I had a comment from someone who isn’t my Mom! Thank you for the kind words, Cat. 🙂
Back in Xmas 1999 I had a customer service job working for a toy-selling dot-com (this was the Christmas before the .com bubble burst). It was all telephone work and I was good at it, but I think the burnout rate was really high, especially considering what I was making an hour, even with the 10 hours of overtime per week. So why do I want to get back into a service oriented job (more service than HR is, anyway)? I’m really not sure, it’s a gut feeling. I think I’m a really excellent service type person and I’m a good problem solver and I am always, always cheerful. And if you can be cheerful when telling someone that their $500 order of toys (I mean, an entire CHRISTMAS of toys) would be arriving to them on December 24, and then when they call at 5 pm on Christmas eve, tell them that they’ll get a gift card for $100 and their order after Christmas, and still be cheerful enough to at least not slit your wrists or curse at the 12th woman in a row cursing at you in Brooklynese….
Confidentially, readers….I never cursed at any of these frightening mothers, but I did hang up on a few, knowing fully well that they’d call back and be on hold at least another 30 minutes. And if they asked for a supervisor (god, whoever taught them THAT trick??), the hold was worse, and rumor has it, often ended with them being cut off that line and left with a dial tone.
Back to the here and now…work was long today. I stayed until nearly 6 waiting for a report to finish running (soooo slow, especially since it was over 50,000 rows long) and starting to assemble drug test kits. Thursday I get to train 3 new managers while my boss is in a meeting. I’m still working on that bummer quarterly report thing. I didn’t get my boss to help me with it because I had a bright idea that led to above 50,000 row report. We’ll see how it all works out. I’d really be so happy if I can fix it by myself. I’m trying to operate as much as possible using the “pretend your boss is dead” principle — not because I want my boss dead, mind you. I just think it’s more impressive to work without bugging her 10,000 times a day. I think today I only had to ask her to sign some things for me — that’s one trick I haven’t learned yet.