Fortunatus S. Marchbanks' Quotidian Minutiae

Today was supposed to be my first day as a Resolver.  Note I said supposed to be.  It didn’t turn out that way.

Smiley and the Tulip agreed I could take last Thursday and Friday to do the onboard and preparatory work, and get ready for moving over today.  However, about mid-morning Thursday the Tulip came over and said, “we have more outages than we expected and don’t have enough people to cover the incoming chats.  Do you have enough tools running to get in?”  I quickly assessed what I had installed, what policy documents I’d read, crossed my fingers and told him I’d try.  He said, “Great!  Until you get the hang of it, we’ll cap you at three simultaneous chats rather than four, which is what the regulars do.”  Great.  Three chats at once on an application I’ve never used in my life, so I’m trying to learn it as I go along.  The other four new Resolvers, incidentally, have already been using the chat application for some months, doing e-support and handling three and four chats at once, and only had to pick up the technical parts of the job.  I was the only one who had to do both at once.

I didn’t blow anything outright, although I did get flustered once or twice and had a challenge for a while with typing remarks to Tech A in Tech C’s window and on around the horn.  By midday Friday I was beginning to find my range; the only thing continuing to irritate me was one of the ancillary tools that’s notoriously balky and resistant to any fix any programmer has tried on it.  I took somewhere around twenty chats, which is low production but plenty enough to satisfy me as a beginning point.  No one came back with any “what are you THINKING??” statements, and no one came over to yank on me for doing Something Ineffably Stupid.  That’s probably a good beginning point.  Today was nothing more exciting than an all-day training class on Windows Vista, which we’ll have to start supporting next month.

During his welcome-the-newbies speech in our first team meeting last Wednesday, the Tulip said, “When you first hit the floor as a new agent in Auric tech support we throw you into a river to see whether you can swim.  When you hit the floor as a Resolver, we throw you off a cliff to see whether you can fly.”  After last week, I think that like Arthur Dent, I truly can throw myself at the ground and miss.

O sibili, si ergo fortibus es in ero.  Fnord.

The offer letters went out at 4:55 PM yesterday, almost an hour after I’d gone home, so I found mine when I came in this morning at seven.  After a quick review to see that the terms were more or less what I’d expected (one-step pay grade increase, base pay of $37,600 annually with a 7% possible performance bonus, making a total around $40,000), I sent back my acceptance with thanks.  When Smiley read his copy of my acceptance a little later he was so excited he came over right in the middle of a call I was taking and hugged me.  (Silly manager.)  He’s going to be giving up a lot; not only am I leaving, but the other really hotshot tech on our team is being promoted to Resolver too, so Smiley’s going to take a clobbering in the team stack rank with both of us gone.  I give Smiley a lot of credit through this process.  Without his help, coaching, and occasional gentle pushing I might still have made it to Resolver, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth as it was.We were all asked to hold off making noise about it until after HR had everyone’s replies in hand, so I sat on the knowledge. After all, it wasn’t as though it was going to go away now—it was written.

I sat on the knowledge through my cross-function team meeting this morning, where we began to thrash out the requirements for making a single searchable portal for urgent updates and alerts that will be usable by any tech support unit, whether in-house or outsourced.  Towards the end the guy who’s been the leader de facto said, “you know, it would probably be good if we got some Resolver/L2 representation in this meeting too.  H— (our tech liaison manager), can you see whether someone from that group would join us?”  Why looka there, there’s Sam all ready and waiting as a shiny-new L2, already knows what the issues are and won’t have to be brought up to speed.  Isn’t that nice?

I spent half the afternoon starting to go through the onboarding process, requesting access to the tools I’ll be using.  A couple of ’em, I already had access from long ago in another situation.  Nobody ever got round to revoking my privileges.  The team’s biweekly meeting was this afternoon, so we five new guys were invited to “c’mon over,” sit in, and introduce ourselves.  (Besides me and the other phone tech from my team, there’s another phone tech from the Tulip’s old team and two e-support techs I don’t know.)  When it came my turn, I looked round the conference room, paused a beat, and said “Looks like I’m back to being the official team Old Fart.”  There may be one other guy over forty, but I’m not sure about him, and EVERYone else is still on the short side of it.  Maybe not by much—the Tulip is 39—but ain’t NO one else on there pushing fifty, as I am.

Our official start date is next Monday, but the Tulip told us all he was going to steal as much of our time from our L1 managers as he could possibly get away with.  Smiley already told me he has no problem with that, so I expect I’ll spend a lot of the next two days on the phone in the AUX code for projects, winding up my final cases, and getting myself arranged so much as possible.  The Tulip also announced to the team that H— had put in a request for an Resolver liaison/representative on the tech council, and he was naming me as the liaison.  Wasn’t it nice that he has Sam all handy and already briefed on procedures and issues?

I still have no notion what my new work schedule will be; I suppose I’ll find that out in the next few days.  I hope I don’t get stuck with some god-awful late-starting 4×10 shift.  After three years of working seven-to-four, that would be a major adjustment.

Your olive drab super glue reinvigorates some cross-ventilated affidavits.  Fnord.

Details follow.

The interview process is done for the Resolver positions I applied for, and the Tulip told me that the decisions are made on who will get the job offers.  But nobody can know who’s chosen!  Oh, no . . . Human Resources is in a snit because they weren’t invited to the party, and have insisted that everything must be sent to them for review, and don’t anyone be so presumptuous as to ask when they will be through reviewing!  We Must Not Question the Ineffable Wisdom of HR!  The Tulip, however, is unimpressed and is going to make Evil Nasty Remarks to the managers involved when he’s up in Gemini next week at the same time as some of the other managers involved.  And when the Tulip gets pissed off, his wrath shakes the earth.  You do not want to have him mad at you, period.

I was one of the ones who made it past all three technical rounds to the final panel interview with the Tulip, his Number Two, and three other members of the team.  There was also another level-one tech whom I know by sight but not to speak to; she just sat and took notes, asking no questions.  I guessed she was included to give a peasant opinion of whether she thought the candidates would get on well with the L1s.  Thanks to Smiley’s coaching, I handled the interview with much more than my usual ability.  Generally I’m left completely flat-footed by at least one question, but in this case I was able to come up with answers to every question they asked, with almost no hemming and hawing as I considered what to say.  Smiley had also advised me to have some questions of my own ready for the team, which I just about never do in interviews—generally I feel that until I get into the job, I simply don’t know enough to know what questions are sensible.  However, this time I came up with some and was pleased to think they even pertained to the job pretty well.

Ever since the interview, Smiley has been acting as though he knew I was one of the Chosen Few, but I’m afraid to let myself think he might be right.  I firmly believe the gods will punish hubris and over-confidence, particularly public over-confidence, is ill-advised.  Thus, I keep telling myself that while I think I did rather better than I normally do, I still might not be the best candidate of the available pool and might not get chosen, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up.  It hurts too badly if I’m wrong.

A polychrome conure directs the Istanbul Sinfonia.  Fnord.