A Guilded Cage

I had been moving along on cruise control for a couple of years.

No huge drama in my life. No ups, no downs. Just a long stretch of highway.

Outwardly, things were progressing nicely. I was no longer sabotaging my entire life, so I was getting ahead. I was no longer working menial jobs that I didn't care if I kept or not.

I had been hired on at a telecommunications company. I was a "First Line Customer Service Representative", which is a fancy way of saying that I was a phone monkey... the first guy that answers the phone when you call in with a problem.

I viewed this as my first "real" job... I had to wear a tie!
I B.S.'d my way through the interview. I said that I was computer literate, and asked enough of the correct questions to find out what kind of computers they used (Windows).

I went to Sears, sat down at a demo computer they had set up, and taught myself enough to look like I had seen this before.

Since I was now being paid more than I had ever made in my life from just one job, I figured it would be a good idea to know a lot about what I was supposed to be doing. If it was in the office, I read it. Tech manuals, billing manuals, brochures, instruction manuals for the voice mail system... if it had words, I read it.

Overkill.

If you have ever called into a telecommunications company, you know that the first 3 people you talk to are lucky to be able to find their mouths with both hands and a map. They are functionally retarded. They are only vaguely aware of where they are, and have no clue what it is that the company that pays them actually does.

This was the case in my office and, in very short order, I was the guy people came to for answers. I got frustrated by the fact that the same people came to me with the same questions, but still recognized that it was better than what the rest of the monkeys were doing: making up answers.

Yes, it is true. If the first person you talk to at a telecommunications company gives you an actual answer, chances are excellent that they simply made it up off the top of their head.

Inside 6 months of stepping in the door, I was promoted to the Technical Support Team. Bear in mind, this is a publicly traded company. I had NO formal training whatsoever. And I was a Technician!

I took it upon myself to create classes for the phone monkeys, and the people they randomly blind transferred calls to when they had been on the phone too long.

One of these classes was "Voice Mail and You: An Interactive Journey of Discovery". It was a basic troubleshooting class for our voicemail system.

Sigh... If I had been content to know nothing and collect a paycheck, 2 things would have happened.
1) I would probably still be working there.
2) I wouldn't have gotten married.