Oct 18, 2007 18:49
I really don't want to overload everybody with tales of my new job
I'll try to keep posting about it to a minimum. Maybe I'll try to do weekly updates for those of you who are. Who knows. So far it's been pretty good. Not too hard, although I'm certainly finding out how much I didn't know about computers. It's fascinating to discover some of the weird problems that can happen and as you're talking to the customer you're thinking, "I didn't even know a computer could do that and you want me to tell you why it did that? What have you been smoking and why did you share it with your PC?" But instead, you tell the customer, "Hold for just a minute while I discuss this problem with a couple of our other techs and I'll be right back with you to help you resolve it." Then you turn to your manager and describe the problem to him and he looks at you blankly and says, "I don't know. Then several other techs get involved and you spend 1/2hr troubleshooting with them between getting back on the phone with the customer to work on whatever troubleshooting techniques the group can come up with. In the end, you guess that the customer is giving you good info, take an educated guess at what part(s) might fix it, and send the part(s) and a tech to the customer's house hoping that you will never hear from this particular bozo and their crack-box again. It's good to not be the only one who doesn't know, right? Fortunately, we have some really good techs who don't mind training people who can learn and will work because I've had some pretty stupid questions too considering that I've been out of really dealing with computers since 2001 and some of the new developments that have happened in the past couple of years I've barely even heard of and some I've missed entirely. There's also the fact that there are lots of thing that, I know what they are but never learned the term for it . All in all though, it seems to be going well. I know more than I thought I did about some things and less about others but my manager says I'm doing really good and I'm certainly enjoying myself. I actually stayed 1/2hr late last night just because I was curious about a problem in one of our work orders and couldn't resist calling the tech to find out what the issue actually was and why he wanted to resolve it the way he did. I am utterly fascinated by this stuff...as I always have been. I just gave up on getting a job doing it because I couldn't afford school or enough pieces and parts to experiment and get more experience with it.
Like George, I'm just lucky I guess. Let's hope I still feel that way in a few months because right now it's awesome.