HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Second attempt at updating this thing, I mean it’s been two weeks! If I made New Year’s resolutions, one of them would be to write in here more often, but I don’t, so it will just be a generic plan. Another “project” I have signed up for is 100 words, which is funny cuz I registered for 750 words a few months ago and only wrote like one entry which Katja then made me post on her forum and that was the end of it. *lol* But 100 words is much more realistic than 750. I also should try to take one photo a day, maybe? Tho this would get a bit repetitive, my days aren’t that exciting, and I already missed my chance today to take a pic while I was out cycling.
My Sketchbook project is coming along… slowly… I need to do another 3 pages today, really. I ripped out 8 or so blank pages in the middle, which has made it a lot more manageable. *lol* But I’m still kinda out of ideas and it’s feeling rather uninspiring right now (and I don’t have much time left, less than two weeks!). Once it’s done I will probably post it here, password-protected. It’s become pretty personal so I don’t really want it too “out there”, tho it will be to a certain extent anyway cuz whoever happens to read it when it goes on tour can trace it back to me. Well, Clarissa-me, not realname-me, but still.
Yeah then I also wanted to document the first few weeks at my new job on here for posterity. Ok, mainly for myself. *lol* I read a few weeks ago my first assessment of the Amex job, and it’s quite interesting how accurate it was in some respects, and how wrong in others. I think I have become more cynical generally about jobs, I certainly didn’t like Amex as a company when I left there, which is weird cuz with most jobs before that I did – even menial ones like Asda. I still love Asda, which is probably largely because they employed me twice. But they did also treat me well. Amex not so much. We’ll see how newplace goes (I don’t wanna name them here cuz I don’t wanna be too googlable).
Okay so first impressions. First day I got there, my PC was already set up with a LAN login and an email account, which had already been included in mailinglists for like 3 days. By the 2nd day I had all logins and accounts I needed. What a difference with Amex where some people didn’t even have all their logins after months!! (and yeah yeah I know, financial company needs to have different security measures in place, but come on!!) My first “week” (which was only 4 days cuz of Xmas) was spent in training, and this was pretty overwhelming and exhausting.
It’s a very weird feeling going from one of the three people in a team who know most about the product, to being the one who knows absolutely nothing. And I guess the slightly tricky thing here is that this is something I could know stuff about, I mean they’re games and I could’ve played them, whereas if you start somewhere like Amex it’s expected that you will have to be trained up from scratch. It also sucks having to ask about almost every single thing you’re doing, but everyone’s very gracious and helpful and doing their best to reassure me that I don’t annoy them. *lol*
The job itself is… interesting. We support two games in three languages (French German English) plus tech in French and German (“we” being a small team of three). We’re actually the luckiest of the lot cuz we get a lot fewer tickets than the rest of them, and it’s more varied than if you do nothing but basic account maintenance all day. The queues we do are also the third level escalation queues, i.e. someone else will have looked at each of the tickets before and it only gets to us if they can’t solve it. All the same, the vast majority of tickets are of the “why did you block my account, I have done nothing wrong” kind. To which you reply, and then they come back. Again. And again. And again. Until you want to kill them. *lol*
Company atmosphere… kinda hard to gauge still, a lot of people have been on holidays cuz of Xmas/NY, so I haven’t met everyone yet, plus I suck at faces so I don’t remember the names of most of the people I have met. Working so late (I finish at 6pm instead of 4pm) is really rather.. different. It’ll take some getting used to. By the time you get home the day is almost over! And the fact that you can sleep an hour longer doesn’t really seem to make that much of a difference. Haven’t done a full week yet but the 5 days instead of 4 will also be quite a big change, heh.
Right, well, that’s it. Here’s to a fun-filled and productive 2011!!! 😀