I live in Northern Kentucky and in my senior year of highschool (2000-2001 school year) I had enough credits to be able to leave school and go to work. Staples has a large call center here so I was assigned there. I worked in the call center doing cust. service from october 2000 to february 2002, when I was fired.
About 6 months prior to my termination, I was taken off the phones and placed in a then-experimental internet chat program to handle customer service (which is still used on Staples.com to help customers today). So anyway, this is also when I started visiting sites like FatWallet, Ben's Bargains, and this website. I was first introduced to AnandTech while searching for "hot deal" websites that posted Staples coupons and deals. Basically, I informed the call center managers about price match schemes / coupons posted / etc so they could take action to correct/discontinue.
The only problem was, however, I was extremely interested in the hot deals myself so I actually got in touch with someone at Ben's Bargains and started providing full lists of valid coupon codes and stuff. Staples would give us packets of coupon codes and good product deals to be aware of. I would scan them and provide them to others. Well, I made a two fatal mistakes which lead to my termination. Well, one actually, but it lead to the discovery of my other mistake.
I was doing an internet chat with a customer while I was busy copying/pasting some hot deal info to/from websites and I accidentally pasted into a customer chat session (gulp). All the chat sessions (at that time, anyway) were recorded and reviewed because we were still developing/tweaking customer service chat. I acted like nothing happened, hoping one of my friendly chat monitors would shrug it off.
Nope. About 3 weeks later, on a Friday, my shoulder was tapped on and I was asked to have a short meeting. I got canned. They said the chat monitor noticed the strange info posted in the chat session so they did an investigation. They saw that I was posting on "Anandtech Hot Deals" and was posting sensitive Staples information. They also discovered I was having Staples items shipped to my house using coupons (you're not allowed to order any products for yourself, but I ordered them in my moms name). Then the head HR person at the call center said they would be watching me on AnandTech and if I were found posting any more Staples info there would be legal action. So, I made this new username.
So, my title should be "I got myself fired, but Anandtech was involved" but I think its more catchy the way I have it now.
EDIT: Grammur.
About 6 months prior to my termination, I was taken off the phones and placed in a then-experimental internet chat program to handle customer service (which is still used on Staples.com to help customers today). So anyway, this is also when I started visiting sites like FatWallet, Ben's Bargains, and this website. I was first introduced to AnandTech while searching for "hot deal" websites that posted Staples coupons and deals. Basically, I informed the call center managers about price match schemes / coupons posted / etc so they could take action to correct/discontinue.
The only problem was, however, I was extremely interested in the hot deals myself so I actually got in touch with someone at Ben's Bargains and started providing full lists of valid coupon codes and stuff. Staples would give us packets of coupon codes and good product deals to be aware of. I would scan them and provide them to others. Well, I made a two fatal mistakes which lead to my termination. Well, one actually, but it lead to the discovery of my other mistake.
I was doing an internet chat with a customer while I was busy copying/pasting some hot deal info to/from websites and I accidentally pasted into a customer chat session (gulp). All the chat sessions (at that time, anyway) were recorded and reviewed because we were still developing/tweaking customer service chat. I acted like nothing happened, hoping one of my friendly chat monitors would shrug it off.
Nope. About 3 weeks later, on a Friday, my shoulder was tapped on and I was asked to have a short meeting. I got canned. They said the chat monitor noticed the strange info posted in the chat session so they did an investigation. They saw that I was posting on "Anandtech Hot Deals" and was posting sensitive Staples information. They also discovered I was having Staples items shipped to my house using coupons (you're not allowed to order any products for yourself, but I ordered them in my moms name). Then the head HR person at the call center said they would be watching me on AnandTech and if I were found posting any more Staples info there would be legal action. So, I made this new username.
So, my title should be "I got myself fired, but Anandtech was involved" but I think its more catchy the way I have it now.
EDIT: Grammur.
