Being On Call on Christmas Eve

I was supposed to only be on call one day over this holiday period, but due to technical difficulties diverting the phone, I have wound up being on call for the entire holiday period.  This does not make me happy, but that’s life.

Of course, only 15 minutes after being told I am the sole point of contact over the holiday period, I receive my first tech support call.  The issue itself is one well known to me, but will take a call to the poor soul on call from the development team to fix.  But whilst I am on the phone to the client, the dogs decide that this is the perfect time to go and bark loudly at whoever or whatever decided to walk past the house.  Now the client thinks I am at the office and my office does not have two extremely loud barking dogs.  There I am trying to sound extremely professional whilst sitting in my front room when two dogs go flying past to bark loudly at the front door.  It is loud and noisy and ruins any hope of sounding like I might be at the office.

“Sorry, that’s my dogs”, I hurriedly explain whilst trying to shh my dogs by waving my hands about.  My dogs who have spotted the cat that dared to walk past the house refuse to be quiet.  More hand waving that happens to connect to doggy bottoms manages to bring things down to a more tolerable level.

“Are you at home?”, my client asks and I can tell she is trying not to laugh.

“Yeah,  sorry about that.”  I apologise.

Fortunately, my client is amused by the whole situation.  Then I realise that I don’t have access to my work email and the client needs to send me things.  My boss reassured me that I would not need access to my work email account as I would only be providing phone support and not email support.  I should not have believed her.  Reluctantly, I give the client my personal email address and  that destroys any shred of professionalism I may have possessed.  How ever tame your home email address is, it is not even remotely professional and besides who wants their clients knowing their home email address anyway?

Now, I have a professional sounding gmail address set up and the dogs have been warned about barking at the front door (though I doubt they listened to any of my lecture).   I am ready to face the onslaught of holiday tech support phone calls – that is until I discover something else I have forgotten.