Firefighting…

So I told a friend of mine that I would be writing a few entries on my blog today if it wasn’t a firefighting day (No, I am not a firefighter and fire prevention month was in March). I work in the IT industry and in my last job I was the last line of defense. I handled the tech support group (around three people routinely took calls) and trained the customer support representatives on how to handle calls and inquiries. Note that this also includes changing the spiel during promotional periods and such. Overall it was a stressful job and it meant that by the time customers reached me, they had passed through the tech/customer support who were not able to solve their concerns. By this time too, the customers were either already irate or losing their patience.

Now, while taking my 1st semester for my masters last June, I made friends with a classmate who worked in the IT industry. She handled VOIP services and was also in charge of the customer support group. While we were sharing experiences in handling the support group and juggling school work, we then came up with a term called ‘firefighting.’ We likened the stress and anxiety related to handling irate customers as ‘fires’ which you have to put out immediately else they grow bigger. They do grow and if you do not stomp them out from the source (probably an erring code or a bottleneck in the code processing) they do grow bigger and your problems multiply. You also end up having to put out fires all over the place as work gets backed-up and more calls come in. You also get stuck inside a stressful cycle which can last way past the real working hours.

So here’s to a firefight-free day!