My Last Call

Well that didn't last long at all...and for those who are a little slow to pick up, my last call means that I resigned from my job. There were a number of reasons for leaving, of which I will explain here, but first lets reminisce over what was only 2 months of work.
David Ung - Technical Support Specialist at Datacom - 17th March 2008 - 16th May 2008...

Two weeks of full time training wasn't fun with the driving and constant learning, which I barely used when I actually started work, I pretty much learnt everything on the job, during my calls, kind of like getting thrown onto the battlefield with rifle in hand, except replace battlefield with office floor and rifle with phone headset. My first week of actual work sucked badly, I dreaded taking the train and bus to work, standing on the platform, toying with the idea that throwing myself onto the train tracks was more appealing than turning up for work.
I remember my second or third day one of the workers telling me "It'll get better over time.", and it kind of did, I got a bit better with my calls, and felt more confident. But so many times I thought to myself how I wanted to quit so badly, but thought if I stuck with it, I'll be alright, but it didn't turn out that way as you can see.
Oh, and now that I've quit, I can reveal the most embarrassing and low-esteemed comment made to me by my team leader. My team leader hammered me during my first few weeks, telling me I sucked (in lighter terms), but took the time to teach me what to do, which was nice, but more so that I could perform and rack up the calls for the team. But I'll never forget what he told me about my voice and how I handled calls, I needed to raise the pitch in my voice and sound more confident, because to him, "You sound like you're crying...". I was stunned, but found it funny, yet true, which made me sad, but not to the point of crying. Suffice to say I tried to raise my pitch and sound more confident from then on, and I think I achieved it, so hopefully that'll carry on in future times, talking to people in general.

At work, I probably only made one friend, during training, and he and I were in different departments, I was in Cable and he was in ADSL so we never saw much of each other during work. I had other acquaintances that I would say hello to each day but nothing substantial, but I wasn't too worried about friends at work, I don't really have any friends at university, so the same goes for work. My team leader wasn't working on my last day either, so I couldn't thank him for helping me at all. The only other person who knew who I was was tthe guy that signs me in, otherwise I was, as always, the invisible man.

My last day was pretty uneventful, 16th Friday, 8am start, I drove to work, and got there in time, but didn't start taking calls until 8:10am because I needed to log in my programs, so I was deemed late, so what a way to start my last day. My first call was about a guy who couldn't get his email working, apparently Bigpond did some updates which screwed with people's email programs, fortunately the problem was easily fixed, so those calls were welcome when I got them. However, one guy I got regarding email was using Eudora, which we don't support, so I couldn't really help him much, but I told him what I could then left him on his way, but he left very unhappy (read: angry). Unfortunately he called back later and I ended up getting him again, fortunately he didn't know I took his call before, but just to be safe I deepened my voice while talking to him for the rest of the call, which was something I always wanted to do, take a call with a different voice and I got to do it on my last day!

My actual last call was from a lady named Peggy from Victoria, her problem was she couldn't get onto the internet, and I ran through all the troubleshooting steps but could not fix it, then I tried other things I could think of but still couldn't fix it, and in the end suggested that she check with a computer technician. So it was quite unfortunate that my last call was one that I could not fix at all, which says a lot about my skill. After that, I handed my card to my team head, gave my headset to some guy, signed my name off for the last time and walked out the door. I should've took pictures of the place but it slipped my mind, I was too relieved to think about it until I got home.

So why did I quit?
Time would be the first issue, I was working 4 days a week with 5 hour shifts, which sounds fine in theory, but when put into practice, you have to take into consideration the travel time, which takes two hours to get there, totally four hours travel time, meaning it took nine hours out of my day. And with class and various other things I do I didn't have a lot of time left over to do uni work. But some of you might look and go "you're weak", which was right, 5 hour shifts only had a 15 minute break, which didn't allow me much time to eat a proper lunch, which killed my diet so when I got home, I was starving and not feeling all that great. I tried to do two 6 hour shifts and one 8 hour shift but that didn't work out too well, and after the two weeks they revert back to the four 5 hour shifts, which was annoying.

University, even though I don't have many subjects left, and the reason I went looking for a job was that I didn't have many subjects, meaning I had spare time, with a job, I found I had little time to do the work for university, which is quite ironic in a bitter sweet way. And since it's my last semester I want the time to really make sure I pass my subjects and graduate, which truth be told, at this point doesn't look like it may happen, but lets see how I go eh, we've got a few weeks left now.

Travel was annoying, changing trains, then taking a bus. Missing a bus or train would mean being late for work, which you don't want to be at all, but I was many a time. And I'm sure we've all heard the complaints about public transport, but just incase you've been driving all your life, I'll enlighten you, but not now, in a later blog. If the job was in a closer location, with easier public transport I wouldn't have minded the travel, but the whole two hours killed it for me.

Rotating rosters, every two weeks you're working a different time, so every two weeks we had to plan around the roster we got. The first few weeks I got to change my times so that I was working the times I wanted for myself, without clashing with classes, but this didn't last long of course. If you didn't like your shift, you had to swap it with someone, so every day I'm getting emails from people who wanted to change their shift for another one. I suppose I wasn't prepared for how crazy rotating roster would be, and the constant uncertainty of times was something I didn't like, I like to be certain of things, and rotating rosters were like being in a washing machine, tumbling around. I tried to get a permanant timetable going but was told I couldn't, which helped tip the scale towards resigning.

Weekends, I like to have my weekends relatively free, I had a few shifts for Saturday night, which were okay, but nothing I wanted to have long term, and getting home late wasn't appealing either. It turned out that the rotating rosters rotated between weekends and weekdays, so for two weeks you're on weekdays, then the next two weeks you're rostered on weekends as well. And since I have church on Sundays, that would mean that two weeks out of each month I'd have to miss church, which is essentially half of the weeks in a month. To most people they can give up their Sundays for work, I mean, you get the extra pay and all but for me that was something I couldn't do, constantly at least. I mean, if in the future in whatever career I find myself in, if I have to do the occasional Sunday to get work done I'd be able to do that (I think), but to do it over and over for half of each month is something I couldn't do. Especially since I have commitments at church, teaching Sunday School and doing the powerpoint for Morning Service (something that I seriously need to find help for). So in this case, I chose church over work, or rather, I chose God over work, which to me is and was the right choice.

Work, the actual work done after a while wasn't that interesting for me, but then work shouldn't be interesting you might say. But what I thought I would be interested in, turned out not to be at all. While the work was okay, I could only handle so much before I wanted to just get up and go. If only I had gotten that other job I applied for, doing video editing stuff, but instead I got the one that comes with the daily angry customer. At least now I can tick off "inbound call centre job" off the list of jobs I've done, I can see that I'm not one for customer service.

So I did my two weeks notice thing, and had my last day, but I came out with a few new things. I can handle internet problems a little better now I think, and I hope I got a bit more social, something I've been working on for a long while to fade away from my anti-social self, but probably not since I never spoke to anyone during work, only to customers, about the weather, how their day is, what they do, but otherwise I'm still the same quiet, shy, introverted Hybrid.
I've dipped my foot into the real world of working, and like the kid who finds the water too cold, I've run back, clutching to what is familiar, only to be slowly pushed forward to take another step in, so until that next step is taken this is the temporary end of Work Watch.

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