Amanda CAARSON – Page 4334 – Amanda Unvarnished

note

· 15 Tishri 5766 (Tuesday 18 October 2005) · 3 minutes to read

A lot’s happened in my worklife since the last time I posted about it last Tuesday.
First of all, all the access we had (to the share drive where all my work documents are stored, as well as any memos sent by management in order to be able to be read by myself through Jaws along with my mail, and this blog), has been completely blocked, yet to be restored.
But the biggest event by far has been the disaccessibilization of our database.
Not that it was the most accessible thing in the world, (as you’ll find out by browsing the archives of this blog), but it worked well enough to allow me to do my job.
Now it doesn’t work at all.
This has been going on since Friday.
So after everybody in upper management (and that includes upper management outside the local center as well as the upper management from the client) gushed profusely about how it was a horrible oversight, and how it would never happen again, I had a “meeting” about it yesterday afternoon, at which nothing got accomplished, unless you count my unceremoniously being added to the “pilot team” for the hellish database.
An IP address was supposed to be sent down the pipeline that would give myself and the other agent in the client’s office up in Pennsylvania access to the old version of the interface, but that IP yielded nothing.
The end result of all this?
I spent the last two days (Friday and Monday) at work sitting on my ass, doing absolutely nothing, and I’ll be doing that today too, as the answer I got yesterday before leaving was “Just come in tomorrow and we’ll think of something.”
Guys, that’s really brilliant.
But it’s not the most brilliant thing to happen yesterday.
During our little meeting, I asked if there was any way for feedback to be sent directly to the development team. (Why the hell does every group of people have to be a team?) I got to talk to someone from Development at that meeting, who says he’s going to download a forty-minute demo of Jaws and test it out on the interface.
Never mind he’s probably not used the damned software, and has no idea of how it works or how to use it.
The answer: “You talk to your supervisor, who will talk to his supervisor, who will talk to the person above them, who will talk to the client’s representative, who will meet with the supervisor weveral levels above the other guy in PA, and it’ll go down that chain after we all form an “action plan”, and then we’ll go to Development.”
In short, the same system we’ve been using which produced this huge mess in the first place.
Corporate America is indeed lovely, isn’t it?
Actually, let me rephrase.
Instead of “Corporate America” read the Call Center Industry.
And on top of all that, I broke my cane.
Well, at this point it’s in one piece until I can replace it, but it’s really bent, and it can’t be folded because the elastic in the middle is broken.
I’ll have to wait until the next paycheck to start saving to replace it.
This one went to bills, and the next one will primarily go to my rent.
I’m hoping they’ll fix the access at work so I can post during the day today, so that doing nothing takes up less time than it did yesterday.
If not, I’ll post later today.