Maybe a Check-In

On the plus side, it's been raining for three days and ya gotta love that. At least, *I* do.

On the flip side ... I dunno, I'm not feeling real perky. It seems I'm hearing from friends a lot less than I had gotten used to, and -- and here's a flash for those of you who have kids, especially those of you who have *several* kids: they don't ever stop being your kids. I take on the worries and moods of every doggone one of them, but there's a lot less I can do to fix it when it needs more than a cookie and a teddy bear. (And even though I know it's important for them to learn to deal with their own problems and slay their own dragons and kill their own snakes and all that sort of thing, I'm a MOM and I still want everybody to be happy, dammit.)

Oh, and then there's The Job. Which I dislike in an extreme sort of fashion, and I'll be honest, it isn't just this particular company and its particularly draconian customs. It would be any large company and any set of draconian customs. It isn't that I don't want to *work,* it's that I don't want to work for some big entity like this. I hate being told what to do with every microsecond of my day. I hate being told to do things that run contrary to my nature, such as forcing products I personally don't believe in down the throats of my customers, especially in a bad economy. (Often I've thought that working for a big entity like Barnes & Noble might be fun, but people who do work there say I'm dreaming.) Yeah, I get to work from home, which is convenient in the extreme, and I get to work surrounded by my baskets of yarn and my laptop and my cats and even keep a tv on over in the corner (although I keep it only on CNN because I can't watch anything with a storyline -- the phone keeps ringing!)

But they run numbers on us non-stop. Not only do we have to spend x-number of minutes per day either talking with a sub(scriber) or being clearly available to talk with a sub, there are also measures of the acceptable average length of those calls, to say nothing of the quality of those calls and what products we *offered* and how engagingly we offered them, as well how many of the people we speak with on a given day find it necessary to call back within 24 hours (not good!). And mostly and most frustratingly, how many Units do we sell?

Please note: I do not like Sales. When I transfered here from the same company in Denver, where I was reasonably happy (not delighted, but reasonably happy) doing tech support for the internet, I discovered that the only option in California was to be in the Billing Dept, which I did not want to do because I assumed (and rightly, as it turned out :o) ) there would be numbers involved, and I simply do not grok numbers and I do not want to argue about numbers. But the choice would be to take this transfer or start hitting the streets of San Francisco looking for I-Have-No-Idea-What-Sort-of-Job, and I already knew people there who had been looking for literally YEARS. So I asked the HR person who was conducting my phone interview if there was any selling involved in this post, and SHE SAID NO. Her name was Heidi, of all the tricksy things, and she flat out bold-faced told me no. "Oh," she said, "there may be a little 'soft sales,' like if you're taking a video payment and they say they'd like to add internet, then you can enter that order and make a little commission." I swear to all the gods that's what the woman said. And apparently she said it to everyone, because they waited until the last three days of our three-week training to roll in Anthony, the Quick-Talking Greasy Used Car Salesman, to give us our Sales Training, and everyone in the class said, "They told us there wasn't going to be any sales!" And our teacher said, "Well, there is."

So obviously my biggest single grief is the expectation that I will sell x number of video units, x number of internet units and x number of cable phone units.

I hate this.

And I'm not measuring up and I don't even WANT to measure up, really, and I'm being written up all the time because they seem to think I need reminding that while my cover is happy helpful (if somewhat bumbling) billing agent, my *real* identity is Sales Beast.

Aside from that, I've gotten a written Counseling just this past week for taking a sick day. Yes, I have the time in my 'bank' to cover me for a sick day -- several of them, in fact -- but the thing is, see, I took this one 'unscheduled.' Isn't that just the way with sickness, how it sneaks up on you and doesn't give you two weeks' advance notice so you can clear it with your draconian employer first? And why did I find it needful to take that sick day? It was a Monday. I had tossed all of Sunday night, stressing about having to go back to work and face the numbers, and the more you tell yourself you have plenty of hours left to get enough sleep to make it through the day, the more you hear the clocks. I finally fell asleep (sleeping pill, twice) around 5:30. Woke at 7:30 just long enough to make the two required bleary-eyed clumsy-fingered incoherent-of-speech phone calls to let them know (two hours before my shift, as required, dammit) that I wasn't going to be working that day. Dropped back into the pillows and woke a little after noon. Felt very guilty but managed to have a nice productive non-corporate day. Now I've got yet more negative paperwork in my file.

David and I have been working our way through the Director's Cut of Lord of the Rings, watching all the Appendices and everything. I hear the writers and the woman who designed the costumes and even to an extent the artists, and I TOTALLY get what they're saying and why they're making the decisions they're making as they put this masterpiece together, and I keep doing that little Dane Cook thing, thumping myself rapidly on the chest with the flat of my hand and wondering, "Why not me?" Yes, I see they're working really really hard, but I also see that they're doing things they love and understand and are good at, and they have a huge sense of pride in their contributions.

Why not me? I could have done any of those things if I had focused a long time ago, if I had actually taken relevant classes and actually applied myself, if I had somewhere acquired the self-confidence to believe that the ultimate measure of my own life's success and happiness was not simply coming away from college with my M.R.S. degree. Yes, I wanted kids, lots of kids, and I wouldn't trade them for anything, but how I wish I had at least finished school in some meaningful way (I dropped out in my final Senior semester, feeling that school was of piffling importance compared to getting married and settling into being a wife and mother, and I would never need any of that stuff, anyhow). I wish I had kept my hand in somehow. I wish I had kept writing, and writing imaginatively. My nerves, Danielle Steele had like nine kids ... not that I think a lot of Danielle Steele's work, but still, she did some. :o)

Yesterday they made us come into the call center for a mandatory meeting. I try to be perky about those -- after all, I get to listen to a book on my iPod while I drive and I get to hit Subway for a tuna on whole wheat for lunch. It's a pill otherwise, of course, but there are those two bright spots. Yesterday they kept us in a 2 hour meeting, the gist of which was: We Ain't Playin' Wi' You People Anymore. Yes, once again they're tightening the thumb screws. And to emphasize how much they aren't playing, we have to come back each of the next two Fridays. At least.

Now, I had suffered some insomnia again the night before, fell asleep a little after midnight, woke up at 3:45 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I was wobbling pretty seriously, in spite of the 5 shot latte. At the end of the Mandatory Meeting I mentioned to my supervisor that I wasn't doing real well as I only got 3 1/2 hours sleep. She smiled sweetly and said she had gotten 4. My last supe in Denver would have said, "You've got paid time available, don't ya? Go the hell home!" I loved Bruce. He was a redneck gun-toter, but he knew which side was up. Of course, I did hear that he was fired recently for having 'a poor attitude.'

But I haven't been fired yet. It's on the horizon; it hasn't happened yet. Every day that I come downstairs at 6:30. I think, "Well, they're still paying me. Got over on 'em again!" Wondering how long this will last?