PanningForGold

In my ‘Ideas For Blog’ there is a note that simply says ‘dispatcher games’  I know what the note refers to, as will you by the time this post is finished what I can’t figure out is what prompted this note in the first place, not that it really matters.

I started out as a dispatcher, as dispatchers  we mostly talked to technicians.  We made sure they had their jobs in order, and we helped them troubleshoot problems they had in the field.  What the technicians didn’t know is that we dispatchers played some interesting games to make our day that much more bearable. 

My favourite game was the ‘word’ game.  At the beginning of the day we would all write a few words on individual sheets of paper.  The papers were then thrown into a hat and we would each blindly choose a slip of paper.  We then had to use that word in a sentence while talking to the technician.  Of course the technician never knew we were playing a game.  They probably thought we were just a little crazy.  There were only a few rules, the main rule of course is that we had to be respectful of and to the customer.  We would never put a technician in an awkward situation.  A bit of experience, meaning a week or so on the job and you knew in the first few seconds of a conversation whether it was safe to play or not. 

A few examples of the words we used are: Australopithecus, meatballs, nutmeg, bifutus regularis, bigfoot, amniocentesus, neoteny, beens and weeines, etc.  Keep in mind these were technicians installing modems and digital boxes in peoples homes.  So a conversation might go something like this.

Tech: “Hello Bri, this is Dan tech 8433.”

Me: “Hello Dan what can I do for you today.”

“I’m at job 3 I’m having some issues getting the modem on line and the customer is here in front of me”.  This is the technicians code for ‘the customer can hear everything that is being said.

“No problem Dan, can you give me the serial number and I’ll check to see if the modem is online on our end?”

“Sure thing Bri here you go”

“Okay Dan I can see the modem on our end. I see the modem is trying to get online, but keeps failing at a certain point.  The problem appears to be that the downstream signal level is deep in the red, perhaps you can try and give it some bifitus regularis and see if that clears up the signal issue?”

long pause from the techincian, on my side however the rest of the dispatchers are bent over in fits of laughter.

“…Uhm, thanks I’ll get that signal cleaned up and give you a call back'”

The lesson is, life is often what you make it, so you may as well work with the hand you are dealt and make it as enjoyable as possible.