I’ve started working a new position as a system administrator at a company that values the idea of work from home but still has a lot of comradery and a healthy assortment of sodas and snacks in the kitchen area that is up for grabs when caffeine is required.
It might be the new job energy talking, but I have a feeling that this is a great step forward for me. It’s not my first system administrator role, but the company I’m working at now has a lot more people dedicated to working the same number of clients that I had at my last job and, most importantly, no live calls.
No Live Calls = Much More Relaxed
I will admit to a bit of autism and neurodivergence which, boiled down to it’s most component parts, means I get internally anxious when I have to deal with a never-ending tide of calls and complaints and people who want their problems solved immediately. I’ve been able to deal with this anxiety, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had over two decades of customer service/technical support experience under my belt, but it’s still kind of there and it makes work less fun.
But, when it’s a situation where I am not being hit with a phone call the very instant I get off the last one and instead can get everything in place before calling the client back, I am much more at ease. If it’s an issue I am unfamiliar with, I can look up articles explaining a solution or discuss it with team-mates. If it looks like I’ll need to remote into their desktop or the server to make a change, I can call up their company password lists and remote monitoring software. Then, once I’m ready, I can call.
It’s The Little Things
This honestly doesn’t sound like much, but what it does for me is it builds up all the tools and foundation I need for success without having a person hemming and hawing in my ear wanting to know why their issue isn’t fixed yet. That means so much to me.
I discovered this when I was working chat support at Datto. Even though I was helping multiple users at the same time (effectively doubling the workload), not having to hear them pepper me with questions when I was trying to focus or hearing grunts of impatience was a literal god-send.
And, unfortunately, my last system administration position was 100% live calls requiring me to remain on the line with the client until the issue was fixed. And while the clients never seemed to have any issue with the support I gave (routinely got 10 out of 10 on quality surveys) I felt like I just didn’t have time to breathe.
Time To Learn, Too!
Because of the little bit of space during and between tickets, I also get a chance to retain and learn processes I’m going through to solve problems that come my way. If I find that I’ve had to look up a procedure more than once, I take the extra time to write that process down or watch a video that goes through the process so I’ll remember it better.
Because, with my previous roles in several different companies, I had to switch so fast between issue A to issue B to issue C and so on, I wasn’t able to retain what I did that day. It became such a mindless blur that at the end of a shift, if you asked me to describe literally any issue, I would just look at you blankly.
But not now. I feel like a lot of this job is going to be a learning opportunity for me, letting me cut my teeth on a lot of different resources that I’ve dealt with in the past, but never had the opportunity to deep dive beyond the initial issue at hand.
So, Next Steps?
While I am definitely going to continue working on a number of my creative projects and programming, there’s now going to be more than a little bit of time dedicated towards my self-improvement. Optimistic, I know, but I’m seeing good things in the future now. Maybe a certification or two is in my future!
So stay curious and stay active! Have a great weekend, everyone!