Jester, Exploding Boilers and Manager Call-backs

Full time hours are not going too badly and the tiredness is becoming less of an issue for me but I'm now full of a cold so I have a sore throat, stuffed up/runny nose and I'm sneezing fit to burst. Never mind, I'm happy to keep going into work, safe in the knowledge that I'll be spreading my germs like nobody's business and also staying out of trouble. You see my company has a sickness policy - if you are still breathing, you have to come into work. Some forward thinkers are trying to make even death no excuse for taking time off work.

My reasonable gentleman, mentioned in the last blog, who went straight to the top settled for a nice figure yesterday - nicer for him than the company but I am a generous jester so that's one complaint closed.

I was investigating another yesterday and today and I was struck at the lengths some people will go to to speak to a manager. This particular person was having trouble with her boiler and was unhappy with how long her claim was taking so she rang our help-line and told one of my colleagues that her boiler had exploded and blown one of the walls off her house, causing £340,000 worth of damage.

She got her manager call back quickly enough, I can imagine the poor fellow running to find a manager and breathlessly telling her what had happened. The manager rang her back and she explained that the boiler had not exploded and the wall was still where it had been the previous day and probably had been since the house had been built. She told the hapless manager that she had thought that that was the only way to get a response from our company. The manager explained that she had only needed to ask for a manager to call her back and one would have done so.

I would say that that is being economical with the truth. We have a team of people to make manager call backs and none of them are managers. Of course, if the customer is still not happy then we may get a manager to call back but it might just go to a slightly more experienced member of staff. I suppose if you're insistent enough, you may get to speak to a manager but we try to look after them as much as possible.

Fortunately, most of our customers do not feel the need to make such claims to get a manager to call back and of course, this one provided me and my colleagues with a great deal of amusement along the way.