The good news is, the bad news is

The good news is that I moved up one notch in the stack rankings for this week.  “One notch—big deal!” I hear you cry.  (Yes you did so.  I heard you.)  Thing is, that one notch is from #7 to #6 out of 293 level-one techs in the stack.  It takes a helluvan effort to move one notch when you’re that close to the top, but I didn’t even make an effort.  I just kept doing exactly what I have been doing— maybe being a little more decisive myself about whether to send parts or fiddle with software, rather than asking for a decision from a level-two tech, but largely doing exactly what I have been doing all along.  It would appear that’s what I need to be doing, too.

And it counts for more than just bragging rights.  Seniority for bidding on shifts now depends on stack ranking, and all techs who are in the top twenty percent of the stack for any of three metrics get chits awarded which can be exchanged for time off the phones (extended breaks, extended lunch, etc.) or minor rewards (aka “schwag”).  The very top five techs become eligible to receive flat panel monitors that are theirs to use as long as they’re part of the call center.  And this is altogether apart from how good it looks on your semi-annual performance review.  So being #6 is a big deal, yes.

* Due to data integrity issues, the rolling 13-week rank was reset to start over with the beginning of Q2.

And the bad news is I got told a week ago that I’m being re-organized off my team, effective Monday—the team I’ve been with for more than 2½ years, the one on which I’m one of the most senior techs, the one I’ve been with since I started at the Empire.  I met my new manager one-on-one today.  He was hired in from an outside firm rather than being promoted from within, as most of our managers have been.  While both my former managers say they like him and that he’s Good People, I wasn’t so impressed on first meeting.  Some of the things he told me about his style and goals struck me as being from the category of Protesting Too Much.  There are some things you don’t say you do, you demonstrate them by doing them and let us figure it out.

Hm.  The Boss Who Came In from the Outside . . . sounds like “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.”  I think he just got dubbed “Smiley.”