Glad You Could Help
I've been trying to change my address for my full time employer since the first week in July.
Yes, you read that right.
It has taken me three months to get my address changed in all computer systems so that I now receive my paycheck and any important documents from my employer at my "new" address. It has taken me literally 46 emails (I counted) to the same office. It has taken me dozen of agonizing phone calls. The time data is downright depressing.
You might wonder: why would it take this long? I mean, why would it be so difficult? Haven't people moved for centuries - and haven't people moved further than ten minutes down the road - and haven't their addresses had to be changed? And I have to believe that it's been done with success.
So today, I got tired of wondering all of these questions and spending all of the time telling the same story over and over again to the same incompetent people ("I moved. I need to change my address." "I moved to a new apartment." "I moved about three months ago." "Address is no longer valid." "I need to change my address." "I don't live there anymore." "I live here now." "Donde esta mi casa?!") and so I decided that today, whoever answered the phone downtown at the national headquarters for bureaucratic bullshit, well, that person was going to change my address. No excuses. Burn the goddamn boats.
I called up Human Resources. The woman who answered sounded unfamiliar to me. This I took to be both a good and bad sign. The good sign was that there was a slim chance she could actually help me. If that slim chance worked in my favor, there was a slim chance then that she would help me. And if she would help me, there was the slightest of hope that I could get my address changed. The bad sign was that we'd heard HR was going through tons of turnovers, so that put slim chance #1 at increasingly low odds, no matter how much a newly minted HR guru wanted to help. But I was undeterred.
I told her my story. She was properly outraged. "You HAVE to change your address, honey! You have to! I mean, what if we send out important documents?" (What IF?)
"Exactly," I sighed. She seemed upset, and not just jaded and accepting of HR's consistent failures, like the cohorts before her.
"What about your paycheck? Or your W2? They will hang you for not paying taxes. I know it! Let's get this fixed. I gotta transfer you to the helpline. They'll help you."
Sccccccccccrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.
"Is there any way you can log into the system and change the address?" I asked this even though I had been told several times, on several different occasions, that they could not. (My previous favorite: "It's on a different network." Really? Human Resources doesn't have access to my home address? What kind of bunk HR department are they running down there?)
"I can't, honey, I'm sorry."
"I guess I am confused as to why. This isn't my first call, as we talked about."
"I understand that, sweetheart, but I gotta tell you, I can't change addresses. It's just not allowed."
"So, as a human resources employee, you are unable to log into a system and change my address."
"Well, it's not quite that simple."
"Apparently."
"You need to go through the helpline. They give you a work order and then they go through work orders and they solve problems that way."
"Actually," I interrupted her, "they don't. Because I have done that, I have several work numbers, and none of them have been resolved."
"Well, that might be because you have multiple work numbers for the same work order."
"But that's what you are suggesting I do right now. Transfer me to the helpline, they will ask about my problem, I will tell them it is an existing problem, and they will give me yet another work number."
"But it is a different work number because you are complaining about not having a problem solved." I can only imagine that this woman is sitting in a cubicle with stupid koosh balls or something, with a completely straight face as she says this bullshit to me.
"I'm complaining to you - "
"Which is a work order problem."
"Which is secondary to my main problem, which is that I need to change my address and the system continues to have problems updating."
"I see."
"So, I am wondering, can you please log in and update my address for me? I can verify any information for you."
"It doesn't matter. I cannot update your address."
"Okay, may I get your name please?"
"Why?" No more smiling at koosh ball cubicle.
"Well, when you inevitably have to transfer me to the helpline, I would like to reference that you could not change my address on the system, and that I did speak to you, and that you told me these people could help me. It is best, I find, if I have a name. Though it hasn't served me too well so far, I have to admit."
"So my boss is gonna see this?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
What planet am I on? Who do I work for? "No. I am not going to use your name to get you in trouble. I'm simply using it for my records." The truth is, I want to put a little pressure on this dink. I mean, right now, she could be doing her nails and looking right at a screen that says "Would you like to update address? It is easy, please click here" and just deciding to fuck with me. So I want her to have some accountability in this whole dialogue. People - especially salespeople and customer service motherfuckers - get really nervous when you suddenly want their name. They might actually start to do their job. She didn't know that I was thinking, "Hmm. If I write about this clusterfuck situation, it might help for clarity purposes to be able to have a name for this HR woman rather than continuing to call her HR woman." Still, she wasn't quite biting. "I mean, you have my name, so you know who you are speaking to, and if someone asked you if someone called about an address change, you could tell them. I'm just asking for the same thing. If the helpline asks if I spoke to someone already, I'd like to be able to give them specifics."
"Fine, since I know your name, I guess it's only fair." (Oooookay.) "My name's Sharleen. S-H-A-R-L-E-E-N."
"Thank you, Sharleen."
"You're welcome, honey. Now, I am not trying to be difficult. But you have to understand, honey, I cannot change your address for you. I just can't." This Sharleen chick was making me laugh. She had a really nice voice, and she kept saying "honey" and "sweetheart" all over the place, like she was trying not to be a complete loser but couldn't help it. I almost liked Sharleen.
Almost.
"Okay, well, I guess I'm just wondering, since nobody can give me a straight answer, why can't you change the address? I mean, Sharleen, doesn't that make no sense to you? You work in HR!"
"Well, honey, I'll tell you what. You have to get a work number so they can track everything."
"Yes, I get that. But what's the harm if I don't get a work number? Just this once, please, I am asking you, can we skip the work number? Please. I won't tell anybody."
"You need a work number, honey!"
"But I have about seven of them! I really do. I can give them to you. All I do is get another one, which tells me that nobody's tracking anything, or else you'd be concerned that you have at least seven unresolved work orders about the same thing - something as simple as changing an address."
"We have a very specific system for changing an address."
"I realize this. But whatever it is, it isn't working. I have asked whether I can fax - "
"No faxes."
"Right. So I've asked if I can come down in person - "
"No, we don't do paper changes anymore. Nothing in paper, because paper just gets amassed and then lost."
"Agreed. Except that at this point, I feel like a message in a bottle would be more effective than your current system."
"A message in a what?"
"Nevermind. I guess I just do not understand how I can have called Human Resources several times, and all I want is my address changed, and you cannot do it. That's just unfathomable to me. Human Resources is all about employee records. I just don't get it. I mean, really, as a human resources employee - "
"Manager."
"Manager. As a human resources manager, you do not have the ability to log into my profile and change my address."
This struck a nerve with ol Sharleen. "Oh, honey! No, I CAN do that. As a manager, I have access to all employee records."
"Right!"
She talked right over me. "It's just that I won't."
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.
"What?"
"Well, we can't be handling all of these paperwork - or what used to be paperwork - details. Database updating has to go through another department, like that helpline. If it didn't, I'd spend hours of my day just updating profiles."
"So instead, you are answering my phone call about not being able to update my profile."
"Exactly, honey! My primary focus is on customer service!"
Good to know. Good. To. Know. So I got transferred to the helpline. I was ready to give up on changing my address - either just accept that I was going to have to order another copy of my W2 or move back to my old apartment - when I ran into a colleague and relayed my story. "Had the same thing," he said. "When you log in, it gives you that error message, right?" I nodded and asked him if he'd spent hours dealing with insane bureaucracy like I had. "No," he told me. "I just tried this lame computer trick I learned in college. You hold down the shift, control, and alt key or something like that while you enter everything. I can't remember it exactly but I can show you." So he did. We went back to my laptop and he shadily hit several keys while typing in my address, and it worked.
Incidentally, the helpline sent me an email with the following message: "Due to the high number of work orders identical to this issue, you are no longer eligible to receive a new work order number for this issue. Your work order is still: open/unresolved. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue."
Someone oughta tell Sharleen she's got a big job on her hands.
Yes, you read that right.
It has taken me three months to get my address changed in all computer systems so that I now receive my paycheck and any important documents from my employer at my "new" address. It has taken me literally 46 emails (I counted) to the same office. It has taken me dozen of agonizing phone calls. The time data is downright depressing.
You might wonder: why would it take this long? I mean, why would it be so difficult? Haven't people moved for centuries - and haven't people moved further than ten minutes down the road - and haven't their addresses had to be changed? And I have to believe that it's been done with success.
So today, I got tired of wondering all of these questions and spending all of the time telling the same story over and over again to the same incompetent people ("I moved. I need to change my address." "I moved to a new apartment." "I moved about three months ago." "Address is no longer valid." "I need to change my address." "I don't live there anymore." "I live here now." "Donde esta mi casa?!") and so I decided that today, whoever answered the phone downtown at the national headquarters for bureaucratic bullshit, well, that person was going to change my address. No excuses. Burn the goddamn boats.
I called up Human Resources. The woman who answered sounded unfamiliar to me. This I took to be both a good and bad sign. The good sign was that there was a slim chance she could actually help me. If that slim chance worked in my favor, there was a slim chance then that she would help me. And if she would help me, there was the slightest of hope that I could get my address changed. The bad sign was that we'd heard HR was going through tons of turnovers, so that put slim chance #1 at increasingly low odds, no matter how much a newly minted HR guru wanted to help. But I was undeterred.
I told her my story. She was properly outraged. "You HAVE to change your address, honey! You have to! I mean, what if we send out important documents?" (What IF?)
"Exactly," I sighed. She seemed upset, and not just jaded and accepting of HR's consistent failures, like the cohorts before her.
"What about your paycheck? Or your W2? They will hang you for not paying taxes. I know it! Let's get this fixed. I gotta transfer you to the helpline. They'll help you."
Sccccccccccrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.
"Is there any way you can log into the system and change the address?" I asked this even though I had been told several times, on several different occasions, that they could not. (My previous favorite: "It's on a different network." Really? Human Resources doesn't have access to my home address? What kind of bunk HR department are they running down there?)
"I can't, honey, I'm sorry."
"I guess I am confused as to why. This isn't my first call, as we talked about."
"I understand that, sweetheart, but I gotta tell you, I can't change addresses. It's just not allowed."
"So, as a human resources employee, you are unable to log into a system and change my address."
"Well, it's not quite that simple."
"Apparently."
"You need to go through the helpline. They give you a work order and then they go through work orders and they solve problems that way."
"Actually," I interrupted her, "they don't. Because I have done that, I have several work numbers, and none of them have been resolved."
"Well, that might be because you have multiple work numbers for the same work order."
"But that's what you are suggesting I do right now. Transfer me to the helpline, they will ask about my problem, I will tell them it is an existing problem, and they will give me yet another work number."
"But it is a different work number because you are complaining about not having a problem solved." I can only imagine that this woman is sitting in a cubicle with stupid koosh balls or something, with a completely straight face as she says this bullshit to me.
"I'm complaining to you - "
"Which is a work order problem."
"Which is secondary to my main problem, which is that I need to change my address and the system continues to have problems updating."
"I see."
"So, I am wondering, can you please log in and update my address for me? I can verify any information for you."
"It doesn't matter. I cannot update your address."
"Okay, may I get your name please?"
"Why?" No more smiling at koosh ball cubicle.
"Well, when you inevitably have to transfer me to the helpline, I would like to reference that you could not change my address on the system, and that I did speak to you, and that you told me these people could help me. It is best, I find, if I have a name. Though it hasn't served me too well so far, I have to admit."
"So my boss is gonna see this?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
What planet am I on? Who do I work for? "No. I am not going to use your name to get you in trouble. I'm simply using it for my records." The truth is, I want to put a little pressure on this dink. I mean, right now, she could be doing her nails and looking right at a screen that says "Would you like to update address? It is easy, please click here" and just deciding to fuck with me. So I want her to have some accountability in this whole dialogue. People - especially salespeople and customer service motherfuckers - get really nervous when you suddenly want their name. They might actually start to do their job. She didn't know that I was thinking, "Hmm. If I write about this clusterfuck situation, it might help for clarity purposes to be able to have a name for this HR woman rather than continuing to call her HR woman." Still, she wasn't quite biting. "I mean, you have my name, so you know who you are speaking to, and if someone asked you if someone called about an address change, you could tell them. I'm just asking for the same thing. If the helpline asks if I spoke to someone already, I'd like to be able to give them specifics."
"Fine, since I know your name, I guess it's only fair." (Oooookay.) "My name's Sharleen. S-H-A-R-L-E-E-N."
"Thank you, Sharleen."
"You're welcome, honey. Now, I am not trying to be difficult. But you have to understand, honey, I cannot change your address for you. I just can't." This Sharleen chick was making me laugh. She had a really nice voice, and she kept saying "honey" and "sweetheart" all over the place, like she was trying not to be a complete loser but couldn't help it. I almost liked Sharleen.
Almost.
"Okay, well, I guess I'm just wondering, since nobody can give me a straight answer, why can't you change the address? I mean, Sharleen, doesn't that make no sense to you? You work in HR!"
"Well, honey, I'll tell you what. You have to get a work number so they can track everything."
"Yes, I get that. But what's the harm if I don't get a work number? Just this once, please, I am asking you, can we skip the work number? Please. I won't tell anybody."
"You need a work number, honey!"
"But I have about seven of them! I really do. I can give them to you. All I do is get another one, which tells me that nobody's tracking anything, or else you'd be concerned that you have at least seven unresolved work orders about the same thing - something as simple as changing an address."
"We have a very specific system for changing an address."
"I realize this. But whatever it is, it isn't working. I have asked whether I can fax - "
"No faxes."
"Right. So I've asked if I can come down in person - "
"No, we don't do paper changes anymore. Nothing in paper, because paper just gets amassed and then lost."
"Agreed. Except that at this point, I feel like a message in a bottle would be more effective than your current system."
"A message in a what?"
"Nevermind. I guess I just do not understand how I can have called Human Resources several times, and all I want is my address changed, and you cannot do it. That's just unfathomable to me. Human Resources is all about employee records. I just don't get it. I mean, really, as a human resources employee - "
"Manager."
"Manager. As a human resources manager, you do not have the ability to log into my profile and change my address."
This struck a nerve with ol Sharleen. "Oh, honey! No, I CAN do that. As a manager, I have access to all employee records."
"Right!"
She talked right over me. "It's just that I won't."
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.
"What?"
"Well, we can't be handling all of these paperwork - or what used to be paperwork - details. Database updating has to go through another department, like that helpline. If it didn't, I'd spend hours of my day just updating profiles."
"So instead, you are answering my phone call about not being able to update my profile."
"Exactly, honey! My primary focus is on customer service!"
Good to know. Good. To. Know. So I got transferred to the helpline. I was ready to give up on changing my address - either just accept that I was going to have to order another copy of my W2 or move back to my old apartment - when I ran into a colleague and relayed my story. "Had the same thing," he said. "When you log in, it gives you that error message, right?" I nodded and asked him if he'd spent hours dealing with insane bureaucracy like I had. "No," he told me. "I just tried this lame computer trick I learned in college. You hold down the shift, control, and alt key or something like that while you enter everything. I can't remember it exactly but I can show you." So he did. We went back to my laptop and he shadily hit several keys while typing in my address, and it worked.
Incidentally, the helpline sent me an email with the following message: "Due to the high number of work orders identical to this issue, you are no longer eligible to receive a new work order number for this issue. Your work order is still: open/unresolved. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue."
Someone oughta tell Sharleen she's got a big job on her hands.
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