Bus stop thoughts.

Half an hour. Alone at the bus station. I wasn’t cold, I bought a warm jacket and boots.

Honestly, I think I’ll do this every evening, I mean if the bus won’t come and I’ll have to sit that half an hour.

Why? It makes me come to terms that this is how my life is. It’s cold, dark and lonely. And I’m the only person to blame. I am here, I’ve stayed here even when I wanted to be gone. As I sit there and think, I see myself just existing, I’ve given up my hopes and dreams. I make decisions, for example, one of the decisions I made was that this Christmas I won’t give gifts, I’ll simply give money, I’ll put it in a blank, white envelope. Also, another decision – I won’t celebrate Christmas. I hate them. I might make a post about why I hate/don’t see anything special with Christmas.  If anyone (by that I mean my sister or brother) will invite me over, I’ll politely say no, thank you. It was my New Year’s resolution – to not celebrate those things.

As I sit there, I feel…. I can’t even explain. As if I’m put in this world even though I didn’t want to be here. No…not exactly. I’m just here.

I was on a short cruise ship with my friend (should I call her that?). Aside from terrible hungover at one morning, it was pretty nice. We talked about our childhood (we know each other for 20 or a bit more years). I envied her family and hated mine. She felt like my family doesn’t like me (it was hard to explain how she felt), that my family sort of neglected me. Whatever. Her current situation is worse than mine, so why do I even complain.

Don’t know what to do with my job. I guess I’ll stay even though I hate it, it’s killing my nerves. It’s not like I’d a job that I’ll be happy to go to. It’s like, what, 10% of all people who actually love their job? Good for them. If I can resign at 65, then I have 40 years left. Not that much.

You know, my mind is light. When you make those decisions, everything seems better.

On Friday I’ll go to a concert. I haven’t been to one in years. I’m almost sure that I’ll grow bored, then I’ll want to cry because of seeing all the people enjoying themselves while I’ll think “Can ground open and swallow me?” If I wouldn’t get a horrible hungover, I’d like to get drunk but I won’t.

Well, I guess all I left to do today is to go to sleep.

 

 

Free day

At work I had this sort of awkward situation. 

I need a free next Friday, I already got approval from my boss, no issue with that. But my team also have this not really a manager, but she’s the one who makes work schedules, so I wrote her that I won’t be at work next Friday. To which she replied, “If she (my colleague) will be back (she’s ill), then you can have free day, if she won’t be back, then no!” 

What? I had planned this day before, had it approved by BOSS and then she tells me that I can’t have it because someone’s else is sick? There’s still 4 people (we’re 6 in total) on the line (I work in customer service). 

So, turns out that the “procedure” to get a free day is: 

-1) Check schedule, see if 2 people already haven’t taken a free day (oh, surprise, one more colleague took whole next week free but she told that only last week). This step makes sense and is understandable. 

1) Ask (or beg) her. 

2) If she approves, only then get BOSS’S official approval.

I very rarely ask for a free day. Okay, in last two months I needed 3 days because I was ILL and even those I almost didn’t want to take. I’ve been working when everyone else was ill and we were like 3 or 4 people fighting with the calls. Did I get praised for that? No. I see how other coworkers simply leave because of headache or she herself leaves earlier every other Friday. The colleague who now is ill, she’s a newbie and not really on the line yet and how I was supposed to know that she’ll be ill (again). Also, how she’s more important than boss? She does everything and also tries to be a manager…. But She is not one. 

Okay, this time I need this day free because I’ll go on a trip. But if I’ll need to go to a doctor? My colleague (who answers other line and there are 12 people team) can’t even get half a day free to see a doctor. Great, right? Yet, I was told “We need healthy people”. 

It’s quite clear that if you’re some person’s favourite, you’ll get stuff without problems, but if you’re challenging the person, they’ll want to show more power. 

Monday blues.

Stress made me ill.

The week was too horrible, too stressful, too much.

On Sunday I felt dreadful of Monday. This is the first time in this job when I felt this terrible just because I had to go to work. So on Monday (though already on Sunday) I woke up ill. Thank my immune system, it’s nothing very serious but scared me anyway. I stayed home for two days. Spent money on pills, thank you insurance for paying for hospital.

Honestly, I didn’t want to return to work. Maybe it was just last week that took everything out of me. I didn’t sleep enough, I didn’t drink enough water, I didn’t walk enough (though I used a scooter). I didn’t do enough. I wasn’t enough at work too. I work in customer service, IT support, and there were days when I couldn’t help them, even on the

I wasn’t enough at work too. I work in customer service, IT support, and there were days when I couldn’t help them, even on the easiest thing. It made me believe that I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t helpful enough. On Friday I almost took it out on my co-workers. Everything annoyed me, I was so frustrated that I could’ve punched someone. Would that have helped? I doubt. See, in this work, we’re asked to work faster, answer calls for a shorter time, solve more and more cases. I have to switch between two languages. Already that is making everything harder. Brains sometimes overheat. Then comes all the thousands of programs, errors, problems we need to solve. Impatient customers, customers who don’t listen. In the beginning, when I started to work, it was easier. Now, our management makes us do more, for example, answer about access rights, even though there’s a SPECIFIC group for that, but, oh, they don’t want to deal with those questions. If only they had made instructions for managers about how to do THEIR job. Yeah, we often have to teach people how to do their damn job. Funny enough, even we don’t have enough instructions, quite often we improvise and guess what we should do. Then comes the program updates which usually cause more problems than solving them. Or the new programs, those often don’t work properly so again, we cannot work fast.  Also, we don’t have enough people, some 7 people left and what, only, 3 are hired. Doesn’t seem too horrible but the amount calls of are increasing. According to law, every two hours we are allowed to take 15 minutes break but do you think it’s possible? No. Of course, those who work on the other language line, they can do it. But for us 5 people? Pretty much no. Because we work on two lines. Very effing fair. See the difference, there are 15 people, some of them work on two lines, one of them calls a bit less. Then there’s the 6 (5 because one is the ‘elder’ and answers calls less) and we have to work on two lines, on one of them, the original I was hired for, call quite a lot. So, we don’t have time to relax. Lunch time is all we have. The noise, the damned open space office, I cannot hear the customer, I have to repeat everything twice or I cannot hear what the customer says.

I want to call it a poor management.

Now, I try to think what to do to not be in this situation again. I guess I’ll take my 15 minutes break matter how long the call line is. I’ll take fewer calls if that’s the way how to save my health. Not worry that much (pharmacy, here I come, I need sedatives).

I could try to speak more about it. But no one wants to hear it. I told about the noise but all I got was “You’ll get used to it”.

As much as I like the place, the people, the paycheck (not big enough for all the work we do), I don’t think it’s sane to stay there long. It’s a great place to learn and I have learned a lot, this is an amazing experience but I cannot kill myself (nervous breakdown every other Friday isn’t healthy) because of work.

I wish more people would understand that. ESPECIALLY THE ONES WHO ARE IN CHARGE OF THEIR EMPLOYEES. HR do your job!! Or does IT Support need to teach you that?