"You're probably going to want to get a fan in here, it gets real hot..."
Those were the first words spoken to me when I walked into my new "office".
When someone from Bako, where people don't bat an eye when the temperature hits 106, tell you it's going to be hot, it's time to panic. As I mentioned before, my "office" is really the server closet. A windowless space with banks of servers against the back wall, each with a little fan blowing out hot air.
There was a desk that looked like it was picked up off the side of a road. And an ancient, ratty office chair. Four of the five wheels didn't work. The fifth wheel was missing.
Luckily for me, the first day ended up being brief.
I did have a fairly new Mac, so I sat down and tried to adjust and get the lay of the land with their computer set-up. I quickly discovered the computer wasn't connected to the server. I did what I could to connect to no avail. I contacted their IT person who gave me a bunch of codes to enter.
Still nothing.
I called him back to tell them it wasn't working and he came harumphing down the hall, already pissed at the new guy. He kicked me out of the decrepit chair and proceeded to enter the same numbers himself.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
And again... for the next 30 minutes he kept entering the exact same numbers and getting the exact same result, nothing. Over and over again. It was like watching a caveman try and make fire with two rocks... one of these times it was bound to work. Here we were sitting two feet from the servers, where all the work and email access rested, with no way to get to it.
And I thought irony was dead here.
After half an hour he finally threw in the towel and called their outside tech service. And this being Bakersfield, they said they'd try in get to it in a day or two. I offered to work from home and asked the IT guy to burn some jobs onto a portable drive for me. He grudgingly agreed and disappeared. After half an hour I went to his office to see what the holdup was and as I walked in he exclaimed "I just figured it out... I'll have it for you in a minute..."
Again, this was their IT guy.
So that was Day One - I was home by noon. Banged out their stupid little job in about an hour and then watched TV all afternoon.
Day Two was today. The computer still wasn't connected. I went to check with the IT guy to see what the ETA might be.
He's in Vegas today.
I called the outside tech company to check on our service call. They have no record of it. It's going to be a day or two they said.
What to do?
As luck would have it, I didn't have to make that decision... the power went out.
To half of Bakersfield.
My boss was out, so I sat in my little pitch black office waiting for the power to come back on. After 30 minutes I called her. "Just wait it out..." she said. The air conditioning was out so the office was getting steamy. After an hour someone finally thought to call the power company and they informed us we most likely wouldn't get power back for several hours.
I'd called home and discovered we still had power, a fact I decided not to share with my boss. I didn't offer to work from home. I'm going to be watching TV all afternoon.
Again.
I believe it all to the work of a Higher Power. A sign I'm not meant for this job. If I come in Monday morning and it starts raining frogs I'm outta there.
