Special Ops Engineering: "One-day" business trip, Day 3

I really know better than to fly without my tools or a week's worth of clothes, but I believed my manager when he said "one-day training" and hopped on a plane to San Jo' with the bare essentials.

I suppose he was technically correct. Our training was one day, and now I've spent another day at a customer site playing Look Like You Know What You're Talking About. Choir taught me the awesome skill set of Follow Along And Try Not To Look Lost. Look Like You Know What You're Talking About is really just a specialized implementation of my choir skill set, paired with Read Helpfile While Customer Gets Coffee.

Also, working with my boss makes me privy to information about our region that I don't need and don't necessarily want. It's an interesting balance. I suppose I should get used to it; my review indicates that I'm "on the fast track to Sr. Engineer." Sr. Engineers focus on problematic accounts, development of the region, mentoring, more complicated systems, etc. It's like leadership and crisis management bundled up on top of our usual jumping out of helicopters role.

If I ever make Senior, Matt's going to have fun re-imagining my job.

Right now, I'm pretty happy that I'm managing the transition back to field work fairly well, on a technical level. I was rather concerned that my inexperience with our general install pool would bite me in the ass, after spending so long on a highly specialized instrument. So far, so good. Take that with the caveat, though, that I'm mostly working with other people at the moment, and not entirely on my own.