Work again

This might be a little rant-y; feel free to skip to the end.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been acting as front-line tech support at work. The chap who normally does it is on leave; there was some who came in to cover for him, but she never actually turned up. The first day she was supposed to be there, she called and said that her car had been impounded - she's been living in Quebec for long enough that she should have updated her driver's licence, so when she was pulled over by the police that morning.... That doesn't explain why she didn't appear the next day, or indeed any day since.

So with about an hour's training, I've been answering the phone and taking messages for people. I can understand just enough to send people off to the right person about 80% of the time; and while I'm still terrified of the phone - there are far more buttons that I'm comfortable with - I can at leats use it without cutting too many people off. I can't say I don't resent it - I'm a software engineer, after all, and this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm doing OK at it.

I do dislike that I'm expected to be doing my proper job at the same time, though - it's quite hard to concentrate on code when the phone is ringing. And when I get asked to fix a PC as well.... I think it's been ten years since I last popped open a PC case, so I had no idea how to go about fixing a hardware issue - I ended up asking so many questions of a colleague that it would have been faster for him to do it himself.

And then I found out that I'm supposed to be answering support emails too - there have been complaints that we're not going responses. I don't mind doing that sort of thing, but I've been doing support for a fortnight now, and this is the first time that anyone's mentioned them to me.

So I think the general gist of my rant is... If you want me to do four jobs, that's fine. But you might want to be sure that I'm aware I'm actually supposed to be doing all of them, and you might want to consider whether I actually know how to do them in the first place.

And it's amazing how my motivation seems to slip the later I get paid; my latest paycheque is now two weeks late.