I need to insert more time into my days, or something
I could have sworn it was 9:30 just a minute ago when I woke up. However, I have done all my dishes and made myself a smoothie of sorts. I am experimenting with tofu and following a recipe (okay, more like a guideline) given to me by a coworker: yogurt, frozen fruit, tofu, and a bit of milk to make it liquid, and so far it's quite tasty. I made it with raspberries.
Work has been work this week. It will continue being work this weekend, since I've been asked to do a split shift over two days due to some unanticipated scheduling glitches. Glitches, you may ask? Glitches, I shall answer. Mostly, the glitch is that the Powers That Be had to fire one of the newbies (one of the newer newbies) for being, well, grossly incompetent and slow.
Aside from the fact that I didn't much like the guy, I have to say good riddance. The job I do is not rocket science. However, it demands a reasonable level of concentration (which, in the grand scheme of things, is not much). You have to be able to concentrate on it enough to copy/paste the right things in the right order. A lot of the job is copy/pasting from one place to another.
Allow me to get into the boring technical details of dealing with an alarm behind this cut.
Let's say you're in charge of the Excel page in which we keep track of alarms during the day. Here's what you have to do:
An alarm comes in by email (they all come by email).
1- Copy/paste the ten-digit MIN into the right square in the Excel Page.
2- In your intranet, paste the MIN and get the information on the Boomerang (serial number and type of vehicle to which it's been assigned).
3- Paste the serial number of the Boomerang into the Excel page and type in the kind of vehicle.
4- Write in the time at which the alarm was received.
5- Send a VLR (Vehicle Location Request) by email, and dial the MIN to see if it's reset or still in alarm. If it's reset, treat it like a false alarm.
6- Check the alarm code. If it's a 41, treat like a regular alarm. If it's a 44, treat it like a false alarm.
7- In your intranet, check the alarm history of the Boomerang in question.
8- If the alarm history indicates many alarms, write notes in the Excel page and make sure a recall has been issued. Treat like a false alarm. Do this only in cases of repeated false alarms. When in doubt, move to Step 9.
9- If the history indicates a first alarm or very few, attempt to contact the client to ensure the safety of the vehicle in question.
10- Write notes in the Excel page.
11- If the alarm has been resolved, fill in the background with grey and move it up the page. If the alarm is pending, fill in the background with yellow and leave it at the bottom where everyone can keep an eye on it. If the Boomerang contract has been terminated, fill it in with blue. If it's a digital Boomerang, fill it in with green. (There are a couple of other colour codes I won't bore you with because they don't come up often)
12- Every half-hour to one hour, call the alarms in yellow (to check if they're reset) and send new VLRs by email (to see if the vehicles have moved).
Steps 6 through 9 are performed by everyone in the central, regardless of whether they're in charge of the page or not. If you're in charge of the page, your job is essentially copy/pasting, listening to notes given to you by others on the status of an alarm, and keeping the yellows up to date. It's long but not complicated. It took me about a week before I was completely comfortable having the Page, because alarms tend to come in quickly and in batches, and you have to be able to enter all the information quickly and accurately so that everyone is kept up to date.
New Guy, after three weeks of training, still didn't have the basics down. Not only that, he'd paste the wrong information in the wrong places. He mixed up serial numbers. He would consistently overwrite other people's notes (the Page tends to get swapped from person to person over the course of a shift, as people get busy with theft calls or else go on break or whatever) without noticing, and generally fucking things up in a major way.
The last time I worked with him I had to hang over his shoulder and babysit him through the ten extra steps of fixing all the mistakes he'd made.
So, they fired him.
This means that this weekend the shift he was supposed to be taking over will have to be filled by the guy who was supposed to get a different shift. Here's the problem:
1- Coworker #1 asked for Saturday off to go to a boxing match. He asked well in advance and got the time off.
2- Coworker #2 was not meant to be working this weekend at all, since New Guy was supposed to take his shift. He has a wedding this weekend and, as I understand it, is one of the groomsmen. This too was known a long time ago.
3- Coworker #3 asked for Saturday off because it's her parents' 30th wedding anniversary. She got it approved, again ahead of time.
C1 doesn't want to give up his night off. He has a lot of seniority over C2 and C3. C2 has rightfully pointed out that he gave plenty of warning and wasn't meant to be working anyway, because the schedule change was supposed to take place this weekend. C3 is also fairly adamant that 30th anniversaries only ever happen once.
So, the central has been caught with its pants down, and a number of us have been asked to step in to make sure we're not overwhelmed this weekend. I'll be doing a split shift: Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. On the plus side, it does mean a fair bit of overtime pay. Or maybe I'll try to bank the hours and see if I can convince them to give me the week off at the beginning of July so I can go to Tulsa after all.
Work has been work this week. It will continue being work this weekend, since I've been asked to do a split shift over two days due to some unanticipated scheduling glitches. Glitches, you may ask? Glitches, I shall answer. Mostly, the glitch is that the Powers That Be had to fire one of the newbies (one of the newer newbies) for being, well, grossly incompetent and slow.
Aside from the fact that I didn't much like the guy, I have to say good riddance. The job I do is not rocket science. However, it demands a reasonable level of concentration (which, in the grand scheme of things, is not much). You have to be able to concentrate on it enough to copy/paste the right things in the right order. A lot of the job is copy/pasting from one place to another.
Allow me to get into the boring technical details of dealing with an alarm behind this cut.
Let's say you're in charge of the Excel page in which we keep track of alarms during the day. Here's what you have to do:
An alarm comes in by email (they all come by email).
1- Copy/paste the ten-digit MIN into the right square in the Excel Page.
2- In your intranet, paste the MIN and get the information on the Boomerang (serial number and type of vehicle to which it's been assigned).
3- Paste the serial number of the Boomerang into the Excel page and type in the kind of vehicle.
4- Write in the time at which the alarm was received.
5- Send a VLR (Vehicle Location Request) by email, and dial the MIN to see if it's reset or still in alarm. If it's reset, treat it like a false alarm.
6- Check the alarm code. If it's a 41, treat like a regular alarm. If it's a 44, treat it like a false alarm.
7- In your intranet, check the alarm history of the Boomerang in question.
8- If the alarm history indicates many alarms, write notes in the Excel page and make sure a recall has been issued. Treat like a false alarm. Do this only in cases of repeated false alarms. When in doubt, move to Step 9.
9- If the history indicates a first alarm or very few, attempt to contact the client to ensure the safety of the vehicle in question.
10- Write notes in the Excel page.
11- If the alarm has been resolved, fill in the background with grey and move it up the page. If the alarm is pending, fill in the background with yellow and leave it at the bottom where everyone can keep an eye on it. If the Boomerang contract has been terminated, fill it in with blue. If it's a digital Boomerang, fill it in with green. (There are a couple of other colour codes I won't bore you with because they don't come up often)
12- Every half-hour to one hour, call the alarms in yellow (to check if they're reset) and send new VLRs by email (to see if the vehicles have moved).
Steps 6 through 9 are performed by everyone in the central, regardless of whether they're in charge of the page or not. If you're in charge of the page, your job is essentially copy/pasting, listening to notes given to you by others on the status of an alarm, and keeping the yellows up to date. It's long but not complicated. It took me about a week before I was completely comfortable having the Page, because alarms tend to come in quickly and in batches, and you have to be able to enter all the information quickly and accurately so that everyone is kept up to date.
New Guy, after three weeks of training, still didn't have the basics down. Not only that, he'd paste the wrong information in the wrong places. He mixed up serial numbers. He would consistently overwrite other people's notes (the Page tends to get swapped from person to person over the course of a shift, as people get busy with theft calls or else go on break or whatever) without noticing, and generally fucking things up in a major way.
The last time I worked with him I had to hang over his shoulder and babysit him through the ten extra steps of fixing all the mistakes he'd made.
So, they fired him.
This means that this weekend the shift he was supposed to be taking over will have to be filled by the guy who was supposed to get a different shift. Here's the problem:
1- Coworker #1 asked for Saturday off to go to a boxing match. He asked well in advance and got the time off.
2- Coworker #2 was not meant to be working this weekend at all, since New Guy was supposed to take his shift. He has a wedding this weekend and, as I understand it, is one of the groomsmen. This too was known a long time ago.
3- Coworker #3 asked for Saturday off because it's her parents' 30th wedding anniversary. She got it approved, again ahead of time.
C1 doesn't want to give up his night off. He has a lot of seniority over C2 and C3. C2 has rightfully pointed out that he gave plenty of warning and wasn't meant to be working anyway, because the schedule change was supposed to take place this weekend. C3 is also fairly adamant that 30th anniversaries only ever happen once.
So, the central has been caught with its pants down, and a number of us have been asked to step in to make sure we're not overwhelmed this weekend. I'll be doing a split shift: Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. On the plus side, it does mean a fair bit of overtime pay. Or maybe I'll try to bank the hours and see if I can convince them to give me the week off at the beginning of July so I can go to Tulsa after all.