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We're finally on the floor at work, taking calls. I won't even go into the mess that was the first day, except to say that they had 3 weeks to get everything up and running and they couldn't even manage that properly.
We've been doubling up in pods to give some of the less-confident people a chance to listen to calls before they take any. On Monday, I buddied with a girl whom I'll call M, who didn't take any calls. Yesterday I buddied with T, who said she'd take calls for the last hour but instead chickened out. Two days of taking all the calls while by "buddy" sits there and does nothing. If I buddy with C again today, I'm going to confirm with a supervisor and see if they'll back me up when I say, "I'll take calls until lunch, then you'll do it." I can understand her nervousness, and a little bit of coddling doesn't hurt, but she's had enough. Next week we'll be taking all the calls, not just our current 30%, so she has to get used to it sooner rather than later, or else leave and find another job. I went through the same crappy training she did, but I don't expect that much coddling.
I think C's the only person who has yet to take a call, too.
Even though things are better on the phones than they were in training, I'm still looking for another job. Most call centres will pay better than this place is, and most have better training programs, too. Now that I have a job, I can afford to be a little picky about where I apply, and I can take my time to look for actual opportunities instead of just "Holy crap, must accept any job that will hire me!"
Which makes me think that I really ought to expand on some skills that I have. I updated my resume to include activities like running my book review blog and my freelance writing, but I want to have a few more things on there to impress people. Thus, once NaNo's over (I'm still behind on NaNo, but I'm catching up, little by little), I'm going to devote some time to going through all my freelance articles on HubPages, rewriting and reposting them with a better eye to quality.
I also plan to do some refresher study in regard to HTML, and then make an effort to go a bit beyond that, learning CSS. I don't forsee myself becoming a web designer at any point in the future, but it'll be another skill that might help me land a better job. When I worked at CD&A, I seemed to be the only one who understood basic HTML enough to code the database pages from scratch, not copying and pasting a template that was saved in Word. When people used that template, it ended up causing a bunch of redundant coding on the page, which I fixed whenever I found it (a thankless job, let me tell you, because nobody noticed anything different when I was done, except that maybe the pages loaded a fraction of a second faster), so it's not like even basic HTML doesn't have its place in a job. Stuff I learnt by viewing the source of web pages I liked back in high school was making me a better employee only a little over a year ago.
The apartment's coming along decently. Most of our stuff has been moved over, with the exception of some books, bags of clothes and yarn, and some of the larger pieces of furniture (my gigantic desk, my bookshelf, that sort of stuff), and we're hoping that by the end of this weekend, we'll have everything out of the old place and into this apartment, and then we can just work on cleaning up the old place and doing a few repairs so we can get our damage deposit back.
I'm loving this apartment more and more. It's comfortable, large, spacious, conveniently located, well-priced. It feels like home, and we've only been sleeping here for a week and a half.
Can't keep rambling on, though. My drive to work will be here in a few minutes and I have to get my butt in gear and actually put clothes on. I don't think work will look kindly on me coming in dressed in my "bumming around the apartment" clothes!
We've been doubling up in pods to give some of the less-confident people a chance to listen to calls before they take any. On Monday, I buddied with a girl whom I'll call M, who didn't take any calls. Yesterday I buddied with T, who said she'd take calls for the last hour but instead chickened out. Two days of taking all the calls while by "buddy" sits there and does nothing. If I buddy with C again today, I'm going to confirm with a supervisor and see if they'll back me up when I say, "I'll take calls until lunch, then you'll do it." I can understand her nervousness, and a little bit of coddling doesn't hurt, but she's had enough. Next week we'll be taking all the calls, not just our current 30%, so she has to get used to it sooner rather than later, or else leave and find another job. I went through the same crappy training she did, but I don't expect that much coddling.
I think C's the only person who has yet to take a call, too.
Even though things are better on the phones than they were in training, I'm still looking for another job. Most call centres will pay better than this place is, and most have better training programs, too. Now that I have a job, I can afford to be a little picky about where I apply, and I can take my time to look for actual opportunities instead of just "Holy crap, must accept any job that will hire me!"
Which makes me think that I really ought to expand on some skills that I have. I updated my resume to include activities like running my book review blog and my freelance writing, but I want to have a few more things on there to impress people. Thus, once NaNo's over (I'm still behind on NaNo, but I'm catching up, little by little), I'm going to devote some time to going through all my freelance articles on HubPages, rewriting and reposting them with a better eye to quality.
I also plan to do some refresher study in regard to HTML, and then make an effort to go a bit beyond that, learning CSS. I don't forsee myself becoming a web designer at any point in the future, but it'll be another skill that might help me land a better job. When I worked at CD&A, I seemed to be the only one who understood basic HTML enough to code the database pages from scratch, not copying and pasting a template that was saved in Word. When people used that template, it ended up causing a bunch of redundant coding on the page, which I fixed whenever I found it (a thankless job, let me tell you, because nobody noticed anything different when I was done, except that maybe the pages loaded a fraction of a second faster), so it's not like even basic HTML doesn't have its place in a job. Stuff I learnt by viewing the source of web pages I liked back in high school was making me a better employee only a little over a year ago.
The apartment's coming along decently. Most of our stuff has been moved over, with the exception of some books, bags of clothes and yarn, and some of the larger pieces of furniture (my gigantic desk, my bookshelf, that sort of stuff), and we're hoping that by the end of this weekend, we'll have everything out of the old place and into this apartment, and then we can just work on cleaning up the old place and doing a few repairs so we can get our damage deposit back.
I'm loving this apartment more and more. It's comfortable, large, spacious, conveniently located, well-priced. It feels like home, and we've only been sleeping here for a week and a half.
Can't keep rambling on, though. My drive to work will be here in a few minutes and I have to get my butt in gear and actually put clothes on. I don't think work will look kindly on me coming in dressed in my "bumming around the apartment" clothes!
