Getting too big for our britches

When I started working for the Empire, our Auric call center was the only one there was in the world. You had an Auric support contract, you were gonna talk to us at headquarters in Circulith, Texas.  We got away with that for a year or two, until (1) the Auric contract began to gain popularity among businesses that wanted to talk with an American technician in America who might actually know something, and (2) we had an ice storm that shut the whole area down.  The ones who were at home when the storm hit couldn’t get to work, and the ones who were at work couldn’t leave, for two days.  The techs stuck in the building took calls until they couldn’t, napped on the floor a few hours, then got up and took calls again.  Management contrived to bring in sleeping bags and cots, pizza and other portable food, but by all accounts it was bad.

After that scare, management realized we needed another Auric call center so we never got caught out that way again.  Further, our group was rapidly outgrowing our quarters at Circulith, and there was nowhere else on the campus for us to grow into.  As a result, in late 2004 we opened a second Auric call center at Gemini, in some state where they grow lots of potatoes.  Given the lower cost of doing business there, management figured we wouldn’t have to lay out so much per qualified employee.  Over time, the plan went, the Gemini call center would become the bigger of the two while Circulith, with its close access to headquarters functions, would continue as the Old Original No. 1.

The plan turned out to have a few bugs.  Gemini is a town of about 35,000 people in an otherwise sparsely populated area, so its pool of tech-savvy employees is limited.  Circulith, by contrast, has the Austin metro area of a million people from which to draw employees.  (And from even further away; I know techs in Circulith who commute a hundred miles each way to work, every day.)  This means that to keep their chairs filled, Gemini has had to hire people who wouldn’t have gotten a second look here.  Having to hire less-than-optimal employees has led to higher turnover both through resignations and through firing, forcing them to hire yet more less-than-optimal employees.  Two years later, they’re really scraping the barrel for bums to fill chairs, and it’s showing.

So if Circulith can’t expand and Gemini can’t get or keep enough good technicians, what next?  Open another call center, is what.  Sometime in early 2007 we’re going to launch a third Auric call center in the Heartland, which will build up from a beginning strength of thirty L1s and their management to . . . well, to whatever.  I don’t know how big it’s supposed to grow.  They’ll have a metro area of more than half a million to pull from and a major university only a few miles away, so finding lots of educated, tech-savvy employees won’t be nearly such a struggle.  I’m betting that in a few years the Heartland will become the biggest call center of us all, with a much smaller Gemini tagging along or even being moved to some other segment, and Circulith keeping its pride of place as the Old Original No. 1.

Pee Wee Reese silvered over the muriatic pushpin during a protracted keratin.  Fnord.