Posted by
Sul, 19:19, 28th June 2002:
This is the first 600-odd words. I'd like opinions, only good ones though, keep the shit ones to yourself. Oh and if I've made grammatical errors then don't worry, I havent got my nan to proof read it yet. (she was all I could afford... as the actor said to the bishop)
I'm still not sure on the title of it yet.
Desk-Monkey (n.; pl. Desk-Monkeys):
A person, of usually high intelligence, who has the misfortune of working on a helpdesk.
Yes, that’s the definition of a Desk-Monkey. That’s how the dictionary would describe this particular breed of person. The truth is that nobody can understand what a Desk-Monkey is until they’ve been one. Until you have experienced the madness that is the helpdesk life, you can not imagine the horrors that, the people who do, encounter. The only way to describe it is pure, unadulterated, mental torture.
Think back to school, the school bully would tease and make fun of you, would undermine you and make you feel worthless. Now imagine you’re 25, you work for a large company and that that bully has managed to manifest itself into 5000 people. Finally imagine that it’s your job to take the grief from these people (they call them customers in the trade) and to keep them happy. This is exactly how Tim felt about his job; he was 25 and a Desk-Monkey. He had to keep those 5000 bullies on the end of the phone happy, he knew how he kept the school bully happy, he let the fat bastard kick his teeth in! So it was the same with the customers. If they wanted to kick him in the teeth, he felt obliged to get up, rush to the their desk, kneel on the floor and try not to get a lot of blood on the carpet. Then give their shoes a quick spit shine, pick his teeth up and ask them if that was satisfactory. Thinking about it, if Tim liked wearing leather he could have made a nice gimp in an S+M brothel.
Tim considered himself to have an above average intelligence. He could play scrabble and win, he knew most of the rules of chess and he read books, real books, the kind where the lead character isn’t an ex-spice girl. So why was he now sitting in an uncomfortable chair, the same chair that he’s sat in for 4 years, listening to a high pitch squeal from the end of the phone, “I hate this fucking computer, why cant you fix it once and for all? Why, every fucking week, do I have to phone you up to get my fucking password reset?”. Tim knew the answer to this, but how could he explain to the irate woman on the end of the phone that she had a poor memory, probably due to heavy binge drinking on the weekend. “We’ll have to look into it”, came Tim’s poor response, of course this was a complete lie but he had a disision to make. Should he tell the user that she was the problem? This would, of course, bring the inevitable debate of who was correct, the middle-aged woman who only upgraded from a typewriter at end of last year, or Tim, the IT specialist. He could sit there and argue his point but there was no way he was going to spend the next 20 minutes getting an earful of how she chooses passwords and how patronising he was.
This was Tim’s first call of the day. Monday mornings were always full of password resets. Tim didn’t particularly mind this as it meant he could switch his brain off and let it recover from the flooding of intoxicated blood he had given it the previous night. His weekend had been a bit of a disaster actually he was supposed to be meeting friends in town for a bit of light shopping and a bite for lunch. Unfortunately he was let down at the last minute, his friends were always doing this, sometimes he thought that nobody actual liked him and that he always got invited out of shear pity. So with nothing better to do Tim did what he done every time he had nothing better to do. He went to the pub.
copyright Dan Sullivan 2002 (you can keep your theiving hands to yourselves!)
I bet I get 2 pages into and then find something else to do. Perhaps I should call it the art of procrastination.
Posted by
Leo, 20:20, 28th June 2002:
i dont have time for this, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BUSY I AM??? not very actually.
Posted by
Grim..., 23:42, 28th June 2002:
Do you, per-chance, work for / have worked for helpdesk, Sul?
Posted by
chandler, 01:13, 29th June 2002:
Hey, good so far. Just a couple of things that stand out as not quite right.
" that she had a poor memory, probably due to heavy binge drinking on the weekend"
Fine, BUT the reason he doesn't mind the password questions is that his brain can, and I quote:
"recover from the flooding of intoxicated blood he had given it the previous night."
Soooo, is he supposed to be a hypocrite, in which case that is OK, if not a particularly likeable trait in a central character.
BUT that is coupled with the fact that the he descibes her as "the middle-aged woman who only upgraded from a typewriter at end of last year".
Now not to be age-ist or anything but not that many middle-aged women belong to the "binge drinking at the weekend" catagory. Fine if she is under 30/35 but she obviously isn't based on what you said! Now at home at her husband's brandy maybe if she was Karen-esqe (Will & Grace) but not likely to be out binge drinking (unless she is a reject from Ab Fab)
One last thing, the whole first bit:
"Yes, that’s the definition of a Desk-Monkey....."
Is written in the style of a forum poster, not a book writer. It reads like an amusing post (which I guess it is!), not like a book that you have to sustain for 350+ pages.
Jesus, sorry man, I didn't mean to sound as if I was savaging it. It's still 600 words more of a book than I've ever written. But those things did stand out. And stop me enjoying the words. Especially the drinking bit.
And you can call me a cowardly pigeon if it isn't so.
Posted by
Sul, 12:41, 29th June 2002:
I see your points chandler, its only a first draft and any criticism is taken in the (hopefully) helpful light its intended.... but I never pass up a chance to call someone a cowardly pigeon :p
Would accusing her of having a bad memory due to a hormonal imbalance from her HRT be in bad taste?
ess: yes I work on a helpdesk, this whole project is just a way to vent my frustration, and do something when I'm bored at work. I'm not really a storyteller, I just wanted a way to note down all the shit that happens in my job in an amusing way.
Posted by
cal, 14:14, 1st July 2002:
it starts out not very bookish, but i can see where you're headed and it might be quite cool.
i think you should read "stickleback" by john mccabe:
amazon.co.uk link