Author: Tiara Rea

I really love doing this staff interviews, because it gives us the chance to get to know even some of the most remote Lunarpages employees. While we don’t outsource any of our support staff, we do have quite a few employees who work remotely from various parts of the US, which means I don’t get to see them day in and day out. D’awww.

So for this month’s interview, I’ve got a treat for you – Steven Priest, one of our remotes! He’s one of the busiest guys here at LP, and everybody on the forums and within LP knows him by “Priest”, which is the coolest nickname ever.

(here is is on the day of his wedding – everybody say “awwwww!”)

Heya Priest, thanks for taking the time for this interview! I know you were looking forward to my ‘hard-hitting questions’.

So I’m always hearing people say, “talk to Priest” or “Yeah, Priest will get that done for you”. You’re quite the Lunarpages rock star around here, but what’s your official job title besides “Official LP Go-to Guy”?
My official job title is Customer Service Supervisor, but ‘go-to guy’ works for me

And what does that job title entail? What are your daily LP duties?
My main responsibility is that of a customer service supervisor, supervising the remote team during the swing shift. This includes spot-checking staff replies to customers, assisting in knowledge base maintenance, assisting my staff with technical questions they may run across in tickets, working the desk myself, and handling any escalated tickets from those customers that may be less than happy. In addition to that, I also am hooked into the phone system in the office and you may see me grabbing a few random calls throughout the night. I also do perform some minor development work, rarely for official Lunarpages pages, and most often in creating tools for myself and other staff to use. Finally, I do a great amount of research in anything and everything webhosting related so I can be a repository of information for myself and my fellow staff.

That’s quite a mouthful! Told you he was a busy guy.

And how long have you worked for Lunarpages?
I’ve been with LP for a little over 4 years now

What made you decide to work here?
Well, I had just purchased a domain and had been with another host that didn’t really offer all that much. I did some poking around and found Lunarpages and signed up for an account. Shortly after that, I found the Lunarforums and started hanging out there. I noticed the job posted up there and thought it would be an excellent opportunity for me. Couple long distance phones calls overseas and dazzling people with my accent and here I am.

Where did you work before Lunarpages?
I used to work for Dell technical support. I started out in their laptop support area, got moved to desktop and laptop dual support, then finally into the last call queue (meaning I got all the calls that no one else could figure out). Somewhere in the mix was the OS reinstall queue they had for a while. Nothing more boring than installing Windows all day, every day over the phone, though I did meet a number of very interesting people (there was a lot of free time for chatting in between driver installs )

Do you host any websites here at LP?
Actually, I don’t. Unlike most webgeeks, I don’t really have a web presence. I do have a domain, but it mainly just serves my email as I got tired of having to constantly change it with all the moving I’ve done. My site at LP is mainly used for me to internally test scripts I’ve written for staff use.

Got any crazy or funny customer stories for us? Feel free to change the names to protect the innocent.
Oh, I’ve heard quite a few. From my time at Dell, here are a few gems:
1.) One lady thought her computer was dirty and actually washed it in a bathtub
2.) I’ve actually had the infamous ‘broken cupholder’ call
3.) Another lady could not get her computer to turn on. After 30 minutes I managed to figure out she had plugged the power strip into itself instead of into the wall
From my time at LP, nothing too much stands out, other than those few times a customer writes in and asks something they end up answering themselves later in the message. They will usually reply back again and say something funny like ‘I see I answered my own question, I feel rather stupid now, feel free to add a charge to my account for the time’, or something similar.

LOL we get those a lot, and I know I’ve personally done the same thing when emailing companies.

What do you think is the one feature that makes Lunarpages stand out from the competition?
I may be biased here, but I have to say its the support team. Its really a great group of people to work with and every one of them cares about getting the customer the right information to get them sorted.

What do you do in your free time when you’re not working for the best web hosting company in the world?
LOL, free time?? When I’m able to break away from the computer, I work on my trees (grow them from collected seeds and in several years, they will be bonsai material). I also waste time watching sci-fi type shows or anime. I purchased a home within the past year and often work in AutoCAD drawing up designs for things I would like to do (never did get away from drafting). I try to squeeze some time in for the wife as well, less I be killed

OMGANIME!

If you weren’t working in the web hosting industry, what would be your dream job?
I can really only think of three jobs I would like to do,
1.) Perl developer (I’m a self-confessed Perl zealot, though I do work in some other languages when its needed)
2.) Drafting, though I much prefer mechanical drafting to architectural. Give me a part, a set of calipers, and maybe a micrometer and I’m a happy person
3.) Horticulturist. Somewhere along the way, I got injected with a love for plants. Would be nice to be able to work with trees

You work as a remote for Lunarpages. Does that mean you go to work in your jammies?
I tell you, it very much used to. Nothing better than rolling out of bed 5 minutes before your supposed to be at work, dragging yourself to the computer, and flopping down in front of it. But then I had to go and get married, so the bachelor style of working from home, and life in general, had to die

Since a lot of our customers are probably jealous that you work from home, can you tell us some of the perks to working from home and how you got this kind of job?
Well, you get to work in your jammies Really its got its ups and downs, just like an office job does. Working from home means that I do get to see my wife a little more since I work a swing shift… which is itself an up and down (hopefully she won’t see this). There is a little more freedom, the boss isn’t always looking over your shoulder, you don’t catch illnesses that co-workers bring in (I hear the flu is brutal this year), don’t have to deal with the drive into work. But it does take a ’special’ person to work from home (Everyone says I’m a little touched, so it works out well) because your office is your home, same 4 walls when you’re at work and not. I do sometimes miss the interaction in person with coworkers, and of course, singing with the radio on the drive in. I got the job by happy circumstance. I hadn’t even considered a home based job until I ran across this one.

If I offered you $5,000 to eat a live worm, would you do it?
I’m a pretty picky eater, so I’m gonna have to go with a no to that one

Are you a gamer geek? If so, name your favs.
I used to be WAY into games, but its hard to find the time anymore. I do have an EVE online account (Ibsydian) and anyone flying through Lonetrek may see me warping around. That’s really the only computer game I’m into, had to give up the Everquest addiction. I do play console games too, the Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda games being my fav (oooh, and Metroid, loves me some Metroid)

What websites do you find yourself visiting most?
Slashdot.org is a staple of course, as well as fark.com and perlmonks.org. I’m an astronomy buff and visit space.com periodically and have also been known to read wikipedia for hours, hopping from article to article as I find links. Finally, I keep sanity with a daily comic visit to 8-bit theatre (nuklearpower.com) and User Friendly (userfriendly.org)

Are you into reality TV?
No, I find reality TV to be the bane of human existence. I have a life all my own and prefer to go out and live it as much as possible, that’s my reality TV.

It’s almost a staple of a Lunarpages employee if you have tattoos. Sooo, got any yet?
Nope, I’m a hardcore, livin’ in my parent’s basement type of geek. No piercings or tattoos. In my defense, I do like going out to clubs/bars and the alcohol that invariably goes with it

Do you get to travel a lot? If so, where’s your favorite place to vacation? If no, where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world?
I’ve travelled pretty extensively, though in a small space (eastern-US). I would have to say my favorite places would be Florida or the Bahamas. I don’t much care for the cold and those places are warm. I have a list of countries I’d like to visit, hard to choose really. Australia, Japan, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, and Italy are all on the list.

Anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to tell our customers about?
I don’t think so, but you can always route fanmail back to me, be happy to answer any they may have =)

And now for the fun stuffs, do you prefer…

peanut butter or chocolate?
Neither, I prefer white chocolate

East Coast or West Coast?
Neither (am I being difficult?), I’m from the South, don’t need no ocean =p

oceans or rivers?
Rivers, less salt

Soup or salad?
salad

Superman or Batman?
superman

Windows or Linux?
Windows… kidding, linux for me pls

TV or Movies?
TV, need the background noise when working and movies are way overpriced

Being outdoors or indoors?
Being outdoors

Talking on the phone or sending an email?
Phone. I’m a bit of a smarta…aleck and it tends to be received much better when my voice can be heard

Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview!

Related Hosting Newsletter Articles:

• Lunarpages Interviews TheRatingBlog.com
• LunarNews: November 2007
• October..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 6:03 am and is filed under Interviews, Issue 8 - March 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Both comments and pings are currently closed.