Had the first day of training at Fido, today. Mostly paper signing and the like. The rest of the class is composed of customer service reps, potentially my future employees, while I'm a team leader. In other terms, it'd look rather awkward if I performed poorly - I can feel a certain (reasonable) level of pressure!

Then again, if I compare to my job, a few years ago, at Bell, I don't think that this training shall be stressful. At Bell, there were 4 branches (landbased lines, cell phones, expressvu TV and Sympatico Internet), with each having several special offers, plans, packages or products, and with various bundling rebates and technical ordering stuff. Plus, Bell being very old, in the telecom industry, there were about 8 different overlapping applications of various generations, each having bugs, limitations, incompatibilities, etc - and as a rep you have to manuver through them all with speed enough to respect an average handling time of roughly 8 minutes per call.

At Fido, there's a single branch: Fido cell phones and plans. And a single, recent, well made central computer application that enables you to do everything. And the aimed average handling time my reps will have to attain... is still roughly 8 minutes per call...!!

I'm not saying "piece of cake!". I know better than to paint a big honking neon-flashy red shooting-practice target on my ass, bend over and call Fate a toothless old hag. I'm just saying there MIGHT be a chance that I won't be drown in the flow of training information and that i MAY have enough ease through the training to acquire a minimal level of credibility with my collaborators. Which would be good. Particularly if some of them end up in my team.

Other advantages I learned about today:
- I've got a 200$ per two years for glasses and contacts (plus eye exam fees are reimbursed too!). So I'll FINALLY be able to replace my last pair of glasses, quite conscientiously chewed by Pistou

- I've got a 300$ a year reimbursement of gym membership fees (no more excuses, the elliptical machine is calling)

- I've got 50% off all Rogers products (cell, video, internet, home phone) - only worry being the 60 gigs monthly bandwidth limit


Summary: GOOD STUFF. I actually left the building today excited about coming back tomorrow morning. That feels GOOD.

Tags: fido, training