A treat for changetje
A treat for: changetje
Cooked up by: A Friendly Chef
Title: If you can't be a technician, be a technical supporter.
Characters/Groups: Kame, Shige, Jin, YamaPi, Ueda, Koyama, Tegoshi
Genre: Slice-of-life, AU (office/tech support)
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo
Warnings: 4534 words
Author's Notes: For changetje, I really hope you enjoy this! Thank you so much to my betas for the handholding and encouragement.
Kamenashi sat on a bench across the street from KitagawaTech sipping his breve cappuccino from a to-go cup that he had gotten even though he really was too early to be going anywhere. He was full of nervous energy to begin his career in business and ‘to-go’ just sounded more business-like. He felt a little young, a little out-of-his-element, and he struggled to get those feelings in check; assuring himself, as he had assured his mother, that he was definitely ready to be considered a part of the regular adult male population of workers. He wasn’t a kid. From today, he was a real salaried businessman who wore a suit everyday and did technical support services for one of the country’s leading technical component suppliers. He was excited. The world seemed bright and new and full of real adult business opportunities.
Even the building looked shiny with promise. It was currently only quarter past seven and he was told that work would begin at eight. He planned to show up early to illustrate his self-motivated go-getter attitude. His plan was flawless. He’d come in, show what verve and potential he had, and be immediately recognized as someone to watch, someone the management would want to take an interest in.
Kamenashi dropped his empty to-go coffee cup into a trashbin and headed across the street into the KitagawaTech building. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he arrived on the sixth floor, the technical support call center where he would be an operator, but it definitely wasn’t a semi-darkened, apparently empty maze of cubicles and nary a soul in sight on whom to make his glorious first impression.
He frowned. Already this was not what he was expecting. Where was the flurry of activity? Where was the quick-step of people busy with important ‘things to do and people to see’? His shoulders sagged with disappointment.
A moment later the elevator behind him dinged and deposited the man whom he almost didn’t recognize as having interviewed him a week prior. Last week, Ueda had seemed cool and professional, the picture of hiring-level management. Right now, he appeared to be gym-rumpled and a little damp; Kamenashi hoped from a post-workout shower and not sweat.
Still, this was his chance to appear confident and competent.
"Oh! Good morning, Ueda-san. I look forward to working with you!"
From the bag over his shoulder, it was clear he had intended to get to work early and make himself presentable. He had not been intending to deal with an overzealous new guy first thing. Kamenashi could tell from his silence and the look of confusion he could barely make out through Ueda's sunglasses that he was still working on placing Kamenashi's face.
"Kamenashi Kazuya. I interviewed with you last week. I am here to begin working today. I look forward to-"
Ueda pursed his lips slightly as realization dawned. “Oh, oh, right. G'Morning. Uhhm. . .Shige should be over to the right there," he gestured vaguely toward some cubicles Kamenashi had previously registered as empty, "He's going to be training you, so. . .he'll get you started."
“Thank you.” Kamenashi bowed and Ueda bowed slightly in return before heading off.
The floor was set up in a long rectangle with an open plan, floor-to-ceiling windows on each short side and a row of glassed-in offices along the long side opposite the door. Cubicles were bounded off with walls just high enough that when seated, workers heads could be seen bent over their desks or cocked toward their headphone receivers while on support calls. They were clumped together in smaller cells of a larger hive, usually four or six cubes to a cell. Kamenashi made his way to a cell of four in the back corner, partially obstructed by a large, wide support pillar. He rounded the pillar to see a harrowed-looking young man facing his computer and nodding along to the very quiet but incessant chatter of a lanky guy in a soft grey suit who was standing in the next cubicle and leaning over the wall, apparently regaling him with gossip.
He felt a little strange addressing someone he didn’t know so informally, but he wasn’t given a full name so he was a bit at a loss.”Um, Shige?” he said, a bit uncertainly and, when the man glanced up, “Good morning.”
A slight frown chased across Shige’s features and he muttered, “You’re here awfully early.”
“Well if that’s so unusual what are you doing here so early?” he retorted without thinking. He almost regretted it except that the other man laughed and poked Shige in the side, distracting Kamenashi from the fact that he should be embarrassed after an outburst like that.
“Shige is always here because he has nothing better to do,” the man explained, smiling.
Shige humphed and his face contorted with friendly perturbance. “You shut up.” He swatted his friend’s hand away. “Don’t you have your own desk to hover over?”
"Eh, the answering service is on for another half-hour almost. Reception doesn't open until eight."
Shige rolled his eyes and stood to properly greet Kamenashi. “Kato Shigeaki. I'll be training you. This is Koyama Keiichirou, he works the reception desk," he shot a pointed but venomless glare at Koyama, "That's your cube he's standing in but you'll be shadowing me for today."
“Kamenashi Kazuya. I look forward to working with you, Kato-kun, Koyama-kun.” He nodded to each on turn.
Koyama helpfully wheeled the chair from Kamenashi’s cube into Shige’s and turned a reassuring expression to him. “Don’t let him worry you, Kamenashi-kun. Shige’s just grumpy in the mornings. And just Koyama is fine. We don’t really stand on ceremony here.”
“Well some of us don’t,” Shige muttered under his breath while Koyama said a cheery goodbye and headed off, presumably to the reception desk.
Shige led him around the office, pointing out the kitchenette, the supply closet, the copy/fax room, whose office was whose, and so on, all with a wry almost-contempt and soft interjections about being the only person who ever straightened up supplies or made a fresh pot of coffee.
Kamenashi got the feeling that Shige liked to act very put-upon but seemed not-so-secretly to enjoy being the one who people relied upon. He could relate to that feeling. In fact, when people didn’t ask him for things, he usually felt a bit put-out. He liked Shige already.
On their way back through the office to Shige’s desk, they stopped for some coffee and day-old biscuit cookies that were only a little stale. Shige set about walking Kamenashi through some basics.
It was a lot to get through and Shige tore through a goodly chunk of it in just a few minutes which, Kamenashi expected, was usually the way of things when you knew your job like the back of your hand the way Shige obviously did. It just never occurred to you how much information you were spewing out all at once when it was your second nature. His confusion must have shown on his face because Shige paused.
“Getting this?”
“Uhh. . . yeah.” Kamenashi didn’t want to appear incompetent in any way so he wasn’t about to say what he was thinking, something along the lines of ‘can we start over from ‘first things first’?’
“It’s all right.” Shige turned to his file cabinet and pulled out a large three-ringed binder, handing it to Kame. “I know it seems like a lot, but you’ll pick it up in the first few days. In the meantime, everything you need to know is in here,” he said, gesturing to the book.
Kame leafed through it. It appeared to be a training manual with directions for what to do in every possible contingency, but unlike the standard manual he was expecting, this looked like personal notes.
"It's handwritten," Kamenashi observed dumbly.
"Well, yeah. I wrote it." Shige made a face like Kamenashi had just said something monumentally stupid. "Those are my notes from when I started. They are vastly superior to the actual training manual." He pulled a tiny leaflet from a drawer and dangled it between their faces like some distasteful wet noodle. "Useless," he concluded, tossing it back into the drawer.
Kamenashi had always loved report card time in school because he got to hear what a great job all of his teachers thought he was doing. Those little checkmarks and ‘satisfactory’s had always given him a boost. Through school, he had gotten perfect marks and now that he was in the business world, he wanted to maintain his record. He intended never to have a bad performance review. Right now, Kamenashi’s first priority was to determine exactly what was expected of him so that as soon as possible he could ‘meet or exceed expectations’, one of his very favorite things to do.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t expected it to be so difficult to determine. For the first part of the morning, when it was just him and Shige, he felt confident he knew what was going on. Shige was very business-like on the phone and in person, he clearly worked hard, and from his manner, Kamenashi thought he had determined exactly how he should act on the phone with his support customers. When the rest of their team started to filter in, Kamenashi felt less sure of just what was supposed to be going on here. The other team members’ styles were very different.
From what Kamenashi could tell in the hour he was on the phone between nine and ten, the guy who sat immediately across from Kato, Yamashita, seemed nice and encouraging to his clients, but had trouble doing the actual problem-solving. It was as though he could do it for you, but he was utterly incapable of explaining to someone else how to do it. But what he lacked in explanatory skills, he made up for with bright reassurance.
Shige had told him to gather as much information as he could from listening to how others took calls (but to avoid picking up their bad habits), but Kamenashi was a little unsure whether he’d be able to learn much from Yamashita, not because Yamashita didn’t do well, just because he didn’t know if he could duplicate Yamashita’s free and caring demeanour without coming across as. . . well, a ditz. He quietly voiced his concern to Shige who said, “Yeah, he is . . . special.”
Kamenashi didn’t have much more time to observe him, however, because suddenly, and without any apparent reason, the phones went out. There were, by that time, enough people in the office that the general groan of discontent could be heard everywhere.
Their fourth team member, Akanishi, was walking in just as the office population was grumbling. Kato had explained that each team typically had a few earlier-shift and a few later-shift employees. Akanishi, and later Kamenashi, once he was trained, were the later-shift employees for their team, which allowed KTech to service clients later into the day than regular business hours would usually permit.
Akanishi started chuckling when he heard the cacaphony of tech cursing sub-par equipment. “I take it the phones are jacked up again? Who’s the new guy?” he asked as he was sitting down at his desk.
“As per usual,” Shige drawled sardonically. “This is Kamenashi. He’ll be on your shift after training. I’m supposed to be showing him the ropes.”
“Haha. Yeah, good luck with that. This happens all the time around here. All of our equipment is hand-me-down.”
“Oh, I can show him the ropes all right,” Kato’s sarcastic tone already had Yamashita and Akanishi chuckling softly. “Here are the ropes,” he said, making the same wet-noodle gesture as before, this time with two hands. “Slack and useless. Welcome to KTech.”
Kato ran him through a couple of role-play calls and explained how to use the user’s manuals for various tech they were supposed to be supporting if you didn't know how to give advice off-the-cuff, which took them straight through to their lunch hour, during which time the phones were put back online.
They sat back down at Shige’s desk to take some calls and listen in on some that Yamashita and Akanishi were taking but before they began, Shige turned to him looking very serious.
"Now, everybody has their own style and I know I told you to try to listen to these two, but. . .just because they both consistently score high on their post-call surveys doesn't mean that you should do everything they do," he cautioned. "Especially Jin."
"What could they possibly be doing?" Kamenashi wondered aloud.
"You'll see."
Kamenashi did see, quickly, exactly what Kato was talking about.
"KitagawaTech Support Center. Akanishi speaking, how can I service you today? . . . “
Akanishi’s tone was remarkably conversational. Kamenashi sounded more like he was trying to pick up a girl in a bar than help her out with her modem-to-router connectivity issues.
“Uh-huh. . .Log-in problems. I'm sure I can get you going. Who doesn't need a good log-in, eh? Let's start with your modem. You're sure the connection is good?. . . Try taking it out and putting it back in. . . . Oh? Have you tried putting it in a little harder?"
At Shige's perturbed glare and Kamenashi's mildly surprised look, he made an overexaggerated expression of innocence, covered his mouthpiece, and whispered "What? Sometimes ethernet cables don't clip in unless you really jam it in there."
"He does this all the time," Kato said. "Jin has a hard time grasping the difference between 'tech support' and 'phone sex operator'."
Well it wasn't entirely professional, Kame thought to himself, but if it got the job done. . .plus it was probably pretty popular with the ladies. His suspicions were confirmed by Yamashita who caught his attention over the wall and informed him, "Jin has the highest female client approval rate in the company."
Yamashita's phone calls were very different. Kame admired the way he sounded so sure and confident on the phone when in reality he was intently spinning a pencil around his finger and looking perplexed. Shige had explained that Yamashita was their team leader, despite the fact that he didn’t do much.
“Then why is he the leader?” Kamenashi asked.
“Ueda says it’s good for morale to have a leader and Jin said he wouldn’t listen to me. Of course, he doesn’t listen to Yamashita either.” He shrugged. “That’s okay. It makes sense for him to lead. He has a very high client approval rating.”
“How high is very high?”
“Very.” Shige said seriously. Kamenashi took note and tried to pay extra attention to Yamashita’s calls while Shige did some data entry.
“KitagawaTech Support Center. This is Yamashita speaking, how may I help you today?”
His calls started well enough with the usual greeting and a kind, friendly voice, but they were not without their problems.
“It sounds like we’ll need to reset your IP settings manually. Just a moment.”
Yamashita looked around his desk and covered the mouthpiece on his headset. “Anyone know where the troubleshooting guides for IP settings are? I had them yesterday.”
Shige didn't look up to answer, "It was on page fifty-seven of the blue manual."
"Please hold while I research the issue," Yamashita said confidently and when his client was no longer on the line announced, "Eehh- I can't find page fifty-seven."
Shige looked up slowly, disbelievingly. "Come again?"
"I don't have it. It goes straight from fifty-six to fifty-nine, oh, heh stuck together."
"Your pages wouldn't get stuck together if you didn't slurp your cup noodle at your desk and get them all splattered in broth."
"Slurping improves the taste," Yamashita explained before picking the line back up and cheerfully helping his customer.
Jin chortled, "Heh, it's not slurping cup noodle that makes my pages stick together."
"Eew. Jin don't be gross in front of the new hire."
"Aww, Kame doesn't mind, Do you, Kame?"
Kamenashi had been snerking quietly at Jin's comment but when Shige turned an incredulous look of betrayal on him as if to say "Oh not you too", he quickly schooled his features.
"See?" Jin smirked. "besides, are you going to tell me that wasn't you and Koyama in the kitchen giving an entire speech on the wonders of cleavage when the guys from the Kansai office were in last week?"
Shige scowled. "Do your work," he griped by way of argument and promptly ignored Jin's laughing.
Things seemed to go well after that. Kamenashi felt like he was learning, at least a little, and it was nice that people were so informal. It eased his nerves to think he could maybe relax a little at work without having to worry too much. Of course, that didn’t mean he didn’t still want to be among the best. He was, as ever, eager to be a stellar employee, someone who could be counted on to help in a pinch, and it was easy for the others to see his eagerness.
It almost got him into trouble when Shige informed him he had a short meeting and left him alone at the desk for a bit. Kamenashi figured it was a good time to start perusing Shige’s manual.
No sooner had Shige stepped away from his cube than Jin started bitching loudly about his phone being on the fritz.
He stood up and peered over the half-wall at Kamenashi. "How about yours? Got a dial tone on your second line?"
He picked up the receiver and hit the 'Line 2' button to listen. "Yep."
"Must just be mine. Hey, listen. Would you mind running down to tech supply on the third sub-level and grabbing me a rotary VoIP phone? I'd go, but I still have to answer line one here." Jin nodded along with his own request and made a commiserative face and Kamenashi found himself nodding along and agreeing.
Yamashita was coughing.
"Should I get you some water?" he asked, concerned.
"I'll get it," Jin assured him. "Remember to ask at the supply desk for a rotary VoIP."
"Got it."
Kamenashi took off at a trot and got all the way to the elevators before he came up short, smacking himself in the forehead for falling for such an obvious trick. Rotary phones were old technology, before the advent of touch-tone dialing. Voice-over-IP was the latest form of telephone. “Of course there’s no such thing as a rotary Voice-over-IP phone, moron,” he whispered aloud to himself.
It was just as silly a request as restaurant cooks who sent newbies out to buy ‘a bucket of steam’ or ‘a bacon stretcher’. Kamenashi felt like an idiot and was supremely glad that the other person in the elevator had his back to him and couldn’t see him blushing in embarrassment.
“Umm-” The young man turned around. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but hear. . .” He had a bright smile and his eyes had a knowing glint. “Did you say something about a ‘rotary VoIP’?”
* * *
Shige returned fifteen minutes later and was alarmed to find Kamenashi missing.
"Jin? Where's my trainee?"
"Relax, I just sent him down to supply. Although, come to think of it, he has been gone a while. I hope he's not lost."
Shige sighed heavily and let his head sink to his desk for a moment before Kamenashi sauntered in with two Starbucks cups in hand, in step with Tegoshi, whom he had met in the elevator.
"Here you go, Shige," he said cheerily, handing one of the cups over. "Oh, sorry. I meant Kato-kun. It's just-"
"No, I know. Everyone else does. You may as well call me Shige too. Is this an extra hot, toasted almond matcha latte? Because it smells like an extra hot, toasted almond matcha latte." Shige said the name of the drink like it was some kind of magical potion.
"Yes. Tegoshi-kun here took me to the Starbucks next door for coffee and suggested we get this for you."
"You're welcome, Shige," Tegoshi added brightly. He handed Yamashita a drink as well. “Nonfat classic cappuccino for you, Nothing for Jin because he’s mean to the newbies.” He stuck his tongue out and Jin mirrored the gesture. "I'd better be getting back to my office. It was very nice meeting you, Kamenashi-kun. I think you'll do well here." Tegoshi smiled cheerily and went on his way.
"Didn't you need supplies?" Shige asked and sipped his latte dreamily.
"No, I didn’t. Good one, though, Akanishi. I didn’t realize until I was already in the elevator."
"Ah well. You can't blame me for trying to get one over on a noob."
Yamashita appeared to consider this. "Tegoshi might. He wasn't pleased when you did it to him."
Jin smiled. "Well then I guess it's a good thing he's not the boss of this division."
Kame was surprised. "Wait, that kid is someone's boss?"
"Oh yeah," Shige explained. "Tegoshi started after us but he got moved up quickly. He's V.P. of Public Relations now. He likes to lord it over me at karaoke." He continued in a funny voice, "I'm a V.P.! I get to go first."
"Oh yeah." Kame nodded. "He said you were friends. V.P. of public relations, huh? So . . . what? It's his job to look good?"
"In public, yes," Yamashita said.
Kame glanced back over his shoulder to where Tegoshi had left through the office door. "He seems like he manages."
Shige explained time card policies and Quality Assurance reporting practices for a while after that while they enjoyed their coffees until Ueda came out of his office to lean on the walls of their cubicles.
"So, Akanishi. I heard you sent our new guy on a snipe hunt."
"Only a little one and he got free coffee out of it."
"Okay. Well, you're fired," he said blandly and turned to Shige. "I'm going to need you to finish Akanishi's QA reports by the end of the day."
Ueda left and Jin blithely continued whatever he'd been doing while Shige groaned and Kamenashi spluttered. Maybe Akanishi hadn’t been especially nice, but Kamenashi was horrified to think that he’d be fired over a silly joke.
"Is he really fired?! Should I go talk to him? I can't have anyone getting fired because of me. It wouldn't be right!"
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Shige put his hands up in the universal ‘stop’ gesture. “Slow your roll, there. Ueda fires Jin at least once a week."
"Only on days that end in Y," Jin put in.
"Right and this is, what? Thursday? He's due. I wouldn't worry about it."
Yamashita added, "If Ueda fires you it means he likes you."
Jin scoffed. Kame frowned, perplexed, but tried to just go with the flow. If these guys didn’t think anything was wrong, then there probably wasn’t. Shige busied himself with paperwork for a few minutes before turning to Kamenashi.
"I'm going to need a few minutes to run these reports. If you like, there are bagels in the kitchen.
Kame nodded and made his way to the small kitchenette, selected a bagel and put it in the toaster.
The moment to himself gave him some time to think. All in all, today hadn’t been so bad. People seemed easy to get along with, he thought that once he got into the swing of things the work would probably be fine. It might take him some time, but it didn’t seem like anyone around here was very strict about anything, so he figured he’d probably have plenty of time to get everything figured out. It had been a pretty good day, he concluded. And on the plus side, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a bagel.
He was occupying himself looking over the various flyers on the bulletin board when Yamashita came in to get a yogurt beverage from the refrigerator.
"Umm, Yamashita-kun?"
"Hm?"
"Does that happen often? Shige having to do other people work? I would feel awful if I thought he had to do Akanishi's work because of me."
"Oh, it's okay. Ueda doesn't need the reports anyway. He only does that to mess with Shige. Shige doesn't feel like he's working hard enough unless he's doing at least two people's jobs. Do you smell burning?"
"Ah!" Kame whipped around to see smoke pouring from the toaster and a second later the smoke alarm was blaring throughout the floor and people were grumbling, grabbing their jackets and streaming down the stairwells.
"It's okay, Kame," Yamashita assured. "This is a good opportunity. I'll show you the emergency exit route."
Amidst a crowd of people, he led Kamenashi down a grey stairwell and through a door that opened into the back parking lot of the building where they met up with their coworkers. Shige was the first to speak.
"Sorry. I should have warned you that you have to clean the crumb tray out. You can't use the toaster after anyone in the office has had an 'Everything' bagel or all the debris lights on fire."
"I'm sorry!" Kame replied, worry evident on his face. He felt terrible. He couldn’t believe that just moments before he had thought things were going well.
"Happens all the time."
“Really?”
Koyama spotted them from across the lot and jogged over to meet them. "Everything bagel?"
They nodded in unison and Kame admitted quietly, "It was my fault."
"Ah well, happens to the best of us, Kame-kun," he comforted, clapping a hand on Kamenashi's shoulder.
“I promise it’s nothing to worry about,” Shige assured him.
The fire squad arrived shortly after to inspect the building and they spent about a half hour milling about waiting for an okay to go back in until finally an enthusiastic young fire ranger could be seen trotting over to Ueda and relaying some information that caused Ueda's head to drop soundly into his palm.
There were benches in the grass for people who liked to lunch outside so they all took a seat, which is where Ueda found them.
"I've just been informed we won't be able to re-enter the building for at least two hours. So who started it?"
Kamenashi leapt from his seat to bow deeply. "I'm very sorry! It was my fault. I apologize."
"Let's all go grab a drink," Jin suggested. "We have a new guy, shouldn't we have a welcoming party?" There was a general chorus of agreement and they all stood to leave the parking lot in search of libations.
Ueda fell into step beside Kamenashi and smiled. "By the way, you're fired," he said before pulling ahead to catch up with Yamashita and Jin.
“See?” Shige said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Kame turned to Shige, "I think I'm going to like it here."