Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Free Technical Support, Computer Science and Colwyn Bay FC

When I worked in the call centre, I used to hate telling people what I did. Call centre work does have a a stigma attatched to it whereby you leave your souls at the door. We were an inbound call centre, which meant we didn't have to ring up people and sell things to them. Instead, we answered people's problems. 9 times out of 10, they finished the call happier than when they picked up. However, because we worked in "a call centre", we got bounded with the arseholes who roll off sales pitches parrot fashion, bully old ladies, and probably rape their own children. We were professional, friendly and had to think in our job. We also won "Call Centre of the year 2005". I know, I never knew such an award existed, but yeah, apparently it does.

Roll on six months later. I have increased the number of dates been on in 2006 on from "one" to "two", and changed my job. When I got the web design job, I felt great! Comedians held me with more respect, women didn't seem so repulsed, and - by having a job like web designing - I became part of a hard working learned elite in Colwyn Bay (yes, it does exist, we don't show our faces much, due to the fact that we may suffer intellectual osmosis with the amount of chavs walking around the place). Now, instead of muttering "callcentre" under my breath, I scream "My name is Rhys Wynne! And I am a web designer!"

Then we get problems.

I'm sure I'm not the first, but whenever I mention I'm an IT guy, people think I care about their PC problems. Conversations usually go like this: "So what do you do Rhys?", "Oh, I'm a web page designer.", "Oh really? Well why is it that whenever I visit slutseatnuts.com, my computer drops to a crawl?". I usually have to explain to them it would be like asking a cardiologist to have a look at my balls to see if they're fine, and that my area of PC expertise is in creating things, rather than fixing things. I mean, I know a little bit about it, but not a huge amount.

It's like because I work in IT, I care about PC's, and that is my life. It isn't. I like beer, football and other things. Nobody ever asks me a football question, but people ask me about PC's. The other thing is that - by not answering - I'm keeping people in work. People should be paid a lot of money to fix people's PC's, I just couldn't live with myself costing thousands of people their jobs. I'd be like a geeky, liberal and more attractive Maggie Thatcher.

My mate Goz had the right idea. Whenever he needed some IT work doing, he showed his appreciation. His appreciation usually came in the form of beer and having my tea cooked, but I - for one - appreciated the gesture. Also, should the person with the PC problems be attractive, I will usually be happy to service them.

I've started fighting back now. I told a taxi driver a few days ago "so, what IS the best route from Colwyn Bay station to Colwyn Heights?". After that, I'm out of ideas, any suggestions for questions to ask various people in trades outside of office hours which would only annoy them?

In other news, Colwyn Bay lost 4-0 vs. Woodley Sports. Woodley (which is near Stockport) has a pitch which is made up of artificial grass. It blantantly gives them the home advantage. Well, that's the excuse we're giving.

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