Pre-Deluge

Last week was a whirlwind which I wish never happens again. Four people in the team had to file leaves -- one each. Tonette was absent Wednesday shift. Unfortunately, during Wednesdays Tatum has a 10pm to 7am shift. I was alone with my trainee for the remainder of that shift. Thursday shift was Tatum's turn to file leave. Good thing it was Thanksgiving Day in the US and not too many callers. Friday, it was Art who was MIA. And he did not even have the courtesy to apologize when he came in during the Saturday shift. For the UK line, Cielo was also absent last Friday as she had to go to the airport to fetch her parents.

I am not happy with the way my trainee is turning out. It seems that his training may have turned out to be half-baked. I've been observing his live calls. He can handle the calls with rookie mistakes. Although I have heard comments from the other agents that he is a little slow. Strictly speaking he is not a computer techie. However, as pointed out by some agents, the call scenarios he's been handling are the same problems over and over again and he has not shown significant progress. He took his Final Exam (Verbals) last Thursday evening. He failed to pass that one. He re-took the verbals Friday evening with a higher passing score, and he still flunked. He will be taking his verbal exams again on Wednesday or Thursday, with an even higher passing score. I am losing faith in this guy. If he does not pass, we will be forced to have six-day weeks, until we can get 2 agents.

There is one applicant from a different account. Her papers are on still with her supervisors. There is also another agent from still another account who is very much interested. And he might make up his mind soon. A girl from the same account has also submitted to us her resume. Aside from these, there is a trainee for a technical account who wants to transfer to our group. Which case I told him to flunk his technical training first before applying with us. And, of course, there are the other resumes being submitted for consideration and interview. I hope we can get at least four of them into the team. Just to get a single trainee, we had to interview two other applicants. And afterwards, we also interviewed another, who unfortunately got a thumbs down.

We need warm bodies, with fast minds and a good work attitude. So far, the interviewees failed because of their english language skills. And the trainee that I have right now looks like he's going down the drain because he is having problems with the technical solutions. Just great.

--andoy, 29 November 2004