My Illustrious Career...Part THIRTY!

As we have seen, I lost my job at Software Spectrum doing phone
technical support. But luckily for me, I now had some kind of
marketable skill that was in demand.

I had finally found a niche...because, as we will see, there are
still a few more jobs to come, but from here on in, they will
all be the same kind of job...computer support over the phone.
This is the type of work I am doing to this day.

Note here that just because I have FOUND a niche, doesn't mean
that I actually ENJOY it...being a slave to a phone that NEVER
stops ringing is not pleasant. After taking somewhere between
50,000 and 75,000 calls over the past 12 years (not exaggerating),
it does get a little bit tedious.

When describing what phone tech support is, I always like to use
the analogy of walking someone over the phone on how to repair a
transmission...and they don't know what a wrench is or how to use it.
By the end of the day, after taking between 20-50 calls like this,
I am mentally wiped out, and my voice is sore from talking all day.

While I am blessed that I currently have a stable and consistent
type of work, it does not mean I have found my life's calling.
Help desk jobs are not what people aspire to, they are what most
people would call 'entry-level' jobs, something to do temporarily
while on the way up. It is ironic that for ME, it is the culmination
of my working life...I don't expect to ever do any other kind of work.

One of my neighbors worked at a company called Sabre, which was a
subsidiary company of American Airlines. I know a main function
of the company deals with the creation and management of PNR's...
Passenger Name Records...the 6 digit number you always get when
you fly somewhere, it keeps track of your reservation.

(Sabre has since been bought out by EDS, but they still do essentially
the same thing).

With my neighbor's recommendation, I started with this company on
Monday, June 26, 2000. It was still tech support-not my dream job,
but it was a JOB. And not only that, since this was a large, old,
established, and stable company dealing with a high-demand product,
I was quite thrilled to think that finally, although still fairly
late in my life (I was now nearly 44 years old), I had at last found
employment at a solid company that I could expect to keep as long as
I wanted! I recall we celebrated with champagne.

Amazingly (you would think I would be used to let-downs by now),
after working here for slightly more than ONE YEAR...rumors began
to surface about lay-offs...because, as you may guess, this was an
airline-based company, and we all know what happened on September
11, 2001.

To the company's credit, they did what they could to keep me around,
but on Monday, December 3, 2001, they finally had to let me go.

Peace be with you.