Thursday, August 16, 2007

Day Shift Is Killing Me

Well, on Monday I finally got to transition to my new shift at work. I have been so excited about the new hours and getting weekends off that I wasn't even thinking about how the details of my job might change. I'm still performing the same job function, but holy crap has my world changed. I was totally confident on my overnight shift. Any call that came in, I knew exactly how to handle it.

Not so much anymore. Now every call that comes in just puts me into panic mode. There are clinics calling in with issues that I've never heard of because they weren't open during my old hours. The hospitals are fully-staffed instead of just partially-staffed and all of the administrative personnel are calling in with problems relating to human resources or accounting, etc. This is crap I am not familiar with. The call volume is heavy, I knew it would be. There are a hundred times more people working now than there are overnight. But because we stay so busy, I don't have the time to put people on hold and ask my co-workers how to do things they have been doing in their sleep for years. They are on their own phone calls, doing their own work.

Don't get me wrong, everyone here has been very helpful and they do take the time to answer my questions. They keep telling me they don't expect me to be able to hit the ground running. But I'm not someone who enjoys feeling like a moron. I hate not knowing what to do or how to do it. Any problems we can't fix over the phone we create tickets for and assign them to specialized teams. The number of tickets we create versus the number of calls we fix without tickets is tracked and used to evaluate how we do our jobs. And I'm creating tickets right and left. It's crazy how I went from creating 5 or 6 tickets during my 10 hour overnight shift, to creating more than that every hour.

Everyone, boss included, keeps telling me not to worry. It's natural to need some time to adjust to the differences. They assure me that after a few weeks my number of tickets created will diminish and I will gain my confidence back. But right now that's hard to believe. I feel like I'm just totally worthless to them. And I hate that feeling.

But, I have Friday and Saturday nights off now - so I guess it's all worth it in the end.

6 comments:

Scott said...

Eh, get over it. You can always Gtalk me or chuck or anyone. Crap, do you have any idea how much time I spend answering phone calls and IMs from techs and analysts? A lot. We're a team. You're not a one-person-solution-center. And trust me, you could spend 20 years here and not even come close to learning everything. I've been here 7 years and worked in 3 different areas; I still daily have things that I've never seen or heard of. Crap, I support 300 servers and I probably know what 50 of them do. Knowledge is not what makes a good tech/analyst. Problem solving and being able to find the answers to questions is what separates us from the monkeys (or Sr Analysts) ;)

Also, FCR% isn't that big a deal. Remember, no matter how low it is there's always someone in STL lower. :)

Scott said...

Did I mention crap?

Michelle-ozark crafter said...

Hang in there! pretty soon panic will be replaced by knowledge!

Anonymous said...

I know how you feel. Transitions in life can be difficult and changes at work are no exception. I'm sure you'll be up to speed in no time!!

Scott said...

FYI: my comment was supposed to be encouraging too. :)

Lola said...

Give yourself a break. Change is always hard but you will get it figured out in no time.