Thursday, April 24, 2008

Troubled by a call

It was my second day in an MNC and first time in a software company.I was provided with a SDD (Software Design and Development) document and was asked to get an idea about the project. But being a non techie, that was the last thing that I had expected to do on job. Anyway I had to read the 876 page book and I was totally convinced that the author of this book was totally drunk when he wrote this.


After a week it was the time for me to get a KT (Knowledge Transfer) from my German Counterpart . There were other few bunch of new entrants to the team across different countries like India, Japan and Germany. Since I was the only one person who was senior in this project ,and had read the SDD , so naturally was responsible for coming out with doubts , raising issues and make myself as well as others to get a hold on the concept.


The Scheduled time for the conference call was set for 16:30, I was ready with my doubts and tried logging in to the confo call at 16:20. Then started "The series of Unfortunate events".

Of late one of my friend was telling me that when you "Assume", you make ass of u n me. Here I assumed that sitting in front of a system with headphones is enough to attend a conference call.
As the clock stroked 16:30, I tried logging in the system , but could not get connected. I asked the colleague sitting next to me who was able to successfully join the conference call. He advised me to call 100. I dialed 100 thinking of an excuse I can tell if it connects to the near by police station.

The other end of the phone I received a polite voice of a guy asking how he can help me. After listening to me he said "Sir, you need to raise a ticket against the component IT-IBC". "Ticket...what???" I said trying to digest too many jargon's with in few days of joining. " Can I have your C Number Sir?" he asked me without caring my question.

He noted down my ID number and replied back "Sir, your role is not assigned to the organization chart. so you do not have authorization to raise a ticket"

"Who the hell wants to raise a ticket, I wanted to join the call" I said to myself and asked "Then what you want me to do?" .

"Well you have to raise a ticket for that" his voice seemed as if he concluded it. "You mean...!" I asked him suspiciously "I have to raise a ticket saying that I can not raise a ticket". "Perfect Sir" I heard from the other end while I was thinking of the logical impossibility of the task.

"Are you nuts!!" I wanted to shout but said "Connect me to some one else If you can't help me out".

He adjusted his tone and said "Well I am certainly here to help you out Sir" he continued with his pleasing tone "Please check your mail box , I have sent you a file that contains method of raising a ticket for the first time , and assigning it to a component." As he was saying I opened my mail box to check the newly received mail. It was a 13 page PDF document. I asked his name and said "Nithin, thanks for sending me such an elaborate document , but I am not quite sure that I have enough time to read through your document, raise a message and then log in to the conference call"

"No sir, this document helps you in raising a ticket that you are not able to join conference call, not to help you join immediately. After you raise a ticket one of us will attend the issue, based on the priority we will solve and..."

" That's great and fantastic" I interrupted "But can you solve this issue, right now coz there are people waiting for me in the call?" I put up a commanding voice.

"Well sir, that is not the way we work, but..."
"If you keep aside the ifs and butts, shall I tell you the problem" I said with an increased frustration.

"Hey Vardhan, aren't you joining the call?" it was a ping from my Team lead.

"Boss what are you thinking? If you want I will raise a high prio message once you solve the problem, then you can close it right?!!! Is that ok??"

"Well fine sir, but next time..." I cut him "Ok yaar I will raise the ticket, now tell me what shall I do?"

"Give your system IP and come to net meeting"

It took a min for me to search where the system IP is and how to log on to net meeting.

I joined the net meeting with an IT support guy while rest of my team was in confo with a developer.

"Sir, looks like your computer is not installed with a Confocal software, do you want me to install it?" . "Do I have an option?" I asked impatiently. "No sir, this is the only way. It takes 10 mins". "Well, go ahead then. Why ask"I replied

While he took the control of screen and was working I waited impatiently."So what you had for lunch?"his voice was over pleasant. I was not keen to strike up a sick conversation like this with a guy, but I am in a situation which demanded me not to be rude with him now

I wanted to say "Well two butter rotis, three chapathis, three curries ,..." but said "are you asking me??" with a suspicious tone.

"No Sir, not you. Hey Deepa, what did you have today?'

I wanted to make sure this guy also worked while the flirting is going on and on. I said "how many more mins"

"It's done Sir, I have installed the software" I thought yeah too early half the KT (Knowledge Transfer) must have been over by now.

"You can restart the computer and then join the call" these words had an effect of bomb shells.

I restarted in a min and typed "Conf" as the run command to open up the application. A window popped up saying "Are you sure you want to join the confocal". "No" I said to myself "actually I am planning to shout from here" being irritated to the core . At last I was able to join the call and listen to the discussion going on. Well my troubles aren't over now. It was the turn of the mike to give it away. I realized it when I joined the call.

"If you do not have any doubts, I will probably end this session, Thank you..." Christine the German developer was saying when I just entered the call. I said immediately "No Christine I have few doubts regarding..." still she continued towards formal ending. I typed them to hold on for a min and ran for the IT store of the company, I threw the head phones on table and said "this is faulty, give me other".

I fainted when he said "Sir there is a procedure, you need to raise a tick......"

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