I caved in and accepted the help desk job that i was pressured into interviewing for a couple weeks ago. Big mistake. I seem to remember telling people that I DON'T DO HELL DESK. Gee i wonder why...?
Monday was my first day. The first impression is a lasting impression. The people were very nice but then that's normal when you first meet them. The facility was pretty nice too. So far, so good. How bad could this be?
I started shadowing someone to get me an idea as to what life is truly like there. The most challenging thing that i saw them do was to walk everyone through getting their ip address so they could remote into the machine and do their job. The company owns a large number of small facilities around the country (500+). This is a result of the company going on a large scale spending spree in the past couple years and they gobbled up a lot of smaller ones. As a result, i was given 4 huge spreadsheets with basic info on what their networks looked like (static/dynamic ip, gateway ip, subnet, network printers, etc).
When a call comes through, the first thing that i would have to do is get the name of the community and fin it on one of the 4 spread sheets. Sounds easy enough? If so, you're giving these people too much credit for knowing the official name of where they work. In addition to the headache of finding the community name/info, we also have to determine if the user is using a regular PC vs a thin client. Oh goodie. The thin clients all talk to servers that are housed at HQ so there's only so much you can really do with that.
Let's not forget the fact that there were 2 users that called up running winNT and only about half of the calls were for winXP machines. The hodge podge of OS's is a result of all of the acquisitions that have been done. There doesn't seem to be a strong push to standardize and upgrade out of date hardware. No standardized image. Most (not all) at least have the same anti virus engine!
After Tuesday i realized i couldn't handle 30-40 calls that were all essentially the same every day. I was bored on the first day of work and the second day was even worse. I was a fish out of water. No one knew that parallel ports are being phased out from modern motherboards which explains why a user couldn't figure out how to plug their printer into their Dell d630 laptop. My time was being wasted and i was bored. The stage was set for me to leave gracefully.
So after a whopping 2 days on a job that i hated, i quit. Yes i needed the money but the work was too painful. Apparently i'm the only person that believes in working a job that you don't hate. It's such an alien concept. Everyone's response to me quitting is "i would have done it for the money at least". ( For the record, the money wasn't all that hot to begin with.) It's that attitude that leads to people bitching and moaning about their jobs and hating their lives. If you don't like your job then do something about it. Never let money tie you down to something you don't enjoy. In the end it's your life and your mental health should be top priority. Why can't people understand this? Money doesn't buy happiness. A large paycheck doesn't necessarily mean a large smile on your face.
Why is it that people think they have to drive 45 minutes just for a couple extra dollars? Between traffic, the time wasted commuting, and secondary expenses that come as a result of this trek, you just don't come out ahead. I look around and see people driving 45-60 minutes one way every day so they can make a few extra dollars at a job that they're apathetic about. I've done the drive like that already. What kept me going was that i enjoyed what i did. Every day i woke up and was ready to attack my work and give it my all because i genuinely liked my job. The hours were terrible. The work was hard. I had a great time despite all of these factors. It was when i got burnt out and stopped caring about my job that i left there. Driving a distance like that wasn't worth it anymore when i didn't have my passion.
I guess what i'm trying to say is that i quit that help desk job after 2 days because i felt nothing towards it. No positive emotion at least. A job isn't worth doing unless you do it 100%. This simple concept which is one of my core beliefs has been lost in our society. Taking the easy route and looking for the "slack" jobs has become the norm. People wonder why Americans are losing out to other countries in the global job market? It's because we've become lazy. We look for the easier jobs whenever possible and then demand more money because we believe we're entitled to it because of who we are (not what we do). I see money being the motivation behind more and more peoples motives. Why are you going to school? So i can get a good paying job. Is school not about bettering your self and learning about fields that you enjoy? Why would you torture and indebt yourself for 4+ years in a program that you don't enjoy with the sole purpose of making money in a field that you have no passion for in the first place? Why not just say you're going to school in order to live a tortured existence in a rut while trying to maintain the status quo? Is that not the same?
I guess i truly am a square peg in a world of round holes....
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