Out in the cold.

Since around Thanksgiving, I've been noticing new faces at the Help Desk. It started with half a dozen people sitting with other analysts. Since we had previously had visitors from Branch Support over to see how we did things, a sort of exchange program, I first thought these new people might have been from downstairs. Then I thought they might be visitors from the now dismantled Financial Services Help Desk. When I saw them sitting in front of computers attempting to take calls I finally figured that they were new analysts.

Since I've been the trainer for a number of years now I wondered why I not only wasn't involved in the training of these new analysts but also why no one had even seen fit to tell me anything about this or even introduce me.

Yesterday, I got tired of waiting and asked M***, the designated "backup up trainer". He told me he had been tasked with bringing them up to speed on passwords only in two days. At which point they were put on the phone and expected to be productive. Except, I knew from experience that it took more than two days of training to prepare one for taking calls. I knew that callers regularly just pick the first selection on the phone menu just to get a person and, surprise, surprise, the first selection happened to be passwords so that even those who were supposed to get only password calls would get every call imaginable. M*** spent his entire day going cube to cube trying to help these people who had been thrown to the wolves without proper training.

This morning I went in to talk to the Site Manager.

"So, N***. When was someone going to tell me that I wasn't the trainer any more."

E said that I was still the trainer and I launched into him. If I was the trainer, why wasn't I doing any training of this half a dozen new analysts. If I was the trainer, why wasn't I even talked to about this? If I was the trainer, why weren't any of these new people sat with me to actually learn something.

He thought someone had talked to me. I told him that M*** had said on several occasions " Shouldn't you be talking to Geis about this?" At one point the Education Coordinator said that he thought M*** should do it. "Oh no. That's not my job," he said. And so no one ever talked to me.

N*** said that the training was on Fridays and Saturday afternoon and evenings and I wasn't available. Untrue. When D**** had asked me at the beginning of the summer about the possibilities of training on Saturdays I said that it would depend on which Saturdays in case I had already made plans. That I should have a little more advance notice than I had been getting for new training (3 days). When D**** conveyed this information to the Site Manager and HR Manager he changed my "it depends" to a "no".

I also took the opportunity to tell the Site Manager what was going on with his company. The missed SEC filing, the 25% drop in stock value, the probably delisting from NASDAQ. He didn't know this.

He tried to convince me that it was just an oversight.

"I see this as a long evolving pattern of neglect. I started out getting two weeks notice as to when new hires were going to start. Then it was a week. Then it was less than that. Then it was three days. Then I wasn't even told at all. I started out keeping a seating chart up to date and the HR Manager copied that file from the shared network drive into the training manual. Then she wasn't copying the up to date file anymore. Then she created a brand new seating chart from scratch and when I told her that I'd been doing that all along she looked surprised and said she didn't realize that I was doing that. My job description doesn't say that I'm a trainer. My salary doesn't say that I'm a trainer. I'm not doing any actual training when there are new hires sitting out there right now. What the fuck am I doing here?"

Here's what I see happening. Earlier this year, the HR Rep asked me about doing this "two days then taking passwords" program and I said it wouldn't work. It wasn't enough time. They wouldn't have enough experience and the Help Desk would suffer for it. So, instead of listening to my years of experience she gave the job to M*** who she thought didn't know it was impossible. And you know what? It failed, just like I said it would. THAT'S why I wasn't talked to about this. She didn't want to hear me tell her that her scheme wouldn't work. And now that I've been proven right yet again, no one has the guts to talk to me about it. If we had done this my way, the way I've been doing it successfully for nearly four years now, they would be productive now. Instead, M***'s off the phones solving their problems.

"I have absolutely no confidence in this management or this company," I told the Site Manager. "This is completely unprofessional. It's short sighted. And it's failing. . . . My phone is ringing."

And I walked out.