So I had a new experience. It’s about 10 o’clock and I’m chugging along with a mind toward lunch when I see a weird email come in saying that I have a Google Meet with a long-timer that had disappeared into the corporate structure and who, I haven’t seen or heard anything about in many years.
“He probably doesn’t want to catch up…” I think.
I continue working on the dumb project that I accidentally took ownership of, subtly cursing it and wondering how I could make it someone else’s problem, when meeting time comes and I see Mr. B and Ms. M (the head of HR) appear on my screen.
“Yes. The time has come.” I think.
I’m reminded that Company didn’t hit growth goals and my name ended up on the short list as a cost savings and that there’s nothing I can do about it. There are no positions open in any department to move laterally (or even backward) into so I can now consider myself terminated and I’ll get a follow up email from HR with the details. Pretty standard stuff, I assume. I don’t really know since I’ve never been fired before.
But why was your name on the list?
I’ve always had a problem hitting ticket quotas. I spent a few months in general support before I realized I was too focused on good customer outcomes than on pushing out emails so I quickly moved into another role that was focused on working through tasks at a steady pace. That came at a career cost and last year, having finally realized I had dead-ended myself, I moved from that hands-on monotonous hardware role into a “fast paced” ticket pushing role. Everyone else is good at “ticket fluffing”, “cherry picking” and keeping away from tickets that were too far over their knowledge base, but I have never had the knack for that.
To my managers credit, they did really emphasize that I needed to be improving metrics (I suspect they knew I was on “the list” and were looking out for me), but it was only in the last month that I finally got the feedback to “just shoot for 100 tickets,” which is the kind of solid number you can plan around, but by this point it was too late.
I hear you saying, “Just work harder!” In no small part, my numbers have always been lower because I follow the instructions that I was given in training and I treat customers the way I would want to be treated as a customer. I take real ownership of ticket that are in my name and always try to respond when the system alerts me to a reply. For a new person to the team, I had a surprising number of customers ask for me directly and let me know that they haven’t had this kind of service in several years. Here are some examples I managed to screenshot over the last year…
Above was from a customer; below from a coworker…
Conclusion
In the Google Meeting with the head of HR, she actually said, “thanks for not cursing at us.” That basically summarizes my feelings on the situation. I *should* be really angry about this, but it’s also kind-of a relief. I wanted to leave five years ago when they fired my first boss and restructured my team (the first of many) for reasons that only made sense to people who were completely disconnected from the job, but we had babies and things were expensive and we just HAD TO have steady income. Funny enough, the majority of those who were left at Company were there because they were in exactly that situation.
I’m really thankful to have seen this coming and have moved myself into a position where I will (hopefully) be able to get a job higher than entry level for my next role. I’ve picked up lots of awesome skills and some new hobbies. Hell: this entire LJ-to-WordPress archive/blog would not have happened without my current previous role.
On to the next adventure!
