i finally got hired at cPanel on October 16, 2012. i was so excited and nervous. There was a lot that I needed to learn. When i started Brian was a developer. i had many questions and Brian was one of people that helped answer those questions. Then on February 15, 2013, Brian became the Support Manager.
He liked that i would never do anything without running it by Him unless He already defined the answer before. He would have me shadow (train) new hires on policy type of stuffs and ticket etiquette. i believe i was the first level 1 analyst to help train people. It was because i followed the rules and practiced good customer service tactics. He knew that i would tell people how to do things the way He wanted them done because i did what ever He asked me to do. “Answer a ticket like this in this kind of way.” “Do this in this kind of situation.” Always would i do things the way He defined them.
We had a blast working together. He would come to my desk and tease me mercilessly. He would play practical jokes on me too. One of the most epic pranks He did was when He plugged in His remote controlled light switcher thingy to my monitor. Keep in mind that i was already having issues with this monitor turning off randomly. Come to find out later it was a bad transistor and i got a new monitor… Back to what happened… So He plugged in the controller thingy to my monitor and would randomly turn it off and on during the day. Already frustrated with it, i would get so mad. Then by the end of the day at shift handoff (where we handed off the active tickets we were working on to the next shift analysts) He got a co-worker in on it. This co-worker came up and asked me what was wrong and i complained that the monitor was acting up really bad that day. So he leaned against the desk and it turned off. i flipped out and yelled “SEEE! DID YOU SEE THAT! IT HAS BEEN DOING THAT ALL DAY! I AM DONE WITH THIS MONITOR!” *Slams fists on desk* Brian had the hardest time keeping it in. Sean Malen was down here from Michigan for training. Sean had to walk away or he would have blown the joke. Once Brian sawl how mad i was getting He took pity on me and finally showed me the controller in His hand. Immediately i knew what it was and looked under my desk and sawl the receiver. Man i was frustrated for the first 3 seconds. Then i flushed and laughed. He did not do those kind of things to anyone else and i realized it in that moment.
He also bought me a pony on a stick. i would ride it around the office like a hertard. Especially if i sawl this one person…he would get a “round about” until the pony stopped its “music”.
He would also hang out at my desk periodically through out the day. Just to talk about nothing and everything. This was when we developed our friendship even further and became very very good friends.
In the beginning we would go to dinner about once every week or two but that trickled to a halt. Later, when we started dating, we talked about it and it was because His manager duties took up a lot of His time. Plus He started building a wall around Himself in regards to me since i was with someone else at the time. He also had started developing feelings for someone else.
Needless to say, when Brian was Support Manager, and i was an analyst, we had a blast working together. i woke up every weekday morning excited to go to work!