Man-o-man, what a week this has been.? It all started out normally enough - work was bad on Monday, but it’s nearly always bad on Monday.? That’s the price we pay for being closed on Saturdays and Sundays.? But once Monday had come and gone the stress lingered across the call center floor.? You could read it on the faces of the agents - they’ve just about had enough.

The Company (our client) has a habit of not communicating with itself very well.? This week we had a mailing go out that was worked on by four or five departments.? There were no fewer than five documents going to four groups, and the information contained was nowhere close to being consistent across them all.? This generated a huge number of calls for our department to handle.

We’ve also started a marketing campaign that, though slow to get off the ground, has begun bringing inquiries in every format possible.? All this extra volume has forced each department to fend for themselves, even my grossly understaffed team.? A lack of time to follow-up with customers has made the calls even more difficult.

And so we have the perfect storm and tempers are beginning to flair. Today we nearly had a fistfight in what is normally one of the easier departments, had a supervisor’s meeting degrade into a screaming match and an entire team pulled to talk about the degrading of the inter-personal relationships.

To add to things, I’ve had my own personal issues that have kept me from being able to put on a strong face for my team.? I know I shouldn’t let my home life get into my work life and vice versa. But when neither one goes right they sort of get hard to separate.

So forgive me if I don’t have any funny stories to tell.? This week its all been for not.