Service Is My Middle Name – #1LinerWeds

Since so many of you read the longest post ever published on No Facilities, I’m giving you a break today. A simple one-liner Wednesday and some photos.

In addition to managing information services, developing systems, and managing our anemic social media presence, I handle administrative stuff where I work. I pay the rent, buy the appliances – clean the ice out of the freezer – (well, not any longer) and coordinate repairs on all things building related. When people have problems, they bring them to me and I solve them. Just like this:

“Who do I see about a replacement bulb for the light fixture under my binder bin?”

“Home Depot.”

Hey, I can’t fix everything.

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s fun weekly series One-Liner Wednesday. If you have a one-liner, I’d encourage you to join in on the fun. You can follow this link to participate and to see the one-liners from the other participants.

Loving the flowers outside our office.
Thse little guys popped up in the grass by our parking lot
Thse little guys popped up in the grass by our parking lot
These squirrels should hike themselves up to our place.
“I think there’s a bunny over there.”
“I don’t have time to watch these guys. I need some sleep.”
“Thanks for the peanut!”
I am not entering the water, I am well with the boundary of the parking lot.
We’re on our way to the park.
I thought that might be some interesting birds – it’s just little rapids.
Lime Bikes!

80 thoughts on “Service Is My Middle Name – #1LinerWeds”

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  1. They’re sure gonna miss you, Mr Fixit. Those squirrels really look like fancy rats in that photo. Maddie, Maddie….
    Great photos. More photos than paragraphs! Are you sure you’re ok? 😉Just joking. Your words are always interesting and fun, Dan. Enjoy your weekend.
    PS Those photo ‘taunts’ used to drive me nuts. Waves that could be dolphins or whales. You just never know. You might have had Nessie out there.

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    1. Thanks Cheryl. My weekend is starting this afternoon. We have some nice weather for outside work.

      I was sure that bit of rough water was some great bird or fish or something. Just the sun playing on the water.

      Maddie really knows how to work that cot.

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  3. First and foremost, now I know I can send all my ‘extra’ squirrels and chipmunks to GP Cox – he’s looking for new residents. :-) For several years in addition to my HR duties, I was the head of facilities for an international company of 1,000+ employees. I think you and I found another topic we could share stories about. :-) Maddie, Maddie, Maddie – I do love seeing you rest on your cot. :-)

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    1. We have so few employees, Judy, but the stories…I have a list of topics in a folder labeled “After you retire.” It’s not like we’re running a spa! I can’t imagine if there were hundreds or over 1,000 – I might do some harm.

      I’ll be pointing the squirrels in the park south to Florida. It’s a long walk, but the livin’ is easy in the south.

      I took Maddie out for “business” On the way back, she dragged me into the shade. I told her we could sit for 10 minutes. She smiled all the way to her cot, and we sat for half an hour. She has my number…

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  4. I’m glad to know I’m not the only Cheers bar around here…”where everyone knows our name,” and thinks we know/do everything, including changing light bulbs.

    Nice photos, Dan. Love the daisies, the lime bikes and G.P. Cox’s soon-to-be army of squirrels.

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    1. Seriously, like you have a magic wand!

      The overhead lights, I can get repaired. The desk items are on us. The guy wanted to know if he should pick up a few, in case others need them. I said no, because I’m sure we already have a few stashed away somewhere. I’ve actually had people ask me for light bulbs for accent lamps they brought in from home – my office is not a hardware store! Tools, tape, Super Glue – yeah, ‘cuz I use a lot of that when data tries to get out of the database. I will not miss this job when I give it to someone else later this year.

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  6. Just an observation here . . .(Hi Maddie) . . . the go to guy at works doesn’t stop being that guy when he retires. My father got calls for years after he retired. And I’ll bet you’re ‘him’ at home too!

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    1. Aw Pam, don’t say that. Actually, don’t remind me. My dad was that guy, and he continued to be that guy until he passed away.

      the good news is that I get to give this job up before I retire. They want a transition period for the new guy.

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    1. Thanks Teagan. Maddie enjoys that cot in all kinds of weather. My wife tells me that they’ve already been out today, while there was still shade near the house. Maddie will lead us to the shade in the summer, as if to say: “it’s cool here, we could sit in the shade…”

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  9. “Home Depot” says it all!! I’m afraid when you retire you will become Mr. Fix-It in your neighborhood. It’s your destiny Dan. And I bet The Editor already has a secret ‘To-Do List’ in the making!!

    Birds or not, that’s a great shot with the bright sunshine. Looks like those squirrels found a great smorgasbord at their disposal. I’m definitely putting a note in my backyard for all the chipmunks to go see G. P. Cox!! See? This is me waving goodbye! Lol.

    Maddie never disappoints. You could take a picture with a paper bag over her head and I would love it! She’s done a superb job of training you Dan. And for all that hard work of whipping you into shape, she deserves all the downtime she can get on her cot!
    🔹 Ginger 🔹

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    1. It looks like GP is going to be welcoming squirrels from all points in the near future. The Editor has a not-so-secret to-do list that I will be addressing for many years to come.

      Maddie knows how to work me into retrieving the cot. She has started dragging me to shady spots on hot days. She used to accept it when we would say “it’s too hot” but now, she tries to get us to consider the shade.

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  10. “Who do I see about a replacement bulb for the light fixture under my binder bin?”

    “Home Depot.”

    That is good. That is really good.

    But then again, while working in a steel foundry, I remember getting chewed out by the union rep for shoveling sand out of my work area. The guys who were supposed to do it were goofing off, so I did it myself. What stunned me was how genuinely angry the union rep was about what I did.

    The foundry went out of business. I wonder why.

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    1. My very first job after college was as a programmer in a manufacturing plant of Burroughs. I saw an outlet in an overhead bus and I thought I would hang an extension cord for a desk lamp. Big mistake! About two hours later, a man came, stepped up on my desk and hung a cord that came down to about 3 feet above the top of my desk. I signed the work-order as being complete and they charged the installation back to my boss.

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  11. Don’t you love those nav apps? They tell people they’ve reached my house when they’re a couple of thousand feet from the drive, possibly because the road curves closer to our house than the drive entrance. I still say they’re programmed by zombies. They’re always sending people to graveyards and wastelands and abandoned properties and crack houses instead of their programmed destinations.

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    1. Half my friends think I am going to end up in the river while visiting the park, so I thought I’d share this with them. I trust Greta not to get me in trouble. She does occasionally tell me I’m going the wrong way on a one-way street when I am clearly on a two-way street, but she hasn’t driven me off a cliff…yet.

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  13. That was really short. You know, instinctively I’m a helping person. So, when I was working as Microsoft Technical Chat Support Rep I had this habit of resolving all the problems that came to me. However, that ruined my stats. As per the rules, my chats should not exceed 18 minutes on average. My average chat time was way beyond an hour. I was on the verge of suspension after three months of poor performance. So, my best buddies and my manager stepped in. My solutions were right. The quality of chat was good. My manager read more than 100 chat transcripts and found that almost 60% of chats were beyond my support boundaries. I sat for extra training after my shift for around two weeks. It wasn’t a technical training, but he had to train me that sometimes the best way to help is to direct the person to the right department. My instincts and upbringing won’t let me do that. It took me a while to convince myself and the next month I was in the top ten list. Later, FranklinCovey support department chose me for their team based on my willingness to help factor.

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    1. So how is it that I never got you when I called for help? I’ve had several jobs where I was chastised for doing too good a job, producing too much during my shift, or fixing problems that weren’t in the scope of the agreement.

      I have fixed all sorts of problems around here, but I choose which projects and for whom I will go above and beyond the call. I work with a woman who is very nice (our CEO’s secretary). The drawer tracks on her desk drawer broke. I bought new ones and installed them, after she couldn’t find anyone who would take the repair job. We have another person whose desk has a broken drawer, but I’m not offering to help.

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      1. You might have. We don’t reveal our real names. I was Morris and my best buddies were Russell and James. We are told to choose a Christian name on the last day of the training. I was Shane at AOL, Bora at FranklinCovey. However, with experience I realized that irate customers swear less at female chat reps. So, I became Jennifer and since I was handling a senior position I was also Katherine. So if the customer isn’t happy with Jennifer, he would say that he would like to talk to my superior. I would switch the chat to Katherine and then continue talking as Katherine. Of course, the tone and style would change and I was excellent at it. I was Sebastian at eBay. Later I decided to take back-office job for HP UK. I believe HP UK was the best job I had. However, the most learning happened at Microsoft.

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          1. Not sure what you mean by the term coney sketch, but I loved working on the chat support. I became a trainer in 2005 after which I took fewer chats, but every now and then I used to manage escalated irate chats that my juniors can’t handle. It was challenging and fun. In 2006 I was the head of the email support (it was boring) and by 2008 I got a new job in HP UK which I lost in 2009 during the recession. Then the writer in me was born. Out of necessity.

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    2. This is a great example of why stats don’t always tell the whole story. Kudos to your manager for making the effort to look beyond the numbers!!

      I had a DELL rep on the line once for 6 hours – I wish that was a joke – and he never resolved my problem.

      I bought an Apple.

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      2. To be honest, Joanne, back in the days, Dell support was considered the toughest job in the call centre industry. If my resume shows I worked in Dell support, any darn company will take me. In fact, within the industry professionals we would say – Dell is Hell. As a Microsoft Tech support I used to take around 80 chats per shift. Dell guys would take not more than 10 chats per shift. Also, the problem with most reps is that they are more worried about maintaining their own stats. Like in my case, my average time was way higher than others. There are many dark secrets that I can spill about how American companies and the world of call centre. In my experience, AOL and HP UK were the only two corporations that empowered us to truly help customers with whatever tools we had.

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        1. I bet you could tell some hair-raising stories.
          Call centres get really bad reps but I’d be prepared to go out on a limb and say it is ALWAYS management’s fault.

          During my career, I was parachuting into our struggling call centre for 6 months to identify what was happening with this ‘problem child’.
          What I found was appalling and what these people were managing to accomplish with the tools they had available to them was nothing short of miraculous.
          I’ve had a very deep respect for anyone who works in a call centre ever since. I believe that EVERY executive should spend several weeks in their company’s call centre – on the phones managing customer calls.

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  16. As an admin professional, Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie) and I are the same person because we have all the answers and we can fix all the problems. Apparently. Loving your humour and your wonderful photos. Gosh! Those squirrels make my day. The lone squirrel in my yard hasn’t been around in a while on account of my dogs. I live through you (lol).

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  18. Home Depot was perfect. I enjoyed the flowers around your office, Dan. When you retire can you open an “ask me” blog. Then I can contact you with questions like, “What did you have for lunch?” and “What size bulb should I use if the element says no more than 60 Watt?”

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    1. Good idea, John but I’m pretty tired of answering these questions. Then again, it would be a whole new group of people (as long as I don’t tell my coworkers).

      I’ve been know to put brighter bulbs in those sockets. If a 100watt LED only uses 16 watts, I think it can go in a Max 60 watt fixture.

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  21. Haha! Fine answer. I must admit, I was pleased when the office manager climbed up on a chair and changed out my bad bulb for me. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind running an errand to buy bulbs, but still, it was nice :)

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