Let's talk about our jobs!

[Nail Strafer]

Let's talk about our jobs.

Since so many of us on this board are getting older and into the workforce, I think this could be a fun topic. At least when work's keeping you away from the board (like my job) we'll have more of an idea why XD

Anyway, I'll talk about my job first. I work for a software company that builds computerized tax systems for governments. Most of our clients are U.S. state governments, although we also have a few state counties, a few cities, and even a small nation or two.

My job title at this company is "Implementation Specialist", which means I basically ask the government's tax bureau what they'd like their system to do, and then make it happen through programming. I am implementing their requirements into the system. But when people ask me what I do for a living, I typically just say "computer programmer", because everyone has an idea of what a computer programmer is and I bet I'd get blank stares if I said "Implementation Specialist".

My particular area of tax systems is mail. Tax bureaus kill trees by the hundreds when it comes to paper mail, so with that huge volume you want to try to automate things as much as you can. That's where I come in. The biggest part of my job is creating pre-made letters. With premade letters, nearly all the text is written out for you already. You either just hit the button to send it, or you fill out some fields (which will populate in certain spots on the letter), and THEN hit the button to send it. Like for example, let's say we've got a field that tells the customer how much they owe. I would make that a field where you just type in how much they owe, and then that amount's automatically placed in the right spot on the letter. I also make sure that all the mail created every day is either printed manually upstairs, or that it makes it safely to the mail room downstairs where it's printed and stuffed by machine instead.

This is without a doubt the best job I've had so far in my life. I like my coworkers, my boss is actually a pretty cool guy when we're off work (we go to autocross together), and most of the time I don't feel overworked at all. It's just when there's a system rollout that things get hairy.

But if I could change a few things...it would be to get rid of the neckties (that's the only part of business dress I really mind). The second thing I'd want to change would be to not stress independence so much. There have been a few times where I'll struggle with stuff for hours, but I still stay silent for fear of what people would think if I needed to ask for help.

Small niggles though. I plan to stay with this company a long time.

[Viper]

It seems you are more in a real office setting then I am. I'm hoping to get more into my field of study (Networking) at some point but right now I'm technically called a 'Call Center Associate'. This is pretty much a cover all term for someone who answers the phones at 'Call Center', which is ANOTHER general term for Help Desks, Customer Service, etc but basicly my main work is answering calls.

I work at corporation where we run a food chain as well as maintain and sell our own POS system, to franchises under our corporation. I work the technical side as what some might know as 'Level 1' Tech Support, and our main customer is often managers, both corporate and franchise, who are having some issue with our POS System.

As a parrelle to Nail above, while he works on programming end to 'make' a system, I'm on the end of 'maintaining' the system or 'support' for the completeled product. I often get to hear both valid and 'mis-placed' issues in the system. I have to admit a majority of the issue is not with how the system is made but who is using it. I get to hear the troubles of the system and often time I will hear the same issue at least 3 times a day, from new managers who are unware things in the system and of those who did not listen the last three times before.

I find my job interesting and fun with a small healthy dose of depression/reality. I look back at what I thought of mankind in general before I got my job and now and its so radical that its scary. I've gotten to hear some of the honest best people in the world, who will willing admit to messing it up or know nothing about computers. I've also heard from those who think they know what they are doing and clearly don't. I've heard from those who have a honest computer issue which someone in our higher support Level 2 and Level 3 have to handle... hell I've even seen an issue be sent back to development as its too major.

My over all work place is pretty claim for the most part, I work third shift and though we aren't overwhelmed with calls. We still get our share of critical issues and wide area outages. My co-workers as much ass they make fun of me are fun to work. (I hang out with few of them in WoW in fact.) My boss is a very nice but objective person, she knows how to get things done, and when we have issues everyone asks each other for answers. I've been asked several times for problems I understood and others times I've been doing the asking but generally we get an anwer one way or another. I've been told that our Help Desk Level 1 is more like Level 2 on other help desks, supposely.

The biggest thing for me as this is technically my first job I've ever had. I mean I've never worked anywhere else, not at some small job or anything. I got this job straight from full time college student to full time employee, was not the safest on my education (which I am still doing but part time) but overall I have been able to make some forward progress in life.

Overall, pretty happy for my first job involved in the computers, and for those in the computer field the hardest thing is the first job as many computer related jobs want some level of prior work experiance in the computer field. This is rather hard to do if you are trying to make your first move into the field in the first place.

I plan to stick around for awhile, while I get my schooling done then maybe find something more specific to the networking field.

[Nail Strafer]

Quote:I work at corporation where we run a food chain as well as maintain and sell our own POS system, to franchises under our corporation.

So these systems are for fast food franchises? Or at least that's the impression I get.

Quote:I have to admit a majority of the issue is not with how the system is made but who is using it. I get to hear the troubles of the system and often time I will hear the same issue at least 3 times a day, from new managers who are unware things in the system and of those who did not listen the last three times before.

For me...I would say it's the other way around with the system being wrong, since I'm helping to build the thing. Programming is an extremely detail-oriented job, and it's quite easy to miss a small mistake that nonetheless can really screw things over later.

But what is the natural inclination of people who encounter an error? To assume that the problem is as big as the error. If it's an error that's widespread (like they're unable to use letters on any customers), they assume there must be a really big problem with the system, like it's going to take hours to get this all fixed. When really, it could just be something as simple as me forgetting to activate letters or forgetting to place them in their proper print groups. That can be done in five minutes by me. Because of this, I have to spend a lot of time calming people down who are acting like the sky is falling.

But while it's annoying I'm okay with this. The state people tend to take a very humble attitude towards our new system, like it is a deity and we are its priests. While this arrangement does cause confusion and people always assuming the worst with problems, at least it means we can pretty much work on the system as we please without interruption from them. They don't really care as long as it works.

[Viper]

(12-18-2009 01:54 AM)Nail Strafer Wrote:  So these systems are for fast food franchises? Or at least that's the impression I get.

Close, we are not in the 'fast food' chain but in 'family dinning', our main compitition is mainly iHop, as breakfest foods is a majority of our sales and income.

(12-18-2009 01:54 AM)Nail Strafer Wrote:  For me...I would say it's the other way around with the system being wrong, since I'm helping to build the thing. Programming is an extremely detail-oriented job, and it's quite easy to miss a small mistake that nonetheless can really screw things over later.

But what is the natural inclination of people who encounter an error? To assume that the problem is as big as the error. If it's an error that's widespread (like they're unable to use letters on any customers), they assume there must be a really big problem with the system, like it's going to take hours to get this all fixed. When really, it could just be something as simple as me forgetting to activate letters or forgetting to place them in their proper print groups. That can be done in five minutes by me. Because of this, I have to spend a lot of time calming people down who are acting like the sky is falling.

But while it's annoying I'm okay with this. The state people tend to take a very humble attitude towards our new system, like it is a deity and we are its priests. While this arrangement does cause confusion and people always assuming the worst with problems, at least it means we can pretty much work on the system as we please without interruption from them. They don't really care as long as it works.

I know what you are saying about the buttons, we have our share of new pomotional meals and new foods that needed buttons but when the update went out the code was missing for it to register what it does. You can press it all day and night and nothing will happen.

The biggest problem is in fact before an update. You have release dates for your updates and products, right? The problem is I get is the customers often do not read everything they are given. We tell them about a new meal promotion that is coming out and then they call the next day asking where the button is thinking its a problem. The thing is this 'new' promotion is in two weeks and we do not release the update till the day before. The problem is many people do not read that the promotion will start on day XX and the button will appear one day before.

This is especially true in inventory control where product numbers change almost monthly due to provider changers or package size changes. The product changes are sent out two weeks in advanced and directly on the cover sheet of the paper invoice the truck driver gives to them, most managers however rip the sheet off and then check the invoice to make sure its right with the truck and never read it despite how important it is. The old product then becomes disabled leaving the manager thinking that he can't order an item he really needs to sell because he did not read that all we did is change the numbers and he needs to order under the new number.

This is further complicated by franchise that have some speciality items.

I mean the ability to find a programming problem is often times much easer to notice then user error or a minor programming bug. This is cause if one manager finds it, they ALL find it. I then spend most of the day fighting my blinking red light that tells me someone is in the queue to answer the same question for 8 hours. "I apologize but we are aware of the issue and we are currently working on a solution, which we will have out as soon as possible. We do not have an ETA at this time". Its nice if we got a work around but sometimes we do not have one.

The hard ones to find is problems with our spilt check functions which has a nack of reverting back to the orginal ticket after tendering the spilts... increasing voids never makes manager's happy. A large problem is that the function to tender the spilts before SAVING them. <_< I sure hope they fix that at some point cause all it takes is the computer to crash or a server/manager to hit 'return' instead of 'save' and everything done is now undone. The act itself of tendering before saving on large orders often causes the system to crash as well.

I've overall gotten use to the paniced manager over something that requires only a restart or maybe clearing of a lock file. I can understand why they are paniking if credit cards are down or orders are disappearing.

I do not feel too much remose over "My Kitchen monitors are down.", as my next question is always "Have you turned on the kitchen printers?" since we kept both the old style and new style, using the old printers as a backup for our new monitors. The biggest thing is that even without them its still very much possible to have a server deliever the order to the kitchen the old fashion way. The ability to walk and hand a peice of paper over to someone seems to be a concept beyond some managers. I understand you are lossing orders and we are going to fix it to the best of our ability but that no excuse for why your servers can't deliever the orders... yes its a bit slower, and sometimes you'll miss one but its better then NOT GETTING THEM AT ALL. The sad part is some managers would disagree.

The Manager's also sometimes (mistakely) think that we (my corporation) can be held accountable for missed breaks (especially in CA locations, cause of labor laws). The missing break alert system breaks sometimes... it happens. The problem is they think that this somehow shields them from the legal results of employee's not taking there breaks. It does not and will not, its a TOOL, it does not replace the accountablity of the manager to do HIS JOB. The break alert system does not stop you from checking your reports or viewing the who is here report, or the collective dashboard that gives you a break down of todays sales and labor.

So ya I'll stop my rant now.

[Tancer Fang]

I stack boxes, a lot of boxes.



................ It pays 10 an hour leave me alone.

[Yolanda Riona]

Dude. $10/hour just to stack boxes ain't a bad catch. Especially when most jobs pay a lousy $7 an hour. I'm sorry. $7.15. =B Catch my drift.

I currently am jobless at the moment. I used to work at a movie theater where I did the typical gig of serving people that don't deserve to be served and cleaning up after slobs. But it was a job and I couldn't really complain when I got my paycheck.

I worked with kids over the summer and did little art projects with them. That was either very fun or very intense depending on the day. Sometimes I wouldn't know what to do and pull things off last minute, but they all seemed pretty bummed to leave when it was all said and done. At least a lot of the girls. Them boys were all about playing outside. Which I couldn't blame them. It was nice most of the time.

[Tails]

I'm sure I've told you people before, but I guess I can do it again.

I work as a writer. I know it isn't much, and I know it isn't a paying job until the piece gets published, but I love to do it.

[Nokame]

If i told you, you'd all kill yourselves

[Yolanda Riona]

Do tell. =D

Come on. It can't be that bad.

[Viper]

Sounds interesting, lets hear it!