Just when I think things are FINALLY finally finally going my way just a LITTLE--
It's just useless. Pointless. No matter what "good" things happen, there's been some dark cloud following me around for years to fuck it all up.
What is it this time, you may ask?
Well, last year (as many of you know) I relocated from Florida (where I'd lived my entire life) to Tennessee with my husband. (The fuck ups that came after the big move? Shitty apartment, no friends, dead brother and two grandkids I will not get to know.) When we moved, we both had jobs here already. He was working at Dell Computers and I was working for SunTrust bank. We both hated these jobs. I thought I found a great job working for an ebay powerseller, but he turned out to be a prick who fired me after three days for NOTHING, AFTER he told me to quit my other job. Nice, eh? Then I tried to make a go of it by being an ebay seller myself. I couldn't make enough money, so I filed with a temp agency and they got me another job--with a customer service outfit for those info-mercials you see on tv. Yeah, pretty much the shit end of the csr world right there. It was terrible.
Then, I found the job I have now. The company is fairly small (less than a hundred employees) but is a division of a larger corporation so has great benefits, etc. They hired me in May--ostensibly to be a CSR, but they didn't have a training class set up because they were still hiring folks. So they let me do some things like inputting orders so I could learn about their procedures and then one day when all of the orders were caught up they asked me to answer some emails from the customers. Their website has an "ask us" type of feature, and there had not been any real attempt to answer emails on a regular basis, so they had stacked up pretty high. There was over 20k of emails in the queue. So, I started working on them.
I loved it from the start. I loved answering the questions for the customers, and finding the ones I didn't know. Sometimes I had to do some digging on the internet, but it was all good. I told the boss I thought I'd found Nirvana. I loved doing it, I would love to take ownership of it and I would be glad to figure out some methods to get through the numbers more quickly. She agreed and I jumped in. As I went along, I noticed that some of the same questions kept coming up so I wrote "standard responses" for those. Answers that could be copied and pasted and then sent, cutting down on the actual answer time and allowing me to respond to more. For months, I was the only person working on the emails. I was able to get them down to around 14k by myself.
I loved it. I loved going to work, I loved what I was doing, it was a joy to get up in the morning and go in to the job instead of a drudge. I didn't mind the hour-long commute, working overtime, being at my desk all day. For the first time in years, I loved my job.
So, they have been hiring more people, and when they got the phone CSRs all covered, they turned their attention to the email situation which I had been dealing with. Suddenly, it was important to get the email numbers down and a dedicated push was made to catch up by the end of the year. I was praised for the job I had already done, and told in my performance review that if I kept it up, I would be in line to be a lead in a future email department.
I should have known it was too good to be true. Remember that black cloud?
The email numbers have dropped down to about 300. Which is totally doable per day. I was thrilled. Finally, instead of making excuses, I would be making a difference and really helping folks in a timely manner.
Yesterday, I got called into a meeting. They told me what a great job I had done, and then they dropped the bomb on me. They are going to train me to go on the phone starting next week. Apparently they are getting a new system in next year which supposedly allows the CSRs to take calls and do emails...according to them "first in first out". I was gobsmacked. Devestated. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I couldn't believe it. They sat there grinning and saying things like "Isn't that great?" I tried not to cry and told them this was the worst possible news. I said I figured I would have to update my resume, but assurred them I would go along with things and still be their good employee, but I wasn't happy. Then I left the room, went back to my desk and broke down. I asked to see the manager who gave me some time. I went in to her office and I was so upset I couldn't speak at first. She guessed what I was upset about and then everything just poured out of me. How I'd basically carved out a perfect (for me) job, how I had been told all along that since I was so good at it and enjoyed it so much, I could continue to do it. How even SHE had said in my PR earlier that I was a candidate for email lead.
She then started with the "manager" speak. You've done such a great job. Think of what you've accomplished. You started out at the bottom of the mountain of emails and now you're at the top... I replied, and now I'm being kicked off as my reward. I told her I felt like I was being punished for doing such a good job. How I came to realize over the last year how much I HATED talking on the phone AT ALL, never mind to customers. She tried to tell me how she listens to calls and the customers aren't that bad. Oh, what a crock of shit. She can listen to what--10-20 calls per day, if that? And then she told me all about this wonderful system which is going to allow reps to do both phone calls and emails...and she said the first in first out thing again how sometimes you'll get a call and sometimes you'll get an email. I looked her in the eye and said to her that she knows as well as I do from working in a call center that if there's calls in the queue, the calls are going to have priority, not the emails. Why should I even pretend to believe that bullshit?
Then I told her I wasn't sure if I could do phones anymore and I asked her, bottom line, was there anything I could do to stay there and not be on the phone and was told no.
So, I'm sitting here, the next day, wondering what's the point? Why should I even try to snatch some happiness or joy? My life is one great big joke. Every time I think I've found something good, it gets fucked up.
I'm sick and tired of it.
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