Thursday September 5, 2002 at 08:23 pm

Should I feel any guilt or remorse for the 3-4 dozens of people I talk to on a daily basis, who for some reason remember me, no matter how short and abstruse the conversation may be? I recently had a conversation with a faculty member whom, as soon as hearing my voice, knew exactly who I was and proceeded to have a 5 minute conversation, okay a 5 minute monologue, since I didn’t say anything beyond my normal greeting. He ended with the following “Well thanks again, it was great talking with you and hopefully all will be well soon, have a good one”. How was it great talking to me I said nothing, other than as he was drifting into his closing spiel I had to get his username as I had no idea who he was or when if any I had ever talked with him.

Ironically enough it seems that most of the other techs seemed to make a connection with the people they speak to, almost as if they go beyond a simple question and answer relationship, which is fine in my opinion as long as you get your job done. The problem is most of them don’t and end up spending days talking to the same people over and over again, simply because they got so friendly that they forgot the real reason we are here , and that is to solve problems and not chit chat about the weather and kids. Needless to say most of them have repeat callers and somehow get recognition and praise for being so interpersonal with the facilitators calling in, but never get reprimanded for doing accomplishing the prime objective, fix the problem.

I’m being faced with a choice here soon whether to move to a team that actually works hard and accomplish tangible goals, or I can stay on a team that gives the impression they work hard, but in reality barley do anything and spends the majority of the time, trying to find ways to appear busy. The problem is if I stay I will have the benefit of being on a team that will be appear to be in the limelight, thus I’ll have better chances of being hired on permanently, in theory. If I go to the team that actually works however, I will be able to actual prove I work, and have measure of accomplishments and stats to warrant being hired on, rather than basing it on visual performance and kissing ass. As I have stated many times over, I don’t kiss ass very well, as a matter of fact if there were a job to kiss people ass I’d be fired before I was even hired.

Okay so today is hectic as usual for the last 3 weeks, and I’m on the phone with a faculty member who, talks at about the speed of snail crawling up hill in the ice covered snow and in molasses. To make things worse she has one of those jacked up mix of southern drawl and Forrest Gumpish accents and the mentality to go with. Now normally after about 10 minutes their intelligence will be knocked up a few IQ levels simply be osmosis, however with ever waning moment hers simply seems to be dropping below sub artic levels.

This is going to be a long night………………