Experiences at Lucent and Avaya

I worked for Lucent and Avaya for almost 7 years and enjoyed every minute of it. I started as a dsic technician installing wire for large business projects. Six months later I passed my Avaya engineers test and become a Customer Systems Engineer.
The first product lines that I regularly worked on were the Avaya Partner, Merlin Legend, and Spirit communication systems. My favorite was the Partner ACS, and working in the small businesses offices that purchased them. The Merlin Legend usually had to be programmed by software specialists, and I preferred to let them complete the programming. The Partner system was very user friendly and I enjoyed programming all aspects of the system.
About a year after I was hired, I was moved to the dsic crew again. This time I was shadowing lead installers and learning how to install the large business systems. Within about three months I was installing systems on my own. These projects would sometime takes a couple weeks to complete and involved installing over 3000 phone stations for some projects. I installed Definity Prologix, Avaya 8700's, Sun CMS, Intuity Audix, Intuity LX (Intuities that use Linux as an operating system),Sun Netra servers, and Polycom video conferencing products. I worked and installed systems at many large corporations including NCR, Reynolds and Reynolds, Fifth Third Bank, Key Bank, Provident Bank, Meryl Lynch, Victoria Secret, General Electric, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, The Federal Reserve, TRW, Microsoft, Home Depot, Best Buy, and many more large businesses.
My project experience continued to grow for many years at Avaya and I learned a great deal training all over the United States. I attended training in Chicago, Dallas, Concord Massachusetts, Denver, Orlando, Markham Ontario, White Planes, and took over 100 online classes at the Avaya University. Training was important at Avaya and keeping up on the latest system was key to the success of my job.
I logged many overtime hours while working at Avaya including work 3 days straight resolving issues at a major outage. I would traveled all over Ohio, and assist in other cities when they needed help. Gas was not as expensive when I worked at Avaya but I would regularly spend over $100 a week filling up two or three times.
I eventually became a Senior Technician and was forced to leave the company about three years ago do the layoffs. The unionized Avaya requires the last hired employees to be the first to go. This was a sad time for me, as I was very fond of my job and the accomplishments I had made while working at Avaya. I can't imagine life today if I had not had the experiences I did while working at Avaya. I was given tremendous responsibility and trained to be the best in my field. I did not have to much trouble finding a new job since I had worked at so many different businesses in the area. Many of the customer contacts I had would ask me if I was looking for a job. This network of colleagues was extremely important when my unexpected layoff occurred.
I believe in everything happens for a reason, and know that my time at Lucent and Avaya was a gift and I am glad I took advantage of it.