05 Dec 02
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Fido's Hoop

Today I go in to face the lions. Ok it's just a test. At work, they have this test, which is the last hoop of several you have to jump through in order to qualify for promotion within the department.

See, in order to qualify for this test, you have to have done well on several categories of evaluation for 60 days, and those categories of evaluation are so preposterously sloppy and error prone, it's ludicrous. Plus these measurements do nothing whatsoever to actually gauge the level of quality of the tech rep. I'd like to see them measure happy customers, or first touch resolutions, or something a little more tangible.

I got through by the skin of my teeth. I got a horrible grade on an absurd case. I fought it, and got it revised to only a slightly less horrible grade, but it was just enough to qualify for the test.

So here I am today, facing nine hours of testing. Blah. Two things especially annoy me about this. The first was that when I got hired, we were told that if we wanted to take this test, in order to prepare, we'd need to study The Noodle - the compiled grass-roots knowledge base that had grown up out of the contributions of tech reps as they learned things. It was rough hewn, but it was extremely well organized. You could read it like a book, if you were so inclined. It had nested menus so that you could walk your way through a tricky diagnosis. It was damn useful.

Well, some fancy-ass knowledge base design company was hired to redo our external help site, and a damn fine job they did too, but somebody got the bright idea that these folks should overhaul The Noodle as well. They broke it. They didn't preserve the original navigation, which was ideal for what it was being used for. Slowly, they are gradually fixing it, but it's barely functional as a reference; it's virtually useless as a study tool.

This was just a couple months after I hit the floor, and the original Noodle was ordered taken offline completely. So I'm going into this test with nothing more than plain experience. And I hope it's enough.

The second thing is that I know how this test came to be in existence, and it's a perversion. I know who the authors are, and why it was created, and it had nothing to do with making Fido jump through flaming hoops in the hopes that one day he might be a Team Leader. I don't feel comfortable giving the particulars here, because it's not my story, but it's galling to know that this was once a Good Thing, and it's been twisted into the service of evil. It's been made into a barrier, rather than a doorway.

So anyway, here I am, having slept too much and not gotten enough coffee, achy-headed and irritated. And I see it's time to get going. Wheeeee.

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