March 7, 2010 Less than 24 hours to my birthday, wee. I haven’t been a fan of these birthday things for the past few years as they tent to be a total flop and do nothing but remind me that I am yet another year closer to death, and yet another year older with nothing to show for it.
The parental units are taking me out to dinner for my birthday, and they are also apparently buying FF XIII for me which is pretty awesome.
Posted in General 
No Comments »
March 6, 2010 Day 5 and still going strong-ish. Got myself 2 different types of beer, yay. Played more Battlefield and placed in first or second almost every time. Haven’t heard back about the apartment yet, hopefully soon.
I have the urge to play DnD, and no one to play it with, bah.
Posted in General No Comments »
March 5, 2010 I’ve noticed that no matter how tired I am, I can always stay up way late for video games. I had planned on going to bed early tonight, like around midnightish but here it is after 4am. I ended up playing with a really good squad in one of my Battlefield 2 matches and just kept playing till everyone went to bed. I guess it’s better than smoking crack though.
Posted in General No Comments »
March 3, 2010 I decided to shell out for some Gunnars today so that my eyeballs will stop hating me when I play video games and stare at the computer all day. I must say, my eyeballs enjoy them, hopefully I’ll get fewer migranes when staring at my laptop for long coding sessions.
Went and applied for an apartment in south Tempe today, that is a long ass drive from way out here in west BFE. Hopefully I’ll hear back with good news cause I’d really like to move back into civilization and where most of the people I know are.
Posted in General No Comments »
March 2, 2010 So day two and I’m still here. I just got done listening to an episode of This American Life from last year, “Scenes From a Recession” and the last section about the death of Circuit City reminded me of getting laid off and how I was one of the last to go at my last job.
So I guess I’ll make the Strange for March 2nd the story about the dissolution of my last job and my decision to stay on a sinking ship till the end.
For starters I’ll give a little background information, my last job was a little strange for me as I performed a multitude of roles inside the company. Primarily I was the lead technician for inbound phone support for a well known computer peripheral maker, secondarily I provided in house desktop support and assisted the on site IT director. When I was first hired on the company was basically thriving, the department I was in was doing so well that we were authorized to hire on another 60 heads. At this time our team had about 8-10 heads. We had hired about 40 people on and ended up having to move half of our team into a different office as we had run out of desks. I was just making my transition into lead technician around this time, my manager and I had a little pow-wow and decided how to split up the team as I was going to be making the move to the other office. By the luck of the draw my better friends ended up staying in the original office, so I was basically working with an all new crew and 2 of my friends. Shortly after, the company we were contracted to do support for informed us that we had to change our metrics or risk losing our contract, primarily at the time it was our Average Handle Time which was floating around 16min, not terrible but they wanted 14min. My team and the team in the original office busted our asses, we all quite enjoyed getting pay checks. When all was said and done we had an AHT of around 12min 30secs, goal met, we get to keep our jobs. Or so we all thought. Fast forward a few months, our team is now at about 18 heads, we’d had some seasonal layoffs, some just didn’t make the cut. Around this time we start hearing some grumblings, the company we provide support for is making cuts, 15% of their corporate staff all laid-off, one of which was our liason. So here we are with basically no one to voice our needs to the company we are supposed to be providing support for. At this point I have been assisting with IT needs for some time, more specifically and unfortunately I had become the grim reaper for computers who’s users were to be downsized. Due to this inside knowledge I knew bad things were coming but I stayed. Months before I walked out of my office for the last time our director of operations called an all hand meeting, informed us we would be having a conference call with the HR director. I already knew what she was about to tell us but I had to sit in anyway. In this room where we all played ping-pong on our breaks and had some of our best fun in this company we were given the somber news that our days were numbered. We were to be the latest victims of the recession. Thankfully we were given a few months notice, we were told that if we left there would be no hard feelings and good references would be given.
This was my chance to jump ship, but I was compelled to stay. There were still things to do, I still had friends there. Not long after the meeting I was given the task of shepherding the computers without current users as well as setting up labs for people to look for new jobs. The video game consoles were taken from the break rooms, the Foosball table pushed against a wall. I was pulled aside for meetings and informed that the manager directly above me would be leaving and that I was now in charge of my team and that I was the contact for my department with the company we were providing support for. Now on top of my regular duties, I have extra work and the same pay. Around the time we were told of the layoff was when I had my one year anniversary at the company, in better times this was when employees were given a raise, not this time. I persevered, kept my team operating in tip top shape, I had found out that we were to be one of the last teams out the door which was good news. The bad news however was that I had friends in other departments, I knew they were going to lose their jobs and I knew when but I could not tell them. It was my duty to re-image their computer and empty their cube, then move their computer to storage, essentially removing evidence of their existence in our office. At first it was one or two people here or there, morale was getting a little low and we had stock we could give away. One of the managers and I started holding video game tournaments on weekends and gave away prizes, there were raffles and such right up until the end. You see in Arizona there is no such thing as a severance package, the state is set up so that there are as few workers rights as possible, so what we left with on our final day was a warm smile and a firm handshake and our final paycheck. After a few months went by the one or two employees leaving every so often turned into a whole department being let go, and then other departments. I was kept pretty busy re-imaging computers, cleaning out desks/cubicles, keeping inventory and keeping track of all the computers, monitors, peripherals, and making sure what was left of my team was still functioning. With about a month left until we closed doors there were only two support teams left functioning, mine and one other. Not too long before this we had all consolidated into a smaller office. Our previous office was nice and well lit with rather large desks, the consolidated office dark, cold, and we had cubicles that reminded me of cubbie holes. At this point morale was pretty low and people only worked when they absolutely had to. There were 5 people left on my team, all good friends at this point, it was getting cut-throat for hours at this point, I would only show up for about 4-6 hours a day, other people had kids and families, all I have are my computers, they could use the money more. The inevitable day came, it was my day off. One of the managers, Danny, with whom I was good friends with called me and let me know, told me I could come in that day or the next to get my stuff (which there was a lot of), one of my friends who also had to pick his stuff up drove me down to the office that day. I took a milk crate in with me to take some of my belongings, it felt so weird to clean out what was basically my home away from home for the past year and a half. I said my goodbyes to the few people who were in the office that day and gave my card to a few people to stay in touch. I grabbed some of the signage we had on the walls for keepsakes, I had really enjoyed working there which isn’t something that happens often with me and jobs. Since I lost that job I haven’t had any luck getting a new job. In the near future I am going to be starting business with a friend repairing computers like I used to do back in the old day and I hope it will float me by with enough to pay rent and bills. I do miss my old job though, mostly the atmosphere there. It seemed almost like a family unit for awhile, we were all mostly friends and we were always playing fun pranks on eachother or finding places to get free lunch from. Unfortunately I don’t keep in touch with most of my co-workers or friends from there very much, but that’s what happens when you don’t see people every day anymore, you lose touch with them.
Posted in General 1 Comment »
| « Jan |
|
Mar » |
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | ||||
.jpg)
