Today has been a good day so far and it is not even 9 AM yet! I got up (very tired after watching Law and Order until 11:30 PM and getting up at 5 AM) and did my normal routine (walk/feed/water dog, make coffee, read e-mail) when I notice Knightmare updated his blog. Well, you know me, I was compelled not only to read all the new posts but respond as well. I lost track of the time and that only gave me 45 minutes to shower, read my bible, eat breakfast, pack my lunch, and wash the few dishes I had before I had to go to work. Also I still need to get petrol before the price went back up above $2.00 a gallon (it is currently $1.99 where I normally buy it) but at least that station is right along my route.
I got to work and before I could even put my laptop in the docking station, I received a call from my colleague "Stefan" asking me about some high severity incidents that our manager contacted him about. It seems there is some meeting our boss "Tim" has to attend and he needs some information about those incidents before he goes. I did some research for "Stefan" and sent it to "Tim". All that took about 30 minutes, but the urgency of it (not to mention the ambiguity of the initial message) made it a bit more challenging.
I also received a bit of a scare yesterday a couple of hours before I would normally go home for the day. I received an e-mail from another colleague who said that we may have to escalate a high profile/high severity issue due to an service level being missed. Now in my line of work, an escalation is much different than changing the severity. Escalations are managed processes that are focused around communication with many techs, team leads and levels of mgmt, up to and including VP's and Presidents if needed. As I explained to my wife, tackling this escalation (by myself) would be like taking someone who has never driven an automobile before and putting them in a Formula One race car on a tricky circuit. It ain't gonna be pretty folks.
If you are new to my blog, you may not know that I am very new to my position. I took this role after the old Esc Mgr was laid off. I have no formal training in this and I have never had to deal with an escalation before. It can be very intimidating. The gentleman I replaced had been formally trained by professionals in Europe and had a about a year of experience. While I know our business and the business of our customer, I have lost touch of who the players are over years due to job changes.
God was with me yesterday afternoon and answered my prayer. I asked him for the ability to remain calm and deal with the issue as professionally as I could. So I went to the colleague who informed me of this and we investigated the issue together and we learned that a solution to the issue was being worked on and even though our service level would be missed (really due to our overly strict adherence to the policy and processes), no escalation would be needed. Of course a corrective action form would need to be completed, but that is a job for the techs.
Changing subjects, I would like to welcome my new reader(s) from Germany. Sometimes it is nice to see that my blog is read by more than a couple of my friends that I blackmailed :-) . If you like what you see, please feel free to continue reading. If you feel led to comment on entries, I encourage it. Positive and negative comments are welcome, but offensive language is not. Any entry that contains offensive (as I see it, since it is my blog) will be removed.
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