Is this a career or a roller coaster?

I thought I’d written about some of this, but it appears that I wrote it in my head, not HERE.

I’d been looking at jobs for a while, since the almost-22 an hour I was making wasn’t ever getting us out of where we were living. Beginning of October, you know, Prime- ME time of year, gets there and our Dear Landlord informs us he’s selling the place and we have 30 days to get out. Many bad things were said in our place after that as I’m sure you can imagine, being longtime readers but first time callers of my blog. Sheil came to the rescue and said we could stay with her until we found a place. Of course, I felt lower that an ant’s Odor Eaters, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

I was still looking for jobs, getting calls about some of them, but nothing really pans out. THEN, one day, I’m on the way to work when Brian Jaworski sends a message that he’s had food poisoning, but Giovanni–the head of BMS–is having a meeting in his room, can someone take care of it? My room had been co-opted for COVID testing, and all the rooms at Nassau Park where I was before I got bounced back to Princeton Pike were similarly inactive. I hadn’t run a meeting, as in gotten to play with audio and my cameras, since I went on vacation back at Hopewell. Okay, cool! EXCEPT—

Someone had come up with the bright idea to install a privacy mode on A1230 and A1250, the meeting rooms. I never had to do anything with this mode, so I didn’t really KNOW about it. Some brilliant designer or installer or other person at AVS set it so that when the privacy mode was ON, the mics were still active and being reinforced in the damn rooms–as in, the mics were hot, just not going anywhere, so the feedback was QUITE impressive. + I’m trying to fix this, and sending messages over Teams to the other guys on site, nothing’s working. There’s a button on the touch screen to turn the privacy mode off, but again, I haven’t run a meeting since the privacy mode was installed, so I don’t REMEMBER it. I go right around the corner to the Atrium control room where they usually hang out, one guy’s laptop is on YouTube again, but they’re nowhere to be found. Probably getting food. I go back and forth between the control rooms, trying everything I can think of to solve the issue. FInally, the wanderers are found, the one guy–who is kind of a jerk but is BRILLIANT at audio—comes over, but it turns out the Tesira server–the audio processing system for the non-AV types out there–is malfunctioning on top of everything else. We move the whole kit and caboodle to another room, I feel awful about it, life goes on. For a month. Then. the account rep calls me and says we have to have a meeting. I tell him what happened, we move on. A week later a friend of mine who’s main desk is over at the main BMS site calls me and tells me he heard the higher ups talking about getting rid of me. Tech problems, people who weren’t there to help when I’m ALWAYS the first one to help, doesn’t matter. I ‘m out. Everyone is pissed, lots of people tell me I should sue them for wrongful termination. I give it serious consideration. The Jersey unemployment is SO far behind thanks to the pandemic that I can’t even get reviewed. In fact, I STILL haven’t gotten paid by those guys–another story.

I interviewed a lot of places. I ended up accepting a job at te Science History Institute. 25 and hour, which I thought was going to be a good jump after making just under 22 for a couple years. I was the only AV guy, and the head of IT–who is a great guy, very competitive disc golf player–is always helping me out. The cameras are not full motion, both controlled by an iPad. I start having issues not long after I begin. For one, they only work 35 hours a week. This meant even though my hourly was up, my take home was the same as I was getting at AVS. I could have lived with that except for the city wage tax and having to pay a hundred a month to park in the museum’s lot. But, again, I was still getting calls about jobs.

One of the calls sounded good. Thirty an hour, no weekends, no nights—since the Institute rented the Ullyot Room out, I’d had to work several of each–it all looked good. I interview with them online, they offer me the job, I leave the Institute ready to be in a better place. I show up that Monday as instructed over the phone—and the problems start. The account rep tells me they didn’t expect me until Wednesday, but I’ll just get a head start. They don’t have a work laptop ready for me, can I use mine? Sure. I’m told they use ServiceNow for tickets, which is what BMS uses. I ask what configuration settings they use, no one knows. This company is just starting here, I figure it will work out. The account rep tells me we’re going to get all the information from the client’s AV people. Great! EXCEPT–there ARE no AV people bar one, who’s leaving and not there. IMS, the tech company, had a rep to do white glove AV service right outside the new president’s boardroom, Josie was a lovely person, but she’s an auto mechanic, NOT an AV person. Why they had her there is still a mystery. Inside said boardroom was a hodgepodge of tech, new and old, that wasn’t really working together that no one could really explain to us, so there were issues. I was told then these rooms were all about to be upgraded, this was a temporary fix–that wasn’t REALLY working. I managed to figure things out, but not as quickly as some–including the VP in charge of tech–would have liked. My first paycheck I have to argue with HR that they’re not supposed to take Pennsylvania and New Jersey taxes out. In another important meeting room, a similar situation BUT the touchpanel in here led to a lot of audio problems over the course of several meetings. During one, the AV manager pulls me aside and says this shouldn’t be, I have to review Teams to get it configured right. Turns out, Teams was fine, the damn panel we were shown is ACTUALLY a computer with active microphones and THAT was the source of the audio problems. Further issues over the next few weeks–like one IT person asking me to change a meeting room’s log in and then EVERYONE ELSE in IT having issues with this and me getting the blame–make me regret ever leaving the institute. The one recurring theme is my partner and I not being given information that’s kinda vital to our jobs. But STILL, I’m getting calls for jobs. A place literally right around the corner from our house loves me, but they’re afraid I’d get bored an quit–literal response to the account rep since that’s what JUST happened there. The one place really likes me, another place I interview with, the AV department is run by a guy who knows me from Philly Park and they do a LOT of actual video production—so I was relaxing a bit. I got the offer from the one place, five grand over what I’m getting now, which was already 15 grand over what I was getting at AVS–and they’ve already had more answers to tech questions than I’ve gotten after three months at ETS. Sometimes it can be good being me.

~ by Sean on November 5, 2022.