Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Gratitude

Goodness.. been so busy again today!

And just when I was about to have a nice moan about that my mind flew back to the first months I worked for BAC.

Every day from 8 till 17 I was sitting on an office chair 'on the phones' (which means wearing a headset connected to a telephone device) creating service requests for BAC's customers.

This means literally that you need to sit on that chair until it is time for your official and planned 15 minute break, your 60 minute lunch or 15 minute afternoon break until it is time to go home. YAY! It also means that if you are desperate for a wee because of healthy drinking of 2 litre water a day you need to check if someone else is 'covering the line' and if you are not back in 2 minutes you get angry glances from your colleagues.

It was fun though, I like the dynamics of being in one space with about 500 other people and the hustle and bustle really attracts me. It didn't stay fun for long :) - boredom kicks in pretty fast, luckily I got to do more exciting things.

But.. I never forget how I looked at those other members of the call centre, the ones that had been there a bit longer, the ones that got to walk around the centre looking like they owned it. Knowing everybody and knowing how to get things done and most importantly carrying their own laptop.

It was immediately clear that that was the pecking order. OK, it was nice to become a trainer for your team or even a team leader but everybody knew that the next step was 'getting a laptop'. I even once had a teamleader who bought his own version and got it set up with BACs software just to pretend he was on the next step. Little did he know that we all knew that he would never reach that step :-)

Anyway... those 'laptoppers' were perceived to be top of the bunch.

I discovered that there was even a next step when I heard a BACcer talk about 'yeah I am working from home today can you connect me to the US' I was so impressed. Not only because of the fact that he wanted to talk to someone in the US which sounded way far away (being used to working for the local job centre in Holland and never ventured further than the UK), but I was even more impressed because he said 'I am working from home'.

I had read about people 'working from home' but I always sort of had this idea that those were selfemployed people, it felt soooo out of reach.

So... here I am.. I have been promoted to laptopper AND work from home AND talk to the US and loads of other geographies on a regular basis and still moan?

Shame on me!!

4 comments:

Presentnapper said...

The Laptop is just BACs way of squeezing that little bit extra (and free) work out of you by working from home just that fifteen minutes ... that then turn into an hour or two ...

And I do find myself longing back to those 'dull' days sometimes ... at least one could relax from time to time and let the team carry your dead weight for a while :)

Presentnapper said...

But of course I am not even close to any kind of promotion (the ladder for the people in the know) so ignore me :p

Edmond Dantès said...

Can you even see the ladder?

And we have adverts on this blog. I don't look at it for a weeks....bit too much of a chick blog ;-)...and it's been sold out to the capitalists. Is nothing sacred these days? ;-)

Back on the Nest said...

a. no nothing is sacred, any way of making money and we are on top of it - it is the quickest way to retirement :)

b. The laptop might have been given to you to get extra work BUT SURELY you can think of ways to switch that one into your favour? I don't believe I have worked any more/harder because I received the laptop, it did allow me to do my favorite things on the couch instead of in the computerroom! I am forever grateful. Should I ever leave the BAC and have to give away my laptop I will buy one myself instantly! :-)