Wednesday 29 October 2008

Sleep, glorious sleep....

My small sojourn into not blogging coincided with two things:

1) Me working hideous amounts of overtime and
2) Spurs being the biggest pile of poo since Mr Neanderthal ate uncooked Mammoth meat and suffered from the Neolithic runs....

I don't want to talk about 2 (though we have won and will hopefully do so tonight as well against the hideous gooners) so I shall stay on the subject of 1.

The day I went permie we happened to have a scheduled meeting about our wonderfully helpful and patient* client in America. The option of overtime was offered to allow out of hours 'emergency support only'. I agreed.

Everyone else refused.

Arse.

So I've done 85 hour weeks every week this month as I'm 'on-call' for 'emergency issues only' until 11pm every night, 7 days a week.

I have a nice new Blackberry which buzzes every time an issue is raised, meaning I have to get to my computer and respond to the issue within an hour.

I tried to quit after the first weekend. Sample moment of the personal hell that was my Saturday - having to leave my shopping in the supermarket, drive home, boot-up the laptop only to find that she needed something doing IN FOUR DAYS TIME but didn't want to forget so was insisting I did it immediately.

And apparently if I told her to 'fuck off' I'd get in trouble. Where's the justice in that?

My threat to quit got her told off enough to only raise issues that were emergencies. My average evening goes like this:

BUZZ!!!! BUZZ!!!!
*check email*
*sigh*
*logon*
*type 'This is not a critical issue. I will look at this in work hours tomorrow.'*
*logoff*
BUZZ!!!! BUZZ!!!!
*check email*
*sigh*
*logon*

*type 'That is in testing and will be rolled out next week.'*
*logoff*
BUZZ!!!! BUZZ!!!!
*check email*
*sigh*
*logon*
*type 'As just mentioned in the other issue you raised just now, that is in testing and will be rolled out next week.'*

*logoff*
BUZZ!!!! BUZZ!!!!
*check email*
*sigh*
*logon*

*type 'As just mentioned in the other two issues you recently raised, that is in testing and will be rolled out next week.'*
*logoff*
*scream in frustration*

I currently very much have a love/hate relationship with Americans. Thankfully with different people ;-)


Uh-oh, I think I hear something buzzing..... :(



*Evil, vicious Harpy

6 comments:

Glamourpuss said...

Ah, the joys of working in a service industry!

Puss

Kevin Musgrove said...

One of the reasons why I have always dodged pagers and works mobiles.

It helps if you can set the rules up in your email account to randomly select and fire off one of a dozen anodynes. I've been at both ends of "This is an issue that will be addressed in the next release;" "I want to double-check the available options as I wouldn't want you not to make a fully-informed decision some way down the process chain;" and "please could you confirm the dates involved."

I'm sure others would share.

Kevin Musgrove said...

congrats on the fuck-off pension, btw!

Red Squirrel said...

Puss - yeah, normally I'd never do support. Never again will I 'help out' at work. Last night tonight though :)

km - it's a good idea, sadly the particular nightmare client would see straight through that. She's a nun as well. A nun direct from hell, I suspect....

Agent Elle said...

Oooo you have a BlackBerry? Let's be BB Messenger buddies!

The amount of times I've wanted to say 'fuck off' and walk out in the past fortnight alone has astounded me. Methinks we are in the same boat. Sadly, I need money. :(

Red Squirrel said...

Elle - I've given my BB back. I'm no longer on support, thank god! How do you stick with it every day?