Just when you thought it was safe to quit your job, fate rears her fuckin' ugly head and bites you in the butt with her big ironic teeth. Seems to be the story of my life of late. Ever had anything really really good happen to you...but it was actually bad? Well, it just happened to me Tuesday evening.

As you all know by my last few posts, I really do not like my job with TAG and have been looking for something else for well over a month. Last Friday, during a monster job search (faxed out like 18 resumes), I was rewarded with a very quick response for an interview. I set it up for Thursday (yesterday) since it's one of my days off. Sunday, during work, I informed my TL (team leader) that I had an interview and if it went well and paid well, that I'd be a vapor trail. He just nodded and wished me the best of luck, honestly. I was all set. Hit the interview Thursday, get the job and then go into TAG over the weekend to quit and turn in my headset and ID badge. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? Um...no, I don't either. Anyway, I kind of got derailed.

Sunday and Monday progressed rather well. Had time between calls, never really got flooded, and was in a pretty good mood. Tuesday was starting out the same way...until she called. She is a woman who, I could tell when she read off her phone number, was already in a pretty bad mood. Her issue wasn't really that serious. She had a sound problem with her computer. She had just had a Verizon DSL modem installed in her computer and while it was connected to her computer, her sound was all distorted. When she would disconnect it, her sound was fine, but as soon as she would connect it again, the sound would go bad. She'd spent, according to her, 2½ hours on the phone with Verizon and 55 minutes with HP and neither of them could figure out the issue. Her last resort was calling Best Buy tech support, where she got me. Yup...I'm up to bat.

Well, after getting her information and having her explain her situation, I started running possible scenarios through my head and couldn't really come up with what would be causing her problem. So, I did what I usually do. When in doubt...ask someone else. The tech who sits across from me and one cube up, Felix, has been with TAG for like 4-5 years and he's kind of been my "go-to" guy. So, after putting the caller on hold, I run to him and quickly explain the situation. No sooner do I finish and he's got a smile on his face and says, "They've both got the same IRQ. Have her remove and reinstall the sound card drivers and hopefully the computer assigns it a different IRQ." For the less computer literate, I won't go into what an IRQ is, because I don't really understand it myself. Anyway, I knew what Felix was talking about so I get back on the call.

I explain this to the caller in the simplest terms I could and then started on the troubleshooting steps. Soon as I explained it to her she was like, "Now see, you sound exactly like you know what you're doing." Anyway, in like 15-20 minutes, we had her sound card driver reinstalled and her sound was back, clear as a bell, even with the DSL modem hooked up. She was so happy, and on top of that, I also helped her with a few other issues she had that took no time at all. In total, the entire call, from the time I answered it to the time I thanked her for calling Best Buy took 32 minutes and change. Before I ended the call, she asked me if there was a phone number she could call, or an e-mail address she could write an e-mail to, letting them know how helpful I was and all. Not thinking anything of it, I gave her the e-mail we provide for comments.

I continue working and a few hours later, I see an e-mail pop up into my inbox from our floor manager. She's the big boss of all the techs. I'm kind of afraid to read it because she's been "on the rampage" lately and I figure it's bad news. So, I open the e-mail expecting the worst and am surprised when I see "AN EXCELLENT JOB FROM ~ ICEBEAR! (it had my real name but I'm keeping it out of here)" and then it had a copy of the e-mail the woman sent and it was just a gusher. She went on and on about how I was so professional and knew exactly what I was doing and fixed her problem in 2 minutes. I thought to myself, "Well, it was nice of Mary to have sent that to me." But I had more surprises to come. She not only sent it to me, she sent it to everyone on the floor in both our account and the Best Buy SCI account. But that's not all. She also sent it to the TAG owners, the Quinns and to the Best Buy corporate office! My TL was just beaming, he was so excited. I guess this letter came at a good time for the company. But it doesn't end here.

Around 9:00 that night, I'm, yet again, asking Felix for assistance when people start coming up to me and going, "Where we going for lunch?" I'm at a loss until one of the overnighters comes up, claps me on the shoulder, says "Way to go, man. Check your e-mail." I go back to my desk and lo and behold there's another message there. This time from Andy Quinn, the big man of TAG...or one of them anyway. He's also thanking me for the job I did, but there's more. My jaw dropped when I read the line, "So go out to lunch or dinner and expense it back to TAG. Just try to keep it under $100." $100!? For lunch? Wow! I was blushing like a Priest in a strip club. Everyone was coming over and congratulating me and clapping and stuff. It was embarassing. But then I got to thinking. Dammit! If this job interview Thursday goes good then I'm quitting. Needless to say, a $100 lunch/dinner makes it very hard to quit the company. What to do. In the words of my TL, "It sux to be good at a job you hate, isn't it?" Heh...you can say that again.

Basically, I decided that, if the job interview went well and I got the job and got decent pay (read better than TAG), then I'd quit and not use the lunch. If I didn't get the job and had to go back to TAG, then we're eating out baby! And that's where we're at now. I'll do another entry telling about how the job interview went. I didn't get the job, but it's not over either. It's an instructor job and they want to see how well we can interact with a class of students so we basically have to auditon for the position. I can't do that until Monday so I'm going to go into TAG on Sunday, then call in on Monday and not go in and prepare my Test Teach audition and then audition Monday at 5:00. Then if I get the job, I'll quit at TAG.

Talk about things all happening all at once. Damn. Anyway, I've rambled on long enough about this. Oh, one other thing that could come of my "letter" experience is that I get a promotion of sorts. My 90 days is up, I think, so I'm a Level 1 tech and get $11 an hour for my primary pay. My TL told the floor manager that I have a job interview and they may be losing me so it's possible they may bump me up a level. That would make me Level 2 at $12 an hour. Thing is, if I get this instructor job, I'll be making at least $14.25 an hour so it's still better than TAG. Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see. Check in later on for the entry about my job interview and more on that job. Till then, you all take care.

Remember, Da 'Bear loves ya!

Da 'Bear

previous - next