Starting a new job, what to expect...

YodaTuna

Well I finally got a new job and put in my two weeks at GameStop, woo. Anyway, I will be a level 1 help desk for a large retail chain. I guess I answer calls from the stores as well as the distribution centers. Just wanting to know what to expect. Like how the job works, possible work load size, is it boring as shit? Any tips from current or former help-deskers out there?

The Snert

Former helpdesk employee here. I enjoyed it initially and worked in level 1 helpdesk for a large real estate/mortgate company for about 8 months. YMMV, but my enthusiasm for the job wore out after the 3 month mark. It was my first 'real job' having done only fastfood/retail beforehand, so I was still glad I took it. It was a great way to get my foot in the door doing IT. In my experience, workload tends to vary. Sometimes you can go 2 or more hours with no calls at all, and then WHAM, the phone is ringing off the hook. My company had about 8 level one guys, and we averaged about 100 calls a day. It's mostly boring, but everyonce in awile, you might get a crazy call and it'll be some good fodder for stories and jokes later on.

Cynic Jester

Depends on the size of the call center. The bigger the place, the more calls you'll handle. Doesn't seem like it makes much sense, does it? Thing is, smaller call centers need more people in case of a spike in traffic, while the larger places typically get away with far fewer "extras". I currently do level 1 tech support for a printer company, but we're just 3 guys on my line and I'm on the lowest priority due to handling mails and such, so barring extreme traffic, I'll get 7-8 calls a day. Each lasting typically 5-10 minutes. On the other side of the coin, in the same call center, there is a line with 200 people. The people there tend to be on a call 80%+ of their workday, doing nothing but talking all day long. Most internal helpdesks tend to lean toward the smaller type, but this of course varies from company to company. I imagine a large retail chain might have a rather large one, especially if they handle all the calls in the country.

Jimmy King

Been several years since I was stuck on the old helpdesk, but I'll put in my 2 cents here, which mostly go along with what The Snert said.

I did tech support/helpdesk for a regional ISP of around 15k users and for Capital One which was around 20k employees at that time, if I remember right and the numbers I was given were correct.

As was said, the workload varied greatly, this depended on luck, shift, and time of year. For instance at the ISP, if it was a holiday, it was wonderfully dead. I also did the 3pm-midnight shift for a few months and after 9pm or so, again, dead. At Capital One weekends and holidays were pretty much guaranteed dead. The first couple of days after a long holiday weekend? Total hell. The rest of the time? As Snert said, you never know. Could be steady and even all day, could be slow, or you could suddenly get hit with a mass of calls - sometimes due to something breaking that affects everyone and sometimes just random bad luck that the entire company decided to call at once. At the ISP we kept a pretty stable number of employees but at Capital One the demand actually varied so much that over the almost 3 years I worked there I saw the size of the helpdesk go back and forth several times between 30ish total employees with 8-10 on per shift to 100ish employees with 30-40 on per shift. I don't remember the number of calls at the ISP, but at Capital One we generally took 2k-3k calls per day and 50-80 calls per person each shift on normal days.

My experience for how I felt about the jobs, especially the Capital One job, and what most people I know went through phases kind of like this:
1) Hey cool, I've got my first solid IT job. I'm learning some stuff, too.
2) Oh my god, these people are stupid. I can't believe there's this many people who are this stupid. This job is hilarious.
3) Oh my god, these people are stupid. My job is to make it ok to be a lazy, incompetent, moron. I need out now!

Phases two and three really depend on your personality. Some people really do enjoy the work and helping other people. They may never reach phase 3 and maybe not even phase 2. Other more stereotypical IT people, like myself, are egotistical bastards who feel they are smarter than everyone else and think everyone should be as smart as they are and hit phase 3 within a few months.

As far as tips, go in, learn what you can, and get out when you feel you need to. Also, a lot of people bring books in to those jobs to read during down time/slow days.