I had not spent so much time with one particular “student” as I have the last three days. We start at 8 am, and since Thursday we have gone until 8pm, 7pm, and 7pm.

He is making progress, and he isn’t giving up. He has run seven jobs through the system, and he’s getting faster. Jobs that once took 8 hours now take two, but this is still unacceptable. One salesperson calls in about 4 jobs a day on average. The “student” would be good enough if he only had to deal with one salesperson’s calls. He needs to get down to about 15-20 minutes a job. Father Time offers no forgiveness.

At this point he can handle the screens by himself, but he’s weak on the sequence of the program and his duties. He has been learning by repetition, which gives him familiarity and reduces his fear. We’re getting to the point where he’s starting to think through the program.

There are several reasons why this one’s a special case. He’s the relief service coordinator, which means that he doesn’t do that job all the time. He’s been on duty while the other coordinator takes off days he hasn’t had in a month. So he’s really learning two jobs. He also has little familiarity with Windows, sometimes trying to click on items outside the active window. He also has a little bit of an inferiority complex, joking about how I must think he’s an idiot. I make it a point to encourage his successes, but the occasional question previously answered can catch me off guard. :)

This will be worth it, though. He’ll be able to help the primary service coordinator when he comes back. They enter most of the information at the beginning of the process, to be used by those performing the work at the well sites. By helping this one I’m hopefully helping those guys, who are in direct contact with our customers and don’t need to spend time entering information already known beforehand. More time spent keeping customers happy tends to pad the bottom line. :)