{"id":1357,"date":"2023-07-13T19:07:08","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T23:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/?p=1357"},"modified":"2023-07-25T09:59:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T13:59:27","slug":"canned-like-tomato-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/13\/canned-like-tomato-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"Canned Like Tomato Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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So I had a new experience. It\u2019s about 10 o\u2019clock and I\u2019m 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\u2019t seen or heard anything about in many years.
\u201cHe probably doesn\u2019t want to catch up\u2026\u201d I think.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"\u201cFirst<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s problem, when meeting time comes and I see Mr. B and Ms. M (the head of HR) appear on my screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes. The time has come.\u201d I think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reminded that Company didn\u2019t hit growth goals and my name ended up on the short list as a cost savings and that there\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why was your name on the list?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve 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 \u201cfast paced\u201d ticket pushing role. Everyone else is good at \u201cticket fluffing\u201d, “cherry picking” and keeping away from tickets that were too far over their knowledge base, but I have never had the knack for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cjust shoot for 100 tickets,\u201d which is the kind of solid number you can plan around, but by this point it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t had this kind of service in several years. Here are some examples I managed to screenshot over the last year…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above was from a customer; below from a coworker…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/s>previous role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On to the next adventure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I had a new experience. It\u2019s about 10 o\u2019clock and I\u2019m 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\u2019t seen or heard anything about in many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","tag-neo-lj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1378,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions\/1378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.woodchuckhunters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}