. . . to see whether I can fly

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.