Training Underway!

I've spent the past four weekday mornings in training for my job with J. Lodge. Suffice it to say that even though I've only started, I can't even compare the two; I'm getting "good vibes" from J. Lodge that simply weren't there with Alpine. It's hard to explain, but I feel like I matter there, as opposed to being some nameless, robotic lackey who bore the brunt of customer frustration.

I was wrong about which client I'd be analyzing calls for; it's not Road Runner. While I can't say which company I've been assigned to, I guess I can say it's a technology company, much more up my alley than "peddling pansies," as one of the 1-800-FLOWERS supervisors at Alpine used to say. The training is not only significantly more extensive than Alpine's was, but it's also self-paced and very relaxed.

The whole thing even reminds me, in a very broad sense, of how my favorite software company, Sierra, used to operate "Used to" is the key phrase here, unfortunately, since the company doesn't truly exist anymore. Anyway, Siera was a "mom-and-pop" company, as is J. Lodge (to the point that the CEO was the one who hired me). I can't explain it, but it's also obvious that J. Lodge cares about its employees and its business in a way that Alpine did not.

It's also quite nice that the company whose calls I'll be analyzing has much more realistic and flexible guidelines for its agents to follow. For instance, FLOWERS agents had to follow the (poorly-worded and unnatural) scripting in their terminal programs verbatim. They also had to explicitly verify customer information for customer service calls, even if the customer already told the agent a required piece of information wthout having been asked. In the words of the woman who's training me now, "That's unfair." Oh, well.

Getting back to J. Lodge reminding me of Sierra, I finished Gabriel Knight 1yesterday. In one word: AMAZING. It definitely gives King's Quest VI a run for its money. I see "Project WAMM" in GK1 all over, albeit indirectly, of course. It's inspired me and given me ideas where there were once few or none. Rick has the game, but has never played it. In short, guess who's going to be pressured to play it now? Hehehe... I'm embedding the "Making of Gabriel Knight" video included on the game CD for everyone to see. I know I included it in my MySpace blog a while back, but the video is so cool and inspiring that I thought I'd include it again here. I can really see myself doing this, especially with someone like Rick. He's most likely going to visit again soon and probably spend the night, so we'll have plenty of time to truly start planning this story out and getting it into a "tellable" form.