Bear with me, because I need to put some mundane stuff in order to explain my post tonight.
My job is dispatching guys (and some gals) out to various doctor's offices, hospitals, etc. to fix medical equipment. My office serves the entire country...the various parts of the country are broken down into "zones", such as Northeastern, Southern, Western, etc. The area that I'm "assigned" to is the Western & Southwestern zone.
Ok, so now we've got the basics out of the way. Now, for my post:
Since I finished up with my training class, I've been more than a little frustrated with some stuff at work. First of all, it took an act of congress to get my desk set up...I was missing some pretty key things necessary to be able to do my job, such as a computer and a telephone. For the three weeks that I was in class, I asked my supervisor every other day if my desk was ready and he told me, "it'll be ready by the time that you get out of class."
It wasn't.
The day that I got out of class, the computer was there, as was the telephone, but telephones normally don't work too well if there's no cord attached. So after making a few inquiries, I was all set with my phone. I quickly found out that I wasn't as set as I'd initially thought. You see, in order to log onto the telephone, this program called HiPath has to be opened. Each person has their own unique ID number to access the program. Guess who hadn't been assigned an ID for this program?
Once I obtained the ID for HiPath, I again thought I was ready to start working. I was wrong again. Once I was logged into HiPath, then the program that I work with to dispatch the calls (called SAP), I discovered that I didn't have an ID for the SAP program.
Once again, I had to arrange heaven and Earth to just get started...needless to say, my frustration level was growing. They'd had nearly TWO months to get this LITTLE stuff out of the way! If you recall, I've been working at this company since the middle of June, so they had plenty of time to get all of this taken care of.
So....once I finally got situated with the desk & computer thing, I am informed that I have to move into a different desk...on the other side of the office! No big deal though. Luckily I'm a whiz at hooking up and unhooking a computer, so the move didn't take more than 10 minutes or so.
Now comes the REALLY annoying part. Every day when I come in, my first responsibility is to watch over the zones for the folks who are coming in later. Again, not a big deal. Once those other folks come in though, my monitoring of their particular area is over. Now, you'd think that since I don't have my own zone that there would be some sort of game plan as to what I should do with the rest of my day...but there's not. Even when I specifically ASK what I should be doing, I'm all but ignored.
Y'all think I'm kidding, don't you? Well, keep reading:
Check this out...last Wednesday I'd noticed that I didn't have any phone calls coming in. I mean NONE whatsoever. That is VERY VERY unusual for a dispatching office that covers the entire United States. So I asked my "assistant manager" and told him what was going on. He told me that it was probably just because it was so slow that day and to remind him the next morning and he'd double check to see if there was indeed any kind of problem.
So Thursday morning rolls around and I remind the assistant about the lack of phone calls. He told me again that it was probably just due to it being really slow that day. So, for the second day in a row, I sat for 8 hours doing absolutely NOTHING. Then Friday rolls around...yep, still no phone calls! Remember folks, I spent the better part of five years working as a dispatcher and two years working for an airline in their call center, so I know that receiving NO phone calls is NOT normal regardless of how slow business might be. This time, though, I decided I just wasn't going to say anything at all. So I sat there all day and did nothing. Finally, about 30 minutes before the end of my shift, my supervisor came over and asked how everything was going. I told him about the phone thing and that I knew there had ot be something wrong. So he calls the IT department and low & behold there WAS a problem!!
So THIS week I have actually been able to do at least part of my job, which is answering the phone. I still have yet to be given any clear direction as to what I should do during the day, and quite frankly I've been more than a bit frustrated about the situation!
Today, however, I made a decision while I was driving to work. I decided that I would go into the office, do my zone monitoring until the others came in, and then I'd just sit there and wait for the phone to ring....and that's exactly what I did. I came in, sat down & did what I've been directed to do until this point...I answered the phone when it rang and didn't even talk to anyone unless they spoke to me first. Know what else? This was one of the best days that I've had all week at work!
It took a bit for it to dawn on me, but I finally figured it out. I've done my part to try and get some direction, but apparently it's being left up to me to direct myself, or at least until someone finally comes along and says I should be doing something else. There's no sense in stressing about it anymore.
WHEW! I feel SO much better to have gotten that off of my chest!!!
Again, I'll emphasize the fact that I really DO like this job a lot, but as with any job there are some not so great things to endure. At least now that I have figured out the routine I can go in with a much better attitude about everything!
Well now that I've bitched, moaned, and complained and brought everyone down into the dumps, I'll sign off for the evening!
