Julie Benson-Grant’s blog

Hello everyone!

So, I am back to work and loving it. New stuff all the time and getting quite masterful with my first venture with SQL. Why was I ever so worried! My experience with relational databases in the past put me past "stumbling" within the first couple of days. Great group of people here to, am happy to be on board.

However, since I did have such a relatively long hiatus for income producing activities, I thought I might stick my toe into the tech support business, see if I could add a few dollars back into the coffers and pay down some of the credit cards. I had an email cross my path for tech support and indicated that I could 'set my own hours' and still make good money.

I have a quite extensive history of Mac support and it has come to my attention that there aren't many folks in my neck of the neighborhood that do, so I thought I would take a shot. Sending in an application with a cover letter that very plainly indicated that this would be very specific situations - weekend and evening hours for Mac support only - it was evident that neither my resume or the cover letter was actually read by anyone.

I had the "initial interview" this morning. Raised some serious suspicions, so I did some googling on the company. Turns out, lots of folks have had some bad experiences with this company.

Oh, the company? Rescuecom

Check out these postings: 

          http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=188328&messageID=1931697

Needless to say, I had to add mine $.02. In case you don't want to spend the time on techrepublic.com, here is my post:

I am not surprised by the general tone of most of the comments here. I work full time in the tech business, but after being off work for some months. I thought I would give this a shot for some extra cash to make up for lost wages and stash money in the bank. I noted on my cover letter - which obviously was never read - that I had unique Mac support skills and could work some evenings and weekends.

When I had my phone "interview" the woman who called me didn’t speak enough English to communicate with me! The anticipated 20 minutes the call was supposed to take was used up with my trying to understand what she was saying. I really got hung up on the phone issue, she said that I had to have a specific PDA phone before the second interview... which with my current service, would be another $500 plus... uh, I am trying to make money, not spend it. Besides, I have an internet ready phone (Apple's iPhone), so if they require techs to carry these, they should supply them.

When I told this woman that I wasn't going to buy a new phone for an interview (who ever heard of such a thing), she proceeded to tell me that I could buy one and return it within 15 days for a refund. That really sent off a steady supply of warning bells! Who legitimately would tell someone this?

The difficulty of trying to understand what she was saying was aggravating, to say the least, so I asked to speak to someone else. She ignored my request. I then asked to speak to her supervisor, to which she responded that she was "I am just interviewing for you to do" and asked did I think she had a supervisor. I swear, I had no idea what she meant and thought just more language issues, but she repeated that same statement about 4 more times.

Finally, the frustration apparently was too much for her as well and when I repeated that I couldn't understand her, she told me that she couldn't understand me either and hung up. Yeah... like this is some place that I want to work... NOT.

Thank God for the internet, so that we can research companies before using their services or signing contracts for employment.

Thanks to everyone who posted here!

So beware and proceed with caution, to anyone thinking that this might be a good place to work. There are lots of warning signs...

See everyone soon!

Julie

After four months of looking, have finally found a job. Its a contract position with the opportunity of becoming permanent, so until that happens - and I decide that this is a place I want to stay a while - I will still be keeping my eyes open.

The weather in the midwest has been insane! If you live here, you know that this has to be one of the worst spring seasons (can you say 'tornadoes'?) on the history books... I haven't seen the sun shine for more than a few hours for the past two months! Not to say it isn't hot though... and humid! I lived nearly 11 years in Phoenix and never experienced anything so unbearable as 90 degree weather and 90% humidity. You can't breathe! And yeah, since I lived there (Arizona) I am entitled to say this: Even though Phoenix gets hot... its a dry heat!

I think I have stumbled upon the next stage of my professional career... or at least I hope. I see that more and more companies utilizing web applications are going global and are therefore in need of localization (L10n) or internalization (i18n) QA Engineers. I have the QA background (more than 15 years), my problem is that I don't have fluency in any other language. Most are requesting European languages such as German, French, Italian and obviously Spanish.

I attempted a German class years ago only to be interrupted by the pregnancy of my son, so I am leaning towards picking that up again. If anyone has any information on learning a second language such as German and the best way to approach it, I would be interested in hearing your experience. At this juncture, I figure on taking a 5 credit hour class at a local college and hopefully I will be 'fluent-enough' at the end that I can make the transition.

Well, time to go tempt fates and leave the house. Hopefully the rain will remain at bay for a few hours.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Julie 

Another week of job hunting, well into this month and still looking. I know things are tight, but this is the longest I have been out of work (when I didn't want to be).

I am finding that Kansas City metro (all of the midwest?) does not seem to be Mac friendly. I have been doing PC work along with the stuff I do on Mac, and can do PC if I have to. but I would rather do Mac. Makes it hard when most companies are Windows based though. I wish there was an easier way to find those companies that have made a commitment to the Mac platform... can anyone help?

Had a fantastic experience with Apple's customer service last week. I bought my iPhone during the early stage of release - yes, I paid the FULL price for it. I felt it was worth it to be an early adopter of the technology. And have loved it every minute. However, about a month ago a small hairline crack developed at the bottom of the glass screen. I figured it was mostly aesthetic though, as it didn't impede its functionality. The only problem was it was exactly where you press most often, the menu bar at the bottom. So inevitably the crack spread and began to prevent me from unlocking it or answer calls. I did a google search and had braced myself to pay the $250 replacement fee and made an appointment and then drove down to the Apple store (Plaza location).

I don't know if it was the extremely patient and polite tone I took, the pleading look or that I had resigned myself to paying the price and wasn't pissed at the outset. The young man I handed it to looked it over and said it would be covered by the guarantee... the unit had no signs of drop damage or abuse (I do take ALOT of caution with it, after all it cost me $600+... and I take care with anything that costs that much) and proceeded to tell me it would be a free replacement! I was so excited that I thought I shouldn't say a thing in case he might change his mind!

And the really great thing is that I had an extra $250 at that point, so I bought a new external hard drive to take full advantage of Time Machine! What a great day!

Anyway, hope that ain't too mundane, but it is only my second post. I thought it was important to get that out there, there has been a lot of negative press on the iPhone and screen breaks/cracks. I wanted to let people know that it isn't all bad.

Have a great Tuesday!