Halfass Review - Happy Chef BBQ - Wickham St Fortitude Valley

...you know how they say..... location, location, location? well...i work in an interesting location... right smack in the middle of brisbane's Chinatown. yes, red lanterns, semi existent pagodas (which are in the middle of being torn down apparently....to make chinatown look less like chinatown... which not only sucks but is really rude....anyway) and a lot of asian restaurants. i say asian cuz it's not just chinese food.....there's thai and vietnamese as well and a couple of japanese places.

anyway, i went a-wandering before my shift started at 2pm cuz i wanted to find Oxlades (an art supply store) to look for some colour remover (which i didnt find any of yesterday...major bummer). i found oxlades, but dammit, they're closed sundays. (BOOOOOOO!!!)

anyhoo, on my meandering back to work, i opted for something to eat for lunch and walked back to McWhirters (shopping centre complex on brunswick st/cnr of wickham) and looked at the phillipino place, but nothing looked appetizing and they didnt have any Adobo....which i like,. but they put peppercorns in it and i hate picking out the peppercorns.. so i decided to walk back past the chinese restaurants on wickham st. i pretty much picked the first place that mentioned take-away and had roasted items hanging in the window....and cautiously opened the door.

now, here's where the comedy starts. my mum took me to a lot of chinese restaurants as a kid, and some smallish places that if you blinked as you walked past, you would miss it. this was even SMALLER than the smallest restaurant i had been in, and to demonstrated how small, i opened the door to see someone sitting right in front of me, eating their lunch. i'm like ....oh shit... and make my way inside...

now the scene as i walked in was odd too. no sound at all... except for clinking of forks and plates and things... but no aircon, no crappy chinese muzak either. and a couple of people from the tables peering up at me as i walked in...and there were less than 10 tables in there. and all these tables were FULL. not kidding.

anyway, i didn't feel like chicken, so i got something simple.....barbecue pork and rice.... $9.50 ....a little bit pricy, but once in a while wouldn't break the bank. anyway.... she takes my order and then proceeds to slice the meat right there behind the counter. none of this.... yelling an order in fluent chinese babble to some hidden away chef who would conjur up my order. she literally reaches over, picks up a piece of barbecued pork and grabs a cleaver and begins to slice away, on a cutting board that probably doubles as part of the register.

it's only then that i sort of take in the garishness of the place. the usual painted golden buddha statue on the counter... one or two faux jade items and lots of those red lantern thingies. she's fiddling behind the counter...ladelling on some sort of sauce and adding some green vegetables. she packs my order into a box, and i grab a menu on my way out, after paying.

when i get to the break room at work...i open my meal and have a nibble. the pork was really good, and the greens....although a little bitter were tasty. the sauce was sweet with soy and probably a bit of garlic in it. then i started reading the menu, which was a good laugh.... for starters, they mis-spelled "noodle" (noodel) and mistyped "bean curd" as "bean CARD", as well as misspelling "chicken" (chichen) ...and even more embarrasingly "szechuan" (szechen)....

...and chicken was misspelled directly under where it was written in the previous line.

so for their dodgy engrish menu and crap decor i give them a 2 but for the food, which didn't make me sick and was actually worth it (ok maybe if it were $1 cheaper).... i give it a 4 out of 5.

Job Update #2

...cuz myspace is borked and i need a whinge.....

and this is all going to be written lowercase, cuz frankly....it's nearly 2am and i don't give a flying fuck about punctuation.

i love my job... on the whole....really, i do. it gets me out of the house, keeps me out of trouble, and helps me pay my bills and keep a roof over my head.

there are times, though...that i find my job a bit difficult... essentially it's a simple job and i wouldn't say it's the kind of job a trained monkey could do, but so long as you're polite to people on the phone, and good with a keyboard, you'll do ok. the tough part comes in the people we deal with... some are rude, some are clueless, and some are just plain off the planet....

tonight was a typical case... i was on the outbound desk, doing callouts (in short, we call people who haven't called to confirm msgs that need confirming) for one company in particular down in melbourne which is once again having shitty weather and bushfires. anyway...dude calls in regarding some building somewhere in melbourne city that has no power. we log the call... and i call it out to the guy who says... no worries will get to the guy asap.

now on the outbound desk we also pick up calls transferred from the floor when agents are having difficulty...so i pick up a transfer from one of the agents.. telling me it's the guy who called in the call about the building with no power and he wants to know when the guy will call him. i take the call and explain that the call has been made and the on call dude will get in contact with him ASAP...meanwhile he's already logged another 2 jobs with the agent who put him through to me.

meanwhile, i've called out the other 2 jobs he's logged, one to the same guy i called before (which is not uncommon) and one to another guy who i woke up (tough shit, that's what you get for being on call) ....so they take the respective details and i think...ok my job is done, can get on with the (slow) night.

about half an hour later i get another call transferred from the floor which i pick up (which was mistransferred to the wrong extension AND not introduced.....ggrrr) and it's the no power guy again. he's pissed and wants to know why he got a call from X company about the problem when he contacted X company to begin with. i try and explain to the best of my abilities what our process is (e.g. we take details then call out this guy and he calls you) and that i was simply following the process we have, etc, etc.

went around in circles with this guy 3 times and he's just not getting the fucking point that my instructions were to contact that particular person for that particular building....he ends up deciding to contact someone else and see what the problem is (or whatever)

less than 5 minutes later i get one of the techs i called the job out to calling in on the confirmations line.... wanting to know if the contact number i gave him was correct.....because the phone has been ENGAGED for the last hour. i explain to him that i've just had the guy on the phone and he's not happy that he hasn't been attended to yet, and he should keep trying to get through to him.

so obviously this guy has been on the phone the whole time either to us or whoever else... while the tech has been trying to get through to him. smart, huh?

thankfully he never rang back though, so he must have got fed up or hopefully the tech got a hold of him somehow.

likewise when people ask when they will get a return call....AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IS THE BEST ADVISEMENT WE HAVE.

here's a hint...if this is the SIXTH call you have made and still had no response..either their really busy, or the business you called is FUCKING DODGY and you should seek help elsewhere.

kinda reminds me of all the rigmarole with X financial services we had LAST year. they weren't returning calls....so we were getting the phone calls from pissed customers about their tax returns (right near tax deadline...cuz...y'know....no one does their tax EARLY) wanting to know why they hadn't called back....i took 3 calls 3 nights in a row from some dude in china who wanted to do his tax return, and each night i had to give him the same line and take his details.

yes, i'm a messaging service....or answering service. no, i don't have that information...but i can take your details and ask them to return your call. whether they do that is not up to me, once i pass on your name and phone number, MY JOB IS DONE and whether they return your call is NMP = NOT MY PROBLEM. i've got the information i have on my screen. that is it. if i say i don't have contact details (which is 95% of the time.....people seem to want ppl to answer their phones but not to pay extra to have info for callers on the screen...) DON'T PUMP ME FOR INFO I DON'T HAVE IT! no, i can't transfer you. if you ask to speak to my supervisor, i'll gladly put you onto my supervisor... but don't be surprised when they give you the same info i just gave you.

likewise: if i say one moment please... don't you fucking DARE tell me "i don't have to wait" .....yes you do. whoever transferred you through to me didn't let me know, so i have to find the right screen in which to process your 3 messages in one which you always stupidly leave.... i know the guy can't help it, but jeeeeeeez......

eh....ok....done whinging for now. sleep then do it all again....fuck i must be insane.....