Saturday, March 04, 2006

Disney World

Welp, I'm going to Disney World!! All expenses paid, too! The company where I work, for those of you who may not know, is in the IT Solutions business. That means we set-up and repair computers, printers, networks, servers, software, and whatever else our customers need us to do. We partner with several vendors to sell and service their equipment, depending on what our customers want. HP, IBM, Toshiba, Cisco, Microsoft, and several others. There are very strict guidelines that we have to follow in order to be allowed to service these units under warrant and get reimbursed for the labor. Every warranty unit we work on, that vendor does a survey of the end user to see if they were satisfied with the service we provided. The ratings go from 1-5, with 5 being the best. We get paid based on these ratings with a couple of the vendors - IBM/Lenovo and HP are 2 of them that I am very familiar with.

There are different pay ranges depending upon these surveys and a few other areas. The payment tiers are Premiere, Preferred, Basic, and below Basic. Every branch of our company is considered to be independent as far as the vendors are concerned. We do not get penalized for any of the mistakes made by other branches of our company, we are rated based only upon the customers that we service ourselves. All of the years I have worked there, we have been 95% of the time Premiere. There are a few time that we have fallen below to the Preferred level, but not usually because of surveys - mostly because of the other guidelines. Why? Because we really do care about our customers being satisfied at our branch of the company. :)

So, enough of that boring stuff!! But I wanted to explain a little as to why IBM/Lenovo is paying for 2 of us to go to Orlando, FL for a Conference. Because our branch was Premiere for the entire year of 2005, so we get to choose a Manager and a Technician to go to Florida. I got chosen as the "Manager" because my boss doesn't want to go, and the tech going with me is Robert - our depot manager. They were going to send me as the tech and Robert as the manager, but the tech that goes has to be IBM certified - so although I have my A+ and know a little bit about computers, I am not certified in anything and since the tech has to go into a "work-shop" of sorts with other techs, I would be way out of my league there. Robert is one of the best techs I have ever known (I've know a lot) and he will fit in well. I can hold my own with the managers!

I don't get to take any of my family. I do wish that I could take everyone, I want to take the kids to Disney World - I was wanting to when Conor is a little older anyway - BUT - I am looking forward to a peaceful, fun trip by myself. Of course Jeff is giving me all kinds of playful grief about going off on a trip with "some guy" while I leave him behind to take care of the kids and the house.... He acts like I just planned a trip for myself and Robert only - that there won't be a bunch of other people there for the same reason. He keeps telling everyone that "Katie's going off to Florida with some guy" and so on.... But I know he is just teasing me. :)

I have worked with, and been friends with Robert for 6 years. He is my go-to person for any type of technical assistance. He has fixed, or helped me fix, several of my computers and my families computers. He is also married and has 2 kids. :)

So, that is my news. We will be going in May and I will get more details about where we are staying and all of that later in March. But for now, what I know is:

Arrival will be on Sunday, with check-in @ 1PM or later. That evening Lenovo will host a welcome reception from 7-9pm @ the Disney Contemporary Resort.

Monday we will have a general session followed by training breakouts for managers and technicians.

Tuesday will start with a general session and afterwards everyone will have the opportunity to enjoy Disney's parks or golf at one of Disney's premier courses. A dinner on Tuesday night will conclude the conference activities. We will depart on Wednesday with check-out by 11am.

I'm excited!! :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Katie!! It's nice to be recognized for hard work well done and I know you deserve it!!

Say hi to Mickey for me!