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I have to make this post to remind me that there are good work days.
Despite having a cold and beginning to lose my voice, i had a good day at work. The phone calls were not out-of-control like they normally are. I got everything on my to-do list done. I had time to breathe between tasks. I even got to take a five-minute break today!
On top of that, the governor announced that we will be keeping the 4-10 work week. I've changed too much of my life around the four-day work week and don't feel like having to adjust to a new schedule anytime soon.
What made me the most happy is that I ingeniously solved a problem that has vexed the department for months. (Okay, I probably didn't solve it, but let me have my moment.) To explain, the State purchased years ago a phone system. It's a nifty thing that lets clients calling in be put into on hold for indefinitely amounts of time until a worker is available to talk to them. This is because before we got so many calls that each individual workers had desk phones that rang all day usually with three to four people trying to call the same worker at any given (I'm not exaggerating this, I tracked 70-80 calls per day on average). Now since an average worker on has time scheduled in the day to take about 8-10 calls. You can see there was a problem.
So we have this expensive new phone system that is generally considered to be Beelzebub the Lord of Pain by most people, but is a necessary evil. It also likes to malfunction a lot. (I case you didn't catch on, I work for the government.) One of the problems is that when someone calls in, we get a ringing on out computer letting us know there is a call coming in. Our desk phone also rings to let us know the phone is ready to answer the call. But sometime the desk phone doesn't ring. This is followed by the worker answering the phone and not being able to talk to the person on the other end because the computer will not connect the call to the phone.
Today, I had that happen. This has happened a lot. I usually try answering several times then the person gets it that the call isn't going to go through and they hang up. (And since average wait times can easily be 45 minutes or longer, I'm don't imagine they are smiling and singing praises about the department when this happens.)But today, the person didn't hang up. Fortunately, my brain was working despite a head cold. So I realized that I could still transfer a call, so I transferred it to another worker. I didn't know this at the time, but since the system doesn't work, it actually put me on a conference call with the client calling in and I could actually talk the person. All the person wanted to know was if his case had been processed yet which was a total waste of my time, but I was ecstatic I found a work around to a problem that has plagued us for over a year.
I reported the problem to our tech people, who were amazed with my discovery, and even more amazed that I filed my report correctly.
It's so sad that I'm excited about that, but it felt a lot better than having some elderly lady investigated for fraud.
Despite having a cold and beginning to lose my voice, i had a good day at work. The phone calls were not out-of-control like they normally are. I got everything on my to-do list done. I had time to breathe between tasks. I even got to take a five-minute break today!
On top of that, the governor announced that we will be keeping the 4-10 work week. I've changed too much of my life around the four-day work week and don't feel like having to adjust to a new schedule anytime soon.
What made me the most happy is that I ingeniously solved a problem that has vexed the department for months. (Okay, I probably didn't solve it, but let me have my moment.) To explain, the State purchased years ago a phone system. It's a nifty thing that lets clients calling in be put into on hold for indefinitely amounts of time until a worker is available to talk to them. This is because before we got so many calls that each individual workers had desk phones that rang all day usually with three to four people trying to call the same worker at any given (I'm not exaggerating this, I tracked 70-80 calls per day on average). Now since an average worker on has time scheduled in the day to take about 8-10 calls. You can see there was a problem.
So we have this expensive new phone system that is generally considered to be Beelzebub the Lord of Pain by most people, but is a necessary evil. It also likes to malfunction a lot. (I case you didn't catch on, I work for the government.) One of the problems is that when someone calls in, we get a ringing on out computer letting us know there is a call coming in. Our desk phone also rings to let us know the phone is ready to answer the call. But sometime the desk phone doesn't ring. This is followed by the worker answering the phone and not being able to talk to the person on the other end because the computer will not connect the call to the phone.
Today, I had that happen. This has happened a lot. I usually try answering several times then the person gets it that the call isn't going to go through and they hang up. (And since average wait times can easily be 45 minutes or longer, I'm don't imagine they are smiling and singing praises about the department when this happens.)But today, the person didn't hang up. Fortunately, my brain was working despite a head cold. So I realized that I could still transfer a call, so I transferred it to another worker. I didn't know this at the time, but since the system doesn't work, it actually put me on a conference call with the client calling in and I could actually talk the person. All the person wanted to know was if his case had been processed yet which was a total waste of my time, but I was ecstatic I found a work around to a problem that has plagued us for over a year.
I reported the problem to our tech people, who were amazed with my discovery, and even more amazed that I filed my report correctly.
It's so sad that I'm excited about that, but it felt a lot better than having some elderly lady investigated for fraud.
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