Rough Friday

In general I love Fridays. Even though I have to go to work, it's usually a good day, because everyone is in a little better mood. But yesterday - which was Friday - was so bad that it's the reason that I am writing this from my office. I'll get to that in a second.

As the Training Manager for a technical support center, I want to go through the training for all of our clients. Doing this for some is not that difficult - a few days, to a week of training. Not too bad. Over the last 2 weeks though, I have tried to go through one. I want to sit through like a student, and experience everything. I managed to accomplish this for the majority of the time. Anyway, Monday I start a different session with our largest client, and that will be 4 weeks long.

The hardest thing about doing this, is it severly reduces my ability to be a manager. I have reports and projects I need to get done, and my boss (who is great most of the time) was really demanding that a lot of these things get done by the end of the week. Well, given that sitting in class was usually 8 hours of my day, meeting I have during the week I had to reschedule during my "lunch" (I use the quotes, because it's not like I had the opportunity to eat) and anything else I needed to do would have to be done outside of class. Until Wednesday. On top of all of these things, we are hiring a couple new trainers for the client whose training begins Monday. The deal is the client sends someone to train the class while the three of us (along with regular trainees) sit through the class and pay attention not only to the information, but how the trainer presents it. It's called "Train-the Trainer." Hiring a trainer meant that I had to be a part of the interviewing. This took me away from training class on Wednesday and Thursday. On top pf this, the curriculum for Monday's class was completely changing. Which meant we had to get the software and the materials ready and printed for Monday. They said everything would be ready by Friday. Friday? Yes, Friday. If we didn't have to have 20 manuals printed and bound for Monday, that would be fine. But here we have a time crunch.

So Friday comes, and everything was starting out ok. We got the software, and we waiting on the materials. I went to training class. At which point the trainer came in and said that the class was pretty much done. All that was left was for us to go out and listen to phone calls with another associate. This is called "mentoring." I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to get some of my little 'projects' done, and then I could mentor in the afternoon. And that's when things went awry.

As a manager, most of my days are not spent completing projects, getting paperwork filed and filled out, and such. Most of my time is spent "putting out fires." Handling the small issues that pop up during the course of the day.

Fire #1: A trainee - we'll call him "Chad" has missed 30 hours of training. The rule is you are jepordizing your job if you miss 8. Then we make a judgement call. The biggest thing we ask is that if you are going to miss, then call us and let us know. If you don't then we are free to assume that you quit. Chad missed Thursday, and did not call in. This put him to about 30 hours missed (I failed to mention that he was originally tranferred from another class because he missed to much time in it). He decided to come in on Friday...late. So the trainer sent him to my office. I pulled up the "Sick Line Log" which shoes who called and when. He came in and sat down. I said "Where have you been?" (this was not the first conversation I had with him about attendance). He said "On (interstate) 83." I said "Since yesterday? That's some traffic." He said "No, I was sick yesterday." Quickly, I asked "Why didn't you call?" He replied "I did." I go "Well, I'm looking at the call log and I don't see anything that remotely resembles you name." He then said "I called Wednesday night, I can get my phone to prove it." I said "Okay." He went to get his phone and could not show where he called in. He sat there and lied to me, and I called his bluff. He lost - both the battle of wits, and his job.

Still waiting for the updated material so I can take it to the printer. I went back to work, trying to get a couple things done. I got a little done.

Fire #2: A class was graduating yesterday. However, one of the students didn't have the average to pass. The trainer let me know. I emailed my boss (who is head of HR) to see how she wanted me to handle. She got back to me an hour or so later. He was going to be let go. I told the trainer to send him to my office. He came down. We'll call this trainee "Norman." Norman sits down and I asked him "Do you know what average you need to pass training?" He said "No." I asked "Didn't the trainer let you know what you needed to pass." He shook his head. For a brienf moment - I wondered if he really didn't know until I realized that the trainer didn't tell his class what they needed to pass... I DID. On day 1 (about 4 weeks ago) I went in and gave a presentation which includes a slide that tells them what average they need to pass. Norman said that he messed up test 3 because he was rushed. I asked him if he didn have as much time as everyone else, and he didn't have an answer. I figured it up and let him know that even if he got a 100% on the test he messed up on, his average would still be below the acceptable level. He, too, lost his job.

Fire #3: A guy needed his original hire sheet to prove that he told us about a vacation that he had planned in April. I don't know why he emailed me, but then I had to go find it, talk to his Supervisor, emailed him, and the Operations managers. No resolution as of yet.

Fire #4: Had to print Non-Disclosure agreement forms from the client to use on Monday. Keep the information secret. Put those in the printer.

Still no new material.

Fire #5: One of my trainers is being moved to a different position to help New Associates on the floor. By doing this, he's changing managers. He went to a couple meeting with that manager. And decided that he didn't like it. And wanted to talk to me about it. Well, one of the positions that we hired for was the one left vacant by this transition. So, if we was wanting to come back, he really couldn't. He didn't go that far, and we talked for a while.

Finally! We got the new material. I had one my trainers download it and send it to me. Once I got it, it burned it to a CD. Popped it out and was on my way.... Driving out of the parking lot I looked up at the building that provided me with a horrible Friday, and felt releived... until I remembered. I had left all of those copies of the Non-Disclosure form in the copier. I stopped turned around and went back. I ran to the copier and grabbed the copies, and got back into my car. Driving away I looked up at the building that provided me with a horrible Friday. I was on my way to Staples to have the manual printed.

I took me a half hour to get there. I took the disk in and she popped it in her computer to find she could not open it. I went to the car and grabbed my laptop. Put the disk in, and I could not open it either. The file was "corrupt?!?" After running it through a small repair, I could open it. I burned another copy.... nothing. She still couldn't open it. Maybe it's the CD. I burned a 3rd copy on a brand new CD-R, and still nothing. I would have to print it all out. Since it is 420 pages, I can't do that from home. Which leads me to why I am in the office today. I am printing out 420 pages, so I can take the hard copy to a printer and pray that they can make the manuals by Monday morning. My weekend is killed by my Friday.