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Subject:Re: What to do in slack times? From:Amy Janczy <ajanczy -at- ITIS -dot- COM> Date:Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:28:24 -0500
Is everyone else working on the project slacking too, or is there still work
that needs to be done? If I were you, I would also the folks who seem to
need help if you can assist them. Perhaps this isn't possible in a larger
organization, but in the companies I've worked for in the past, I've stepped
in to assist with the web production team, the sales force, the marketing
folks, the testing folks, even the dreaded tech support lines. While this
means you are doing tasks that don't have anything to do with your job
description, you would be surprised how much you can learn about how the
company works this way.
For instance, I learned that the sales force was being completely bogged
down by the need to enter paperwork into a separate database that was used
for shipping and then a different one for billing, which meant that their
actual on the phone sales time was only 50% what it could have been. Maybe
even less, since these guys couldn't even type! I was able to help them
write up the problem and communicate the need for a sales support staff and
for merging all this info into one relational database system.
When talking to end-users as a "substitute" sales or tech support person, I
was able to ask them questions about the documentation I was producing and
to find out about their key likes/dislikes about the product. This helped
me plan future enhancements.
Also, you could look around and see if the company isn't ignoring a huge
area where you have skills. At the same company, I noticed there wasn't a
PR department and proposed to start one. It worked. Of course, this was
after the above-described volunteer efforts while performing my original
(TW) position.
As long as someone isn't putting a leash on you, there really is no such
thing as "slack times" so long as you remember you were hired to help the
company succeed, not to play "technical writer" in a situational comedy.
Now if they ARE putting a leash on you, I can see why you'd want to have
some slack!
