Archive for the 'Uni/Work' Category
January 29 2010: How Does One Do This Career Thing?
Filed under Uni/Work with 30 Comments
I’d like to know how some people manage to just magically know what they want to do as a career – and then manage to pursue it and stick with it for the rest of their life.
Four years of a bachelor’s degree, one year of a Masters degree (plus two to go), and seven years of work experience in a million different fields later, I still have no fucking idea. This indecision really fucking pisses me off, considering that I’ve prided myself on my ‘adultness’ in all other aspects of my life, yet I can’t figure out what I want to spend forty hours doing each week.
Give me your insight. How do you know what’s right for you? Because right now, I’m just going off a hunch that maybe this potential upcoming career change will be right for me, but I just don’t know. How do people get that certainty about jobs and careers? Why the fuck don’t I have that one consuming passion that I can turn into a job the way others do?
January 12 2010: Happiness Comes With A Window View
Filed under Uni/Work with 8 Comments
As an earlier entry mentioned, I recently spent time over the Christmas period single-handedly preparing my organisation for an office move. On the whole, the move went relatively smoothly, excepting the fact that the telecommunications industry in Australia is a fucking joke and can’t get anything right, delaying the reopening of your office by almost two weeks when you have no lines of communication open to you. Anyway.
We were previously located in an inner-city suburb. To give you an idea of the type of suburb it was, we were five minutes from a large housing estate that regularly had police cars pulled out the front, around us was the highest concentration of homeless shelters per square kilometre in Melbourne, and I had to watch out for needles when I walked down the street. Our office was in the back of a building with no windows, no natural light, and no airflow – right next to the male toilets.
We’re now located in the inner city, a mere two minutes from the central train station. This is the view I’m now greeted with every day when I sit at my desk.
Melbournians will know it as the most recognisable piece of modern architecture in the city – Federation Square. I now have natural light, a room with a view, and I am not within sniffing distance of a toilet.
And as everyone will know, a better working environment makes for a happier and more productive worker!
January 7 2010: Do Not Sign Up With Telstra or Pacnet
Filed under Australia & Reviews & Uni/Work with 4 Comments
Telecommunications in Australia is a fucking joke. I don’t often blow off steam this way on my blog, and rarely post inflamatory negative reviews, but let me run you through a sequence of events that end up leading to the conclusion: Under no circumstances would I recommend that any business or organisation choose to use either Telstra or Pacnet for their telecommunications providers. They are both unreliable, incompetent, and unable to deliver on promises.
17 December: I informed Telstra, our phone line provider, that my organisation was moving offices. They agreed to disconnect our old number on the 31st of December, but that our new number at the new offices will be connected immediately (that very day) for our use. So both lines were active at the same time.
18 December: I informed Pacnet, our internet provider, that we would be moving offices, and gave them the new phone number. We were assured that our internet service would disconnect at the old address, and recommence at the new address on the 1st of January, the day we were scheduled to ‘officially’ start our residence at the new offices.
28 December: The 28th of December was our official move-in date (though our lease didn’t start till the 1st). I spent the day packing up the last of the boxes and moving everything to the new address. The rest of the week was spent just unpacking boxes and organising the new office – communications weren’t touched as our (freelance) tech support guy wasn’t back from vacation until the 6th of January.
6 January: Our tech support guy arrived at 9am on the dot to set up our network. Upon examination of the phone lines in the office, we found only one with a dialtone – Telstra managed to fuck up the reconnection and connected an expired number from a suburb on the other side of the city, instead of the number we were originally advised.
In a call to Telstra, we were advised that they can change the line to the correct number within an hour. We were also assured that as our internet service was connected to that number, that it would carry over as per normal with immediate usage. An hour later, we had the correct number, but Telstra managed to remove the codes placed on the phone line, so that our internet provider couldn’t get through. Another call later, we were assured that the right codes would be activated between 8am and 12pm on the 7th of January.
7 January: By 1pm on the 7th of January, our internet service still hadn’t been activated. Calling Telstra, we were informed that they had placed the codes on the phone line – codes designed for their own Bigpond internet service, though we had specifically stated that our internet provider was an outside carrier.
We were then required to call Pacnet to get the correct codes placed on the line – which they can do, but which they claim will take five to ten working days. This is a procedure that would take 24 hours at most, if they actually did it immediately instead of adding it to their To-Do list for later action.
And Therefore…
Between the fuckups caused by Telstra, and the incompetent service received from Pacnet, my organisation has been offline with no communication lines (phone, internet, fax or otherwise) since the 28th of December. This situation is likely to continue until the 5-10 working days specified by Pacnet pass – e.g. January 13 at the earliest. I’d like to know what kind of modern organisation Telstra and Pacnet believe can go without communication lines for upwards of two weeks. Keep in mind that we’re a member-based organisation whose business and reputation is based upon effective and prompt communication with its members.
Under no circumstances would I recommend that any business or organisation choose to use either Telstra or Pacnet for their telecommunications providers. They are both unreliable, incompetent, and unable to deliver on promises. One mistake I can understand. But a litany of mistakes that require us to make a million phone calls back and forth? Unacceptable. I’m going to be writing an official letter of complaint and asking that for the standard reconnection fees (plus any other expenses accrued because of their incompetency) to be waived because of the damage they have done to our reputation as a reliable organisation.
…and they make me look bad, because I’m the only one working here at the moment, and have had to deal with them every step of the way. When our members and the board of management look for someone to blame, who do you think will come under scrutiny? Not the incompetent providers, but the underpaid staff member who’s had to deal with them.