For ~20 years I have had an interest in computer interfaces. It's not so much that I was interested in what computers could do, but I've always been able to understand computer interface concepts, so I know just about every detail in how they work. I can almost always immediately understand how to control interfaces, even if I've never used one before.
In 2007(almost 2008), after learning about AS, I finally had an idea why I couldn't convince anyone to hire me. I got really obsessed with the idea that I might be able to finally get a job, so I constantly watched videos about how to make résumés and do interviews. By the end of 2008, I was able to get hired managing the computers for a school. I was the only tech there.
In 2009, I think that I was about to be fired because I didn't handle things like previous techs. Luckily, the school got an opportunity to get a major grant, and the principal asked me to prepare something for the grant. I didn't know that she meant to prepare a preliminary draft proposal, so on the day that she asked me to have it ready I handed her the completed grant proposal, not a draft. She turned that in, and the school got the money. After the grant, their perception of me changed drastically positively. I set up and managed hundreds of computers until this year. I managed the school as I saw fit in most cases, and I loved the job. The principal, who I think had wanted to fire me before we got the grant, later told me that I was like family and joked that if I ever quit she would quit the day after. It gave me a huge opportunity to learn different aspects of tech, but this year I had to leave for financial reasons.
This year, I decided to apply for a tier two support position in a different city. Because my résumé is well-written now, I got an interview. The interviewer told me that he would ask 5-6 questions, and I only had to answer one correctly to pass the interview. I answered the first one correctly, so he asked me the second question. I answered that one correctly, and he said "Congratulations; you passed the interview, but I want to ask you the other questions just to see how you do." So he asked the third question, and I answered that one correctly. At that point, he told me that in the entire time he'd been working as an interviewer for that company, no one had ever answered three of these particular questions correctly. He said "You're not tier 2; you're tier 4." So he asked me the fourth question, and I got that one correct. Then he answered the fifth question, and I said that I didn't know the answer but could probably look it up within a few minutes. He said that wasn't necessary, and he asked me the sixth question. I got that one correct, too.
So I took a plane trip to have an interview in the new city, and it wasn't clear which of three positions they were interviewing me for, but they hired me. I started two weeks ago.
I had an idea what were the requirements for the position I applied for, but I didn't know which position I was actually hired for until I started. During the second interview, they said I'd be paired up with someone for the first month or so, and then would start getting assignments for what to do.
On the day I started, I came into a room with other techs, and they sat me down. My new supervisor(who has not been at work at all this week) told the other tier 4 tech to show me what to do, and he didn't show me anything. He probably didn't say ten words to me. To this day, I have never received any assignments to do. As near as I could understand, I thought I was only supposed to handle the problems that tiers 1-3 couldn't handle. The company also has never made it possible to change my password from the default. Every time I ran through the password change process I got the message that password change would take 24 hours, so until today, literally every day I've been there I tried to reset my password. After it failed the first day I contacted someone who's supposed to be able to reset my password, and every day for several days he would send me a message saying that I should be able to change it "now". To this day I still can't. People in this room spend the day reading Facebook. The other tier 4 tech spent the day today watching The Big Bang Theory. In my previous job I would often set up between five and twenty computers per day by myself. I am not lazy. I want to do work and I am good at this kind of work. But I didn't know that I was supposed to be going with other people. When I had asked to do things like set up a system myself, they had told me that I wouldn't need to be doing much of that so I didn't need to. I finally got them to let me set one up, but I couldn't even get that completed, because my account wasn't put into the right user group to give me the access that I need.
I have sat in this room for two weeks, and have told people I would love to help them. But no one asked me to. They would just run off for long periods during the day. I am really good at solving technical problems. I have so many technical certifications, and I have never studied for technical certifications. I've always taken them without preparation and have never failed a certification. On almost all of them I've only missed 1-2 questions.
But I've sat in this room and haven't been assigned anything to do. I've really wanted to. Today someone told me that I should probably ask someone to go with them when they have a call, and that they had expected me to have been doing this for the previous two weeks. I had absolutely no knowledge that this was expected. Up until two days ago I didn't even have access to the calendar that would give me a schedule of who was doing what on what days. Twice people have said that I should be showing the initiative and asking people to do things, but as has happened so often in my life, it's not that I don't want to be involved with other people; it's that I have no concept of what others expect of me, and I don't know what to ask. This is compounded by not knowing what position I was hired for and the technical problems with my account.
In my life I remember all of these instances in which people expected me to act a certain way to accomplish a certain goal, and the problem wasn't that I didn't know to act that way to accomplish that goal, but that I didn't know that other people expected me to have that goal.
In this position, two people have already made statements that effectively mean that I should be taking initiative to try to accomplish certain things, but the things they wanted me to accomplish are things which I didn't even know were things that I was expected to try to accomplish.
I have spent the past two weeks not understanding why I was even hired when they weren't assigning me any work, and today I found out that they had expectations I was unaware of. I've been sure that I'd be fired because I served no purpose there, even though I wanted to work. I have been staying in a hotel because I didn't want to sign a one-year lease if the job wouldn't last. It is so frustrating, because I want to work. I want to do work. I want to and am capable of doing this type of work. I hate this.
23 Jul 2014, 4:48 pm
