Thank you for calling Domino's Bureaucracy, how may I help you?
Thank you for calling Domino's Bureaucracy, how may I help you?
How to start off on this one?
First let me say that today was an incredibly trying day at work. Of course I work a helpdesk and almost every day is a trying day but today I was actually on the phone, in the trenches, fighting the good fight.
You see lately (the last month or so) I've been involved training or re-training some of the newer help desk staff. It's been thoroughly enjoyable getting to show other people how to do my job. I believe that the only way to improve one's company is through it's people. I don't care how much technology you implement, I don't really care how much you act like you respect your people, or how cool your job title is. None of those things will ever make a company great. The only thing that makes a company great is how quickly you can deliver:
expediant-consistant-high quality-service.
The best way to do that is to:
1) Interview/Recruit Frequently(very difficult assessment of real world ability but until we develop telepathy its all we have to go on)
2) Train, Train, Train (you can't really skip this step)
3) Reduce Turnover (this is were most companies really fuck up hard)
There are all kinds of self help books, seminars, and sage water cooler advice for each of the above steps but really it's not a science it's a practice. Come up with some kind of standard and deliver it consistantly and then tweak your results by slightly modifying your methods. Do this and do it well and cut the occasional mistake (Horizontally Promote) and you will suceed.
Before I get way off topic here the above link is to a website that I visit frequently when I'm feeling kind of shifty or I've had a really insipid day. If you don't get the 42 reference or have no idea what the fuck 42 is all about then get a grip and go read "The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide". Read it. It will change your life forever. I swear to GOD!
The link above is kind of indicative of the "idiotic policy enforcment" idea. Some well intenioned company has created a policy to keep their employees safe, and I applaud them for that but please give your employees some latitiude and common sense (impossible to hire for common sense skills if you're wondering).
Now I cut my teeth in the Dough/Suace/Grated Cheeze business for over eight years so I know that Industry well and I find the above story incredibly witty, but isn't that the type of logic feedback loop that we seem to run into everywhere. If you are involved enough/influential enought at your company please challange yourself and seek out and destory those types of problems before they cost you some business.
I am about to start up another website after my ill fated www.propellerhead.com site that my wife bought me two years ago. It was the perfect site but everyone I talked to couldn't figure out how to spell it. Most people would sit at their keyboard and wonder gee is that two pp's and one l or two ll's and *arhead or *erhead. So now I've been pouring lots of energy into coming up with a short domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell out phonetically for Anglo Saxons. Screw the whole cross language meaning shit. Remember the whole Joni loves Chachi means Joni loves penis in Japanese fiasco?
I would also like the website to mean something. Now I still haven't figured out what direction I'm going to go with the website yet. Is it going to be my proffessional business building website for my budding consulting/computer SOHO company, or a personal blog/opinion type site, or just a hobby enthusiast self help forum board. Either way I wanted something that would be easy to remember, simple to spell, and short and meaningful.
If you have any good ideas look them up to see if they are available and email them to me.
Now to email me just send the email to jefferyestes@gmail.com. Of course I've munged my email for those shady ass email harvester bots so take out the from the email to figure out my real email addy.
Thank you to RyanTaylor for the gmail invite. Gmail rocks Hotmail sucks (I pay for my hotmail btw). Now I have zero clue how to bite down and kill my hotmail and not lose touch with my 2 MILLION email friends. I guess I mainly hate Hotmail for not being cool anymore. I've had the damn thing since like 93 when justing having an email address made you elitist and having a web based mail account made you ubergeek. So maybe I'm just feeling nostaligic by holding on to my Hotmail but it just fucking sucks ass and I'm paying money for it. So I'll probably add the gmail to my hotmail, along with my yahoo mail account. Did I mention that I also have two work emails for both my alias accounts and I'm paying for my own spamfilter also. Different blog different day.
On a more humanitarian note the whole Tsunami thing is getting way to hard to bear.
Not only have more people lost their lives overseas than any other natural disaster in last 200 years but I don't know if my Mother and Brother are even still alive.
My Mother is the strong silent type. She left my dad over 15 years ago and since that time she has primarly been a gypsy. Not the work at the cirus and steal your children type but more like a modern day nomad. She owned one backpack and one bicycle and worked all over Europe and Asia backpacking from town to town for over ten years. It wasn't rare to go for over a year with no phone call and the occasional postcard from Mt. Killamanjaro one day and then a month later from a Pink Floyd concert in Buckingham Square. Nothing can touch my mom she's fucking NWA hard core. She'd bitch slap ICE Cube and he'd probably apologize and then go make her some Chicken Stir Fry so she wouldn't get all Asiatic on him.
Now about five months ago my Mom and my Brother (God Rest their Souls??) are living in Thailand about 45 minutes from Phukat which one of this one places you've been seeing in the news that got hit hard by the Tsunami. She didn't call me on Christmas and I haven't heard from her since she left Arkansas. Is she Dead? Is she alive and kicking it in Thailand? I have no idea and all I hear about at work is "Jesus Christ they just reported that now their are like xx,xxx people dead! Cut that shit you insensitive dick-weed.
First it's Fucking Tragedy not a news story so please treat it with the respect it deserves. I mean less than 5k people died in the world trade center attacks on 911 and look what's happened since then. This is bigger than just lots of dead people. This is going to crush the economies of entire regions of Thailand, India, and other countries on the other side world. In todays global economy that means trouble. There will be massive employment, massive unrest, and political upheaval. It's bad enough that those governments don't have a lot of money but when you kill tens of thousands of people becuase you didn't invest some god-damned loudspeakers and a public alert system, and you have displaced millions of poor ass and now homeless people you're going to have serious problems.
Look at American History we tarred and feathered tax collecters for charging extra money for tea! (Can you imaging being tarred and feathered? I don't even like walking barefoot on a hot freshly tarred road). We might have military coups, or cival wars in the ensuing power struggles.
The worst part is I can't reach anyone that can tell me anything about my Mom and Brother. I can't take time off at work to make phone calls since it's the end of the year and all the really hard working people who put in for time off back in January of this year are off work and all of us working stiffs with PTO can't take off and will end up losing our PTO. And every phone number I have for people in Thailand are either fast busy (read shitty POTS lines from the 5th century BC) and or the poeple on the other line speak Thai and I speak Redneck English.
Online you can find picturs of dead water logged, now bloated bodies with numbers attached to them like marathon runners. You're supposed to sort throgh the thousand or so pictures and identify your loves ones by calling and number and saying "Yea I'd like to claim body 3728 I think that one's my mom.
This is why people say they need closure. The fucking pressure is killing me and I don't know how to get rid of it other than blogging or beating the everliving shit of someone for eating up an hour of my life with their computer emergency. "When I right click it says copy here, move here. I don't see anything that says open or properties!" I swear if I get one more call like that when I'm on my way out the door or on personal time, somebody is gonna fucking pay dearly.
While I'm ranting/venting let me go on about something else.
Do you have any idea how fucking rude it is to break into someone else's conversation at work. I mean if I'm training someone or engaged in a real conversation about something important or time-sensitive DO NOT FUCKING INTERRUPT ME! pass me a note or make those Vietnam like soldier hand gestures. You know move your hands like a talking shadow puppet and hand mime the "talk to me when you get a minute thing", or extend your thumb and pinky fake the "call me when you get chance thing". Under no circumstances at all grab me when I'm walking out the door and say to someone on the phone "well, let me put Jeff on the line with you to explain that difficult to understand topic because I'm lazy and stupid" and then have the fucking nerve to walk off and not even try to learn how to handle that call in the future. Osmosis works in Nature not on a helpdesk you brainless fuckwad!
Fortunately my new boss is doing a great job wading through bullshit and seeing the big picture. Not only that he takes the time to thank your ass in a thankless environment for just doing your job and doing it well without putting people in headlocks and vulcan neck pinching people.
PS Mom, Allen if you're out there and you can read my mind or this blog or if you live in or near Phukat or have access to resources I don't have I'm desperately trying to reach either one of you and make sure you're ok. Please email me at the google address in this message and I will contact you. God bless you! I love you guys and I hope you're okay. Please call me!
How to start off on this one?
First let me say that today was an incredibly trying day at work. Of course I work a helpdesk and almost every day is a trying day but today I was actually on the phone, in the trenches, fighting the good fight.
You see lately (the last month or so) I've been involved training or re-training some of the newer help desk staff. It's been thoroughly enjoyable getting to show other people how to do my job. I believe that the only way to improve one's company is through it's people. I don't care how much technology you implement, I don't really care how much you act like you respect your people, or how cool your job title is. None of those things will ever make a company great. The only thing that makes a company great is how quickly you can deliver:
expediant-consistant-high quality-service.
The best way to do that is to:
1) Interview/Recruit Frequently(very difficult assessment of real world ability but until we develop telepathy its all we have to go on)
2) Train, Train, Train (you can't really skip this step)
3) Reduce Turnover (this is were most companies really fuck up hard)
There are all kinds of self help books, seminars, and sage water cooler advice for each of the above steps but really it's not a science it's a practice. Come up with some kind of standard and deliver it consistantly and then tweak your results by slightly modifying your methods. Do this and do it well and cut the occasional mistake (Horizontally Promote) and you will suceed.
Before I get way off topic here the above link is to a website that I visit frequently when I'm feeling kind of shifty or I've had a really insipid day. If you don't get the 42 reference or have no idea what the fuck 42 is all about then get a grip and go read "The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide". Read it. It will change your life forever. I swear to GOD!
The link above is kind of indicative of the "idiotic policy enforcment" idea. Some well intenioned company has created a policy to keep their employees safe, and I applaud them for that but please give your employees some latitiude and common sense (impossible to hire for common sense skills if you're wondering).
Now I cut my teeth in the Dough/Suace/Grated Cheeze business for over eight years so I know that Industry well and I find the above story incredibly witty, but isn't that the type of logic feedback loop that we seem to run into everywhere. If you are involved enough/influential enought at your company please challange yourself and seek out and destory those types of problems before they cost you some business.
I am about to start up another website after my ill fated www.propellerhead.com site that my wife bought me two years ago. It was the perfect site but everyone I talked to couldn't figure out how to spell it. Most people would sit at their keyboard and wonder gee is that two pp's and one l or two ll's and *arhead or *erhead. So now I've been pouring lots of energy into coming up with a short domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell out phonetically for Anglo Saxons. Screw the whole cross language meaning shit. Remember the whole Joni loves Chachi means Joni loves penis in Japanese fiasco?
I would also like the website to mean something. Now I still haven't figured out what direction I'm going to go with the website yet. Is it going to be my proffessional business building website for my budding consulting/computer SOHO company, or a personal blog/opinion type site, or just a hobby enthusiast self help forum board. Either way I wanted something that would be easy to remember, simple to spell, and short and meaningful.
If you have any good ideas look them up to see if they are available and email them to me.
Now to email me just send the email to jefferyestes
Thank you to Ryan
On a more humanitarian note the whole Tsunami thing is getting way to hard to bear.
Not only have more people lost their lives overseas than any other natural disaster in last 200 years but I don't know if my Mother and Brother are even still alive.
My Mother is the strong silent type. She left my dad over 15 years ago and since that time she has primarly been a gypsy. Not the work at the cirus and steal your children type but more like a modern day nomad. She owned one backpack and one bicycle and worked all over Europe and Asia backpacking from town to town for over ten years. It wasn't rare to go for over a year with no phone call and the occasional postcard from Mt. Killamanjaro one day and then a month later from a Pink Floyd concert in Buckingham Square. Nothing can touch my mom she's fucking NWA hard core. She'd bitch slap ICE Cube and he'd probably apologize and then go make her some Chicken Stir Fry so she wouldn't get all Asiatic on him.
Now about five months ago my Mom and my Brother (God Rest their Souls??) are living in Thailand about 45 minutes from Phukat which one of this one places you've been seeing in the news that got hit hard by the Tsunami. She didn't call me on Christmas and I haven't heard from her since she left Arkansas. Is she Dead? Is she alive and kicking it in Thailand? I have no idea and all I hear about at work is "Jesus Christ they just reported that now their are like xx,xxx people dead! Cut that shit you insensitive dick-weed.
First it's Fucking Tragedy not a news story so please treat it with the respect it deserves. I mean less than 5k people died in the world trade center attacks on 911 and look what's happened since then. This is bigger than just lots of dead people. This is going to crush the economies of entire regions of Thailand, India, and other countries on the other side world. In todays global economy that means trouble. There will be massive employment, massive unrest, and political upheaval. It's bad enough that those governments don't have a lot of money but when you kill tens of thousands of people becuase you didn't invest some god-damned loudspeakers and a public alert system, and you have displaced millions of poor ass and now homeless people you're going to have serious problems.
Look at American History we tarred and feathered tax collecters for charging extra money for tea! (Can you imaging being tarred and feathered? I don't even like walking barefoot on a hot freshly tarred road). We might have military coups, or cival wars in the ensuing power struggles.
The worst part is I can't reach anyone that can tell me anything about my Mom and Brother. I can't take time off at work to make phone calls since it's the end of the year and all the really hard working people who put in for time off back in January of this year are off work and all of us working stiffs with PTO can't take off and will end up losing our PTO. And every phone number I have for people in Thailand are either fast busy (read shitty POTS lines from the 5th century BC) and or the poeple on the other line speak Thai and I speak Redneck English.
Online you can find picturs of dead water logged, now bloated bodies with numbers attached to them like marathon runners. You're supposed to sort throgh the thousand or so pictures and identify your loves ones by calling and number and saying "Yea I'd like to claim body 3728 I think that one's my mom.
This is why people say they need closure. The fucking pressure is killing me and I don't know how to get rid of it other than blogging or beating the everliving shit of someone for eating up an hour of my life with their computer emergency. "When I right click it says copy here, move here. I don't see anything that says open or properties!" I swear if I get one more call like that when I'm on my way out the door or on personal time, somebody is gonna fucking pay dearly.
While I'm ranting/venting let me go on about something else.
Do you have any idea how fucking rude it is to break into someone else's conversation at work. I mean if I'm training someone or engaged in a real conversation about something important or time-sensitive DO NOT FUCKING INTERRUPT ME! pass me a note or make those Vietnam like soldier hand gestures. You know move your hands like a talking shadow puppet and hand mime the "talk to me when you get a minute thing", or extend your thumb and pinky fake the "call me when you get chance thing". Under no circumstances at all grab me when I'm walking out the door and say to someone on the phone "well, let me put Jeff on the line with you to explain that difficult to understand topic because I'm lazy and stupid" and then have the fucking nerve to walk off and not even try to learn how to handle that call in the future. Osmosis works in Nature not on a helpdesk you brainless fuckwad!
Fortunately my new boss is doing a great job wading through bullshit and seeing the big picture. Not only that he takes the time to thank your ass in a thankless environment for just doing your job and doing it well without putting people in headlocks and vulcan neck pinching people.
PS Mom, Allen if you're out there and you can read my mind or this blog or if you live in or near Phukat or have access to resources I don't have I'm desperately trying to reach either one of you and make sure you're ok. Please email me at the google address in this message and I will contact you. God bless you! I love you guys and I hope you're okay. Please call me!
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