Weekend Round-Up
A lot has happened since the last time I had a few minutes for an update, so here we go:
We finally learned how to use the phones!
We finished our training.
We did our exams.
We spent Friday on the phones!
I suppose that is just how it's gonna be from now on. That's what we do, we sit, we receive incoming calls, we answer them as best we can, we go home. My first call was an absolute nightmare, it was a guy who had taken out his pension in the 70s and was repeatedly told by the call centre that it didn't exist and that he was mistaken! Maybe because I was fresh out of training, or maybe because I like to do my best for people, I remembered that there was a type of pension sold so rarely they weren't held on the system, and after a few probing questions I managed to find it for him! Yay! After that things got better. It certainly was better after lunch, things seemed far less confusing then!
Friday night me and Ronnie went to Beerfest. She goes every year, and this was obviously my first time. I was tired and had a headache from work, so I wasn't in an ideal mood to start with, but after we'd been there for a bit I settled into the swing of it! However I don't like beer at all, and I only slightly like some ciders, so there wasn't a lot there for me to drink, but then I suppose taking little samples of everything and then pouring them away is kinda funny! I'm sure one day I'll find a drink that I like (that isn't Coke; that was my favourite drink of the night!). Ronnie had a chocolate beer that she really liked, so at least she was happy! Our taxi driver on the way home was insane; he didn't seem to care what side of the road he was on, or how fast he was going on anything! It was kinda like being on a rollercoaster! We got home safe and sound though, which is more than could've been said if one of us was driving!
Saturday was a bit more relaxed, we slept in quite late, went and did some shopping, then I baked in the evening! For some reason Ronnie wanted mince-pies, and rather than bake them herself she taught me to do it! They were actually pretty good, although I don't think the pastry was thin enough; it made them more like biscuits than anything else! Still, not bad for a first effort!
Yesterday we went to the Thorney Music Festival. Thorney is the little village where Ronnie used to live, and every year they put on this charity show where local bands come and play, and everybody has a great time! Well, yesterday was just like that! There were a couple of bands I thought were excellent, especially Mesh 29, State of Freedom (playing their last ever show), and my faves were The Playful Rays! Admittedly the Rays lacked the polish of some of the others, but then they've only been together and year, and they are all just 15 years old! Look for them on myspace if you're interested! When we got home Ronnie decided she wanted to play a fighting game, so I introduced her to Soul Calibur II on the Xbox. This may've been a mistake, as her drunken moneky/button mashing style actually allowed her to finish arcade mode on her first try! She even beat me 7-3, although I should point out that the only time I used a character I'm familiar with I took her to school. Still, this could be the beginning of a regular humiliation for me...
And so to today. It's a Bank Holiday, the last one before Christmas, and so a much welcome break in routine. I've no idea what we're gonna get up to today either! All I know is that my alarm went off as normal, and once I was awake I couldn't get back to sleep, so here I am! Normally at this time in the morning I'd be just leaving for work, so it's nice that I'm doing nothing of the sort!
And Another Thing!
We still don't know how the phones work!
Rainbow Styling
Judging from the number of times I've mentioned my first pay day, I'd guess I'm pretty excited about it. SO today, when we got our first pay slips, was a pretty exciting day too, even though it's only the promise that the money will be in there on Friday! Sadly I've been put on the wrong tax code, so I've been paid about a hundred pound less than I should've had, but I suppose it'll all come out in the wash, as they say. Still, I can't help but be worried about how I'm gonna make it through the month with that much less than I should have. It's a shame something so mundane has to spoil what should be a fun thing.
I think we pretty much finished our training today. Tomorrow it's our final exams, then some more role-plays before we get put out onto the service line on Friday! Which is actually a bit scary, I was kinda hoping to not be the service line till next week, but I guess the sooner we get it over with, the less worrying it'll be. At least that's what I'm hoping. As I understand it we're gonna be put on a little nursery pod by ourselves for a couple of weeks, with our own dedicated floor walker, before we are eventually and inevitably subsumed into the body of the service line as a whole, and another group of newbies appears to replace us! It's just like the circle of life in the Lion King, except nobody's been crushed by stampeding buffalo. Yet. There's still time, and I'm fairly certain that stampede has Sam's name on it...
Another Day, Another Dollar
Actually it won't be pay day until Friday (at least, that's what we've been told), but it's been another largely uneventful day at work. We're starting to have so many pension products that they're all starting to blur together. That said, in the comparatively limited part of the industry that we work in they ARE all the same.
Sam did more of his "most annoying human being on the planet" routine (for instance, he insisted that Puerta Rico is one of the fifty states of the USA, despite EVERYONE telling him otherwise), and he still seems to be stuck somewhere around day 3 in terms of his actual pension knowledge (and yet claims to have worked in the financial industry before). Thank god I've yet to be stuck with him on my team for anything.
We had a pretty good day yesterday too; Ronnie was tired from working 13 days in a row, so she had a good long lie in, while I played lots of Soul Calibur II (I know, but it's still good!). Then in the afternoon we popped out to a garden centre near Spalding and had a nice look around, followed by a relaxed evening in. Sadly Archie decided to be a royal pain in the ass during the night; he started about 5.20am, and didn't stop till I finally got up to feed him at 7.15am! I just hope tonight he lets me sleep, 'cos I can't take another night like that. Still, at least he didn't break anything last night...
One day I'll have to actually explain what it is I do at work, but as we're still in training I'm not exactly sure myself. I wonder if they'll actually teach us how to work the Rockwell (it's the phone thing, kinda like a switchboard and time clock all rolled into one, I think), or if we'll just have to guess that part? It's not product or system knowledge that's really worrying me, never was, it's the little things like "how do the phones work?" or "what's the form of the conversation?" that are troubling me. Ah well, we've still got four days left, I'm sure it'll all become clear in time...
No More Star Wars!
For the first time since Episode III came out, I'm sad there's no more Star Wars.
The other night I was dreaming about the 'Wars, and dreaming the next movie (as I so often used to do), and when I woke up I started wondering what was gonna be in the next one, when I remembered that there wasn't going to BE a next one. Which is good in some ways, 'cos at least we won't get another Phantom Menace! But in every other way is bad, 'cos even Phantom had it's moments (Qui-Gonn, Darth Maul, pod racing, the duel of the fates).
Work's obviously been taking up a lot time, even though the hours are pretty regular. It's surpringly tiring sitting about learning all day, and even though we do a little bit of vetting work at the end of the day, I still don't really feel like I've done a full days work.
I think we're a pretty good group at work, with one exception, who I won't name. But we all know who it is. Seriously, it's getting to the stage when we're just wanting him to just fuck OFF and leave us all alone. I know that's wrong, I know that no matter how irritating he is, he's a person with feelings, hopes, dreams, the whole nine yards. But he is just such an annoying prick we can't help it.
Me and Ronnie went out for a lovely meal last night, at an Italian restaurant called Prezzo. Actually, we went there last week too, but it was so nice that we wanted to go again this week. I'm sure if we could afford it, we'd do it every week!
And maybe we will be able to afford it soon, 'cos next week (next Friday to be precise) is my first PAYDAY! Woohoo! And that weekend is a Bank Holiday weekend too, so that's a three day weekend as well! I think we've got to go to a party at one of Ronnie's friends house, which I'm not wildly keen on, but I expect I'll survive. I'd just not go at all, except I can't really do that without being rude. I just don't like parties, that's all.
The Joys Of (Installing) (Half) Life (2)
Friday was pretty good: not only did we learn more about pensions, but we actually did something useful! Admittedly it was just record a few hangups (the notes that go on the system at the end of a call), but at least we contributed in some way. I still can't escape the feeling of being a fraud though; they're paying me more money than I've ever earned before, and for far less work than I've ever done. Clearly, my 'career' up until this point was badly misdirected!
I attempted to install Half-Life 2 yesterday. I say attempted, 'cos... well you'll see. First I should make my position on Half-Life known: I played the first one at the time it came out, and couldn't see what the fuss was, really couldn't. I am not now, nor have I ever been majorly excited about playing HL2, but Stu loaned me his copy and (after having it about six months) I figured what the hell. So, first up I stick the DVD in and away we go. Up pops the STEAM installer, and I decide somewhat experimentally to tell it that I don't want to install STEAM on my system, 'cos, well, I don't. I just want to play the game, I don't give a shit about Valves online content delivery system, I'm not going to purchase anything from it, nor am I gonna play online 'cos HL2 is (hello!) a single player only game. Sadly, none of these things matter to STEAM so it exits and that's that. Fine, okay, I'll have STEAM then, and it installs, then asks me if I want to install the new version of Counter-Strike. Again, played it when it came out, didn't see the fuss, don't want it taking up a gig of my hard-drive. STEAM proceeds to merrily install for about five minutes before crashing. FINE, okay I'll have STEAM and Counter-Strike then, just fucking install! It takes ten, fifteen minutes to install, and I think we're getting somewhere. It runs updates on itself, makes me register for an account I don't want just so I can play a game I'm only slightly interested in, and then finally, after what must be nearly an hour, it asks for the serial number that came with the game. Which it promptly rejects, 'cos this is my bro's copy of the game, and it's registered to HIS STEAM account! I think it was at that point that the blood vessel in my brain popped, and I decided that if I ever meet Gabe Newell I must make a point of kicking him repeatedly in the crotch. Until he passes out. Needless to say the whole lot has been uninstalled and will almost certainly never darken my PC's hard-drive again. I might get the Xbox version though, 'cos I know that'll run without any of this mucking about...
The Stranger Returns
Blimey, it's been a while eh?
I have excuses and reasons, which would you like first? Excuses? Okay, well I've been REALLY busy...
No seriously, that week of courier work was bloody hard goin'. Admittedly you don't always DO a lot, but just the driving is tiring. I went down to London a couple of times during the week, had one day that started at 4am, and another one where I went all the way down to Devon (an eight hour round trip!). So as much fun as it was, I was kinda glad when it was over, 'cos I was bloody knackered!
Now for reasons: NTL decided, in their wisdom, to temporarily disconnect our broadband service. This is a good one. Okay, so when I moved up here I thought I'd transfer all my existing services to the new address right, make things easy? Yep, would have, except that they didn't migrate the direct debit instruction, so our bill didn't get paid. When I DID try to pay it using my credit card I discovered that my bank (thanks Barclays!) hadn't processed my change of address correctly and had left me at the old address. When they got returned statements, they assumed I'd vanished and promptly cancelled my cards. So we had to pay by cash, and then the Post Office managed to delay the payment, so we got disconnected. This was bad. In fact the whole thing was bad, but luckily I think it's pretty much all sorted back out again now, and everyone is happy. I'm just glad I was trying to pay a bill over the phone when I found out my card had been cancelled, and hadn't just put fifty quids worth of petrol in the car that I suddenly couldn't pay for.
Now to my new job.
Well, I'm four days in, and to be honest I don't feel like I've done anything. Admittedly, I haven't, but that doesn't change a thing. The first two days were just waffley corporate induction, which was so tedious that I was actually thinking about finding a new job by Monday lunch-time, but for the past couple of days we've been doing some basic financial training, and I've been finding that super-interesting: I even stayed on an extra half an hour to listen to my 'buddy' (yuck! We have phone buddies!) on the phone with customers! Still, I'm enjoying it a lot more now, so that's good. I've got photos of some of the nice parts of campus (the herb garden, and the pond) where I tend to spend my lunch break, but I'll post them another time.
I'm sure lots of other things have happened (the rabbit incident springs to mind) but I can't really think what they are. So I'll leave it there for now.
I'm not dead yet, which had to be good news, right?
