I have another entry I’m supposed to write first, but it’s on a sensitive issue and I’m not sure I want certain people finding it. It’s unlikely that they would, but if they did, it would cause a great deal of embarrassment. (More than I’ve opened myself to already!) Instead in this entry I’ll write about possibly the best job I ever had: {A Major IT Company ™.}
I joined {The Company} in 1998, as part of the co-op program. You may be familiar with it… it allows college students to enter the job market on a part time basis to get experience. I was a student at the University of Kentucky at the time, and I was living with Darron over on Codell Drive. In any case, he heard of a number of openings at {The Company} and told me about it. We both applied for the technical support department and were quickly hired without any serious questions. The interview took place as we were walking to tour the offices and was very perfunctory. I don’t think they even glanced at our resumes or checked our references. They must have been desperate for people!
{The Company} manufactures all sorts of things, but in my day, was primarily known for printers and scanners. Most of their important customers are large corporations such as {Big Box Store}, but they also have an End-User Division. I started in the Customer Support Department, answering phone calls from End-Users about our most popular printer. It was about $50 and generated revenue primarily through the sale of ink cartridges, which were about $30 a piece, required a “color” and a “black” cartridge, and were only halfway full so the customer would keep having to replace them. The printer was so cheap that eventually they made it disposable… if somebody had a problem with it which required repair, we would tell the customer to throw it away and {The Company} would send them another one. It was manufactured in China, of course.
Most of these users were very ill-informed about anything computer related. I would get the most ridiculous calls: customers would complain about no power without having the power cord plugged in, they would try to insert driver CDs into their floppy drives, that sort of thing. Sometimes a really difficult call would come through requiring deleting files from the spooler, or for the customer to send in print samples so we could diagnose problems with the ink heads.
Customer Support Reps are rewarded based on the number of calls they complete per hour. This is true for almost any phone business: Sales, Support, Marketing, Etc. However, whenever I received a call with a complicated problem, not only would I lead the customer through every step for a solution, but I would explain each step of the process. This led to my calls taking upwards of 30 minutes to an hour — I was a very inefficient employee. One of the Supervisors noticed this… but also noticed that I was very technically proficient and maybe even felt a little sorry for me. So he recommended me for the Operations Support Department.
Operations Support is basically the “Technical Support for the Technical Support.” Any time one of our Employees had a computer problem, we were sent out to take care of it. Most often this meant “newdriving” the computer — copying an image of a fresh Windows installation over to the PC to resolve any difficulties. However, this was not our most common task. Usually, what we did was answer the phone to change passwords. People forget their passwords all the time . . . I would get a dozen or two calls a day about it. What we had to do was reset it to some easy password like “monday15” and set a flag so the employee had to enter a new password at logon. This was my primary job responsibility.
I also had to inventory PCs and roll out new PC installations every so often. This was left to me, the lowliest grunt in the place, because two of our younger, full-time employees (they were in their 20’s) claimed to have “bad backs” and were unable to lift such a ponderous, heavy device as a PC. Most likely they considered manual labor beneath them, and refused to do it so they could sit at their desks and browse the Internet. The entire time I was there, I never really pinned down what they did for {The Company}. We had other Employees to maintain the servers, and most of the time it seemed like they sat at their desks looking busy.
One of them was an extreme Dittohead, spouting the most vociferous invective about all things Liberal. He was supposed to be a Christian, but he was very bitter and vindictive. We had a very attractive young woman who also worked in Operations Support. (I developed a small crush on her once we became friends, which I will detail later.) The head of the technical support division basically kept her on because he liked the look of her. Everyone in the office badmouthed her because they assumed she was useless, while contributing nothing themselves. I think they just hated her because of her attractiveness. The so-called loving “Christian” was the worst about badmouthing everyone around him. Due to my low status, I’m certain they did the same to me.
The great part about the job, however, was that very little was required of me. Most of the time I sat at my desk browsing the Internet or playing Magic: The Gathering via the Freeware Apprentice app. As I said, I primarily answered the phone changing passwords, and maybe once or twice a week I would have to go out on the floor. Even sweeter was the fact that I had the Weekend Shift, when basically nobody was there. Entire Saturdays would go by without my receiving one phone call. I used to bring my PlayStation in and play it on a projector on the wall. I played through the entirety of Icewind Dale while there. I even took naps. This is why I suspect others at the {The Company} badmouthed me, because they caught me doing these things a couple of times. It was a cake job and it paid well. It seems like a lot of large corporations have this “dead weight,” especially in the IT Departments. I guess they keep them around just in case something goes wrong. . . . not because much hard work is required of them.
I recently went to lunch with Erin at Five Guys Burgers & Fries, and a detachment of {The Company’s} employees came in to sample the fare while on their lunch break. They were primarily balding, middle-aged dudes with one woman or two. They all had {The Company} badge on their hips. It made me remember {The Company} fondly, and wish that I’d never left. (I have even had dreams that I reapplied to {The Company} and got accepted.) Given the hard times the economy went through, though, I probably would have been fired eventually.
I was very Expendable. I went through a lot of problems working at Erin’s Startup, not the least of which was my slide into Psychosis. I like to think if I never had left {The Company} my life would still be stable … although probably my illness would have come on me anyway since I had already started experimenting with drugs while I was there.