Saturday, August 13, 2005
Finally, she speaks.
Wow, I finally have a little time to breathe! Here's what made my week so crazy...
My new account at work, FamousDesigner, is going live next Wednesday. We are creating FamousDesigner's online shopping boutique for their skincare, makeup, and fragrance. We are also creating a web tool for the call center agents to use for order placement. The web tool wasn't finished until Monday. Most of the other business rules (you know, the stuff I have to train) weren't finalized until late last week. This kind of stuff usually happens with a new client, but this time it was particularly painful - we had to create everything from scratch. So I was scrambling to get my training manual finished last week. It didn't happen.
On Monday and Tuesday, the five agents, the supervisor, and I went to FamousDesigner's fragrance/makeup/skincare school. We were joined by other new folks who would be working at FamousDesigner's department store counters. The training was at a fancy hotel out in Irving. That part was lots of fun, and we got great free gifts.
My portion of the training started Wednesday. Now, remember, the web tool wasn't finished until Monday, and so I didn't have any training created for it. Also remember that we don't have internet access at home yet. So Tuesday evening, I went to Starbucks with Victor's computer and grabbed a bunch of screen shots from the web tool (luckily, I could access it from there). I stayed up till 12:30am putting together training for it. Then I got up at 5am to go to work so that I could finish up more of the training manual. Turns out the account was set up wrong in our system, so I couldn't access anything I needed to. Training began at 9. I had to pick up our client at a nearby hotel, since she was presenting the history and clientele of FamousDesigner to the agents all morning. IT fixed the account later that day, so I still had to put together that portion of the training.
I was at work from 6:45am till 5pm Wednesday. Thursday I was there from 7am until 5pm. Friday 7am until 5pm. I'm about to go back into work today to finish the online training I'm creating for our two days of class next week. I'm exhausted. Training totally wears me out, and I'm not used to working 50+ hour weeks. Every night I come home to a still-mostly-unpacked apartment and work on getting things unpacked. Yuck. But I'll finish up the training material this weekend, and there are only two more days of training left.
Now, enough griping about work. Two pretty cool things happened recently! The first was last weekend... Victor's mom and sister threw me a bridal shower, and I made a ton of cash! The way the bridal shower worked was that everyone who came had to give at least $25 to me. Apparently this is the way a Mexican bridal shower works. We played wedding bingo, ate really good catered dinner, and I tried to smile while not understanding most of what people were saying. Luckily for me there were some English speakers there, so that was good. I'm supposed to use to buy something nice for myself... I'm thinking a nice wedding photographer for myself or a nice wedding florist for myself. It's not supposed to go to the wedding, but that's where I'm going to use it. Also, I got some gifts, even though gifts were not required, since everyone had to pay to get in.
The other great thing is that we finally went to the new IKEA in Frisco. Many of you may be familiar with my love for IKEA, and it's nice to have one close by instead of driving to Houston two or three times a year. We picked up a coffee table, a small table for the herb garden, some curtains, shelves for our cocktail glasses, and various other small things. We're going back to get a wardrobe for Victor's extensive clothing collection. We weren't sure the wardrobe would fit in the car (but it will).
By the way, we are able to get a really crappy internet connection some of the time now, by leaching on to someone else's wireless network. So that's how I'm able to write this from home.
Wow, I finally have a little time to breathe! Here's what made my week so crazy...
My new account at work, FamousDesigner, is going live next Wednesday. We are creating FamousDesigner's online shopping boutique for their skincare, makeup, and fragrance. We are also creating a web tool for the call center agents to use for order placement. The web tool wasn't finished until Monday. Most of the other business rules (you know, the stuff I have to train) weren't finalized until late last week. This kind of stuff usually happens with a new client, but this time it was particularly painful - we had to create everything from scratch. So I was scrambling to get my training manual finished last week. It didn't happen.
On Monday and Tuesday, the five agents, the supervisor, and I went to FamousDesigner's fragrance/makeup/skincare school. We were joined by other new folks who would be working at FamousDesigner's department store counters. The training was at a fancy hotel out in Irving. That part was lots of fun, and we got great free gifts.
My portion of the training started Wednesday. Now, remember, the web tool wasn't finished until Monday, and so I didn't have any training created for it. Also remember that we don't have internet access at home yet. So Tuesday evening, I went to Starbucks with Victor's computer and grabbed a bunch of screen shots from the web tool (luckily, I could access it from there). I stayed up till 12:30am putting together training for it. Then I got up at 5am to go to work so that I could finish up more of the training manual. Turns out the account was set up wrong in our system, so I couldn't access anything I needed to. Training began at 9. I had to pick up our client at a nearby hotel, since she was presenting the history and clientele of FamousDesigner to the agents all morning. IT fixed the account later that day, so I still had to put together that portion of the training.
I was at work from 6:45am till 5pm Wednesday. Thursday I was there from 7am until 5pm. Friday 7am until 5pm. I'm about to go back into work today to finish the online training I'm creating for our two days of class next week. I'm exhausted. Training totally wears me out, and I'm not used to working 50+ hour weeks. Every night I come home to a still-mostly-unpacked apartment and work on getting things unpacked. Yuck. But I'll finish up the training material this weekend, and there are only two more days of training left.
Now, enough griping about work. Two pretty cool things happened recently! The first was last weekend... Victor's mom and sister threw me a bridal shower, and I made a ton of cash! The way the bridal shower worked was that everyone who came had to give at least $25 to me. Apparently this is the way a Mexican bridal shower works. We played wedding bingo, ate really good catered dinner, and I tried to smile while not understanding most of what people were saying. Luckily for me there were some English speakers there, so that was good. I'm supposed to use to buy something nice for myself... I'm thinking a nice wedding photographer for myself or a nice wedding florist for myself. It's not supposed to go to the wedding, but that's where I'm going to use it. Also, I got some gifts, even though gifts were not required, since everyone had to pay to get in.
The other great thing is that we finally went to the new IKEA in Frisco. Many of you may be familiar with my love for IKEA, and it's nice to have one close by instead of driving to Houston two or three times a year. We picked up a coffee table, a small table for the herb garden, some curtains, shelves for our cocktail glasses, and various other small things. We're going back to get a wardrobe for Victor's extensive clothing collection. We weren't sure the wardrobe would fit in the car (but it will).
By the way, we are able to get a really crappy internet connection some of the time now, by leaching on to someone else's wireless network. So that's how I'm able to write this from home.
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