Trainees, ISPs and Promotions

I'm training a new operator at work at the moment. Well, not right at the moment as I'm sitting in an armchair at home with a laptop on my lap writing this. What I mean is, we have a new operator at work and it's my job to train him.

In the seven years since our department first formed I've trained quite a few new operators, so I can usually tell quite early on whether or not the newbie is going to do ok, which I'm happy to say is the case here.

It's amazing how much it wears you out when you are training someone. I usually spend the first couple of days just taking calls, with the newbie listening in on another headset and I point out different things and answer their questions. By the end of the day I've got a sore throat and dry mouth because I've been pretty much talking non-stop all day.

After a couple of days, they're usually feeling confident enough to start taking calls themselves. That's when it really gets tiring. They think they know what to do from watching me for two days, but as soon as they get in front of the computer and take the first call they're lost. They don't know where to click on the screen and aren't sure what to ask the caller. To make things even harder no two calls are the same, so it's rarely straight forward. By about the middle of the afternoon they're generally getting into the flow of it and might even get through a whole call with only a couple of prompts from me.

The most important ability you need when you train someone is the ability to just sit on your hands, so to speak. You have to be able to sit back and let your trainee find their own way around the computer screen and only prompt them when they're really getting lost.

This is the tiring bit. You sit there watching the cursor drift around the screen (and we have two of them, as you can see from the pic at the top of this page) and you find you're using all of your willpower to try and get that cursor to go to the right spot. It doesn't of course, so by the end of the day you've developed a stiff neck and shoulders.

I know from experience that by the end of next week, my new trainee will be taking calls by himself and only calling for help occasionally when he comes across something that he hasn't yet had to deal with.

He won't be asking me though, because I'll be on leave starting at easter and won't be back for four weeks. I've got another residential in Armidale to go to.

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We were discussing ISPs at work last week. Most of us get our internet access from the ISP owned by our employer. My boss is with a different company and mentioned that it was cheaper there, even taking into account our staff discount. He'd never had any problems with the other mob.

I signed up with them that night and am now getting the same level of service as I was before, but for twenty dollars a month less.

Now all I have to do is let everyone know that our e-mail address has changed and that the old ones (one of which only ever gets spam) will soon cease to exist.

I'm in the process of creating a new website with the new provider. It'll mainly be galleries for some of my photography, similar to this. If that seems to be taking a while to load, just hit your refresh button and it should work.

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Donna (my wife) works in the office of a large supermarket not far from where we live. She's worked in that store for eighteen years, starting off as a shelf filler, moving on to service (checkout chick) and then into the office.

Well all that ends in two weeks.

The regional manager rang her on Tuesday and asked her if she wanted the job of "Office in Charge" at another store. That basically means she'll be running the admin side of things there. Naturally she jumped at the chance. It means she'll have to drive an extra ten minutes to work, but by all accounts it's a nice store she's moving to and a lot smaller than the one she's been working in, so hopefully less stress.

It means her pay will go up too.

They say good luck comes in threes. Well, Mum and Dad's house is under contract, hopefully the sale will go through this time. Donna got the promotion. I wonder what the third thing will be.