So, in my "real life," I do phone tech support. There are many times every shift I realize exactly why I'm there that day, whether it is solving a mystery of why something isn't working or educating a customer on how his or her equipment works. While sometimes customers aren't very pleasant, I'm usually able to turn the situation around. It's tough when I can't get the 80 year old grandma's email working right because she hasn't entered the password correctly for the fourth time or when the previous three techs didn't get the problem solved and the customer has been troubleshooting for an hour already.
Having said that, I definitely have days when I'm glad to get home. All I really want is to be a blessing, but sometimes it's a real challenge. Then, I need to laugh, like today. Here we go:
*sigh* Some days, it takes all my patience.
I was trying to get what we call "under time" this last shift, but didn't get my request in the exact time and others got to go home while I got stuck.
That's okay, I guess I needed to be there to help the last few customers.
My cubical mate is a super cool black man who's young enough to be my son. I earned some cred with him by knowing some of the rappers. When I, um, stole a trash can and a bracket for some desk shelves from an area that wasn't being used, he declared he had "the dopest" cube mate. I'll take that. He bent over laughing when I started singing:
from "Office Space." Word.
I also noticed that my picture (from my badge--terrific, right?) was up on the "perfect attendance" board. At a second look, most of the folks up there were of the older persuasion. Not saying that my generation might have a better work ethic, but I've noticed a lot more gray hair around the center. While I know it was a struggle for me, because I wasn't born with a cell phone in my hand, I can be trained. I do have to admit there are days:
Represent. Walking down the hall, everyone is glued to their cell phone. Hell, anywhere anymore, everyone is glued to their cell. Whatever happened to good old fashioned interaction?
When someone asks you a question, look up from the phone and make eye contact please. There's an app for that. It's called Respect. Download it, please.
I not only do tech support for phones, I also work with "laptop connect" devices that hook computers up to the internet. Nothing worse than those two hour calls with the customer trying to pair up their piece of crap computer with an old "air card" that should have been replaced years ago. Sometimes, you just have to give up the ghost, okay?
One of my troubleshooting tricks involves me sending a text with a link in it to the customer. Almost everyone can text now, but there are still a few holdouts.
Packing for a trip recently, I had to find a half-dozen cables, cords and chargers. Craziness! I had to label everything. This made me laugh, because it's so true.
Had to do at least one, you know:
I always get worried when you ask a customer what type of internet security they're using and they don't have a clue. I've been using Mozilla Firefox, so I thought this was cute:
And finally, I am proud to say I am actually a geek. Hell, I'm painfully geeky, by definition:
So, there you have it. Thanks to all--I reached 9,000 page views on this blog this week! I am grateful. Take care and have a great week!
