This new IT job after 4 months.
So I'd been out of work looking for an IT job for over a year after a contract job ended earlier than expected. I blew through my savings and started working at a flea market as the assistant manager making $12/hr which sucked balls.
I finally got a call back from a IT company based out of Chicago. I'm in Indiana. They offered me a hybrid remote job in early December for more money than I've ever made so far and finally started me Jan 5. They had me drive to Chicago for training and they put me in a hotel for two weeks and gave me around $900 to live on while there.
Aside from watching endless videos on my computer in their main office I didn't really get much training and a week there for on-site training would have been enough. As a side note: I've been doing IT for around 10 years. I found out while in Chicago that this company is pretty small and owned by a guy and ran by he and his 3 sons. One of which is my direct boss. They have a dispatcher who started the same time as me and they have a woman who is in charge of "HR" and product procurement. That's it as far as the admin side of the company. As far as techs go, there are 11 of us now. 4 tier 1s, 4 tier 2s, two that just go on-site and a guy who does infrastructure stuff only.
This company basically services IT for a crap ton of car dealerships around Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana and even a couple in California and Florida. When I got hired, they already had another Indiana guy and I figured we'd be splitting the Lafayette and Fort Wayne dealerships and he would mainly do the Greenwood dealerships because he lives there.
Anyway, he ended up getting fired and I found out that they basically hired me to replace him.
This company is the most insane micromanaging bunch of twats I've ever worked for. They have a vaguely enforced in depth "SOP" that can be pretty much used against anyone at any time for any reason.
Some rules include:
If you're on a call, you have to check in with dispatch after 30 minutes. Not 27 minutes. Not 29 minutes or even 32 minutes. 30. I checked in a little early once and got chastised for it. The SOP says 30 but doesn't mention being exact.
If you go on-site, you only get mileage over 30 miles reimbursed. Lafayette and Greenwood is just barely under 30 minutes for me so I get screwed.
Only 30 minutes for lunch. You HAVE to take your lunch before your first 5 hours.
You have to give a 2 weeks written notice for ANY time off. Even if it's a 2 hour Dr. appointment that you could only get scheduled in a week before or days before. This one is loosely enforced but you will get a teams message "friendly reminder". This time even includes time not working, just in case they need to change your schedule on the fly with zero notice to you.
Other fun things:
- They want you to "race to the phones" to pick up calls. They get pissed if you're not answering within the first two rings. They assign me tickets throughout the day. Non stop. I had a new hire ticket the other day with 6 people on it. Usually the most I get is two. I had multiple windows open trying to get these 6 people added to local active directory and O365, and the phones would not stop. I let a call ring 4 or 5 times and I get a message on teams "is your phone not working? Why aren't you answering calls?" Now these calls will ring every T1 tech and I see them available and not answering right away either. Keep in mind that I never let a call just hit voicemail or anything. I will answer if no one else does if I'm busy as hell.
The added stress of trying to do other things, trying to hurry, knowing that the phone is going to ring and you have to stop what you're doing to answer a call and start a whole new ticket and try to help those people is off the charts. There is no ticket time after a call. You hang up, you're available for the next call. You either have to finish the ticket while you're still on the phone or try to rush through it before another call comes in. Which leads to:
- Constant nagging from dispatch. "What's going on with this ticket?". "Why is this ticket in this status?". "Please give an update on your call.". "You need to make sure you add X to tickets." "I just assigned you this ticket. Please make this a priority.".
Then, if I make a fateful decision to escalate a ticket to dispatch because I can't do whatever it needs, then I get the interrogation in teams chat by my boss and his brother and the dispatch girl, all asking questions at the same time. It's seriously like being in an interrogation. Boss: "We need to make sure we're asking X.".
*I did*
Dispatch girl: " Well then why is X and not Y?"
*Because Y and X to Y*
Boss' Brother "Well that doesn't make sense. You need to call *very busy general manager who was already pissed off his stuff isn't working who already made it clear* and ask him to be specific."
At this point I want to walk away from my computer and they can all go F themselves to hell.
- We have an on call rotation. We are sent a list of Saturdays and everybody picks their day they want to work the on call day. We only get paid 4 hours of the day and after that we get however long each ticket that comes in takes. The idea I guess is that it's really slow and you won't be doing much of anything after those first 4 hours anyway.
On call last from 8am to 6pm. Both times this list was sent since I've been there, I was on-site and couldn't respond as fast as everyone else so I got stuck with the day nobody wants. The first on call day wasn't that big a deal to work that day. However, this was the day after a bunch of fucking tornados went through Janesville,WI, so I wake up to my phone going off and shit didn't stop until like 5pm. Dealerships phone systems down. No Internet. People can't login, etc. I'm still new. I'm still trying to learn their systems and processes. I'm getting fucking hammered on the "slow day".
My next on call is fucking Labor Day. The busiest day of the year for selling cars. Not only that but my gf is pissed because we can't do anything for labor day.
- Schedule will change overnight sometimes. You think you're going on-site tomorrow or working from home tomorrow? You wake up and login to work only to be asked why I'm not on my way to Ft. Wayne 3 hours away because they changed the fucking schedule at 11pm.
They scheduled me onsite every day a couple weeks ago in Lafayette, which is about an hour away. Then after Lafayette, I had to go 2 hours from there to Ft Wayne. So I'm super stressed because I have like 4 tickets in Lafayette at 3 different dealerships, then supposed to drive 2 hours, do 4 more tickets at 2 different dealerships and drive 3 hours home in a reasonable time. I'm not even leaving Lafayette until around 2pm, which gets me in Ft Wayne at 4. I have to knock out whatever I have to do there and drive home 3 hours. But, they change the schedule on me every day during the time I'm in Lafayette. Taking off the Ft Wayne ticket and assigning it for the next day. They did that every single day that week, so I was super stressed and mentally and physically exhausted that entire week. They ended up sending one of the full time on-site guys from Chicago to Ft Wayne, which was less of a drive for him that it was for me.
This place fucking sucks. I dread every day and I can't quit. I don't have time to really look for another job or even go to an interview. My entire week day is taken.
Oh yeah, and the owner of the company got pissed off in the monthly all hands meeting and scolded everyone for leaving old equipment power supplies behind when replacing equipment. Then later said that the missing power supply for some switch he needed cost $170 and half "jokingly" said that he would take whoever was responsible's lunch break away to make up the cost. This dude is a real POS.
That old equipment, like old computers I've replaced, sits in my garage. I have a lot. It's taking upa lot of space. They don't want to dropped off at any recycling center because they're paranoid of people taking the hard drives, so they want it brought back to the home office in Chicago. Then I get inventory shipped to me that I also have to store somewhere. 15 computers and 15 monitors.
I guess if I lived in an apartment I'd be screwed. I'd just have to live around a ton of bullshit taking over my home.