Allons-y! in 2014

This is my new phone case. I'm highly squee over it.

I bought the phone from my coworker Rosie. Normally I wouldn't buy a used phone, but it's only about four months old, in good shape and the only reason she got a new phone is she wanted the Samsung Note 3. My phone is a four year old temperamental computer at this point. It freezes when I try to answer calls, or the screen freezes, or I can't get it to go to sleep, or wake up from sleep. I have to pull the battery and that is a pain in the ass in itself. My current phone is an HTC Inspire and the area to get to the battery is a bit tricky.

She gave me the phone yesterday, but I haven't flipped it over yet. She's on T-mobile and I'm on AT&T, so we are waiting for the unlock code. That can take 7-14 days.

The only apprehension I had about buying the phone stemmed from her saying she never could find any nice cases for it. At first, I could only find basic one color cases and had decided just to get a black one if nothing else popped up. Then I found that gem.

Her and I are such geeks. My case has the Tardis and her case is Pikachu dressed as Link.

The new project at work formally started yesterday. It was supposed to be Wednesday, but JG was sick with the stomach bug that's going around (again). So, I took calls on Wednesday and floor walked, then Thursday took some calls, floor walked, then Rocky asked me to take some more calls to get the handle time down for the center, then pulled me ten minutes later to y jack with the nesters. Y jacking is basically where I sit with someone and listen to their live calls, but my headset is muted. The name comes from the cable we use, it looks like a Y. I was pulled for that to start getting me in the hang of Y jacking since I will be doing it a lot now.

Tiffany, one of the OM's, and I were talking afterwards about how their is a major lack of leadership and not very good support in the nesting rooms and on the floor. Over the last few months, I've noticed that big time. And it's making it a struggle for the newer people. It's changed a lot since when I first started. We didn't have the extra support of floorwalkers, we didn't start doing that until after the system upgrade last summer, but the supervisors had more time to sit with people and take time to make sure you were supported when you needed it. Now, the supervisors have so much on their plates, they can't be as effective as they were. Which is why I think so many of our teammates in the Learning Lab are as receptive to it as they are.

We started out yesterday getting everyone together in our designated area and cleaning everything up. The desks in our area had been used for months by the offline error handler team. Then when Jamie moved her filing cabinet from the supervisors desk, that side of the desk broke. So, that side of the desk is now held up by James G's filing cabinet with a paperback book on top of it to make it level.

After everything was all set up, we got everyone together in the dungeon (our nickname for the warehouse that's not in use) for a meeting. Rocky introduced everyone, gave them a rundown of what we were doing, turned it over to James G and he went into more detail with everything. After questions were answered, he asked me if I had anything and I said, "I just wanted to tell everyone, don't be afraid to ask questions. I've always said there is no such thing as a stupid question, If you don't know something, you'll never know unless you ask. We won't bite. Well...I won;t bite. I don't know about James yet." That got a good laugh out of everyone. Then Kyle says, "I've been on James's team three times and I have yet to see him bite anyone." Which got another laugh.

Afterwards, I said to James, "Sorry about the biting comment, it presented itself." James laughed and Rocky said, "It got everyone to laugh, so that's always a good thing."

I found out we have two people on our team that work ten hour shifts, so instead of working 10am to 7pm like the rest of us, they come in at 8am and 8:30am respectively. On Monday's, Tuesday's and Wednesday's I'll be at work around 8:30am due to my ride going in at 9am, so I just planned on working overtime. I asked Rocky instead of taking calls on those days if he just wanted to go to right to our area to be there in case anyone needs help and he said yes. So, I don't see myself getting much phone time anymore.

With all I found out yesterday, while they are calling me a team lead, I'm basically an in charge. I can authorize customer relations transfers, take escalations and will be the support for the team on Tuesday's and Thursday's which is James's days off. He's even given me his Window's login and password so I can log into the systems on those days to be able to watch everyone's progress.

Yesterday, we started the work with's and the side by side Y jacking. James did the work with, I did the side by side's. At the end of the night, we went over my findings and first thing on Monday, I'll be typing them up to send to him so we can chart everyone's progress.

So, it has more of the responsibilities of a supervisor/in charge than I thought. That's fine by me though. It's good practice. And very enjoyable. The day flew by yesterday.

Seven days until moving day. Yay! We may wait one more week if it is going to be the 15th instead of the 14th so we can both take PTO.

One of my coworkers is moving to Pennsylvania tomorrow, so we are getting some furniture from her. It started out as her two couch for $200, then she threw in a coffee maker and microwave, and then last night threw in her coffee table and end table. Six things for $200. Not bad at all. Her apartment is going to be sitting there until 4/4, so today she's coming over here for the $200 and giving me the spare key for her apartment so we can come get them when we have the moving truck.

The excitement is mounting. So many good things happening at once.