I’d love to tell you all about the concert, but I don’t have it in me right now. Maybe later. It was awesome though.

This week and next are the two busiest weeks for tech support at work. And, of course, management is always trying to find ways to maximize our resources to handle the onslaught of calls we get.

This year, the grand plan is too let the engineers handle the phones, so that the support guys can all be in the field closing calls.

On paper, it’s a good plan. The reality is the support guys will, to various degrees, slack and not keep up with the pace and that some of these engineers aren’t cut out for phone support.

The number one job in phone support, at my job any how, is to address small simple problems and to create calls for larger problems and then route them to the appropriate group. I had to cover the desk for an hour (or so) on Monday and all day today. The engineers I was working with did not get it. They would try trouble shoot complex calls over the phone. I looked over at one point and saw the other engineer logged into a server checking something.

Not me. I can reset your password. I can tell you to make sure there isn’t a floppy in the a: drive when you try to boot up. I can check to see if your user has the correct rights. Anything else: “I’ll create a call for you and forward it to the right people who will help you shortly!”

These guys will help one or two users in an hour. But others will ring through to the voicemail. Users hate the voicemail.

I guess a lot of these guys think that doing this is beneath them and they don’t want to do it. Not me. I think it’s a blast. It’s easy work. I get laugh at the users. And I have fun with it. We have a bunch of seasonal help coming back right now. Many of them already have accounts, but they forget the password.

“Tech Services, this is Jeckles.”
“Uh… yeah. I think there is problem with my computer.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well. I try to login and I get an error.”
“Does the error say ‘make sure you used the correct password’ or does it say ‘I can’t find the server?’”
“It was saying check your password, but now it’s saying my account is locked.”
“Sounds like you haven’t used the correct password.”
“I think I may have forgot it.”
“Forgot it? Do you know that you are the first call for a forgotten password that I’ve had this week?”
“Really?”
“No. I’ve unlocked your account and changed your password to ‘password.’ It will prompt you to change it to something else when you login. Have a nice day!”

I’ll be on the desk all day tomorrow and three days next week. And I’ve been staying late so that I can catch up on the rest of my work. So I’m tired, but it’s okay.

If I have time on Thursday, I may broadcast the Ratdog set before SBR. Perhaps around 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested, that’s awesome. If not, who cares.

Thanks for calling the Help Desk!