Tonight is the official start to my 3 months of Night Shift. I haven’t done nights since I worked the HP Call Center Contract years ago (like 2004) and I have missed it all these years… The quietness, the stillness, the lack of phones ringing, no one moving around… utter silence… Ah, I so missed you Nights… And now, for the first time in over 10 years I have you back. My dream of being the guy hidden away in the back room, making sure everything just works, became a reality, and now my dream shift is mine, at least for the next quarter…
The only real difference between 2004 and now (I mean besides the obvious job differences) is that this shift is a lone wolf shift. The utter silence can be deafening when there is no one to talk to. Luckily I have my headset which allows me to play music, loud enough to hear, quite enough that i can hear the alarms if anything goes tits up while I am on duty…
I can remember back to my original night shift back in 2004… Working in a call center off Robertson Road in Ottawa. It was called Sitel, and I was on the HP Canadian Technician contract. Our sole job was to help Canadian Techs close their cases. the group of 4 of us on nights received, maybe, 12 calls all night… and each call lasted, if you were slow, 5 minutes max. If you do the math, that averages out to be a maximum of 15 minutes of calls in an 8 hour shift… I can say this now, but we used to sleep on the shift… I mean your headset would beep when a call came in, so as long as you slept lightly, and trained yourself to be attentive at the beep, no one ever noticed. If the pay didn’t suck I would say it was a dream job… But higher duties called and after about 6 months I transferred over to the Proliant Server Support Department, which meant no more nights. It’s all good though, within a month the Technician contract got cancelled. One of the call agents decided to bring a pillow and a blanket past security… It was a good gig, not many places pay you for sleeping… less so if they actually know you are sleeping lol.
So this shift is a bit different… I don’t answer calls, I answer tickets. And because we deal with international clients, they come in more often than 3 times a night. And since I have full access to the net, (unlike the call center, where every site but the tools needed for your job, were blocked) I can actually learn about new tech and learn stuff.
So here’s to 3 months of the night life. Oh, and I can’t sleep… We are watched by security cameras… Something about protecting the clients best interest… đŸ˜›