Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

Not all our employees were willing to go the second mile for a customer if it kept them from getting in a few extra games of Minesweeper. But a lot were.

Actually, you can play a lot of Minesweeper when you're in queue with a big, impersonal company trying to get help for a customer. But as a department, we tended to make fun of our fellow employees who were too lazy to solve their customers' problems. And I can't count the times that our call center reps ran to my desk with sincere concern for the problems of the caller they had on hold.

One little rep was known for repeatedly gasping, "The customer can't make calls!" Being a technical person, I wanted to know why. Were they being pinned down by thugs? Had they failed to pay their bill? What happens when they try to call out?

"Nothing," she replied firmly. "Nothing happens. They just can't make any calls." Usually I could get her to find out what was really going on, and to verify the absence of thugs and shiftlessness. But I appreciated her sense of urgency.

I hear that Wachovia Bank is getting senior employees to personally call dissatisfied customers.