My first day on the phone

Hello my miscrents,

Now that I have completed training, I am now an official phone drone. Yes, if you are one of the many field techs and you can’t get your question resolved except by calling layer two support, you get to talk to me.

My first day on phones has been ‘interesting’  the que is set to hit me, then my coworkers, in order of when we were hired.  Sadly I am the lowest man on the totem pole, and the most experienced person is in the cubicle across from me, with order to stay off the phone, and help with all my calls.

The first two calls were exceedingly simple (Move an AD object from 1 folder to another, it’s like cutting and pasting a document, but because it’s in AD only a level 2 support monkey (Ie me) is able to do so.  The next call was “I have 4 pieces of ancient tech that used to work but now don’t” gave that one to my ‘mentor’ and he has been working for the last 45 minutes on it.  The next call was “we are from the merged company, and having support problems”  that one had to go to the person second in seniority and once again after 20 minutes, he took the call and I was back in que answering.

Needless to say,  I am looking at the switch board, and feeling more like a receptionist,  all of my ‘advance & experienced’ coworkers are on psychotic bizarre phone calls all of which bounced off of me.  I am doing the rest of the simple ones, but at this point, without a net.

Somehow the first day I am on the phones, and we are being overrun with WTF phone calls.

I think the universe is welcoming me back to the world of the working!

Time for an Intervention

My Fellow Miscreants

It’s time that we all unite and stage an intervention!  I know that most of you probably are more on the receiving side of these, and have little clue how to organize one, but maybe I can help.  I’ll write my speech first, and you can all use it as a template.

“Ma’am,

I have known you all my life. Your antics when I was younger we amusing, and while you often failed me when I truly needed you by refusing my requests, I tolerated this. As an adult, and with a much different perspective, and it would seem your antics are getting more extreme. 

I am sure there is medication that will help; you really need to start taking it regularly, maybe find someone to talk to. 

Seriously Mother Nature, you just flooded my home state, made my neighbors basement into an indoor pool, and converted my car to a mushroom farm.  All that and I still failed my 5^th grade math test because you refused to give me a June snow day from school.

 I don’t know if you and Father Time are fighting, or if you’re going through some type of change, but either way you seriously need your meds!”

All right people, your turn!  And if I get hit by lightning, maybe we will have to reschedule!

The New Position

Hello my fellow miscreants,

the Contract job is going pretty good, considering that I have had 2 weeks of training and still have only limited clues what I am doing.  The job is the first new hires in 18 months,  so they had a confused training regime.  mostly it was “ah what should we show”  or (my personal favorite)  the spend 2 days being told about a system that was put in when the Bangles were in the music charts, only to be told “but we don’t support it, so if you get any calls, refer them to <this place>”

This week, I have the swing shift, because the operation is 24/5 (closed on weekends) there are some interesting shifts, the midnight to 8  shift,  the 8 am to 4 shift,  the 4 to noon shift,  and my current assignment,  the noon to 8 shift.     the early shifts get hammered since the company is world-wide. During normal business hours for China, Russia, Europe and such, the early or over night shifts take a lot of  calls.  enough to prevent people from sleeping at their desks at the very least.

right now, its normal business hours, if your on an unnamed pacific island and happen to need support.  I checked, they get an average of 4 calls a week.

To make matters worse, I am with a trainer, so there are 2 of us to answer any of the 4 calls we can expect this week.

I am torn, between “at least I am getting paid” and “try not to sleep”  and to make matters worse, my badge does not work, so if I leave my cubicle for any reason I have to go to the trainer, and take him with me, or I will be locked out of my cubical.

the good news ? I have more than enough time to edit and write new books, to tease my new Muse (until she falls asleep) and be able to pay my mortgage this month (banks get really cranky when you don’t to that)   the bad news,  I have to do all of it sober.

The sacrifices we have to make. I personally am going to try to get as many swing shifts as I can!

 

wet random thoughts.

Hello my Fellow Miscreants,

Today, as I sit in my car surrounded by the beautiful sound of rain drops, I can’t help but let my mind wander to new events of the last couple of days.

Of course I say that because the rain drops are coming an a horrendous rate and the water surrounding my car is creeping up the door while I pray the car in front of me is able to get started before I find myself swimming for the bus stop.

I also have had to deal with the wee one going to a new and scary place.  It’s tough. I want to go with them, to protect them and keep them safe. To punch the bullies, and beat down the people running the place so they don’t mistreat them.  It is nerve wracking.

But wife sized unit said ‘No’ to that. Both because she doesn’t want me arrested (such a dear) and because it’s her new job!

Thanks to the last of the children moving out recently, we are now an official double income no kids type of couple.  This means improved beverage choices (not just what’s on sale, but what we want to drink) and that we can go out and eat more and have more fun.

Of course that would be easier if we weren’t so freaking tired from work.   Why can’t the bosses just give us the pay checks and not make us do that work stuff?

My weeks training.

Hello my fellow miscreants,

Well after 2 weeks studying technology from the 90’s and taking a few tests I am now certified to start my new contract job.

This is good news, both because it means I will have income, (Won’t need to make a “will write for food” sign) and because it means no more training review.  Training has been hard. Not the subject (I knew it all long before got this job). It’s the fact that the other 3 people in the class were in junior high when this technology was common.  So while I got these concepts quickly, because back in the day I understood the insanity that was the old tech, before they ‘streamlined things’

I don’t know how many of you dealt with the technology back then, but ‘efficient’ was not a word you could apply.  In fact most times, expletives were more needed.

I have tried to keep a good attitude, I have tried not to roll my eyes, as they others in the class are confused asking “why not just program the system to go from A to X, why do we have to do each painful step” I have tried not to laugh at the questions that show a complete lack of understanding of the basic functions.

I have tried and I have failed – badly!  The only person in the class that now likes me and will talk to me is the teacher and the boss.

Not sure if that is a score, or a fail.

Think I will have to consult the holy twelve pack and either divine the answer, or not care.  Either way.

its still the internet

Hello all my Fellow Miscreants,

Being a miscreant is not an easy task.  you must find a way to balance your enjoyment of all things, and maintaining at least some modicum of civility.   Recently a conversation with my UBerfan about her trying to remain anonymous while she publishes. Her Logic, she is a Female, and despite the style and skill she writes with she will be a female first, and an author second. she wants to succeed as a writer, not as a side-show.

I convinced her that the internet was a creepy place, but that she would find that people tended to behave badly only for a few minutes, then they would either move to another target, or start behaving.

of course my UBerfan then went and got a full-time job, so now I can only bug them when they are off work and when I am…(I liked it better when she was as unemployed as I was… but none the less)  Because she was now busy, I started to chat with another author. She became my muse, helping me understand the female brain (or at least get me close enough I could write about it with out spiking my blood Alcohol Level.   she had the same concerns as UBerfan, and I once again gave her my advice.

as it turns out I now owe both my UBerfan and Muse an apology.  I was wrong.

It’s still the internet!  while there is a good section of people who will chat these 2 up out of interest in their  abilities as writers, there are also still more than a few mouth breathers that make it so that any human being with mammary glands must hide behind androgynous names and photo’s. I am tempted to chase down these a$$hats and let them know they are not allowed to harass my muse or UBerfan,  that’s for me to do !

 

 

 

There are Worse fates then a Cubical.

Hello my fellow miscreants,

Random thoughts for you all today.   I have been working for almost a full week!  I forgot how little I liked working, but I have not scored a winning lotto ticket, and none of my fans have offered to adopt me yet so if I want to keep eating and not sleep under a bridge I suppose I will have to put up with this.

Today I also received my cubicle assignment.  That’s right, I am back in the world of cloth walls.  It’s so Dilbert-esque that I am expecting to see Wally or a pointed headed boss come in.  as part of my move in, today I get to clean out my cubical.  So far I have found a ton of vendor swag and have decided that next time someone tells you to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, they are probably talking about a cubical (mine or any of the millions of others).  On the bright side, there is one guy whose cubical is next to the bathroom doors, so not only does he have the pleasure of knowing everyone’s bowl cycles, but because it’s a single door, when you walk in or out, the air is pulled from there and lands in the cubical.

If he thinks hard enough about it, and realizes that orders are in fact molecules of the original source small enough to become air born, the horror of that realization would make even a non- germiphobic person spray down their cubical with a 55 gallon drum of disinfectant.

It’s good to be back to work, is it 5 yet ?

 

Monday Missed me.

Hello my fellow miscreants,

So this is my first working Monday on over a month, and I have decided that Monday missed me.  I suspected this would be the case when I woke to find I have no Redbull.   I went to check my email, I have no internet; Comcast is doing ‘maintenance’.  I go to the doughnut shop, to find out they are sold out of my favorite doughnuts. Go to the new Job, but the parking lot is being stripped so have to go to the back lot which is full already, making me park a block away, at least it’s already 85 degrees outside.  Got to the training room to find the AC is out. It takes only a few minutes for me to soak through my shirt.

All this plus I have to go from my office to my interview.  So I get to drive home, grab a clean shirt, then drive like myself (IE a mad man) to the interview – then depending on mood and time, go back to the office, which means going home to get my other dirty shirt back on. (Don’t want to explain why I got a clean shirt for a doctor appointment) and finish the day.) of course, when I am almost back to the office the new boss calls, turns out he is going home, so I don’t have to worry about coming back.

My big interview went like Crap, so all that work and missed time may well be for nothing.

And of course, the last piece of this twisted excuse for a day, I got another call for an interview, but I had to tell them sorry, I can’t interview until Thursday.

A Monday this epically bad can only happen because Monday has missed messing with me…

 

Wordless wednesday

With this who needs words?

The Fall out from the Fair last Friday

Hello all My Fellow Miscreants,

As many of you know, I am STILL unemployed.  The back ground check required for me to start is still stalled.  Some of you may also recall that Friday I went to a job fair.  The reason for me to go was simple, there was a position I wouldn’t mind doing, the distance being a possible factor, that and because I have to turn in 3 applications a week or they will cut my unemployment.

So with all the planning of “Oh crap, I need to do 2 more this week” I went to a county job fair, not even taking it seriously.   I was bemoaning the fact there wasn’t going to be funnel cakes or a midway.

As it turns out had I been watching closer, I would have noticed a detail, something that god/the universe was trying to tell me.

The County’s job fair, it was not for the county – it was for the county library.   If there is any place that I would want to ply my IT Skills, a library would be in the top 3, maybe right under the strip clubs.   Needless to say I did a last minute adjustment to my attitude, and am thank full I didn’t stop at the bar right across the street first.

The interview was pretty normal, and I sailed through the technical side, and the personality tests.  It was during one of the questions, the fact that I am currently an author came up, and the fact that I am working on a local writer’s anthology, as the editor of record.   The person that was interviewing me, in addition to being on the IT staff is also tasked with trying to do outreach to local authors, and writers.  To grow the library’s collection of Ebooks and start some initiatives about publishing, again to increase the library’s role in literature.

We ended up spending more time talking about those roles and how I could possibly fit into them then we did the job I was after.

I just sent my thank you letter, and included Rakasha 2.0 (yes the new versions is ready it’s going to Pub after I update my blog and do my applications for the week) It is the first time I have ever actually identified my book to a potential employer.  Most times, employers think “if he wants to be an author, he won’t do a good job for us” and I doubt reading my horror book will do anything to enhance their perceptions of my sanity. In this case, that’s 100% wrong, I think the book will have exactly the effect I want the “Oh, he could be a wonderful resource for us as well as fixing out IT and computer issue”

To quote will smith from the movie I Robot “I had a normal day once, it was a Thursday”