glad to hear it jim.
oh!! i had my appraisal at work the other day (finally) after working there a year and a day. it was supposed to be after 3 months but hey
i don't think any of the others are going to be as brutally honest as me. i went in and said that i have real problems with servers and networking as i didn't have any experience in them before working there and hadn't really had any training or experience in them when i got there. when i started the boss was on paternity leave at the other two chaps were working 50 hour weeks to cover the shifts, and then little old me. so i didn't really get trained.
the boss was lovely, really chatty and we set up some goals and they are going to sort me out some training on the servers. they scare me as it's so easy to make THE BIG M (mahoosive mistake) with those... i do work with them quite a bit, but only within my comfort zone. also got to say what really irritates me about the team as a whole, the shoddy documentation of what people are doing and when so when i come to take over a call i don't know what's going on. whereas they chat to each other about it all the time in their little cliquey way so it doesn't affect them as much, and i'm really specific in my updating so they always know what to do with mine, so it only really affects me i think.
and despite me getting marked quite low on my broad range of knowledge (and that was only because i told them what i didn't know and what i wanted to improve -- and i think the others will blag that) i still scored at way above expected as i got marked either 5/6 or 6/6 in most other areas. and i have obvious areas to improve upon which i highlighted and requested myself.
the bossman did point out that the others won't be as honest, but it means they won't get as much out of it. and i am really good at the things in my comfort zone. we all have things that we enjoy doing so we leave it to those people, so a lot of the first line stuff and interacting with staff stuff gets left to me, because i enjoy that, whereas the server stuff gets left for the other two guys, which is why i've never really done any of it... so yeah. i'm babbling, sorry. but it was just a really nice meeting.
it took over 2 hours... none of us were expecting that, but i think the bosses got to see a lot about the team too. i didn't put them down in any way, in fact i brought up things that all of us need to do better and would improve us as a team. there's no real structure. and since nobody is really into the structured organisational side of things other than me... well i think it helped them too...
do you have to give these kinds of things jim?
i'll stop going on now. this turned into an uber post...
abz xx