Originally Posted by TravelMann
You'd think they would extend the hours temporarily back to 24 hours a day at the unaffected call centers to help re-distribute some of the call overflow. I still think it's ridiculous for a major US airline to "close" at night. I'm surprised they didn't extend the hours for the busy summer season like retail stores do during the holidays even before the Phoenix problems.
I don't think we should have dropped the graveyard shift either, but now when we are understaffed by 300 agents a day is not the time to spread the workforce any thinner. And besides, agents are union contracted, and having to go through the re-bid process for what was supposed to be a 3 or 4 day problem would have been a disaster. That leaves the only option as offering overtime.. and there aren't enough agents willing to do it for the company to open the lines.
There are only 4 hours of the day that there is no one answering the phones in the res center. 1am-5am Pacific time. The few of us that are willing to be here all night..on top of our normal shifts (and yes, thats exactly where I am right now) are busy taking care of issues at the ticket counter and making sure all the changes that are being made by agents who have only done new bookings for the past year and a half are being processed correctly so that when you get to the ticket counter, everything is in proper order.
