High Five

It's interesting the number of people that think my weekend job is "below me".  I laugh.  Give me a break:  I've been vomited on, pooped on, stepped on by a horse.  Besides, my mantra is "Jesus was a carpenter".  By comparison, the work is clean and easy, if only a bit frustrating at times for lack of support, training, feedback, rude customers....oh, I digress.

Or perhaps not.  This past Friday, I came to work to find that two of the computers that must communicate to match paint samples were not communicating.  I suggested counseling, but they wouldn't hear of it.  So, I set about using my trouble-shooting skills.  I pulled the tinter machine from the wall, replaced ethernet cords, checked connections and rebooted several times.  The computer continued to give an error message:  it was not pinging to the mainframe.

Without parts, I was stuck.  Frankly, I was not sure I was even allowed to get behind the machine.  Oooohhh.....it's all special and techie and there are cords and I could get shocked.  For goodness sakes, it is a computer.  At any rate, I called IT and requested service.

By Sunday, after an enlightening Saturday on the cash register, I was back in paint.  The computer was still failing to ping.  With no parts, I went about our daily tasks.  We had some extra time, and so I was cleaning a corner inside the employee "cage" when I came upon an AWESOME discovery - a spare black box thingy that I was sure was the culprit with my non-pinging computer (thingy is one of the most advanced tech words, I assure you).  It wasn't connected to anything, just hanging there!

Unscrewing it from the wall, I changed it out, rebooted both computers and voila!  PING.  I suppose the fist pumping and little dance I did wasn't very professional, (I made two customers smile) but it was so fun, so uplifting to have fixed the problem.  It was then that I realized the challenge was so energizing.  I called IT and told them to cancel our request for service, and given that it was a network issue, the tech on the other end said rather loudly, "HOW did you do THAT?"  Oh, we just figured it out, I said, spare parts found, etc.

It is most likely that I've seen too many Tom Peters videos back in the 80s, but I believe in employees taking action and control where it is safe to do so.  And perhaps if more hourly people could, they'd have the occasion to do a little dance and pump their fists.