Finally Started my new Job.
Decided to keep an online diary.
What a a start to the Millenium. My new job officially starts today - I actually started last week. I've had all the official training and am now fully qualified to work on the phones.
Wow, what a day! I got there, and settled in at my desk ( arranging my lucky mascots) and before I knew what had happened someone had made me a coffee.
And I've been promoted. "Would I mind covering the newsgroups? We'd normally give the job to someone more experienced" (they said, what an honour! promotion on my first day!)
They showed me how to access the newsgroups, set up my identity so the customers would know I work for support, and away I went. I thought they must have a really slow connection as it took ages for all the messages to appear, but there were about 800 postings to be answered.
The first one I looked at was full of swearing. I'm not a prude by any means, but I didn't know what half the words meant.
A quick flick through the manual "How to answer Newsgroups" and I found the answer I needed. Its quite clever really, you look up what the complaint is and it tells you what to type. Shame its in a book really else I could just cut and paste it into my reply.
Swearing is covered by the terms and conditions. Its not allowed, but we do give fair warning.
So I answered the post as well as I could. The next one I looked at was from someone complaining they couldn't receive email.
A quick check of my computer and I found I couldn't receive mail either. I decided to take advice on this. I asked another support worker (well I waited until they had finished screaming at someone on the phone first) what to do.
They quickly solved my problem and pointed me to appendix A in the back of the book.
"At the time of your posting there was no reported fault with email, please check that your settings are correct. If I can be of any further help, then please let me know."
Ah, its quite easy this really. Ah well its time for a tea - break. Apparently in this office we get to have lots of T-breaks.
Next posting (I'm whizzing through them now) someone wants a newsgroup added. Thats easy. Policy says we don't add newsgroups unless they've been requested twice. But we tell them we've passed it on to the man in charge of adding newsgroups. Time for one more reply before lunch, ah sadly not, the firealarm has gone off, and we all have to go outside.
Luckily the authorised meeting place is a pub next to our building. Thats quite fortunate. I hope someone put the answer machine on. Early lunch for all. Super, I think I'll like working here.
After lunch I felt a bit tired (someone bought me a couple of pints), so I just read a few of the postings instead. There's a whole thread going on about sparkly bits ... I'm not sure what they're talking about. Its quite interesting though, so I won't tell them they're off topic until the story is finished. At least I hope its a story ... people don't really do that with sparkly bits do they? Last post of the day for me to answer.
Someone is saying they can't access web pages. Oh what an easy one, straight to the right page in the big book, a welll thumbed page I believe.
Ah here it is, ask for more detail. IP address, where they're calling from, what browser etc etc. What a list, but its all common sense stuff. Ah well, What a great first day at work.