First AppleCare Excellence Award in years

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised with an AppleCare Excellence Award for doing a really impressive (to the customer) job helping an IT consultant back in February. My evil twin must’ve come to work that day. Seriously though, I don’t really fret nor gloat about the customers’ feelings or opinions of me. I am confident that a large majority of them think I’m cool and a very small, irrational minority want my head on a pike. 
 
It was a nice shock because very people in my Enterprise team win. Doesn’t we mean we suck, our performance and effectiveness is harder to measure against the dominant model my site uses: Desktop, Portable and Customer Service support. My team tends to also have the same people win frequently on the contests that awards things based upon numbers, not really intangibles. I’m not going to elaborate there since my site is not about slagging my co-workers or job. This is about something positive. And how positive it was! Fifty bucks for me to do as I wish. 
 
The money was nice but I think what I liked better is all the patience and recognitition I’ve received from the powers that be in Enterprise and Site Management. 2004 was an ugly year for me and 2005 was a recovery year. These days, I feel like I’m back on track, namely in the confidence department. The only downside is my co-workers now knowing about the prize so I can’t use the IRS excuse for not providing donuts on Fridays.