November 26, 2011 | Awake & Dreaming

Home alone for 3 days and needing to cook something for myself, so time to try out a little experiment. As I was sitting in the living room having coffee and watching tv last evening I thought that I’d try to make an American Chopsuey. I used to have this dish a lot when I frequented a bar/restaurant called Oberois near my building, just a little way in as you enter M.G. Road. Let me tell you that the Indian version of American Chopsuey, or what we have chosen to call American Chopsuey varies from what is served in American. I have no idea who came up with this version and why they call it “American” but I love it! Obersois serve it up well and it has all the stuff that I love; boiled veggies like cauliflowers, carrots, green peppers, onions and maybe a little bit of potatoes with chopped up chicken, beef & prawns, both crisp & soft noodles, a little gravy, topped with a bull-eye – what more could you possibly ask for.

Now I can’t really do all this at home and plus I can’t really cook. So I bought some packets of Maggi instant noodles at the corner store and also got a couple of duck’s eggs (I prefer them to chicken’s eggs). I had carrots and green peppers in the fridge.

While making the noodles I added a bit of chopped up carrots & green peppers into the pot. Soon I was hungry as the smell hit me right in the nose. I kept the noodles aside and made two eggs sunny side up or bulls-eye as we call it here in India (and wherever else). I didn’t manage to keep the yolk of one from breaking. Anyways, a little salt for seasoning and voila I was done.

Now I add the bulls-eye to the top of the bowl of noodles and you have a simpler but still tasty version of chopsuey. I had waited long time to start preparing my meal and had taken a long time to make it and it was almost 11:15 pm by the time I was done. I was starving and the meal was good. I’m glad the way this came out. Tomorrow after I’ll probably make the same with more veggies and no eggs.

So I only got my connection back up and running last evening and throughout the night. This morning at around 10:30 am just as I settled down in my seat in front of the laptop post coffee and breakfast – the connection is down again! I waited for a while and then called up their call center to register a complaint. According to the girl who answered my call there is a “planned downtime” in Cochin, or certain parts of the city, and that’s why “you people” are not getting service and it would be up and running as soon as possible. No complaint raised. Ok?

I went about my day but by afternoon I was getting quite pissed off. I called up once again and got yet another girl who claimed the same thing and said that it would be up by 5pm. I said that I didn’t find this acceptable as I wanted to get online now and that their outages were becoming far too frequent – four days running for long hours each day – and I wanted an explanation as to why that was so. She told me that there was a technical problem! What kind of technical problem girlie? Now, clearly flustered, she told me that there was frequent power outages in the city and that’s why the sever goes down. I knew that answer was a load of crap, so I said that it wasn’t true that we have that many power outages so what the hell was she talking about? And any power outages we have are for either 30 minutes or 60! And even if we have power failures, how come a big, rich company like Tata Indicom does not have any backup like a generator or a ups?

She said that it was not available in Cochin. Now, Tata has been running services in Cochin for many years and hence should have adequate backup by now. Now I was angry and said that I needed to speak to a supervisor or someone above her, so please transfer me. “Sir, I cannot transfer you to a supervisor”. Not happening kid, get it done. She went on hold for a while and came back rather frightened to speak to me and said “Sir my supervisors told me that I am to convince you and close the call and not to transfer as it is a known problem”. I lost it – I was laughing inside at the stupid nature of this agent and Tata’s services. I told her a few things – first, do not tell any customer that you have been told to convince him or her by your supervisors. Second, has no one ever taught you to ask permission before you put a customer on hold? She never asked me for permission once, just kept me on hold 3 times without asking properly once and twice without asking.

I finally got her to raise a complaint asking for a supervisor to call me back within a couple of hours and she managed to do so without crying. I dunno how she must have felt after keeping the call but boo hoo hoo girlie! I blame your supervisors and managers; they provide you with such pathetic training. If you ask most of the call center agents anything other than the few prompts & FAQs that they are provided, these kids cannot say anything. Also them buggers are rude and lack adequate manners. Not only have their service quality downhill but their customer service also sucks. Pathetic!