Leave of Absence

Not that anyone really reads my blog, but I'd like to apologize for my long leave of absence from the blogging world. I just got caught up in working full time and other things that I just never remembered to update it or felt like writing. But I do now. For the last month or so, I've actually missed it. I was planning on just waiting for the new year to start up again, but I missed it enough to not wait. So, here's to my end of the year resolution to be better. I'm sure you're used to it by now, my promise to be better at blogging, but I'm trying. No matter how much time passes between posts, I always come back. So, to those of you reading I'd just like to say thanks and look forward to reading what ever it is I feel like posting about.

Day Two

Today was a pretty relaxing day. At work, I had a headset that was connected to another employee's headset so I could observe and listen in on calls. Today was just about getting a feel for what I'm going to be doing. I was actually really surprised. There was only one or two negative calls today, that I heard. Almost everyone that called in was nice. Just from what I heard about the position and my own idea of what I would be doing, I thought the customers calling in would be more negative and angry. Or maybe I just got lucky with the person I was observing. I was told he was one of the best and Vivint is sad to see him leave for law school.

I learned a lot today. Vivint really wants to take care of their customers and is willing to work with them. They offered so many discounts and deals to try and keep people from cancelling, especially when the main reason was that they liked the service, but couldn't currently afford it. I'm excited to start working. I also found out I'll be doing a little more than what I thought, including selling (but that's kind of rare and only if the situation is right). I'll also get paid commission and bonuses for different things :) Vivint just keeps getting better and better! I may never want to leave haha.

I also got to meet up with my new friends from yesterday. We ran into each other during lunch. Did I mention how much I love the food? I had a really delicious salad today. I haven't had salad in a while so it was nice to eat one for a change.

Also, I traveled to and from work by bus successfully. Yay me! I'm surprised I've been able to adjust to waking up/going to bed earlier (still not early enough), but I'm going to have to wake up even earlier so I have time to eat breakfast. Yesterday and today I din't have time to eat and so I've been starving by the time lunch rolled around. I need to buy more easy and grab & go options for breakfast the next time I'm at the store.

I'll stop writing work related posts now. I think you get the idea. I'm going to answer phones everyday and enjoy it.

In Training

As of today, I'm an employee in training at Vivint. I will be working in Retention. When people want to cancel their service, I'm the one they talk to. I try and convince them to stick with us or be the bearer of bad news and tell them they can't cancel their contract. Basically, I'm getting paid to talk to angry people on the phone and not take it personally when they yell at me. Sounds fun, right?

New Hires Orientation started at 8am. I had planned to ride with a friend who works there and we were going to leave and 7:35. I went to her apartment and walked in. With the door unlocked I assumed she was awake. Wrong! I went to her room and woke her up. She gave me a nod, said "Hey!" and then rolled over to sleep some more. I asked if she was planning on waking up and she asked for a few more minutes. I told her were were supposed to be on our way out the door. She didn't believe me. She checked the time, jumped out of bed, an ten minutes before I was supposed to be there, we left for Vivint. I was freaking out because I could NOT be late for my first day. I prayed on the way there and things turned out fine. They hadn't started yet and my friend felt horrible. It was a stressful start, but the rest of the day was great. I have a temporary badge on a lanyard. It makes me feel so official haha! I'll get my real one later this week.

I was the only one going into retention from my orientation group; hopefully there were more in the other one. Everyone else was doing sales, tech support, or something else in customer care. Orientation was pretty fun. I met some nice people and I'm kind of sad I won't be working in the same department as them. It's probably for the best though; we got pretty giggly at one point. Watching all the video clips and learning more about the company, I think I'm going to like it at Vivint. We'll have to see how I feel after I really start working.

Vivint really takes care of their employees because they want us to take great care of the customers. There are so many perks to working there. One of my favorites is the free lunch everyday! They have great food. There is also a fitness center that's open to employees 24/7. I just might have to take advantage of that. There are ping pong tables and a pool table in the cafe and I guess they have tournaments sometimes with great prizes. They do a lot of stuff like that. They also have a full size basketball court as well as an onsite doctor. They pretty much want you to never leave. Someone joked that you could practically just live at Vivint and we told that one person actually had done that for a short time until they were caught!

One of my favorite parts was when one of the VP's came in and talked to us. He demonstrated how the home automation system works. He took out his iPhone and showed us inside his house via the cameras he has set up. His son was watching TV in the kitchen and he was like, "Should we mess with him?" Through the app on his phone, he cut the power to the outlet that the TV was plugged into. We saw his son get up and run into another room to tell his mom. It was so funny!

He told us another story about his older son watching a movie with his girlfriend downstairs. Let me just say, when you can control lights, power to certain outlets, locks and the thermostat all from your phone, the potential for for funny stories to tell people increases. He said he was thinking about making a t-shirt that says: Modern Parenting Powered by Vivint. I think it's awesome. The commercial below is similar to the story he told.

I think if I owned a home and had a family right now, I would probably get a Vivint home security system. I can get you a friends and family discount if you're interested!

I can't wait to see how tomorrow goes :)

Oh, and I can dress casually. I love that! To give you an idea of how it is at Vivint, here is a picture of the CEO. He usually looks like this and rarely wears a suit.