So much for dressing to impress.

Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 - 4:12 a.m.

At least I was clean…

Yesterday I got up, showered, dressed in a too-small tank top and a 2x long-sleeved top that I found somewhere, only pair of jeans available, light-colored and not exactly clean. But, hey, I’m just a flunky at a call center. Who’s going to care?

(We don’t have a dress code like we had when I worked at BNO before. The only time we dress up is for a job interview, which is really kind of silly, since the interviewer sees us every day in our scruffies, but… Anyway, you can guess where this is leading.)

Got in for 1 p.m., checked e-mail. I had an e-mail from Rosie saying my trainer interview was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Figures!

They actually have two trainer positions available, which kind of dismayed me. It ups my chances of getting the job, but I didn’t really want to share. I know how it goes. If I do get the job, unless they need two trainers, I’ll be “needed” more for my other stuff, so much for getting in trainer time.

I’m definitely the best person for the job.

But, of course, I’ve thought that before…

11:30 a.m. on my day off… I’ve been technically up since 10 a.m., but I spent almost an hour snuggling the cats. What’s the good of having a day off if you don’t spend some of it doing what you want? And what’s the point of having pets if you’re going to ignore them?

Speaking of pets, Fawn still hasn’t emerged from her hut, unlike my other hamsters. I don’t think she’s ever gone on the wheel. I shine a flashlight in there, “Yup, the shavings are moving, she’s still breathing!” (Either that or my hamster tank is haunted…) Seriously, she does sneak out to eat at some time, and the other day I almost got her to poke her nose out to snatch a yogurt drop, but then she chickened out. It’s been a week now, it’s time to start working on training (bribing) her in earnest. First step is yogurt drops right outside her door every time I feed her, and they’ll move closer and closer to the dish. My other hammies raced to the dish whenever I fed them to snatch their yogurt drop. Once she’ll come to the dish for her treat, I’ll start working on getting her to take it from my fingers. The problem is, every time I open the cage, it gets surrounded by excited cats. But hopefully she’ll eventually figure out that they can’t get to her. (The others never had a problem with the cats—George ignored them and Zipper teased them. I’m not sure if the males were smarter or more stupid than she is.)

Work’s been falling into a rhythm. Tuesday I scramble to catch up on audits and dig out of the e-mails that nobody else seems able to do even though Eric is supposed to be e-mail support on Mondays. Wednesday I only have one day of audits, so that goes a bit faster, and I try to really throw myself into the e-mails. Friday I can usually get caught up on the e-mails. If I’m really lucky, I have a little time to work on our website. Saturday I’m Tier 2, but they don’t really need me at 1 p.m. so I try to get my audits done before the day shift leaves. From then on, I’m swamped, and e-mails don’t get touched. And Rosie wants me to make the website a priority. Not sure how that’s going to happen.

I’m working on getting a rhythm for my days off, too, so I don’t waste them. Sunday is the farm, come back Monday afternoon, get stuff done. Not so much last Monday. I stayed at the farm several hours longer than I intended.

Why? It was a rather odd reason. A neighbor, an old friend of Dad’s, came over, nobody I cared to visit with (or who cared to visit with me). But Dad was having such a good speech day. I sat there stitching and listening, enjoying hearing him actually carrying on a normal conversation.

It makes me sad. The wrecked body, Dad brought on in part by himself by refusing to cooperate with therapy. He couldn’t help the messed up bones in his foot from when a horse stepped on him when he was a kid (they could barely feed themselves, same as when I was a kid, there was no money for doctors), but he could have ended up in much better shape after his knee replacement. He couldn’t help the osteoporosis that caused his arm to break (they had milk cows, he’s had tons of calcium all his life!), but, again, he could have ended up with a much better result if he’d been willing to do his therapy. He still won’t even use the walker correctly, pushes it like a wheelbarrow, and now he’s ordered a four-wheel walker, which scares us to death. He can’t react fast enough to use the brakes. He’s going to fall on his face. But anyway… To have Parkinson’s rob him of his speech just seems like too much, when he so dearly loves to visit. Some people have the patience to ask him over and over until they can understand, others don’t even want to try to visit with him because they can’t understand him.

Thank God for their new neighbors. Reuben picked up Dad from falls a dozen times in the first three months they were out there. And he has the patience to visit with Dad.

Anyway, I didn’t leave till around 4 p.m. and then stopped at the lake to take pictures. (It never did freeze over completely this year!) By the time I got home it was suppertime and I didn’t feel like doing anything, so the day was wasted. That needs to change.

I promised myself that if I got a lot done today I’d let myself slough off next Thursday. (I should get some extra playtime with my extra day off!) I thought about going shopping, then checked my accounts, and that isn’t going to happen. I’m going to end the month in the hole yet again. Which means overdraft fees and the whole vicious cycle all over again. I’m going to be paying for my cats’ huge vet bill for a long time to come, I’m afraid. I was supposed to bring Beauty back in to have her eye checked again, but I simply do not have the money. I’ll keep treating it, and if she loses her sight, she loses her sight, I guess. And they’re still all sneezing!!! Now they’re saying, “Well, they’ll just have to grow out of it.” That’s what they said about Cinders and Cinnamon, and they’re a year and a half old and still sneezing, and I still can’t put them up for adoption.

I’m barefoot (as usual) and wearing a tank top and jeans, and, yes, I’m chilly. My reasoning is this—when I sit, I get chilly. When I’m schlepping boxes around, I’m perfectly comfortable. So… Maybe I won’t want to sit around so much!

Speaking of sitting around, as in reading, I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I was not impressed. I’m very glad I’m a fast reader, so I didn’t invest any more time in it than I did.

Anyway, time to decide whether to work or eat some lunch first…

I ate. And I worked. All day. And finished the day by finishing a Vita tunic I started a year and a half ago. It was a delightfully productive yet relaxing day off. I’m on a roll…

And it gets better.

I got the job!!!

So I get sent to Rosie’s office today, of course I’m pretty sure it’s about the trainer position. So she’s talking on about it and the next training class and goes, “So can you be here for 8 a.m. Monday?”

“Does that mean I got the job?”

(What is it about me that makes it so hard for management to just say, “Congratulations, you got the job”??? Remember how long I was on tenterhooks at the pet store before Crystal finally told me I really did have the job?)

The only down side is there were two positions. If there were just one, I could feel I was the best person for the job. With two, I have to wonder if only two qualified people applied. And what makes a person qualified, anyway? I have the exact same qualifications I had when they gave the job to Jimmy, because he “had more training experience,” and that didn’t turn out so great. I know, different account manager. While I’m not one of Rosie’s friends, Rosie likes me. Doug did not. And don’t try to tell me that management can keep their feelings entirely out of the hiring process. I’m pretty sure it’s not humanly possible.

I don’t know who got the other position, but I’ll probably find out before Monday. Or maybe not, but the rumor mill works pretty well. They aren’t going to announce the positions till Monday, when we actually start training with Rosie when she trains the new class, so I was told to “keep it under your hat,” but it’s the usual open secret, since I’ve already been congratulated by agents who should not know who got the position yet. It’s a pain. I’m pretty sure all of Tier 2 knows, but I couldn’t remind them that since I helped them with a corporate special project, I was behind on e-mails, and they were going to have to pick up the slack because I’m Tier 2 tomorrow, have Sunday off, and train all next week. All I could do was remind them that I was going to be gone for a few days, like I was referring to my usual Sunday – Monday off. All that because nobody could get around to send out an e-mail letting the floor know of the promotion.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the second person is Kayla, since she’s another of Rosie’s friends. I know Mya applied, but Rosie doesn’t like her, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t get it. (See the above about management’s personal feelings.)

I celebrated by going to Walmart after work and buying a desperately-needed pair of jeans that I can’t afford, and can’t even wear till they’re washed and shortened, and I that I may not even keep because I haven’t tried them on yet. I’m down to three pairs of pants, a new pair of dress slacks, beige jeans that get dirty so fast, and black jeans that have glue (fortunately also black) on them. My pet store work jeans… Well, it’s a wonder they don’t send me home for not being properly dressed, but they shouldn’t have light colored pants as a dress code for a job that’s so dirty.

I don’t really get a raise with this. I get a buck an hour more, so that’s $40 more per week, but I don’t know if that counts for my training next week, and it’s still less than I make at the pet store and I have to give up my shifts there. I’m already hurting, and that’s going to hurt me more, but not as bad as no extra pay and no work at the pet store. Unless I don’t get extra pay, of course. Anyway…

Actually, this is the first morning class since I’ve worked at BNO this time around. The first time I worked there, classes were always 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., no matter what shifts the trainees were going on. Now classes usually run around 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. to accommodate the most trainees, so it’s not usually going to be an issue. I’ll just work 4 a.m. – 9 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. – 11 a.m. And when I’m not training (or being trained) I’ll have my four 10’s. I don’t mind changing shifts, but it does make me scramble to have this short notice. (Typical, though.) I didn’t work at the pet store this week so I haven’t checked yet to see if I’m even on the schedule for next week, but I have to call and find out before next Wednesday and tell them I can’t work if I am on the schedule. I thought about coming in for a few hours before work, but decided I needed to be at maximum alertness. I think I may go in Monday after training and see if I can talk to Redg or Todd and discuss the situation, rather than just call in. I have to get to the Verizon store by then, too, because I have a $10 coupon that’s out the end of the month and I want to get a car charger, so I’ll be going into town anyway.

They’re starting a new “game” at work. It’s a bracket thing where every agent is paired up with a partner, or, competitor, and the agent with the best metrics advances on to the next round. I asked Tyler, “Why don’t they just give the prize to the person with the best metrics?” He said, “What’s the fun in that?” I’m thinking, what’s the difference? They’re still awarding one big prize to the agent with the best stats, who is most likely one of the agents who always has the best stats, so where is the incentive for any but the top five or ten agents to even try to improve their stats? That’s one huge difference I would make if I were a team manager. Everybody focuses on big prizes for the top performers. You know what a small percentage makes up the cream, but there’s a lot more milk, and it’s actually a lot more useful. If I were trying to drop my team’s talk time and improve schedule adherence, I would ignore the top performers—they’re always going to be at the top, because being the best is it’s own reward—and focus on rewarding improvement rather than the top metric. Giving my top performer yet another $50 date night package isn’t going to improve my team’s metrics. However, giving little prizes to everybody who can drop their talk time or beat their current adherence would bring up my team’s entire average, and every single agent would have incentive to try harder. When they offered a big prize to the agent who signed up the most customers for automatic payments, I just snorted. When they offered client swag to any agent who could get three customers signed up in one day, that’s when I won my nice company polo shirt.

So, anyway, I’m Tier 2 tomorrow, and I have to go through the day pretending everybody doesn’t already know that I’m one of the new trainers. But I am a trainer!!! Yes!!! Life is good. (I hope I can still say that after I’ve had my first challenging class!)