The Last Word: Working holiday

OPINION: There they go, bless ’em. Always hard to let the techs wander off by themselves unless they’ve got a support call to attend.

The little dears aren’t all that good at the social aspects of life. Some of them also seem less acquainted with the rituals of personal hygiene than recent migrants from Blighty. But they sure are clever little buggers when it comes to fixing computers and networks.

That’s why Rabid Reseller agreed to send all our techs to Microsoft’s nerd-fest on the Gold Coast. We think it is about time that they got out there on their own and experienced the real world.

And it doesn’t get any more real than the Gold Coast, don’t you worry about that. The place won’t know what’s hit it when 1200 geeks descend like locusts on Jupiters.

Good old Microsoft probably hasn’t fully thought through the ramifications of letting a large number of seriously clever bastards loose in an electronic gaming machine-riddled casino. We’re expecting more than a few of the techs to come back with a profit paid for out of those extra GST funds that the banana-benders swiped off us and the Mexicans.

But I digress.

Rabid Reseller prides itself on a strong tradition of employee advancement and that includes training. Where else but TechEd could you think to send your techs? They’ll spend four days cramming with all the latest tricks then come back to work and think they’ve had their annual holidays. Surprising how bad at workplace bargaining these brainiacs are, which is just as well.

Oh sure there’ll be some parties up there and the geeks will get introduced to beer, but this is a once-a-year thing so it won’t do them too much harm. Schoolies Week it ain’t.

But it will do them good to meet up with all the other nerds and learn a few more acronyms that we can use later as mysterious repair codes on our invoices.

However, I must say we were a bit worried that our techs might start talking to the other techs about salaries. But then, after they figure out what a salary is, it will take them another conference to work out that they should be getting one themselves, and by then we won’t be able to afford to keep them. They’d be over-qualified for the work we do so it would be best to write them a good reference and hire another apprentice.

Running your own flock of apprentices can help the bottom line, what with all the government assistance on offer.

Now in case you’re not familiar with this training concept let me explain the benefits. First, it gets those annoying techs out of the shop for a few days. If you don’t get them out of your face now and then you run the risk of turning into a nerd yourself. If you notice that you’ve started keeping more than one pen of more than one colour in your shirt pocket, at the same time, and you’ve taped your name onto them, then you are entering phase one of nerdism.

Send the techs off to a conference and your behaviour will soon start to normalise. You’re also going to need to lay off the jolt cola and pizzas for a while.

The other benefit of training that’s worth a mention is the fact that your techs will usually learn something useful. Now I can already hear you laughing, but techs are nothing like sales people. They suck at karaoke for starters. But at least they’re not likely to come back to the shop with any STDs and they don’t have corporate credit cards to bend out of shape.

Don’t forget the pile of vendor freebies, including software, just waiting to be collected at these conferences. We always impress upon our techs that anything acquired while attending a company-sponsored event belongs to the company.

So don’t forget to tell your team what size T-shirt you need, and make sure your eBay account has positive feedback, so you’re ready to list the entire haul as soon as the techs get back to the office. Can you spell “first-mover-advantage”?

Gotta go, customers waiting!

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