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jakebeR. works from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is generally agreeable. Yesterday he kept the usual stream of late-night monologues, political commentary, and YouTube listicles going while we worked so it was easy to fall into a rhythm. I handled a few sticky tickets and had a 1:1 with the boss, who finally started giving me an idea of how long she expects certain things to take. A relatively simple order that generally takes me ten minutes (when everything is in order) should take around five.
I don't know how firm an expectation that is because most of the folks around here are old-timers but that feels like a good benchmark. So, the question becomes: what can I cut out of my current process to get the time down to that average?
I knew going in that I was keeping excessive notes of what I was doing with each ticket, so now that I've been at this long enough I can start pruning. I've been keeping a tally of every order I work on in OneNote as a way to organize my thoughts around the process and build some structure for tackling the job. After the training I got I really didn't have a solid sense of what I was doing so staring down this incomprehensible form, not having a good frame of reference for it, and then being told to check it for errors is...not ideal.
But now that I have a better sense of what these forms are and where the errors are likely to be, all of that double-tracking isn't necessary. Chances are I can lose the formatting and track the SO number, the "risk assessment" for each ticket, and the number of certs signed per order. If I extrapolate the benchmark time to certs as well, I could see the anticipation being a 5-min average for pre-QC work, and maybe 10 minutes for QC treatment -- with wiggle room depending on how fine-toothed a comb we use. Lumping in that pre-QC work and the support tickets, I could see 35 certs per day being a reasonable expectation.
Now that I know Instacart won't come calling and I'm likely going to be here at least until March, it's time to turn my full attention to earning the job I have. So that's what I'll be doing with the rest of the month.
Dinner sure was an adventure last night. >.> We were making a recipe I thought looked intriguing at the time but should have known would be a nightmare: soy-lime shrimp with pan-fried bok-choy and scallion rice. The presentation is eye-catching; a halved head of bok choy seared on the cut side and dusted with chili crisp, next to a small mountain of brown rice and pink, curled shrimp. :9
But bok choy is just a disappointment, there's no way around it. Maybe I have yet to figure out how to cook it properly, but mostly it comes out tasting like boiled celery. :P When I picked the recipe, the idea of searing a bok choy and flavoring it strongly looked promising! Blue Apron taught me that's how you make cod and catfish work, so why not bok choy?
Well, because the bok choy was not well-cleaned. Dirt was deep within the stalks, not content to be flushed out with cold water, so you crack a lot of the stalks just getting to it. The two heads we got were pretty small, so cutting the root sliced a lot of the outer stalks as well. And the tiny "hearts of bok choy" we ended up with were pretty water-logged.
But they cooked OK; with better heads I think this could have worked. What I wasn't expecting was for the shrimp to be bad.
By the time I had put the shrimp on it was 15 minutes from our D&D game; that'd be no problem because they should only take 5 or 7 to saute. But as soon as they hit the pan I knew something was off. I had patted them dry before putting them on but hadn't noticed it then, but there was an awful athlete's-foot stink that got worse the more I cooked them.
It didn't take long for us to bail on that batch. We were in full scramble mode by then, so R. went to get some fresh shrimp from the store while I aired out the burrow and washed the pan and everything those shrimp had touched. I had to peel the shrimp, but got them on the pan and finished up the dish only 20 minutes late for the game.
It was K.'s home-brew "Children of the Godswake" game. We're deep within a hostile theocratic country, having just interacted with the "native" Gods who had recently awoken there -- as well as some Drow and other enemies the "High" Gods have been agitating but not really helping with. We were set to do some old-fashioned heroing by taking out a white dragon that had been causing trouble for the common-folk.
We defeated it handily. Our Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut even managed to get it to grovel for its life (using Command) before decapitating it. Now, we have its hoard and have earned level 12!
That looks to be all the D&D left for the year until maybe post-Further Confusion. I will do my best to use this time wisely and build a rad dungeon for the lads in Unlicensed Adventures AND start building a story-web to bring things together...
I don't know how firm an expectation that is because most of the folks around here are old-timers but that feels like a good benchmark. So, the question becomes: what can I cut out of my current process to get the time down to that average?
I knew going in that I was keeping excessive notes of what I was doing with each ticket, so now that I've been at this long enough I can start pruning. I've been keeping a tally of every order I work on in OneNote as a way to organize my thoughts around the process and build some structure for tackling the job. After the training I got I really didn't have a solid sense of what I was doing so staring down this incomprehensible form, not having a good frame of reference for it, and then being told to check it for errors is...not ideal.
But now that I have a better sense of what these forms are and where the errors are likely to be, all of that double-tracking isn't necessary. Chances are I can lose the formatting and track the SO number, the "risk assessment" for each ticket, and the number of certs signed per order. If I extrapolate the benchmark time to certs as well, I could see the anticipation being a 5-min average for pre-QC work, and maybe 10 minutes for QC treatment -- with wiggle room depending on how fine-toothed a comb we use. Lumping in that pre-QC work and the support tickets, I could see 35 certs per day being a reasonable expectation.
Now that I know Instacart won't come calling and I'm likely going to be here at least until March, it's time to turn my full attention to earning the job I have. So that's what I'll be doing with the rest of the month.
Dinner sure was an adventure last night. >.> We were making a recipe I thought looked intriguing at the time but should have known would be a nightmare: soy-lime shrimp with pan-fried bok-choy and scallion rice. The presentation is eye-catching; a halved head of bok choy seared on the cut side and dusted with chili crisp, next to a small mountain of brown rice and pink, curled shrimp. :9
But bok choy is just a disappointment, there's no way around it. Maybe I have yet to figure out how to cook it properly, but mostly it comes out tasting like boiled celery. :P When I picked the recipe, the idea of searing a bok choy and flavoring it strongly looked promising! Blue Apron taught me that's how you make cod and catfish work, so why not bok choy?
Well, because the bok choy was not well-cleaned. Dirt was deep within the stalks, not content to be flushed out with cold water, so you crack a lot of the stalks just getting to it. The two heads we got were pretty small, so cutting the root sliced a lot of the outer stalks as well. And the tiny "hearts of bok choy" we ended up with were pretty water-logged.
But they cooked OK; with better heads I think this could have worked. What I wasn't expecting was for the shrimp to be bad.
By the time I had put the shrimp on it was 15 minutes from our D&D game; that'd be no problem because they should only take 5 or 7 to saute. But as soon as they hit the pan I knew something was off. I had patted them dry before putting them on but hadn't noticed it then, but there was an awful athlete's-foot stink that got worse the more I cooked them.
It didn't take long for us to bail on that batch. We were in full scramble mode by then, so R. went to get some fresh shrimp from the store while I aired out the burrow and washed the pan and everything those shrimp had touched. I had to peel the shrimp, but got them on the pan and finished up the dish only 20 minutes late for the game.
It was K.'s home-brew "Children of the Godswake" game. We're deep within a hostile theocratic country, having just interacted with the "native" Gods who had recently awoken there -- as well as some Drow and other enemies the "High" Gods have been agitating but not really helping with. We were set to do some old-fashioned heroing by taking out a white dragon that had been causing trouble for the common-folk.
We defeated it handily. Our Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut even managed to get it to grovel for its life (using Command) before decapitating it. Now, we have its hoard and have earned level 12!
That looks to be all the D&D left for the year until maybe post-Further Confusion. I will do my best to use this time wisely and build a rad dungeon for the lads in Unlicensed Adventures AND start building a story-web to bring things together...
