geekyI stumbled on the idea of color-coding my queues so that I could tell which ones needed immediate and close attention. Queues with one or two contacts to make were coded red or coral. Queues with three or four got orange. Queues with five to nine got yellow. Queues with ten to fifteen got green. Over fifteen got blue. This resulted in me chilling out majorly, because I could tell at a glance what was going on, rather than having to scramble. I'm sure I amused the phone goons, though I may have mildly offended Spiky Earring Chick when I waved off her concerned clucking over my cough. At that moment, though, I was busy trying to close a few over-limit queues without crashing the dialer, and doing all of it a contact and a half ago. Fortunately, she got over it. Even though she doesn't have the best record for performance on the phones, I am fondly disposed toward her. She's just a nice person.
As I pointed out to either Figment or Lady Malfoy or V or some combination including all of the above and perhaps more, it's not the people, nor is it the computer skills. It's learning the computer skills while simultaneously learning proper supervisory skills. Since routines take me a while to get down pat, and since social interactions have to be specially rolled for until I get used to them, this is two different scary things at once that I have to master at the same time -- while I'm also trying to figure out how to live by myself, cope with a new bond, and do all the things that I've always had help doing before. Scary stuff, this "being a grown-up" thing.
I've come to really like the high-lighters, because of the being able to code things so I can understand them at a glance, but also so I can easily high-light the good items, the bad items, and the items that need attention lest they become bad items, for the phone goons to specifically note. Green is something to continue, yellow is caution, and orange is something that needs to get stopped. (Red's really too angry a color for me to pull out under ordinary circumstances.)
A few notes of crucial importance: first, I was calling the people doing surveys on the phones "phone goons" when I was among their number and never dreaming that I'd become even a monitor, let alone monitor, check-in, and supervisor all in one handy package. (Buy one, get two free?) Second, I believe that "anal-retentive" has a hyphen, because neither word can stand alone to describe the specific Freudian state that embodies the spirit of all things Percy Weasley.
Amazingly, we actually made the shift goals. I was delighted. We made the shift goals before we were through dialing as much of the sample in each of the queues that we were supposed to, and we made it right at end of shift, but we made it, even if it is lopsided, unbalanced, and somewhat freaky. We've got the rest of the weekend to catch it up. If I'm on the Yakovitch Catering jobs tomorrow, I want to balance them out for the evening person to not have to deal with quite so hairily.
Work-geekage. I've become a spouting babble-fountain of work-geekage. Ack!
