gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Me - CAR -15)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2004-09-28 09:23 am

This is bloody ridiculous.

Last night, at about 0255, the phone rang. Woke us both from a sound sleep. Fearing that it was bad news, Kirsten told me to answer it.

It was bad news.. it was the dimwit SuperShuttle dispatcher!

The dispatcher seemed to be under the illusion that Kirsten was still a driver, and was letting her know that they had several runs in the South Bay. This is BS. From my time as a dispatcher:

1. We never called drivers who had their vans at home unless they were late signing on. They either just signed on to the computer dispatch system, or called us. One driver had a fax machine at home, so we could send him a heads-up on his first run, but that still wouldn't cause a phone to ring!

2. Kiri's start time for almost her entire career at SuperShuttle was 0400. No way in hell would I call a driver one full hour before their assigned start time unless it was a special occasion like the day before Thanksgiving.

3. She hasn't worked for SS since May. I wonder if they still wonder why I don't show up to dispatch?

I just called my old boss at dispatch, and let him know that we were not amused by this. Kirsten has taken her own measures.

[identity profile] robertprior.livejournal.com 2004-09-28 10:09 am (UTC)(link)
I get this message:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /users/kshandra/571116.html on this server

[identity profile] gridlore.livejournal.com 2004-09-28 10:32 am (UTC)(link)
I hadn't noticed that she locked her entry, sorry.

[identity profile] johno.livejournal.com 2004-09-28 11:39 am (UTC)(link)
Which is what the dispatcher should have gotten. ;)

[identity profile] drewkitty.livejournal.com 2004-09-29 06:01 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe a civil restraining order would be a useful wake-up call, since SuperShuttle doesn't seem to speak English, Clue, Klingon, or any other known language.

If that were one of our dispatchers making a mistake that boneheaded, there would be a personal apology from the dispatcher -- made during the victim's day -- and some frank discussions between dispatchers and supervisors about how the contact list became quite so outdated. At one site, it is the task of day shift to generate accurate employee lists; swing shift to verify contact information; and grave shift to update posted and bound information accordingly.

We run a lot of 24-hour shops, and all of us know and believe in Heinlein's quote from Time Enough For Love: "Unnecessarily waking a person should not be considered a capital crime, for the first offense."

We also page to avoid waking significant others and relatives, unless a phone call is the only option available.