1) Take a note. 2) Make a list. 3) Repeat.

So week two is over.

One thing I decided to do in this new job is buy a pretty black leather case to carry around a notebook in (a spiral-bound notebook, I hate those pads and how the pages get all curly at the top when you have to keep flipping them over the back).  I was determined to carry it around with me all the time and write down everything. So many times I'll hear something and it just seems so obvious I know I'll remember it, but then an hour later I've already forgotten. And since everything at this job is still new to me, sometimes I don't know immediately if a piece of information I've just received will turn out to be important or not.

So I've been writing everything down, all the time, and going back over what I've written to compile lists of things that need to be done, lists of questions, lists of problems. I have to admit, I am fond of lists, I find them comforting.  On my third day it occurred to me to keep a record of what I do, so every day I keep a running list of what meetings I've been in, who I've talked to, what I accomplished, etc. I don't know why, really, except that I'm trying so hard to be organized and to not get overwhelmed. And I suppose a part of it is that I really don't know how long it'll take me to get everything working and figured out, and I want to be sure if someone comes up to me in a week or two and wants to know what the hell I've been doing, I can say HERE, I have documentation!

Because holy crap, I feel like I'm not getting anywhere very quickly. When I interviewed for this job they made it sound like everything was in place and it just wasn't being used, so they wanted someone to come in and use the tools they had. The more I get into the scheduling/forecasting program, I am realizing why they never used it or liked it. It's freaking broken. A giant chunk of it is not working correctly, and I doubt if it ever did.  I have finally managed to coordinate a techie guy at my company with a techie guy at the software company, and tomorrow afternoon he's scheduled to remotely access our server to try to figure it out and, please please please, fix it.

Also, and this is HUGE: it was set up wrong initially. The way it was done split all the numbers into six sections, basically, and that wasn't necessary for this call center at all. So now I'm having to look into going back and re-doing the basic configuration.

Do I know how to do that? No! But I have a manual and access to their help desk and trainers and I am hopeful that I can figure it out and get it done. But it's going to take a while. And in the meantime I'm still struggling with computer problems of my own, like my email not working, etc. It's frustrating.

Who the hell knows when I will actually be getting to do any of the stuff they said they expected of me when they hired me, like forecasting and scheduling.

On Wednesday morning I got called into the office of the Director, and he told me that as of that day my boss was no longer with the company. WHAT. They said they were not going to replace him, so I assume he got fired. Now I'm reporting to a guy in a whole different department, which is a little weird. And he so far has been pretty distant, in that I have had no contact with him of any kind since the meeting where I found out he was my new boss. I was kind of glad to have my notebook filled with every damn thing I've done since I started, just in case.

I feel slightly adrift because there is literally no one who knows what I'm doing or what the status is on the things I'm trying to do. Frankly, I kind of prefer working independently, and have actually been getting more done now that I don't have to worry about putting together those time-consuming reports that my previous boss kept asking for. But it's weird.

The need for what I am doing is so obvious, I can't imagine they are going to let me go. Plus I think they would have already if they were going to. But it's a bit disorienting.

At the same time, now that I can see how sucky this broken program was, I can understand why they never liked using it and finally just abandoned it. Poor little broken program. It has so many awesome things it can do, I feel like if I can just get everything to be right they will be amazed and they'll love it. And I'll be the rockstar who pulled it all together.