lighterthanair | Entries tagged with work

Today was actually a pretty good day. Work was worth note in that it was both easy and beneficial. I did a small presentation in front of the class, and got praise for it, and more importantly, I didn't feel especially nervous about doing so. I consider that to be progress.

We also spent about 20 minutes outside, watching the Disney cruise ship leave port because the trainer wanted us to see how their horn plays the first few notes of "When You Wish Upon a Star." It was chilly, since we were so close to the ocean and fog was rolling in, but I didn't mind too much since it meant I could breathe fresh air and have a little bit of time away from the computer. As much as I like computers and use them a lot for personal things, it's nice to take a few minutes and get into natural light when you use them all day for work.

After work, I came home and had a delicious supper of teriyaki salmon and rice. Simple, relatively cheap (since I bought the salmon fillets when they were on sale), filling, and very tasty. Simple rice-and-meat dishes like that are common in this apartment, because they're so easy to make and yet can have so many variations and all be really delicious.

I spent most of the rest of the evening cutting up magazine pages into strips, in preparation for making another batch of paper beads this weekend. I figured that instead of cutting strips and rolling beads, cutting strips and rolling more beads, it would be easier to do each step in large batches. Marking and cutting the strips takes almost no time at all, and is easy to do it little bits on nights when I'm home from work. But rolling the beads and applying the sealant takes longer and can get a little fiddly, so that's best left for when I have a full day off work. And by that point, if I've cut up even one magazine page a day during the week, I'll be able to make lots of beads, and enough bracelets that it will definitely be worth making a large update to the Riality Studios Etsy store.

Paper crafts seem to be my big obsession at the moment. I'm still sewing, but in between cutting strips. I have to get back to sewing all the 2 inch squares together for my postage stamp quilt. I've been neglecting that.

I also have to stop forgetting to work on the two pillows for my father and his wife. He'll be back in town in about a month, and while it shouldn't take too long to finish the pillows, if I keep putting it off and ignoring the project, I'll find myself with only a day to spare and too little done to be able to finish on time. I'll try to remember to sew some more of it tomorrow evening after work.

I started reading Jo Anderton's Suited today. It's the sequel to Debris, which I read last year and rather enjoyed. It's an uncorrected e-ARC, which normally doesn't bother me (I can overlook the occasional typo), but there are a lot of formatting errors. Any instance of "ti" gets turned into a capital H. A combination of "ft" gets turned into "_" for some reason. And "tt" becomes [. Once you figure that out, it gets more readable, but it's still a pain to have to adjust the way I read in order to accommodate for errors that could have been really easily caught before giving reviewers access to the book.

Still, I can't complain too loudly. I did get the review copy for free, after all, and I'm still enjoying the story. I try my best not to hold formatting errors against the final review, unless it's a finished and published copy of the book that I'm reading. Then errors are fair game, because they had plenty of chances to be caught and corrected before final publication.

I suppose I should get offline now and go feed my cats before they start getting bothersome about it. Then it's off to bed. Only two more days of work before the weekend!

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: David Arkenstone - Return

I survived my first week back at work. Well, first four days, anyway, since they're insistant that since I have therapy on Monday mornings, for the benefit of my emotional state, I should just skip Mondays at work entirely for now. So I really only work for 4 days a week, for the next while.

I'd be fine with this, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm in retraining, so my study and relearning time has been cut down by 20% just in that one "consideration."

Another lovely consideration of theirs is constantly checking in with me to see how I'm doing. I was asked 5 times in 4 days how I'm feeling. I might think this was out of genuine concern for my wellbeing, if it wasn't for the fact that a girl who spent some time in the cardiac unit of the hospital earlier this week only was asked once how she was going.

I stand by my theory that they're afraid of me, and trying to cover themselves. Badly.

But I'm trying not to let all that get me down, and I'm trying to keep my mind focused on more entertaining things, happier things. For instance, this weekend was good. I went out to Jade City with a friend to celebrate a slightly belated birthday dinner. Chinese-Canadian buffet, yum. I especially liked the deep-fried balls filled with azuki paste. They haven't had anything with azuki for a while, and it was a real treat to find some again.

Today, I amused myself by reading (Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone is actually far more entertaining than I expected it to be), and making paper beads for a bracelet.

I used pages from a magazine to make the beads, and then applied a sealant to make them sturdier and a bit more water resistant, and then strung them on stretchy jewellery cord. I definitely want to make more of these, both of bracelets and necklaces. They're fiddly to make, but they're satisfying, and they can make some quite unique jewellery.

I'm also very tempted to make some friendship bracelets again. I used to make then by the dozen when I was younger, but gave them up years ago when they fell out of popularity (and so most of my friends stopped appreciating them as gifts). But I've seen some amazing examples of them lately, and it's made me want to make them again. The proper term for the technique used to make them is Cavandoli macrame, which is simple enough and yet holds so many possibilities with colour. And other kinds of macrame have their own charm. I'll probably end up experimenting with a lot of different styles.

Tomorrow, after group therapy, I do believe I'm meeting friends so that we can all go and see The Avengers. Not a movie I would see in theatres under normal circumstances, but spending time with friends is a good motivator, and it should be fun either way. I'm looking forward to it.

Shame that tomorrow coming means one day closer to going back to work, though.

Positive! Must think positively!

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Air - All I Need

I survived my first two days back at work. They were both better and worse than I thought. Better, in that I remembered more than I thought I had, and the person sitting with me to help me retrain is very impressed with the progress I've been making. Worse, in that work seems unwilling to budge on their ridiculous views of my mental condition, and I'm reminded more and more why I want to get out of call centres completely.

If I can't find another job that will pay me similar wages for similar hours, I am, unfortunately, stuck there for the next couple of years, until life has had time to straighten out and money has been saved and hopefully progress has been made in many areas of my life. I just have to keep telling myself that as hard as it may be someday, I've worked worse jobs, and I know this one's going to be temporary, and at least it does pay well. Worse jobs that don't even pay as well are even lower than where I am now, so I know very well that things could be worse.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 28. I'll be celebrating by doing nothing out of the ordinary, really. The truly sad thing about being an adult is that when your birthday falls on a work day, you can't just skip your shift or bring part of the celebration with you. I miss the days when my parents would let me have the day off from school on my birthday, as an extra treat. I miss knowing that it was going to be a day when I'd have some fun, in some form.

That isn't to say I won't be celebrating. My father bought two tickets to Lord of the Dance on Friday, and so I'm going with a friend. I'm looking forward to that, though less so since I found out that my mother recently bought tickets and tried to get a seat as near to mine as possible. It isn't that I don't like my mother. But she didn't ask if I wanted her company. And she has a right to buy her own tickets to whatever shows she pleases, but something about the way she did this makes me think of going out to dinner with friends and then having your mother show up and make a point of sitting at the table next to yours. It's impossible to ignore her without being a horrible person, and yet it's hard to incorporate her into the rest of what you're doing because she was never part of the original plan.

But she's always had boundary issues. And I've always had problems telling her to back off.

But I won't focus entirely on the negative. Now, for some positive things!

Work allows employees to have free copies of the magazine that they normally send only to customers. I took the two most recent issues home with me today, and plan to cut up all the pages and make paper beads out them. There are some really nice colours in some of the ads that I think will look really nice as a bead.

I'm almost finished with Veronica Roth's Insurgent, too. I should be able to finish it tomorrow, which is good.

That will leave me with three book reviews that I have yet to write up, but maybe I'll be able to get around to that this weekend.

And I think that brings everyone up to speed on the glorious nothingness that is my life. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and do some sewing before I go to bed. Mornings haven't been agreeing with me lately, and I wouldn't mind an early night so I can get a bit more sleep.

Current Mood: awake

It smells like someone is cooking something delicious in another apartment. The smell makes me hungry, but I'm too nervous about tomorrow to really want to eat anything right now.

Tomorrow, I go back to work. I've gotten the last form signed that they need signing, a note from my psychiatrist saying that yes, I really do have appointments on Monday mornings, and there's nothing that can keep me away from work anymore.

I'm nervous about going back because now I've been gone longer than I was there to start with. And where initial training was 14 weeks, they expect me to cram that into 4 weeks of refresher training, 2 of those weeks being ones in which I take calls. So roughly 8 weeks of classroom material must be relearned in 2 weeks. So far management is the only one who's confident that I can do that. I have real doubts about it.

Also, I have to go in there tomorrow and stand up for myself. Their return-to-work action plan essentially has things worded so that if people around me notice that I'm nervous, and it makes them nervous, I can be sent home without pay. It's unlikely, but it's possible. Among other things. I showed their list of rules and requirements to my psychiatrist today and even he thought that what they were demanding was ridiculous. And he's right; I have to go in there and tell them so (in stronger words than I did last time) and negotiate a fair deal. What they're doing to me now amounts to discrimination based on an assumed disability, and that goes against the guidelines in the Human Rights Act for this province.

Convincing them of that is going to be the challenge.

So I'm trying to spend the rest of the evening thinking about things that have nothing to do with work.

I finished The Kingdom of Gods earlier this afternoon, and was blown away by the ending. I'm going to have to really work at a review of it. Some things just transcend words, or at least my ability to use them.

Strange, though, that I can find precious little slash fiction for that fandom. Honestly, there are plenty of opportunities for it. Most of them canon! Of course, if many fanfic writers are anything like me, trying to write anything for such a well-done universe would be a daunting task.

I decided to follow that book up with something lighter, and started on Insurgent, even though I really ought to be reading one of my review copies. I just really wanted to read this one. Hopefully I can get through it quickly. It starts in pretty much immediately after the last book ended, and in such a way that it feels like just a new chapter in the same book. Good if you've just finished reading Divergent, less good if you haven't. But hopefully the rest of the story will pull me in enough to make me forget the awkward opening.

Nick seems to be feeling better today, which is nice. I had the awkward task of giving him his evening antibiotic pill, which he wasn't happy about, but it could have been worse. Later he'll get his tolfedine to help with the fever and inflammation. He seems to be enjoying the strained squash mixed with his wet food more and more each time he eats it, so hopefully that will help with his bowel problem, too. I've got my fingers crossed for him making a proper recovery this time.

My arthritic finger is throbbing right now, so this might be a good time to stop typing and go give it some rest before the dark clouds break open and the rain starts to fall. There's still time to read some more before bed, too.

Current Mood: optimistic

I had a meeting with work today, to discuss coming back.

I should have been able to tell by the previous signs that things wouldn't go well. For starters, two people told me that I was coming back next week, before I'd even had the meeting with the site manager. I initially brushed it off as people making hopeful assumptions, but now, after that meeting, I see it for what it is. It's people at work being told what's going to happen to me before I get to find out.

Which might not be so galling if it wasn't for the fact that my workplace is treating me as though I'm an untreated paranoid schizophrenic. Issues of retraining aside, part of the agreement with me coming back to work is that people are keeping a close eye out for previously exhibited behaviours, and if I exhibit these behaviours, I can be sent home without pay. This includes having hallucinations, being dizzy and/or fainting, being nervous during calls, acting paranoid, and discussing symptoms with other employees.

I have not had hallucinations. I had delusions, yes, but these are different things. But if coworkers report me as being anxious that day, there's a chance I can be sent home?

They're afraid that I'm mentally unstable. In spite of the fact that two doctors have cleared me to come back to work, they're still worried that my very presence is going to make other people uncomfortable.

Other people shouldn't know. And this is where the issue of me discussing symptoms with coworkers comes in. They knew I was experiencing dizzy spells and some disorientation. They know that because I collapsed one day. But the only person who knew about the anxiety and the delusional state and whatnot is a supervisor, whom I foolishly confided in during an anxiety attack. If other people found out specifics about what was going on with me, they didn't hear it from my mouth.

And I told them this today. I also told them that I was disgusted with how this whole situation had been handled. First HR pushes me quite strongly to take time off. Then they say I need a doctor's note to come back. I give them a doctor's note, and then they say they need more medical forms. The delays between me giving them the doctor's note and now have lasted for two and a half months. I have been treated with a serious lack of respect.

And that's just part of the tale. I'd go into the rest, but I've already ranted to two other people today about this situation, and explaining it all over again will just stress me out.

But I told them all of the above. And all they could say was, "I"m sorry you feel that way." They didn't try to defend themselves. They used the words "we assumed" twice during the conversation. They've assumed a lot of things about me, and I'm not going to just sit back and allow it to go unchecked.

Part of what drove me to therapy in the first place was stress. In particular, the stress of feeling like I have to wear a mask every day, the pressure to be what I think everyone else wants me to be in order to keep the social status quo, without letting them see who I am underneath that mask because I've been told in the past that I'm too weird, too intimidating, too isolated for people to feel comfortable around. So I put on the mask, and over time, the pressure makes me feel like I'm starting to crack from within.

Now, knowing that people around me are even going to be watching out for signs of me just being slightly more anxious than usual, I feel that the only way to combat that and keep my job safe is to put the mask right back on again. To hide what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking, so that they don't know a thing. Which builds the pressure again. And could potentially undo the benefits I've gotten from therapy in the first place.

All because they're assuming that I have a condition that's more devastating -- and to them, more scary -- than I do, and because they're ignoring the notes of two doctors who say that things are fine.

I feel like I'm trapped between a rock and a hard place at the moment. I can rant, but ranting is a short-term release, and doesn't solve any underlying problems. I can fight back, which will make for an anxious situation, but I'm going to be anxious anyway, trying to portray that I'm happy and normal so that nobody even thinks otherwise for a second. Fighting back will also ensure that I never get a promotion there no matter how good my work, but in all honesty, I doubt that they'd give a promotion to somebody like the person they've judged me to be anyway.

Now, is that paranoia, or just deductive reasoning?

Current Mood: enraged

Well, I survived my first two weeks of taking calls. It wasn't truly terrible, and I don't mean to make it sound that way, of course. But often I appreciate not taking calls more than taking calls. I was quite happy on Friday, when I got to spend the whole shift doing a research project for a client instead of being on the phones. The research we're allowed - nay, encouraged -- to do to help our clients with their requests is amazing. No company that I've worked for before has ever given its employees such freedom. We're perfectly entitled to say, "That might require some research. Rather than you waiting on hold, can I call you back with the answer?" It's a level of freedom in my job that I'm still marveling over; I'm not sure I'll ever truly get used to it, since I spent so long in so many jobs where the emphasis was on giving as many people minimal service as possible instead of giving fewer people exceptional service.

Starting on Monday, we're all back in supplemental training for four weeks. No calls through that entire time, hurrah! I'm told that what we're learning is going to take the full four weeks to master, but unless it's far more complex than some of our quality mentors make it seem, I can't imagine how that could be true. I don't doubt that we have things to learn, but I don't know that we'll need a full month to grasp it. Of course, the company has been doing this for years, so I'm going to assume they know better than I do how long it will take.

I have few plans today. Mostly I plan to spend the day relaxing and catching up on reading, though I do need to go out at some point and buy a few groceries. I'm out of milk and bread, and I don't think I have many vegetables at the moment. I can't afford much at the moment, but much is relative...

There's a woman nearby who is on a hunger strike until she fills up a 52-foot long trailer with donated goods for the local food bank. If I can, I'll certainly donate a few things, because I know what it's like to have to rely on the charity of others in order to get by, and I know that the local food banks are always looking for donations because so many people need and so few people give. But hearing about it made me think that it's a shame I can't donate the things that were instrumental to me finding foods that were both cheap, plentiful, tasty, and most of all not bad for a person. Most donations are boxes of Kraft Dinner, cans of cheap soup or pasta, white bread. Things that are high in additives and low in cost and nutrition.

When I had even less money than I do now, I had to get creative with what I bought to eat. Kraft Dinner may have been relatively cheap, but it wasn't always filling. What I did learn, though, is that if I went to a bulk store and just bought elbow macaroni and cheese sauce powder, I could buy the equivalent in cost to a box of Kraft Dinner but walk out of the store with twice the food that the box would have given me. Bulk stores did wonders for helping me get through lean times. Rice is cheap. Beans are cheap. Flour is cheap. Potatoes are cheap. And there are countless ways to flavour them and make delicious meals using mostly only those four things.

But there are two problems with this. The first is that most food banks don't accept food from bulk stores, because they're in unsealed packages. Packages of these things cost more, in no small part because you're paying a portion of that price for the package, the brand name, the image. So fewer people will donate food like that, food that could be a great step and inspiration to a person finding their way out of the poverty diet, because of the risk that the food may be tampered with.

The second problem is that so many people don't know how to cook. There are myriad free ways to obtain recipes now (the Internet, libraries, friends, coworkers, or just experimenting in the kitchen), but there's a general reluctance to try. Or else people come home from work so bone-weary and worn down that it's easier to heat up a can of soup than it is to make something more nutritious, something that might work out, in the long run, to be cheaper and healthier.

One thing I've gotten quite good at making is baked beans. For the equivalent of $1 worth of navy beans, 2 $1 cans of tomato soup, and a $1.50 package of breakfast sausages, I can make enough food to last me for four meals. Less than $5 for 4 meals is a bargain. $5 to feed a couple and their 2 kids on a Saturday night is far better than the $10 it would cost to get the equivalent from cans. Or the $40 it might cost to go to McDonalds because it's easier than cooking anything. Baked beans are easy. Most of the work involves waiting, stirring, and then waiting some more.

Or split-pea-and-ham soup. $2 worth of dried split peas, $0.50 worth of potatoes, and the leftover scraps from a $10 from a previous night's dinner, and I've got another 4 meals right there. Meals which can be easily frozen and then thawed when I want it again in a week. Using leftovers instead of throwing them out has also been key to improving my life. Dark meat from a chicken or turkey goes into soup or stew or homemade sausage instead of being thrown in the garbage or compost. I learned never to underestimate the value of leftovers. They're not just the things that nobody wanted. They're another meal in another form.

I hate thinking that some people are honestly too worn down by trying to make ends meet to make the changes that could improve their lives in so many ways. I can understand it, too. I've done it before. Any change takes work, and when you have no energy, whether it's from working all day or being sick or because you haven't slept in 2 nights because your child has the flu, baking a loaf of bread or making chicken stew is the furthest things from your mind.

Cooking helped me a lot. It helped me to relief stress, it helped me by giving me a creative outlet, it helped me ensure that I ate food that was better for me and yet cost less. I feel bad that I can't pass on this inspiration, the tips and tricks and motivation, to people who need it as much or more than I did.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Kenny Kleinpeter - Only Child

This week was the first one on the phones, and I don't think I did too badly. I knew I was forgetting things, skipping steps, and that bothered me, though. More than ever I was aware of the difference between practicing something in the classroom and putting it all into practice in production. Even in class, when we try to throw a twist to the scenario, we're still nice to each other, still patient and understanding and helpful. Callers on the phones do not give us the same thing. Somebody last week told me to stop saying, "That's not a problem," when I would agree to check something or had done something for him. It bothered him, he said. But the phrase is such a part of my spiel on calls that it was very difficult to remember not to say that, especially when I was multitasking and trying to get other things accomplished, and he had to remind me a few times to stop annoying him with that phrase.

Those are the people I will be dealing with in this job. Most have been nice, but some of them have been very picky and demanding, and they are the ones who are hardest to handle. Personally, I can't imagine asking somebody to stop saying something like that unless it was very insulting to myself or others. This phrase just insulted his sensibilities, I suppose, but I wouldn't deem that enough to request that somebody not say it. It seems to me the equivalent of saying, "I don't like your accent. Speak with a different one." It's fairly inconsequential in the long run, and the effort it takes us both to change it isn't really worth the gain.

But I shouldn't complain. A few difficult customers aren't enough to ruin a job for me. Not after some of the jobs I've had. The work environment is wonderful, and I plan to enjoy myself there for as long as I'm able. I don't want to let this go unless something outstanding comes along. Like winning the lottery. Or writing a bestselling novel. Something of that sort.

The week has felt awfully busy, though. I don't feel like I've read nearly as much as I ought to have, nor have I don't much crafting. I've done a little bit of embroidery and finished two books. I know for working full-time hours, that's not bad, but I think I'm still thinking of the times when I was unemployed and was able to read 3 or 4 books a week and still have time to do other things in the evening. It's hard to be reminded that I can no longer keep up that pace.

But it's a trade. I may not be able to do that, but now I'm able to pay the rent and bills and work on lowering my debt to a far more manageable level. Being able to read 4 books a week would have done nothing to stave off homelessness, after all. My review blog isn't popular enough to pull in $600 a month in referrals. And if I'm honest, it never will be! But that really isn't the point to what I'm doing or why I'm doing it.

At this point, I seem to be just babbling. I ought to sign off and go do something useful, like a load of laundry so that I can wear nice clothes for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.