The fun starts on Monday
I made it through the training program at work (not a difficult thing to do) and I can now start taking customer calls. In fact, I should have taken several calls today as part of my training, but due to problems with my logon I was only able to take one call before my training shift ended. We did not do any practice calls at all, I guess because the other person in my class had previous phone tech support experience and I think they forgot I'd never done this before since I already knew most of the technical stuff. As luck would have it, I got a customer with Windows ME for my first call and the "knowledge base" we use leaves a bit to be desired on this operating system because it is so uncommon. Like most "knowledge bases", information is added as needed and I was told in training that I would probably never get a call from a customer using Windows ME. Hah! She also asked about a few other things that were not covered in training, but I poked around and the information was there (which means we support it) so I was able to give her the answers that she was seeking. Not bad for a first try, though I am a bit nervous about Monday morning. I drew the 7 AM shift and there are only a handful of people working at 7 which means I'm going to be pretty much on my own. I just have to remind myself that I've had plenty of successful experiences at previous jobs where I was thrown into a situation with far less training than I received here and I will probably do just fine. I also hope I enjoy the work because the pay is the lowest I've made in 25 years (and that's NOT counting inflation.) Now I've been told by many that doing phone tech support is akin to working in hell, but only time on the job will reveal how I personally feel about it. Besides, the work environment and people seem to be a perfect fit (though they are all 10 and 20 years younger than me) and that counts higher on my list than actual job duties. Again, only time will tell, but I don't seem to have landed in the maw of Evil Corporate America or Totally Fucked Up Small Business this time around.