Work

Dang, it feels really nice to have a Saturday off for once, even if WFO screwed up my time off request by giving me the whole day instead of just three hours.

I’ve been in bed all morning, enjoying the lazy time.

Time change still has me a mile off of the ordinary, though.

I could let the title of this entry be the entire content, but I think I owe you all an explanation. Hopefully, this one’s not against the old NDA I was under (hence the lack of real meat in my work posts).

Basically, the company I work for here, doing tech support for AOL had to lay all of us off, due to… extenuating circumstances. This was something I knew was coming two months ago, and I was prepared and ready. I was planning on using my time off to claim unemployment, and search for a job with similar pay, or even go back to my old job.

On our last week there, I get a phone call just before I could call in with my doctor’s note, telling me that there is an opening available for me with the same company, but doing support for Dell. They tell me it involves a pay raise, which I was pleased as punch to hear, so of course, I went for it.

Therefore, I’ve spent all of THIS week off from work, and will be working next week, by doing over a month of proper training.

I’m glad, too. It means I get to keep benefits, and might be able to make some necessary progress.

A random topic for a random post, or so it would seem.

I’ve spent my days at work playing Nowhere Else and Beyond, simply because I’m waiting on phone calls to come in. All I do when I’m not bothering with quests, is farm for ingots of raw material. The ingots I farm for get sold to someone for large chunks of in-game gold, which makes me happy as a clam.

I use that gold to buy better equipment and spells so that I can go longer in my quest for thousands upon thousands of ingots. By thousands and thousands, I do mean that I farmed up 2050+ Iron ingots alone yesterday. I don’t even remember the gold or platinum count, and I know that I need to switch dungeons to farm up any mythril. It’ll happen eventually. I’m even playing the mini-game that deals with running a mining rig, and I’ve got 5th or 6th place for everything, on average.

What saddens me is that I’m basically being paid to play games while waiting for phone calls. I sort of feel like I’m one of those Chinese Gold Farmers we joke about in most MMORPGs.

I actually hope for more phone calls today, and I hope they’re the short kind. A whole mess of 10 minute calls would do wonders for me. I mean, back to back to back to back 10 minute calls.

i r ded

… or at least, that’s how I feel right now.
Struggling to figure out how I’m going to get a place to sleep tonight, since I work that funky 15:30 to 0:30 schedule.

I’m not sure what’s going on right now.
I am just hanging onto it for dear life, though.

Well, Today marks my fourth full day on the phones at work, and while I was in the middle of a call, one of the assistants stops by my cube, and says “Justin, sign this.”

Apparently, I have officially passed training, and am therefore officially accepted as an agent on the floor.

Now all I have to do is make sure of how I’m going to manage going to and from work next week, since I work an inverted schedule: 15:30 to 0:30.

Well, today is the last day of our training in the classroom.

On Monday, we will be moved out onto the phone system once and for proper, in our endeavor to assist the members of America Online^W^W AOL with their AOL Software issues.

I expect to get a lot of people who don’t quite understand that AOL isn’t responsible for things such as their cat being lost, or Windows managing to issue them a Blue Screen of Death™ because they moved their mouse, or their beloved World of Warcraft account having all of its stuff looted by a skr1pt k1dd13 (lolol!!!!!1!!1!1).
I expect to be able to direct these members to the appropriate forms of assistance (Local Animal Services, Local Computer Technician, Microsoft, Blizzard, whatever it may be).

As for the ones who have actual issues with AOL, I expect to be able to help them to the best of my ability.

I’m actually ever so slightly nervous about this.

I survived my first week of work, though training has been a relatively harsh mistress to me.

Because I must be at my bus stop by 5:01 am each day, I’m up by 4 in the morning.
I get to work just before 6, eat breakfast, and sit through hours of training material, pretending to not be bored out of my mind by the constant reviewing of it, starting at 7 in the morning. Being a kinetic learner, I learn better by doing something after being shown a few times. This is a bit slower for me to pick up, as a result.

I also know that I must reel in what knowledge I already have, and try to adapt to using their tools, rather than suddenly blurting something like, “Download Spybot S&D, then run that. You need to do this, because you’re loaded with spyware.”

When we leave at about 3:55 pm or so, I have to get to the bus stop as quickly as possible, only to wait, since the 4:01 pm bus never seems to come on time.

So, if I skip the library and the store, I get to the Salvation Army lodging at about 5 pm. Else, I get in about 7 pm.

I just need to make it through the next three weeks.
Tomorrow, I guess I’ll go to the store, and get myself some of the imported Red Bull with my plasma money. I want to see if the import tastes any better, since I can’t get my hands on my Bawls.

I know I can do this job, but I just need to actually try to do it.

Finally, a public note to a specific reader:

Alvein, thanks.

More to come later.