So I would have to venture to say that this past week had to be one of the worst weeks of my life and I have has some pretty bad weeks before. I was on call for work this week. You may be asking yourself, "Isn't she JUST and office manager and executive assistant for the president of a small company in Richardson?" Funny thing...I said the same thing! So then you might ask yourself, "What was she on call for?" I would then say something silly like TECH SUPPORT!!! Now you might ask yourself, as most educated human beings would, "Why would an office manager/executive assistant/do everything that everyone else doesn't want to do/dump on me your extra work/CFO-no really, I do the financials too/I work my butt off for this company- be doing something as important as tech support when she isn't exactly "
techy"?" GOOD QUESTION!!!!! I am still trying to figure that one out. But apparently it is
ok to make a "rule" in a company that every employee has to carry the support phone for the company for a week because for some INSANE reason our company thinks it is wise to offer car dealers 24/7 support, even if it means putting somoene like me on the phone for a week. I won't even get started on the brilliance of car dealers-not to mention the fact that we service the entire United States. In other words, we service every time zone. Sounds fun doesn't it?
So, for this week I have been woken up from a dead sleep at 1:30 am, 6:30 am, 7:00 am on Saturday, yes, I said Saturday, and have had calls into the night up to 9:30 pm. I have to fill out a form for EVERY phone call that comes in regardless of the issue. Even if a dealer calls me to shoot the crap for 10 minutes because it is raining cats and dogs in Virginia at their dealership and they have nothing better to do, I have to fill out a form. I then have to e-mail the form to our support department, which might I remind you I am not a part of, so that they can address the issues the next day. I also have to call a developer or a support person that is SUPPOSED to (and I stress the word SUPPOSED) have their phone on them and actually answer it so that people like me that get the calls and have no idea how to help these poor souls can actually call them back and give them a solution. Sounds easy right? Not so much.
Saturday alone, my day started at 7:00 am to the phone ringing with a dealer needing support.
Ok great. I call the person that is supposed to help me and he is great. I have to give big props to Ray. Most of you don't know who Ray is, but he was my savior on Saturday. He answered my call EVERY time I called him on Saturday and he talked me off the ledge a couple of times too! I would have committed suicide on Saturday if Ray wasn't there to help me. However, there are some people in our company less dependable. And when those people choose not to answer their phone when they are the ONLY ones that handle those issues, it gets a bit frustrating. 15 calls I had on Saturday between the hours of 7:00am and 2:45pm. NON-STOP. I had people calling me while I was on the phone with other people. I had calls coming in when I had one on the line, and one on call waiting. Do people think that those of us that are not "
techy" people can handle things like this? I literally wanted to sit there and just cry the rest of the day by about 11:00 am. I honest to God wanted to cry every time the phone rang, and in most cases every time the phone beeped because I was already on the
phone with
someone else. By 3:00 pm I had to plug my phone in to the wall beside me at the computer because my cell phone had run out of battery.
I sat at my computer from 7:00 am to 4:30 pm not getting up for water, to change out of my night gown, to get food, or to speak to my husband who was literally a room away. Between phone calls it was all I could do to get 1/2 way through a form before the phone would ring again. Just when I thought I couldn't take any more, at about 4:30 pm I got up from the computer for the first time since 7:00 am and I walk around the corner of my house and this is the face I see looking back at me.
As bad as my week and especially my Saturday had been, this made it all worth it. How do you not smile when you see that? Let's just hope she can do it again in January when I have the support phone again!
