What a Day, Part 1

Remember how I said I was going to Blog about life shortly? It really had not been dramatic until I said that. Well work had involved some drama.... Then it all just hit the fan.

Yesterday night it started like any other day. Woke up at 9:30 when the alarm went off. Stayed in bed. Fell asleep again. Then got woken up by the alarm. Azrael came bounding into the room and up onto the bed. Nice to know he's my secondary alarm clock. Figure I've got some time to give him attention I curl up with him and then look at the clock. Discover it's 10:30. Oops, time to get up. Okay so that part wasn't as normal. Get up, get dressed, and head off to work.

At midnight it's time to login like usual. Except that there are no managers on duty. For some things I am sure that you could do the job without a manager but not tech support. We need someone to answer questions and authorize escalations. So we all logged in and went into Aux. Around 1 Stu and I had been discussing things and decided that we should go talk to the team leaders for the other contract before they left at 2. It's all about CYA. I was under the impression that we were not allowed to take calls without a supervisor on duty to approve escalations and in case of emergency. So we wander downstairs and leave while they try to reach our team leader... or really anyone that can make a decision and hopefully get someone in. One of the team leaders comes upstairs to find out if we had any idea who was supposed to be here. We just work here. The other team leader was calling the site director after not being able to reach Bill. So at about 1:30 the two team leaders come upstairs with word from the site director that we are to take calls. The question comes up about escalations... We're told to use Bill's name which I still think is fraudulent. The approval is supposed to be based on someone being there to answer questions if necessary about it.... Any ways they call Montreal to confirm but never get back to us. I should also mention that when told to take calls it turned into a confrontation. Some of us scattered so as not to be associated with it. I got pulled off the phones for having the most technical ability. I was just there to answer questions. Immediately I had 3 people that refused to take calls without a supervisor. So 2 people were logged in and another was rolling the queue to avoid calls. Then I had Montreal call wanting me to tell them to take calls. Now they had been told and I can't force them. For the next hour I had to listen to them justify their decision not to take calls and bitch about the whole situation. Had one of them playing mini-lawyer threatening to take the company to the human rights commission. For what? I was pretty happy when they decided to leave. They left at 3... going by the 3 hour rule. Now the 3 hour rule in the Employment Standards Act refers to you being sent home in less then 3 hours. They were not sent home... They left voluntarily. So I'm not sure how the 3 hour rule even applies here. Any ways they left and then at 5 Mr. Negativity finished his shift and left as well. That left 2 people taking calls for the rest of the night. The shift couldn't end soon enough.

I should've known something was up when the Ops manager showed up at about 7:30.... and then one of the team leaders who had been MIA also made an appearance.... Seems he had called the acting supervisor and no one knows what happened there. Then the HR generalist showed up. They sat the 3 of us down and told us that with all the issues we've had with the tools and the fact the call volume just isn't there they are closing down the Sympatico contract and moving it all to Montreal. Last day here will be April 4. How is that for notice?

So what does that mean? Well there is a T-Mobile training group starting on Monday. So they're offering us a job with them. I am not going to lie and say that I am happy about it. Rotating shifts.... Less pay... Billing issues with a cell-phone.... No more emails at night/You Tube/Facebook... About the only good thing is the 6 days off before it starts. That and the fact training is 8 weeks long. Training is always the easy part. But it's from 7 - 3.... not exactly a nice shift for me. I'm still processing the whole situation and where we go from here.