What A Way To Make A Living.
As some of you may know, I've started temping in order to find a way to resolve my current money problem; or rather, my current lack of money problem. It's great. I get a change of scene every couple of weeks, and the pay's, well, pretty good.
I started my first week-long assignment on Friday, and on Monday, I did Full Day II. It's my first day on my own, and it's been... interesting. Yes, interesting.
I described the job to Thennifer as being "temping- (ha, nearly wrote 'tempting'- s'what she said) - in an IT department, logging IT faults and distributing them to people who can actually deal with said faults.
Some consist of 'I can't open that word thingie' and some consist of 'I can't link my server to the dual main processor and frankly, I'm beginning to think that it's a problem with the [incomprehensible] and the [meaningless to me], which means I'm going to have to [utterly baffling] with the [obscure]. Who are you? You don't sound like [name of girl whose job I'm doing while she has a (well earned!) holiday]!' It's varied.
My answer is generally 'OK, I see. Would you mind giving me a little more detail / repeating that again? No, I'm not [name of said girl who is on holiday], I'm [a mystery wrapped up in an enigma wrapped up in an AWESOME rack].'"
This remains a viable description. On Monday words flooded over my head (today they haven't so much. I almost understood!).
The average conversation consists of me furiously typing as a list of incomprehensible error messages flap around my ears like somewhat verbose ducks. I no longer bother asking where the full stops and breaks are; it doesn't matter to the people destined to fix the problem, and it confuses the caller. Instead I end up rattling off a paragraph resembling a computer's stream of conscious on a really bad day. (Think Hex). As far as I'm concerned, it could as well be written in Inuit. Or binary, for that matter.
The people to whom I relay these postmodern epistles are masters of what is, to me, senseless. Like the crew in The Matrix, who see 'red hair, woman, child' instead of strings of numbers, my colleagues can instinctively read the meanings of my tentatively procided missives with any need for intervening translation. I don't know what an 'Error 91' is, nor an 'Error 3343' (I was looked at strangely when I missed a digit from this one, apparently due to surprise that I didn't just know it wasn't right) but apparently these numbers are as simple to comprehend and employ as 'alliteration or 'syntax' are for me. (Or 'fundamentally oxymoronic' for that matter.)
My vast inexperience (and the hugely well-known lady whose job I am covering) has lead to a certain amount of confusion.
(in tones of faint indignation) "You're not Laura!"
"Er, no. I'm Becky. I'm covering for a week while Laura takes a holiday."
"Oh."
Silence.
"Can I help you with something?"
"Oh. Er- oh. Yes. I- what's your name?"
"I think we're revisiting old ground..."
These calls make a little more sense than the ones who cry "LAURA?!" at me in tones of utter horror, as if my predecessor has had a horrible voicebox accident that has spawned my unwelcome (and clearly less than dulcet) tones.
I have honestly had them all today. The hilariously technical (see my description to Thennifer), the simply hilarious ("I can't open this email." "My emails have gone!" "I've been off sick for a day and I've forgotten my password" Ah, and your name was Mr Gold FishBrain, yes?) to the plain bizarre. My two favourites from the last category are as follows:
The one-line email with no sign-on or sign-off, no capitals, no punctuation of any kind and three typing errors. When I idly checked who the sender was through sheer bemusement, I found that he was one of the Executive team. When I spoke to him later, he was quiet, well-spoken, good-mannered, and completely lacking in signs of grammatical coma.
The ultimate: The call from someone named Joanna Smith* that I logged as normal and passed on to the correct person. When he reached it in his queue, some five hours later, he was informed that Joanna Smith no longer worked for the company. Nervous breakdown due to unresolved computer error? Or one final pre-redundancy hoorah of defiance, by confusing the IT Helpdesk.
Answers on a postcard...