I work in a small call center supporting medical software that our company makes. In our company we have three different locations. Where I work (Kentucky)we have the Level 1's (me and a few others) who take on all incoming calls and have basic knowledge of all our medical software packages. Also at our location we have level 2's who take over the most complex calls on a product I'll call TC. We have another location in Vermont that houses level 2's for our product I'll call TW. And finally we have a third location in Illinois who take over Level 2 issues for our TS product line. But all calls come in to me and my wonderful fellow level 1's to sort out as to which are easy basic ones we can solve within a few minutes and which require more time and knowledge than we personally are allowed. There are actually only 2 of us techs that work at all after 5pm normally and that is myself as a Level 1 and a Level 2 here for TC issues only.

In a roundabout way, he and the CFO (they're taking turns, garbling the message as much as possible) manage to relate that the CEO was attempting to send mail from home and received a mail undeliverable message. Given some small hope by this I ask two questions:

What SMTP server did you use and who was the recepient of the e-mail that bounced.

My answers? Comcast and a user not in any way affiliated with our company...

This is kind of a variation on a karma request. As most of you know, I have recently started my own business. But I've found, like many sole proprietors do, that I need help getting started.

So I'm looking for an Administrative/Marketing Assistant. If anyone knows someone who

• lives near Vancouver, BC
• already works or studies part time
• is meticulously organized, outgoing, and enthusiastic

I'm focusing this position toward students or part-timers because there is no fixed compensation. This is more of partnership, where the successful candidate will receive an equal share of the profits for every job.

And Hawk, if this post goes against TSC rules, let me know and I will remove it.

I've been working at my current job for about three years. I'm a jill-of-all-trades for a small IT shop for a big organization. In the past three years I've seen:

1. Clients credit cards double/triple/quadruple billed "accidentally" -week after week- by someone who would then lie about it, and giggle when she got caught and we had to spend three days untangling the mess she'd made of the files.

2. Our entire DC nearly eat itself when someone got the bright idea to pull the last remaining air cooling system out, after blatantly stating they were doing it because "Our Director isn't here to stop me." thus killing 60K in equipment and bringing the network down.

3. A file containing numerous bits of personality identifiable financial data get sent over the internet in plain text by a department too stupid to understand a three-step set of instructions for encrypting it...and then when called on it claimed, "Well you said the system did it automatically...." And then continued to send it that way, despite repeated explanations of how it should work. And all of these people are still gainfully employed with no disciplinary action whatsoever.

And the list goes on and on. My question.... Is this normal? Do you guys see this level of stupidity too? Or is there just no hope for my users in particular?

Cause I'm about at the point I'm getting up in the morning hoping that my car is dead/plumbing broke/building on fire just so I don't have to go into work. Actually, scratch that, I don't want to get up in the morning ...period, if it means I have to go to work.

I used to love my job. That's the sad part. I loved the challenge, and now the phone can't even ring without me cringing.

"Punxsutawney Phil announced officially the seeing of his shadow."

- Sorry about you, my northern friends; whose winter still has some weeks to go, – said the Ghost, sticking his tongue out and sweating like a wet sponge, while watching the scorching sun come flaming trough the windows, raising the temperature inside the room to 35 degrees or more (close to 100 F), effectively turning the premises into a personal solar powered furnace.

Turning on a few more electric fans, in a futile attempt to keep the computers from shutting down by themselves due to excessive heat; the Ghost pictures longingly images of vast snow covered forests; of small, friendly towns of steep roofed houses that look like drawn from a winter postcard; of children merrily playing in the snow.

But cool thoughts don’t help to dry the Ghost’s shroud, so damp with sweat that it looks like... well, like a damp shroud.

I am most certainly too close to hell.

I need to get me an air conditioner...

So I come into work a few minutes late, hoping to avoid detection, and get to my cubicle (which is closest to the door and furthest from my boss) without a hitch. As soon as I try to log into the phones I get this weird error message about licenses being all used up. I occasionally have gotten this before and it usually resolves within a minute or two. So I try again and again over the next 5 minutes. No luck. So I have to go tell my boss I can't get in. This is at my start time at 11am. It's now a little after 1:30pm and I just got logged into the phones a few minutes ago. It took my boss, one of our local "phone experts" techies, a call to the local phone company and at least one other person I don't even know to get me logged back in. And they still have no idea what caused it.

Of course the fun part for me was knowing that I can't take any phone calls until I can get logged in, and that it's in no way my fault, and listening to my coworkers swear at me under their breath(but loud enough for me to hear it)for not being on the phone helping them. One of them decided to play hooky on monday and I spent several hours slammed with calls because she was gone, so I don't feel too sorry for her at least. So more than 1/4 of my shift passed before I had to do anything. Sweet!