Oh deary me...

At the moment, I am on a 3 month contract. This has already been renewed twice this year (since February 21st 2005), but now they are saying that they may not require me after this NOVEMBER 18TH!!! Damn, I have no other plans right now... I must start searching for jobs.

I did find one job earlier as a web developer, excellent pay negotiable upon experience -- so excellent, basically. And the skill set required is a solid understanding of HTML, CSS, JS, Flash, PHP and MySQL. Oh, the beauty!

I'm going to ring the guys tomorrow and see what goes. I'll let you guys know what goes as well...

Hmm, maybe I should give you all a bit of a background in to the working environment I'm in right now...

OK, so I work as a DST (Desktop Support Technician). I support roughly 500 users including laptop and remote users from our site based in Gloucester. We're running on an NT domain, with our servers running a cocktail of NT4, 2000 and 2003. Our workstations are mainly XP, but we have very few '98 machines, and 2 '95 machines. We do not use Unix/Linux in any way.

The IT department I work in consists of 8 staff split in to 2 groups -- Network Projects, and Business Systems. I am in Network Projects as I deal with the Windows end to end stuff, and support users. Business Systems is mainly the development side, who work mainly with RPG and VB. There are 4 of us in NP and 3 in BS, then there is the IT manager, who is also/mostly part of BS, in a sense.

We have a helpdesk system called Track-It! ... Our so called 'efficiency' is being logged by this software (with my assistance), and wrist slappings are dealt according to statistics. THIS IS WRONG!! The Track-It! helpdesk system only measures the number of hours completed in the number of hours you worked in the day to measure your 'efficiency', but this should really be known as: number of hours completed against number of hours worked in the day, and *not* efficiency!

Although my contract states that I should be supporting desktop users, I do an incredible amount of work outside of my contract, and therefore deserve more money. People have come to rely on me doing this additional work, and as such it has become standard, although I will always know that it is a breach of the contract, and this frustrates me.

Recently, our print server died on us -- BSOD's about every 5 minutes. This took the NP and BS staff about 40 hours to replace (they were literally at the building all night and didn't go home until they had finished next days work -- they did not go home!) ... I left to go home just before it all happened, and found them there next morning stinking and sweating, with a semi-complete print server.

Don't even start on how a print server can crash so much, it takes way too much time and effort to type out what APS is, and how APS works. !!!

I don't think I need to say much more, really. Hope this was good read.

So, basically, they're sacking you even though you are the best person there. You have found another possible job that is good. And your current company sucks.

Have i got that right?

In a nutshell.

I like being concise ;).

Work was sucky again today. A guy upstairs in Customer Services wants a 20" flat screen monitor, which some people have been telling him has been on order for a while. They asked me today what is happening and I said it hasn't been ordered -- now apparently there is 'no excuse' for not ordering this. My excuse is a solid, and valid: 'I have been too busy'. The task is prioritised as a Level 3 out of 3, which is low priority.
Also, people assign me tasks to order something (placed under the category of new purchase orders), so I order it, then close the task. I get told off for this, because when they say: 'Order this item' they actually mean: 'Order this item, make sure you receive it, sign for it, install it, provide initial support for it' (obviously not under the category of new purchase orders).
The system we use here sucks, and they are using mostly false statistics to measure efficiency.

Lol, that's just how life is - never what it appears on the surface.

It's just that our processes are heavily flawed.

Surely if someone has got the wrong end of the stick somewhere along the line, woud it be you who wuld be told off? Say, if someone never gave you an order, and hen the thing never came, would you b blamed for the lack of the component, even if you never got the information to order it?

That would almost certainly happen.

Thats not fair. I know how you feel. Everyone usually came to me in primary school for help with hmwk and stuff. And if someone told someon else who told someone else to tell me to help someone, i got the stick.

Well, that's the way the world work, I know.

The world needs to change.

Anyway, they've renewed my contract.

Oh, OK, did you know if you were accepted for the web design job?

I can't get in contact with the people. The woman always seems to be busy and does not ring back.