Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Year: 2011 Page 3 of 18

Disbelief

Today, I watched a police officer pepper spray a chain of college students sitting with arm-in-arm. I watched a police officer calmly step over the chain of students with his pepper spray. I saw him take aim at their bowed heads and unleash a cloud of burning pepper spray directly into their faces.

Is this what democracy looks like?

Are these the violent protesters that needed to be subdued?

I am sitting here in disbelief. I am disgusted.

Two officers have been placed on leave and the Chancellor has created a task force to look into the event.

All of this seems too little too late. Two students were hospitalized and 11 others were treated at the scene for injuries relating the pepper spray. All of the actions of violence and aggression were taken by police in riot gear.

I find it hard to believe a peaceful solution could not be reached. Even if it meant physically removing the protester if they were blocking a public walkway. Just pick them up and separate them. They might have bumps and scratches but no burning pepper spray in the face and no hospitalization.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy

This is a dangerous road we’re heading down and the destinations are terrifying.

How do you spend your day?

The idea of what people do all day has been rattling around my brain for weeks now. I am so curious how people spend their days at work. What do you fill 8 hours with?

Ever since I left college I’ve only had one type of job. I’ve either worked as a Desktop Support Technician ((The guy who comes to your desk when you have computer problems.)) or a Help Desk Monkey. ((The guy you call and report/complain your computer problem to. Hang up. Then curse at.))

Due to the limited scope of the work I’ve done, I have absolutely no idea what most people do for 8 hours a day. How does an Accountant spend their time? What does Human Resources do all day? The lawyers and other legal types, what do you do all day?

I’ve worked in retail and I’ve worked in a print shop so I have some limited experience with retail and sales jobs. But seriously, what do you do all day?

I am not trying to downplay or belittle what you do. I just don’t know what it is. I am curious.

I stumbled across this question because I’ve been thinking about how I work and how my days go. I have very little ability to plan out how a day will go or built breaks and time to work on pre-defined projects within the given day.

My day changes from hour to hour and sometimes minute to minute. I can have a couple of hours planned out or have a basic idea of what I want to accomplish before I go home. Then, a couple of seconds later a high priority ticket comes in, or a VIP call hits my queue, or a computer decides to die in the middle of a big deadline or an important meeting. ((For the record, computers prefer to commit suicide around 3:30pm on a Friday.))

Since my day is so fluid and I’m unable to plan an entire day out ahead of time let alone a week or multiple weeks. I am curious what consumes your days.

Can you plan a whole day out or a half day and are you able to stick to that plan?

Is your job fluid and changes moment to moment so you never plan more than the next task or the next few minutes?

Tell me, what fills your workday?

I am very curious to hear about your days. Please leave a comment, write me an email ((peroty@gmail.com)), or post to your blog and leave a link in the comments.

Occupied

I hold a Bachelor of Science in Communications.
My speciality is Creative Advertising.
I graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University.
I’ve worked as…

  • Assistant Production Chief
  • Production Chief
  • Lab Monitor
  • IT Support Intern
  • Freelance Web Designer
  • Web Designer & Event Promoter
  • Electronic Printing Manager
  • Desktop Support Technician.
  • Help Desk Technician
  • Sr. Desktop Support Technician
  • Computer Analyst

My life plan didn’t really pan out the way I had expected when I enrolled in a college with a stellar Advertising and Design program.

I thought I would be a designer. I’ve worked in print and the web. I know the quick printing business from front to back. I’ve worked on the web and promoted car and bike shows.

I’ve worked at Help Desks and as Desktop Support Technicians in city, state and federal governments. I’ve worked for some of the largest corporations in the US. I’ve worked for a tiny print shop.

I’ve had a confusing and random path through my adult life. I’ve worked a lot of jobs in different industries.

Looking back, there is no cohesive plan I followed to get me to where I am. There is no master scheme at work. I didn’t sit down and decide my fate and my future when I was a teenager growing up in a two-stoplight town surrounded by cows and apple orchards.

I followed one guiding principle.

How will this help me better my situation?

This is what I don’t understand about the Occupy Wall Street protests. I’ve been in desperate places living in my parent’s house. Driving 90 miles round trip to work everyday. I’ve lived pay check to pay check. I’ve lived on unemployment when a round of budget cuts left me out in the cold.

Throughout all the hardships in my life I’ve always worked to better myself and my situation. I am a firm believer that no one is going to help you if you don’t first help yourself.

I’ve gotten some lucky breaks. But to be in the position to get those breaks I had to work hard. Nothing in my life has come easy and has been the result of hard work. Even when I worked as hard as I could, I still lost out. I’ve been the number three-man for two open positions. I’ve had a job taken away that I was a lock for because the hiring manager owed someone else a favor.

This is where my disconnect comes in the Occupy Wall Street protests. What is hoped to be gained there?

Is getting up in the morning and standing on a street corner with other angry, frustrated and uncertain men and woman the best thing to better your situation?

While they’re out protesting, why aren’t you applying to jobs? Why are you not teaching yourself a new skill?

Will protesting Wall Street put food on your table and commas in your bank account?

Will protesting the corporate CEOs finance your lunch?

I can understand the anger. I can understand the hurt and deception. I understand the injustice. I understand that it’s wrong.

But how are you going to better your situation?

Finding Motivation

In thankless jobs like IT Support, it helps my motivation if I have something to strive for. I want a goal to look back on and feel I’ve accomplished something.

The problem with my chosen career is when I do a great job, there is nothing to show for it. When I work hard, solve problems and delight customers, I have nothing to show for it. ((Save a pile of Thank You emails.))

I have no product at the end of the day I’ve produced with my own hands. I have no sales figure I’ve hit and I’ve not made the company any money. ((In fact, IT Support is considered as a necessary evil because we don’t generate any money for the company.))

I’ve said for years my ideal day is when I come to work and sit at my desk and do nothing for 8 hours then go home. That means all the systems are working perfectly and all of our customers have completely working computers.

In the seven years I’ve done this, it hasn’t happened yet.

Because of this, it helps to have something to strive towards so I can look back at the end of a long day where I feel I accomplished nothing and say at least I did ____.

In this case, it’s the number of tickets closed.

Each morning every technician in the company receives a report of closed tickets across the company. We receive a daily closed ticket breakdown over the past two weeks. This is interesting and helps me realize why I’m so tired some days ((18 tickets! No wonder I was so sleepy by 5:30.))

But the real genius in the report comes on the following page. This page provides a leaderboard of technicians across the entire company sorted by average tickets closed per day.

This is where I draw my motivation.

Everyday, I strive to stay in the top 10 of the company. I’ve been as high as number 4 with the CSA ((Help Desk)) technicians way ahead of my with double-digit closes per day.

As it stands, I usually come in at between 6 and 7 tickets per day. This is where I draw my motivation from. I want to be at the top of that list every single morning when it comes out. I want to rank higher than every technician in my building. I want to outrank every technician in the field.

I want to be at the top of that list.

This list motivates me to get up and try to complete one more ticket per day. It causes me to work harder when all I want to do is sit at my desk.

The list pushes me forwards and provides some context for my day. This is the most important thing for me, as a technician with no clear measurement of what I spend my days doing.

This list brings meaning and a sense of accomplishment to my 45 hour work week.

In this age of knowledge workers, we no longer make products in a factory, nor do we sell a thousand products. What pushes you to work harder in your job? Have you found your own leader board to keep you working harder?

iPod Mini: My Apple Gateway Drug

This was my gateway drug.

The iPod Mini. I bought it in blue despite swearing I would buy the green one. I even went to the Apple Store with the promise I would not buy one unless they had the green one in stock.

I had saved my money for quite a while and I was excited.

They did not have the green one. They did have the blue one. So I caved and bought it.

I had broken a promise to a friend to not spend the money unless I got exactly what I had wanted. However, in the end, I did. I got precisely what I wanted.

The green iPod was not the shade of green in person I was hoping for as I saw on the display model and I was afraid the Blue would be too powder blue. But it wasn’t. It was a beautiful, rich, metallic blue that called out to me.

That little iPod wanted to come home with me, so I granted its wish and fulfilled my wish to own what I was coveting most at the time.

I had my little blue iPod Mini and it served me well for many years. I was very happy with it and it did not fail me. It fell out of fashion when I picked up a black 30GB iPod Video years later. It eventually got sold to a student at VCU who replied to my Craigslist ad because I needed the money.

I will always remember the little Blue iPod Mini as my gateway drug into the Apple universe. It was solid, indestructible even in my possession, which was a major plus as I am hard on my things. It never died. It never gave up. It was scratched and worn but it still performed perfectly.

I came across this one recently at a friend’s house and had to grab a quick shot of it since it reminded me of that happy day I bought one of its kin into my home and into my life.

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