Someday, I'd like to dream about something other than my job.

Last Saturday marked the one year anniversary of my last day at my previous job.  What a long way I've come since then, and how much I've changed.

I used to spend a lot of the time just monitoring incoming phone lines and the agents taking calls; I'd switch agents from one line to another if necessary, track down agents who were missing, and try to make sure that calls weren't holding too long waiting to be answered.  While I was doing that, I'd have plenty of time to do other things if everything was working okay - I mainly just had to keep a close eye and react quickly when anything started to be a problem.  But I was good at it, and could head off most problems, so I had time to write blog entries and read message boards and blogs.  I tried to do it discreetly, and unless I am in complete denial, I looked busy while switching back and forth between screens.  You know, as opposed to my coworkers trying to hide the fact that they were reading magazines or playing games on their phones.

I did a good job, I really did.  But it certainly wasn't challenging.  And this new job that I've been in since the beginning of August last year has been nothing but challenging.

I've learned to speak up.  Now when I have meetings with directors and senior directors and vice presidents I can keep my head enough to talk, answer questions, and even ask them questions.  I've also learned to speak up for myself, both when defending my work or ideas and also about HR related issues when they refused to honor the verbal agreement about PTO time/paid holidays.

I've learned to do a buttload of things I'd never done before in NICE IEX TotalView, the program I use to forecast future call volume and schedule ~200 agents.  I had no idea how little I knew, but within the first few months of working here I'd read the entire manual and most of the program's help screens.

I have a much different perspective on the industry in which I work.  I can see how this company is structured on a level I didn't have access to at my previous job, and going to that convention in April gave me a whole different view of how everything fits together and what other companies do.

I've learned to train people: I've trained dozens of managers, supervisors and team leads on the program we all use to see schedules and watch agents.  I've learned to lead meetings and take control if it gets off track or loses focus.

I've had to learn to be less intimidated by people, or at the very least to hide it from them.  I've struggled with taking things personally, and have hopefully gotten better about having the perspective to know it's almost never personal.

But here's the other part:  I know that I have made a massive difference in the way this call center works.  Before I came they forecast future call volume on a spreadsheet, guessed at how many people they needed to staff the call center, and did schedules for the agents on a spreadsheet.  They had no way of knowing if the agents were actually working the right schedule, if they were missing for any part of their shift, and whenever anything came up for the agents to attend (like meetings or training) they just pulled agents off the phone at random.  They couldn't see how call volume was likely to go later in the day, or whether they were under- or overstaffed.

But... here's the other other part.  I don't think they, in particular my boss or the VP that he reports to, really have any idea what I do, how well I do it, or how much of a difference it's making.  The managers know how much of a difference it's making, because it's directly affecting them.  But the call center director has only been there for 2 months, so he didn't see what it was like before.

(I was very entertained to discover that, upon his first tour of the call center when he had his final interview, the new director guy asked where the "workforce department" was, and was visibly shocked to hear that it was in fact just a "workforce person".  But this person does the forecasting, and all the scheduling?  Yes, he was told.  She sets staffing levels?  She approves time off requests?  What about scheduling training and meetings?  She does that, she does that too, she does that too, he was told repeatedly.)

I suppose part of it is me, I could have done more to explain what I was doing and how it all worked.  Honestly, it took a few months for it to really sink in that they had no clear idea of what the whole concept of workforce management really was.  I was going merrily along, fixing things and setting policies and figuring stuff out, and kind of assuming that someone was keeping track of me.  But now I really don't think that was the case.

The final straw was when I found out that the three managers, the director and the senior director (my boss) all got big bonuses based on the extremely low abandon rate, which is low because of my ability to manage the call volume and workforce.  I mean, that's what they hired me to do, isn't it?  And maybe they thought I wouldn't find out about that huge bonus that they all got, or maybe they just don't give a fuck.  

So, I got mad, and then I started working on a plan to go to my boss and ask... for what?  A raise, a promotion, a bonus, some sort of acknowledgement of the degree to which I rock?    I'm still thinking about it, and I'm still not sure.  And I also updated my LinkedIn profile and my resume and applied for a couple of jobs.

On Wednesday I had a phone interview for a job that sounds SO perfect.  It sounds challenging, but without the massive stress of my current job.  I'd be replacing someone who is relocating, and be part of a team.  I haven't heard back yet about an in-person interview, but I'm cautiously hopeful.

I suppose if I could hang in for another year or two things might change completely.  The new director guy is backing me up with my pleas for help, to hire at least a couple of others who would do workforce stuff too, but my boss keeps saying it isn't in the budget.  The truth is that they are all sales people who don't see value in a non-revenue-producing role.  It's possible that they may do it next year, and it's possible that in a couple of years I could be heading up a whole workforce department.  But do I even want to do that?  

This job is challenging, but in a way that is exhausting me.  I am so wiped out when I get home from work I barely have any energy to be creative, or to get things done around the house.  I hate that.

And truly, the thought of leaving just makes me so happy.  I am really grateful for the various things I've learned while at my current job, and the opportunities for growth, and the experience.  But I am ready to go somewhere else.

My Life, Full of Stress and Parties and Pain and Love

I'm fairly stressy lately.  Things are changing.  I am fine during the day, but then I wake up in the middle of the night and immediately terror and panic charge towards my poor sleepy brain.  Even if I fight them off and force my head to think of other things (if I were a crew member on Voyager, what would my job be, and would Chakotay and I end up dating?) enough panic gets in through the chinks to keep me awake for hours.  

Jaw pain doesn't help.  I'm going back to the dentist tomorrow to have my nightguard adjusted. My bite is uneven, hitting primarily on the right side, so I get more pressure there, and my teeth and jaws end up aching if I clench my teeth in my sleep, which apparently I do frequently.  I guess it's a sign of being too stressed out that I want to punch everyone who tells me to relax.

Greg and I did have a really nice long Memorial Day weekend, and I relaxed, at least a little.  We have friends who are moving to Georgia, and they had a going-away party on Sunday.  Despite occasional rain showers courtesy of Beryl, it was a fun party, a celebration of our friends.  Kids running around and splashing in the pool, adults making alcholic Butterbeer and grilling chicken wings and bacon-wrapped shrimp, lots of picture-taking and laughter and hugs.  We've known this couple for a long time.  Since before they were even a couple, much less married and with a son.  It was a nice party and a fun day.

Then on Monday, Memorial day, I open up the laptop and pull up Facebook and the first thing I see there on my screen is my father's grave.  My cousin in Virginia visited the family cemetery for Memorial day and she posted a photo for me.  Despite how unexpected and kind of shocking that was (I may have cried a few tears, just for a minute) it was a very sweet thing for her to do.  Mom said she'd like to see it, too, so I'll print it out and mail it to her. 

Yesterday a pretty cool thing happened:  We made the last payment on my car.  What a good feeling!  Plus, next month we will make the last payment on Greg's car.  No more car payments at all!  Boy, that'll make a huge difference in our monthly bills.  It's a relief.

So overall my stress is manageable.  Most of the time I'm fine, I am even hopeful about the future.  I would say 94% of the time I am looking forward to the next phase of my life, and 6% of the time I am terror-stricken and panicky. 

But I'm glad I have nice, thoughtful friends and family.

Stabbing Anxiety < Blank and Fuzzy

Well, I still don't know what is going on at work, and last week I started to get anxious and upset almost to the point of panic. PMS made things worse, for sure. I tried to keep up with my cardio workouts in the mornings, and that made a big difference with the muscle tension creeping up my shoulders and neck.  I took a few Advil PM's to help me get enough sleep. Taking a few days off last week to celebrate Greg's birthday gave me a chance to get away from the office and have a little distance, both physically and emotionally.  And it might not be possible to cuddle a sweet, nuzzling kitten without being cheered up.

This week I'm back and I just feel sort of numb.  Every night I have weird stress dreams; like wandering through a huge pot-luck lunch full of strangers and platters full of delicious looking food that I don't want to eat because I don't know anyone.  I don't feel the stabbing anxiety anymore, but I don't feel good either. 

Of course I haven't been writing.  Other than taking a few pics of Alabama I haven't done anything at all creative.  A friend invited me to go to a local Romance Writers of America meeting.  It sounds inspiring and helpful, full of experienced writers who have been published, and she said that the fact that my chick-lit novel isn't technically "romance" wouldn't matter.  I'm planning to go with her on Saturday, and there's like a little piece of my brain that is excited about it, but mostly I just feel reluctant.  I feel intimidated by the writers and overwhelmed by everything, and just thinking about going makes me tired.

I am going to try to talk myself into going.  I haven't seen this friend in a long time, and we could go have lunch afterwards, and it would certainly be fun.  I feel like I ought to use writing to relieve all this angst, or to at least escape from it, but I don't know how to do that.  My mind feels blank and fuzzy, but maybe being with other writers would spark some inspiration.

We'll see.

Ready for a Weekend

Yesterday at work I was walking back from the restroom and I met a co-woker chickie in the hallway.   She's one of those co-workers that I really don't know well, but I like her, and we sometimes chat a while when she has to call my department for something.  She appeared to be just arriving, she was carrying her purse and holding a Starbucks cup out in front of her like it was a lifeline pulling her along.

I held the hallway door open for her.

"Hi!  Happy Friday!"  I smiled at her.

"No, it's not," Chickie said.

"Aw, why not?"

Chickie heaved a big breath and said, "I ran out of gas on the interstate."

"Oh, no!"

"I had to walk to a gas station, and carry back one of those things full of gas, and I was trying to put it in my tank on the side of the road, and people were honking at me."  She made a sad face.

I held open the door to the call center for her.  "Oh man, that's awful.  Well... at least it's Friday, right?"

She stopped walking and looked at me.  "I have to work tomorrow."

I know how that is, you really can't be all Yay Friday when you have to work on the weekend.

"Oh." I said. "Boy, you need a hug."

I was kind of kidding, really, but then she held out her arms, so I gave her a squeezy hug, being careful not to hit her coffee.  I hope her day got better.

My days at work have all sucked since we got even more bad news this week.  Nobody at work has hugged me either, although Greg told me that he's been trying to be extra nice to me at home because I'm so sad and stressy about work.  Which made me tear up a little.

Oh well, it's Saturday morning now, and unlike sad Chickie, I do have the weekend off.  Yay for that!

I Heart Christmas

Boy, Christmas can really get on top of you and hold you down like you're its bitch, can't it?  A bunch of people at work have out been dealing with various injuries/illnesses/family drama, and the dentist told me that stress-related tooth injuries make this is their busiest time of the year by far.  So far I am holding my own.  My shopping is finished, although I haven't wrapped anything, and two things haven't arrived in the mail yet.  My Christmas cards and stamps have been acquired, all but three cards have been sent out.  I put up our tabletop Christmas tree and lit my Christmas-scented Yankee Candles and pulled out my Christmas t-shirts (living in Florida, t-shirts make more sense than Christmas sweaters).

I'm trying to keep a close eye on my teeth/jaw,since I don't know if I am clenching my teeth in my sleep until it becomes a problem.  So far it's been fine.  I don't want to end up back at the dentist.  I also don't want a repeat of the really bad migraine I had last Christmas.

I love Christmas. I look forward to it all year, and when it's finally here I happily sing Christmas songs and bake cookies and curl ribbons and watch the tv specials from my childhood.  The tricky part is not getting stressed, especially over things that are made up or blown out of proportion by my own expectations.  Last year I got too stressed, and honestly now I don't even remember why.

Every year Mom asks me not to get her anything because she won't have any gifts for me, but I still take her a couple of things so we can open up presents in her apartment on Christmas Eve night.  Last year instead of making a family photo calendar I got her a calendar of Robert Tuckwiller's art, the landscape artist who lives right exactly where we are from.  Mom loved it, so I'm giving her the new one this year.  I have to admit, I got a second one for myself to hang up at my desk at work.  His beautiful paintings make me positively homesick.  I also got a great Black Friday deal on a digital photo frame for her.  When I received it, I wasn't thrilled with the resolution, but it seems to work just great and it's very easy, so I think I'll give it to her anyway.  I'm loading up a memory card with photos and hope to get some from my sister and my niece.

The little old lady who lives next door to us is in the hospital.  I'm not sure what's going on with her, but I like her; she's very sweet, and I hope she is okay.  It really does seem like practically everyone is having some kind of problem right now.

If you are stressy, please take a moment to enjoy this incredible video of Annie Lennox singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, from her new Christmas album.  It's truly beautiful.

There are some good things, too...

... in between the stress and sadness that is my job now.

Like so many other people, I don't get any exercise, yadda yadda yadda, my muscles are congealing into an ever-expanding Jabba the Hutt style mound of goo, blah blah blah.  Virtually everybody, other than, I assume, actual professional athletes who have negative four percent body fat and work out for 12 hours per day, bitches and moans about needing to get more exercise and eat healthier.  I do not know for sure that professional athletes do not also bitch and moan since I do not know any actual professional athletes, I mostly know people like me who sit down all day and then come home and eat mashed potatoes for dinner and then complain about having to walk more than two feet to get from their car to the grocery store.  But I have had so many sincere, heartfelt, passionate conversations with my husband and my friends and my coworkers about how much I need to get some damn exercise every now and then, and then not actually doing anything, I am sick of hearing myself talk about it.  Shut the hell up until you actually do something, me.

And then a month ago I discovered that our cable provider has a whole On Demand exercise channel, with buttloads of workouts.  They have one entire section of ten minute workouts.  TEN MINUTES.  Who am I kidding to say I don't have ten freaking minutes?  So I looked around, some were too hard for me, but I found one I really liked:  Denise Austin's Daily Dozen.  It's actually twelve minutes long, and it's one dozen different exercises, stretchy and jumpy and lungy moves, one minute each.  It's mostly cardio, and it actually makes me sweat.

It was hard, and I had to seriously force myself to do it.  I am amazed at those people who really enjoy pushing their bodies and exerting themselves physically, I have never, even as a child, liked that.  During each 12 minute workout there are at least two or three points where my body is yelling at me, quite convincingly, to stop it right now and go sit down.  Stupid body, what does it know?  I keep looking at the clock and telling myself: for heaven's sake it's only a few more minutes, don't be such a wuss!

But I am now in my fifth week, and I can honestly say that I can actually see a difference.  The workout is less hard than it was in the beginning, my back feels better, my sore shoulder feels better, and I do have a bit more energy.  And that's with only doing 12 minutes a day, four or five days a week.  I have no doubt that this has made it easier for me to deal with the stress at work, and I have to admit...  I am proud of myself.

:)

Trying To Keep Perspective, But Mostly Failing

I have never before been so stressed about work stuff that I just couldn't stop myself from thinking about it all the time, while at work and at home in those moments where my mind is not occupied by something immediate.  When I'm driving, when I'm taking a shower, when I'm doing the dishes, despite my best efforts to calm down and stop thinking about it I find my mind turns to work issues.

I have never wanted to write about work stuff on my blog, and I still don't but there seriously isn't anything much else in my head these days.  And I'm so busy, and so tired.

I work in a call center operations department, overseeing two call centers in two cities, totaling over a hundred agents and dozens and dozens of different types of calls coming in on different lines.  We use two main programs for this, one to watch/control the calls and one to watch and track the agents.  Both are changing, this weekend.

The new program to watch the agents is one that we have received a fair amount of training on, and a manual.  The training was all done in a hypothetical context, because none of the actual information that we will be using was loaded into the program.  Still, it was helpful.

To learn about the new program to watch the calls we were included, along with a dozen other supervisors and managers, in a web conference projected onto a screen in our training room.  The actual stuff that we will do, watching and controlling calls, was but a very small amount of time, and very hard to see on the screen.  And that's it, no training manual.

To say that we are panicking is putting it mildly.  My department is small, only 9 people, and we are all walking around like we are in a nightmare.  (One co-worker is actually having nightmares.)  One other co-worker looks weepy and confused, one keeps snapping at me and then apologizing. 

Our boss is a wonderful person who we all care about a lot, and she is having a very sad family emergency and has been out of the office most of this week.  Our sadness for her is not helping, and neither is the fact that she's not there.

Pretty much every other department is the same as ours, panicked and overworked and understaffed (two supervisors have left and not been replaced, two people on the technical team overseeing these changes have quit).

Like a cloud of doom hanging over our heads is the fact that our office location will soon be reconfigured to be 50% smaller.  We have no idea how this will happen or when it will begin, but the office manager keeps bringing people into our area muttering about knocking down walls and putting in doors.  When asked they tell us that an official statement will be coming at some point, they don't know when, but soon, within a month.  Until then we feel somewhat homeless, having been asked to clear out anything not vital from our cubicles.  None of us has even started with that yet, and unused bins sit stacked in the corner, a reminder that something is coming, but who knows what, or when.

We found out yesterday that a giant amount of information that was supposed to be uploaded into one of the new programs hasn't been, and won't be -- the company didn't pay for that upgrade.  I have no idea how that wasn't made clear to us earlier, but it means we will have to do it all manually, before Sunday.  It's extremely tedious and will take a really, really long time.

When I visited Mom last month, we went through some very old photos, and I found this one.  Mom laughed but was slightly appalled when she saw it, I don't think she quite approves of Dad having taken a photo of her so (in her mind) unattractive.  It must have been taken sometime in the late 1930's.

I love it, and I am sharing it, because it really makes me smile.

Written in her handwriting in pencil on the back is this.  It says, "Made just after I got up to the top of Stone Mt! Some climb --"

And here is the front.  I love this, and I feel a lot like this lately, especially when I am finally walking out of the building, across the parking lot to my car to go HOME.  Too bad I don't have a cute hat like that.

Things Rattling Around Inside My Head (Ow, They're Pointy)

• I use three main computer programs at my job every day.  All day, every day.  All three of them are being replaced within the next two months.  The only thing not being changed is that we will still use Microsoft Windows, so emails will still be Outlook, etc.  But that's probably 10% of my day, most of what I do is using specialized, fairly complicated software that has taken years to fully learn and get used to.   But now it's aaaall changing.  I know I am smart enough to learn the new programs (at least eventually) but I kind of hate new stuff just in general, and having all three change completely and at the same time is going to be stressful for all of us.

• The lease is up soon at the office building where my company is located, and apparently there is at least a very solid chance that we will either move, or the company will try to downsize the area that we are renting and we will be reorganized within the same building.  Either way, things will change, and it's certainly possible that my department's isolation in a back room will end.  Anyone who knows me at all know that I am a BIG FAN of being isolated...  

• At home we have an iMac, and we were delighted when the new OS was released last week.  It was only $29!  That's surprisingly inexpensive.  We immediately downloaded it and were horrified to see that our very old version of Photoshop no longer works.  We have CCS2 and it's so old it's not compatible with the new OS.  Oh, this is a huge bummer.  It'll cost $199 to upgrade to the newest version, CCS5.  If we don't upgrade now, the new version of Photoshop (CCS6) will be released (there's no official date yet but it could literally be any day now) and it'll be so far ahead of our poor old CCS2 that we won't even be able to upgrade it, we'd have to purchase the whole full program for $699.  We both love Photoshop, I had been trying to get back into digital fine art and Greg uses it all the time to make the graphics for his site.  This is sickening, we would have been happy with the old one forever.  I guess we will have to pay $199, which will make it even that much longer before we can afford to buy the laptop we've been saving for.

• I had planned to go visit Mom next month, but my brother and sister want to have a birthday party for her;  Mom will be 90 on September 30th.  That's great, and I am excited for her to have a nice gathering, but that means I'll have to wait another month and a half before I can see her.  My wedding anniversary is the very next day, October 1st, so my plan now is to drive up to GA on Wednesday the 27th, spend three nights in the retirement home guest room visiting with Mom, then have breakfast with her on Saturday morning October 1st and drive home that day.  Greg and I took two vacation days on Monday October 3rd and Tuesday the 4th, so we'll have a little three day weekend together to celebrate our anniversary.

• I have to admit, I am slightly anxious to get my blood test results back.  What will they show?  Is my cholesterol too high, do I have the beginnings of arthritis, do I have a thyroid problem?  Gads.  I am trying not to worry about it, because it could be all good news.  I should hear on Thursday.  I mean, the giant bloody purple bruise in the crook of my elbow has almost entirely gone away, so that should mean the results are ready, right?