Senioritis

When you know you're leaving a job, sometimes it can be hard to focus. I'm still working my job, but I can't stop thinking on every call that soon I won't be the friendly face of XYZ Cellphone Company. Or friendly voice, either. I'll be the nervous newbie that I haven't truly been for more than two years. I won't know everything about everything we do. I won't be the guy who everyone asks for help. It's a bit like moving from one school to another.

I really do regard my work as education as much as anything. I learn new things, and that is as much a reward as any other part. More than the money I make from the work, possibly more than the thrill of having someone say "I talked to ten of your co-workers and you fixed it in two minutes. What the hell is with that?" It's stopped. I don't feel I have a huge amount more to learn where I am.

The interview was not like any I've had before. It had two parts, the first was a Socratic challenge of my knowledge, a senior technician asking me questions, letting me know the answers I didn't have, working to draw out what I know and figure out what I'd need to be taught. He was impressed with my troubleshooting skills but told me afterwards that I needed to study like crazy before the next time I tried to apply for a job like this.

The second part was a somewhat more conventional interview-by-committee, except the three department heads with whom I met took complete turns with me, allowing me to stay engaged and looking at one person until they were done with me, rather than darting my eyes nervously about the table as I am randomly barraged with questions from all directions. The questions went from the first panelist, who kept asking me to talk about my weaknesses. The second and third seemed interested in ruminations on how I feel about technical work, how training was done at previous jobs, and an admission that they were hiring people at an insane rate and weren't entirely sure how to train them all.

The workplace looks awesome. I can see a major sports stadium from the window there. They have a shower, leaving open the possibility of taking a nice healthy run or engaging in competitive sports in my lunch break, options available to me at my current work but something I wouldn't consider for fear of spending the balance of the day sweating and stinking at my co-workers. The desks I saw resembled cubicles, an upgrade from my current booth-style desk. The interviewers projected an aura of friendly familiarity, and any of them I would love to have as my boss in the near future. I don't actually know what team I'll be on, it appears that I'm up for two of them, a level one position where you take open cases and try to fix them or punt them to level two, and a open line team which takes the incoming calls from customers and either fixing them quickly or opening cases for one of the other teams.

Bless all of my readers, who easily number in the several, and I'll try to update a little more often.

If there is any work for me..