One Hundred and Forty-Two Point Five Hours

Today is Friday, and I am finishing up my fourth week! I have learned a lot this week about advertising and promotions. I learned it takes an incredible amount of time brain storming, designing, researching, and finally putting an order for a promotional item. This process is especially long when there are many parties involved that need to have input into the final decision.

My company is sponsoring a baseball game coming up, and we are going to have a booth where we will be promoting our newest product line and asking for testers for our software. It is pretty exciting seeing all of the pieces come together the past week. It is also scary to see how many pieces have yet to be completed.

I have had a lot of customer interaction the past couple of weeks, one story of which is interesting enough to tell on here. When customers call our business line they are given many options to choose from to direct them to the right department. Right now most of those options go to me. This can be a somewhat confusing situation when customers call and they are upset about something and need to talk to tech support, but they clicked the tech support option and reached me (clueless). I then go to apologize for the inconvenience and I transfer them to tech support. I feel so bad for the customers because I know exactly how this feels... I can hear myself saying to someone "I could have sworn I clicked the tech support option"... and following, the frustration of explaining the entire problem all over again to a new voice.

Another interesting phone situation was Wednesday. I give validation codes to customers over the phone when there's is expired or is going to expire within the next month. Validation codes are the combination of letters and numbers you receive on software packages that you have to enter to prove that you've paid for your software, and it allows the program to give you full access to all of the features. So here I am giving out validation codes... 4.. 5... 8... A as in Apple, D as in Dog, F as in... (what the heck does F stand for?) Fire! Flamingo! Frank!..... Awkwardly I give my validation codes, usually with a different word for the letter every time. This time was different. After I gave the validation code to our customer he chuckled a little bit and told me "Because you work with a large group of military, you should know the military alphabet code." I felt very nervous and embarrassed thinking back to what I had just said.. F as in Fire.. Q as in Queen.. T as in Tiger... I had no idea what I was actually supposed to say so I nervously responded that I was new to the position and I would be learning the correct code as soon as possible.

After that phone call I looked up the code and all my guesses apparently were very wrong.

A: Alpha
B: Bravo
C: Charlie
D: Delta
E: Echo
F: Foxtrot
G: Golf
H: Hotel
I: India
J: Juliet
K: Kilo
L: Lima
M: Mike
N: November
O: Oscar
P: Papa
Q: Quebec
R: Romeo
S: Sierra
T: Tango
U: Uniform
V: Victor
W: Whiskey
X: X-Ray
Y: Yankee
Z: Zulu

W as in Whiskey?? P as in Papa?? How am I supposed to say that without laughing? Anyway.. later on that day I was giving a validation code to a customer and I tried the new system..." F as in Foxtrot... " The manager of administration was reading the paper right in front of my desk, and he fell to the floor trying to mask his laughing. It was very difficult to finish this phone conversation with the customer while he was laughing at my awkward situation.... but at least now I know that F isn't for fire or flamingo or frank....