The Japanese Visit

Our Japanese principals arrived this week. And there were some changes in our already lousy schedules, through no fault of our visitors, of course. During our first day meeting, our Team Leader was conveniently absent, having opted to attend the evening training session. There were several goofs on our part, but all in all, it was a productive meeting. Pity though that the box which contained the new camera and the Mac did not arrive on time. (It arrived when I was on day off, and now the people in the office have the opportunity to play around with it.)

Several things also happened. Our guests asked for a physical inventory of the cameras, which we did, and there were laughs associated with that. It was a messy cabinet. And then afterwards, I was informed by the Team Leader that one off-shoot of the meetings was that escalations would now be officially coming from me, and then if there is a need for translation, this will be forwarded to the TL and then afterwards forwarded to Japan. If there is need for urgency or immediate response, these I can send directly to other Japanese guy. Also, some of the reports would now be coming from me, although the source data would still be coming from the TL's desk. More work for me then. I was also informed by the Operations Manager that the Japanese were impressed by me. I can only shrug because in an earlier visit, the Japanese already gave the opinion that they were not impressed with the TL.

And now the TL is adamant that he will not be doing any technical work because he was hired as a translator anyway. Which is funny because he has a poor command of English and has gaps in his knowledge of Japanese culture and terminologies. And all this time that he's supposed to be managing the team, he's been grumbling that he has not had the chance to practice his management skills. What a laugh.

During the week, the OM gave notice that he will be resigning soon and that the team will be under one of the other shift managers who also handles other accounts. This would be fun. The shift manager actually is a technical guy, and it would be fun to see our TL, who abhors technical stuff, work under this guy.

I also gave notice to the OM that I'm going to give this job another six months. If nothing happens then I'm leaving the account or the company. I don't really like working under the current TL. One of the other agents though asked me if I wanted to be the TL of the account. I mentioned that yes I'd like to be, however current requirements need someone who knows Japanese. Again that is not my problem or my concern right now.

We'll see in six months what happens.

--andoy