Frustration ….

I work shifts.

I’ve been told they are called “Continentals” but I have no idea why. In short I do 4x12hr shifts of 2 days then 2 nights. I then get 4 days off (bar a few hours for recovery) and this naturally leads to not seeing friends or being able to attend Church for a few weeks at a stretch due to the 8 day nature of the shift rotation. I’m cool with this and so are the family.

There are many added benefits such as being able to do things on weekdays with the children that otherwise I couldn’t. Then there’s the extra (shift allowance) pay and many more. One of the nicer ones (because it suits me) is that my night shifts are, apart from regular scheduled tasks, generally very quiet and so I get time to do things that normally I wouldn’t have time for. I study, I read, I do my banking, I catch up with my correspondence, I read blogs, and yes I waste time.

So even though I am the de facto go to guy in the Church for all things technical (except for when it relates to sound) and I can typically respond to a technical issue within a few days, it still frustrates me that the Church still won’t ask me. The latest occasion is to do with one of our auditorium projectors. It’s developed black bars in a repeating pattern vertically across the screen. So instead of asking me to take a look or to suggest possibilities the pastor and one of the other staff members ask my son.

Now I’ve no problems in them utilising him – after all he’s volunteered himself during this time of no school (he’s waiting for his A level results and then it’s off to university) to do whatever they need doing. Technically he’s very computer literate and he’s a much, much better coder than I am (I’m a hardware geek) but he’s also switched on enough to ask me first for answers and if I can’t help there’s always google. So, we’re sat at dinner two days ago and he asks me if I know where one can purchase projector bulbs and how much they might be.

Being a logical and suspicious problem solving type I ask a question in answering (my wife hates that) him. In short I ask why he’s asking and this is when it emerges that the Church has a projector problem. Argh! OK, one could argue it’s my fault because my shifts have kept me away from Church for the last two weeks and haven’t see the problem but hey … we all got to work sometime and didn’t we (the royal we that is) introduce a helpdesk system recently that allows for any staff member to raise a fault. Ah well …

Anyway, 10 minutes of googling brought me the support address for the manufacturer (in America) and a further 10 the price of a new bulb or an equivalent new projector. Then it was off to work for my first night shift and at 2am I got a reply from the support team who advised it was likely down to a mainboard fault.  A further eMail exchange elicited their UK reseller and all of this has been forwarded to the relevant person.

So what have I learnt from all this ….?

That my Church still don’t understand this is my ministry. After all they wouldn’t send someone whom needed counselling to me and they also know not to ask the pastor techie questions …

That I need to keep pushing the helpdesk and the ease of raising a ticket – any hour of the night or day.

That my absence is still not understood.

We soldier on.