Today I have tried to live up to my own ideal of trying harder and caring about other people’s problems.<\/p>\n
I received a call from someone working for the local state government. He was frustrated because he had been trying to access a database hosted at the Food and Drug Administration. He’s been unable to access it for over two weeks.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what this database was or know anything about it. But I was determined to help him where others had passed him off. So I asked him for his email address and his ticket number.<\/p>\n
While he was on the line, I searched for the site in question on the FDA’s Intranet and found it. But it had no contact information for support.<\/p>\n
I told him I would contact the technician assigned to his ticket and find out who he could call for support.<\/p>\n
He was very appreciative and we hung up.<\/p>\n
Now the real work began. I could have ignored him and gone about my day. After all, it’s not my job to support everything the FDA does. But I was determined to help. So I did as I said.<\/p>\n
I emailed the technician assigned to his ticket and asked for a better contact number since the site in question had no support information.<\/p>\n
The tech got back to me quickly with the proper phone number and call tree options to press to get support directly.<\/p>\n
I thanked him and sent the information back to the guy working in the state government. I hope he gets what he needs. The rest is out of my hands, but I did my best to give him an avenue for support. Now it’s up to the technicians on the other side to fulfill his request.<\/p>\n
As an experiment, I recorded today’s post using Anchor. It’s slightly different from the written text but the message remains the same.
\nIt’s embedded below. Or you can listen to the file directly.<\/a><\/p>\n