More insights from Luke O'Donnell on answering calls at The City Bin Co.'s headquarters...
The working day, like grey bin contents, is a vague entity at The City Bin Co.'s headquarters. There are no hours as we know them in civilian life. Calls and silences punctuate the day in ever-changing symphonies of feverish crescendoes and eerie lulls. At peak, more than a dozen phones go Hell-for-leather ably-backed by the odd warble of an outspoken mobile or the guzhirt-guzhirt of an ever-ready photocopier.
The working day, like grey bin contents, is a vague entity at The City Bin Co.'s headquarters. There are no hours as we know them in civilian life. Calls and silences punctuate the day in ever-changing symphonies of feverish crescendoes and eerie lulls. At peak, more than a dozen phones go Hell-for-leather ably-backed by the odd warble of an outspoken mobile or the guzhirt-guzhirt of an ever-ready photocopier.
When
nothing's ringing, we can hear the tumbleweed yawn. The former bears a
striking resemblance to full-time at Croker; whereas the latter is more like
dusk on the third day, before God made telephones. Each is equally fascinating.
Roaring
like the four horsemen during happy hour, the din here with all guns blazing is
both a miracle of modern engineering and a gleaming testament to the harmony of
human interaction. The reason we're able to answer your calls on the first ring
and carry out a sensible conversation thereafter is because it's
important. We're not emptying bins here in the office nor are we negotiating
traffic. We're minding your queries and fielding your concerns. We mightn't be
nearly as helpful if we were changing lanes on the M50 at the same time.
Hitherto,
the only comparison I could have drawn to rival this phenomenon
was the memory of my grandmother and her two sisters having tea. They
didn't so much meet for a chat as invade one another's airspace with
a full-scale verbal battery of one-way narratives about six different
stories involving two dozen people in the face of equally vehement
counter-strikes from their siblings. We might chalk up a good few
conversations on any given day but they only ever involve two people. Odds on,
one of them is you.
So
while The City Bin Co. is not nearly as loud (and has fewer cucumber
sandwiches), the combined age and words-per-minute is about the
same. And so it goes throughout the day. Spikes and troughs, ebbs and
flows. Noise and noise (and silence). As our immensely popular Dublin City
introductory offer winds to a close after four months on the go phone activity
is hotting up once more.
While
the radio ads once yielded ferocious activity around Christmas and the New Year
the television efforts induced half-hour bouts of unbridled carnage. City
councillor Gerry Breen was equally impressive. The €99
all-in-for-a-year deal so enamoured the former Lord Mayor he shared the
good news with his constituency via text message. They called for weeks
after. All through December he justified his own “how’d ya hear ‘bout
us buddy?” box on the registration form.
The
March 31 deadline looms for our €99 introductory offer so ye best get
in quick Dublin, before our lives go back to normal.
