New Position

I was talking with one of the baseball boy's dad last week after the game and jokingly said "Phew...I am ready to go home and go to bed!"  (Mostly because there was no conversation, he is one of those that only talks to me because I am a coaches wife and he hopes I will slip some top secret info to him on how to get an edge for his boy.  Ha.  Not happening.)  Anyway, he thought for about five seconds and then said, "Ya, I guess your weeks are pretty similar to all of our weeks." (referring to the parents).  I smiled politely and agreed.

Little did he know, I was choking back reminding him that Brock and I DO live in the real world.  We pay rent each month, we have a gas and electric bill, phone bills, a home to clean, laundry to do, callings to magnify, the list goes on and on.  I always get a kick out of the people that think he and I are kids.  I remember being a kid, and it did not come with much responsibility. 

Anyway....I digress.  Yes.  My week is about the same as most of their weeks, possibly even more crazy when it comes to Monday thru Friday, 8-5.  Yup, you heard me.  I have a glorious setup.  I haven't been forced to work a Saturday for a year and a half.  I don't think I have ever posted about this job, so I figured it is time.

The company I work for is called Avantguard.  You can check it out at www.agmonitoring.com.  We are a wholesale alarm monitoring company.  What does that mean?  It means that when the sweet old ladies push their button around their neck and say "Help!  I've fallen and can't get up!" our operators heroically say "Help is on the way!" and then dispatch the paramedics or another form of help as needed.  When someone tries to break into your house and trips your security, we send the police.  When you are in a building that spontaneously bursts into flames, our operators will send the Fire Department.  In short, we are the company that has your back.  We don't sell the alarm system ourselves, we monitor for over 500 companies that sell alarm systems but don't have the resources to monitor them on their own.  We like to say "When you save a life, you are a hero.  When you save multiple lives a day, you work at Avantguard."

What do I do for this company?  When I was hired I was hired to be the first shift lead in the Rexburg office which opened in September of 2012.  By November, they were ready for me so that is when I began.  I was offered a position to be the Director of training for our Idaho office in August of 2013.  I joke that there isn't much demand for personal trainers in East Idaho so I train for AG instead.  I loved my position as trainer.  It has been a crazy stretch for the last 9 months.  I was so busy that I was able to pick another trainer from the office to come help me in training full time.  Anybody who works for our company has to go through a 4 week training course, which is 4 hours a day.  In Februrary, they added the Quality Assurance Department the Training Department which doubled our work load and we went from a team of two in Rexburg and a one in Ogden to two in Rexburg and two in Ogden.  The math doesn't add up yet, but we are working on it, and working like crazy in the meantime.

One month ago, my boss determined that he had too much on his plate with all of our growth and it was determined that a new position would be born and I would fill it.  So I am currently still filling all of my normal training/QA responsibilities as well as managing the department.  Let's put it this way, no matter how many hours I work, my to-do list only ever gets longer, which is 100% ok with me.  I am one of those people that would so much rather be busy than sit there and twiddle my thumbs.  In the last month we have lost one of our four team members, so the three of us have been juggling everything.  Friday I drove to our Ogden office and held interviews and have selected a new person so hopefully that will help a little bit.

The moral of the story is that I have a grown up job.  I work over 40 hours pretty much every week (that's not my favorite part although overtime pay isn't unbearable :D ), I have employees that work under me, I run weekly reports, I have an office with a giant window, a direct office number and a sleeve of 1,000 business cards.  I never in a million years would have guessed that I would end up doing what I am doing, but I absolutely love my job and what I do.  It is so fun to be involved in the company and to feel valued and to be able to contribute.  We serve people day in and day out, and that is what makes our company so great.