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Mar. 24th, 2007 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarI had a rather convoluted workday yesterday. It was much like a daylong break with spots of training here and there. Got to really play with some of the hardware that I'm working on. On one hand...whoa, it's some serious video conferencing equipment, and I get to work with it.
On the other...there's something slightly unnerving about holding a $30,000 piece of hardware in my hands.
The only kinda sucky thing yesterday came when everyone was taking test calls. That is, everyone that had been in training for more than just this week. I was around trying to help people out with the software (not the product software, but the case-logging stuff) Most of the folks in my class have worked plenty with computers, but have no experience doing technical support. So, anyway a couple of people were trying to persuade me to hop on the phones and take a few test calls (and by test call, I mean their level two techs calling us and pretending to be custoemrs, knowing that it's a test run). I don't want to do it, and Ahmed (supervisor) wasn't insisting that I do so. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but quite frankly, it's been a week and I'm still a little irked about how things are going and if I wasn't being required to do so, I wasn't going to. That's not to say that I was just sitting there doing nothing and goofing off. Like I said, I was helping people out with the stuff that I was able to, at one point another trainee needed to talk to someone about some of the cultural concerns that he had regarding the job (He's from Brazil, and was hired to do Portuguese language support, but will also be handling normal North American calls and after listening to some of the calls that people were handling was worried that he would have to treat the Portuguese calls in the same manner as North American calls when the level of formality dictated by cultural norms would be different. Thankfully for the techs doing foreign language support, it seems that the company and the client are trusting their judgement and letting them determine how to handle those matters. And I also took some of the time to study some of the proceedures.
So anyway, someone else in the class who was taking test calls decided to get someone else at her desk to take a turn after a few (for this purpose, they didn't set up everyone's computer, so people had to switch off...and the network configuration was a mess due to using a combination of software on our local servers and connecting to the client via VPN. It took some doing to get it all to work. This is just for the testing, thank gawds.)
So anyway, after a bit, Ahmed asked her to go back to her computer and take some more calls and she started bitching about other people not taking calls and not doing anything, and how this was like punishing her and assigning her extra work and all, blah blah blah....and Ahmed was like "This is your job, get some practice, I'll deal with everyone else."
I thought that she was talking about some other folks there, until later when I passed by her talking to another coworker and heard "It's not fair. He's making me work more. Everyone else should have to take the calls too. I don't care if some of them just started. It's not fair."
Which really irked me at the time. Excuse me? But now that I think about it, the same person has been bitching all week because with the exception of Monday when someone else was in charge, Ahmed has been trying to keep everyone reasonably focused on...*gasp*...actually paying attention to what's going on instead of surfing the internet or playing games like half the class tries to do. I mean seriously, it's not downtime. It's a little bit different when you're trained and on the floor and waiting around for calls to come in. So I can't take too seriously the bitching of someone who's gonna whine for being told to pay some attention to the training for the job that she's getting paid to do.
I completely forgot about 4th Friday movie night at the Grove til Jesse mentioned it to me yesterday afternoon. After a bit of a debacle attempting to collect Matt from work, Jesse and I hitched a ride over to the Grove from Jackie. We ended up watching a PBS In Search Of documentary on King Arthur and Roman Britain. It was pretty interesting, and at some point we'll watch the other two parts of it. Neither Jesse nor I had eaten dinner, so after that we wound up going to White Marsh with Mark for a late dinner...which was all sorts of amusing. The sandwich I had was really good, but lemme tell you, Red Brick Station's banana creme brulee was amazing. Oh, and whoever made their mango margarita knew what they were doing. I could tell that there was alcohol in that thing, but I could barely taste it. It was like drinking a mango smoothie, but I definitely felt the alcohol.
Today I think I'm going to go and see 300 in Towson. I also need to pick up some incense...I'm running low.
I just realized it's noon. The washing machine repair guy was supposed to be here before noon.
On the other...there's something slightly unnerving about holding a $30,000 piece of hardware in my hands.
The only kinda sucky thing yesterday came when everyone was taking test calls. That is, everyone that had been in training for more than just this week. I was around trying to help people out with the software (not the product software, but the case-logging stuff) Most of the folks in my class have worked plenty with computers, but have no experience doing technical support. So, anyway a couple of people were trying to persuade me to hop on the phones and take a few test calls (and by test call, I mean their level two techs calling us and pretending to be custoemrs, knowing that it's a test run). I don't want to do it, and Ahmed (supervisor) wasn't insisting that I do so. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but quite frankly, it's been a week and I'm still a little irked about how things are going and if I wasn't being required to do so, I wasn't going to. That's not to say that I was just sitting there doing nothing and goofing off. Like I said, I was helping people out with the stuff that I was able to, at one point another trainee needed to talk to someone about some of the cultural concerns that he had regarding the job (He's from Brazil, and was hired to do Portuguese language support, but will also be handling normal North American calls and after listening to some of the calls that people were handling was worried that he would have to treat the Portuguese calls in the same manner as North American calls when the level of formality dictated by cultural norms would be different. Thankfully for the techs doing foreign language support, it seems that the company and the client are trusting their judgement and letting them determine how to handle those matters. And I also took some of the time to study some of the proceedures.
So anyway, someone else in the class who was taking test calls decided to get someone else at her desk to take a turn after a few (for this purpose, they didn't set up everyone's computer, so people had to switch off...and the network configuration was a mess due to using a combination of software on our local servers and connecting to the client via VPN. It took some doing to get it all to work. This is just for the testing, thank gawds.)
So anyway, after a bit, Ahmed asked her to go back to her computer and take some more calls and she started bitching about other people not taking calls and not doing anything, and how this was like punishing her and assigning her extra work and all, blah blah blah....and Ahmed was like "This is your job, get some practice, I'll deal with everyone else."
I thought that she was talking about some other folks there, until later when I passed by her talking to another coworker and heard "It's not fair. He's making me work more. Everyone else should have to take the calls too. I don't care if some of them just started. It's not fair."
Which really irked me at the time. Excuse me? But now that I think about it, the same person has been bitching all week because with the exception of Monday when someone else was in charge, Ahmed has been trying to keep everyone reasonably focused on...*gasp*...actually paying attention to what's going on instead of surfing the internet or playing games like half the class tries to do. I mean seriously, it's not downtime. It's a little bit different when you're trained and on the floor and waiting around for calls to come in. So I can't take too seriously the bitching of someone who's gonna whine for being told to pay some attention to the training for the job that she's getting paid to do.
I completely forgot about 4th Friday movie night at the Grove til Jesse mentioned it to me yesterday afternoon. After a bit of a debacle attempting to collect Matt from work, Jesse and I hitched a ride over to the Grove from Jackie. We ended up watching a PBS In Search Of documentary on King Arthur and Roman Britain. It was pretty interesting, and at some point we'll watch the other two parts of it. Neither Jesse nor I had eaten dinner, so after that we wound up going to White Marsh with Mark for a late dinner...which was all sorts of amusing. The sandwich I had was really good, but lemme tell you, Red Brick Station's banana creme brulee was amazing. Oh, and whoever made their mango margarita knew what they were doing. I could tell that there was alcohol in that thing, but I could barely taste it. It was like drinking a mango smoothie, but I definitely felt the alcohol.
Today I think I'm going to go and see 300 in Towson. I also need to pick up some incense...I'm running low.
I just realized it's noon. The washing machine repair guy was supposed to be here before noon.
