Miscellany

[mistressofmuses]

Still plodding away at the second draft of Island Territory, chapter 1. I should be able to finish that tonight, though I may wait until Monday to post it. Spent some time poking around unsplash for some images to use in a moodboard/cover type thing, if I decide to make one.

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Going to spend tomorrow night at Taylor's. Alex has a horse show on Sunday morning, and doesn't know his ride time, yet. But knowing how far away the barn is, chances are very good that he'll have to be down there pretty early, which means he can't drop me at work. (Or would have to leave me there at like, five.)

Lyft has been a pain in the ass every time I've used it, plus we're on the "eat-nothing-but-ramen" part of the pay cycle. (Metaphorically - we're actually fine on food! ...But we can't buy much more than gas until payday. The timing of having to drive back down to the barn for the show isn't great for that reason, but adding rideshares on top of it would suck more.)

But always excited to spend a night hanging out with Taylor. :) Even if it's a worknight, we'll have a few hours to read or play games or something.

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Ever so slightly annoyed that starting next week I get a new weekend task. All "customer care" emails from after-hours on Friday will get forwarded to me, to be dealt with when I come in on Saturday. Now, practically speaking, this probably isn't going to change much. Upper management forwards a lot of them to me ANYWAY. But still... Saturdays suck. They are the day where it is most obvious that we are painfully understaffed - the phones are hard to keep up with as it is, we almost always have classes in-center, I have additional testing that I have to coordinate each Saturday. Plus I already have extra weekend tasks that most people don't: I'm the point of contact for compliance paperwork on the weekends, AND I'm one of only two online technical support persons for Saturday (and fairly frequently, I'm the ONLY one). It's one of our busiest days of the week, while also being the one that has by far the fewest staff.

I don't mind having extra responsibilities, and I don't think it will necessarily add all that much. Of all the support staff, I'm the one who has been there the second longest, because I've stuck around and have no interest in being "promoted" to manager. (And the VP/COO told my manager the other reason they want me to do it is because I have "clarity in writing", haha. So at least it's slightly skill-based.)

At the same time, I keep hoping those extra responsibilities will create SOME forgiveness for the fact my sales aren't the best, and my call numbers are the low end of average. ...But it never works that way: I'm always being told that I need to do more, regardless of how time-consuming the other things I'm tasked with are. I genuinely CAN'T do all of it every day. That isn't even the probable-ADHD, though that doesn't help, but even on a good day, where I don't spend any time dicking around, I can wind up staying half an hour or more late just to get the bare minimum done. And that just makes me resent the extra shit, and I don't want one more thing to resent on the weekends, which already make me miserable, haha.

Basically, I hope it DOESN'T add too much more to my plate on Saturdays, because if it does, I'm going to want to die.

Comments

[spikedluv]

Ugh, that sounds super frustrating! It seems pretty obvious that if you keep adding on extras, there's no way to keep up with the calls?!!

[mistressofmuses]

Right? I feel like that should be obvious! Upper management tends to be really frustratingly oblivious to a lot of things like that, though. They look at spreadsheets of calls answered or sales made, and don't consider anything else. :/
(This is the same company my sibling used to work for. They spent months trying to express their concerns with overwork and frustration with what felt like an impossible number of tasks, and it was all brushed off. Then when they resigned, management asked them to please make a list of everything they'd been put in charge of, because no one had kept track. :| )

[spikedluv]

Wow. I think I might not have given them a list because that is not the way to run your business.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? They only wind up screwing themselves, because individual people become impossible to replace, because there's no cohesive job description to give a new hire, or any way to train them on all the things that any individual has been responsible for.
(This company has had years of growing pains now, as they've gone from "small mom and pop, we have a personal relationship with every employee!" to "hundreds of employees over 13 in-state locations + a handful of employees who work out of state." I'm willing to forgive some missteps, but not an unwillingness to try and fix those issues.)

"eat-nothing-but-ramen" part of the pay cycle

[disgruntledgirl]

I hear ya on that! And it's so annoying when that money comes in so you remain buckled down to see if it stretches annnnnnnd something happens anyway.

"All "customer care" emails from after-hours on Friday will get forwarded to me, to be dealt with when I come in on Saturday." Ffffffffffffffffffffffff - been there, too. Funniest one: guy was swearing up a storm about his dryer not working on Christmas Eve and we weren't helping. Given it was Sept and I was working for Bell Helicopter - I decided to be intrigued instead of confused. I called the number and he was confused, too. Said his password reset went fine and assured us his dryer was fine, too.

My recommendation is Line-In-The-Sand. You ask a higher up (in an email) how many of these emails you're expected to get done on top of your other chores (ask for a firm number) and give some push back like setting the expectation "I only have about 2 extra hours I can work this as well as cover ______". The idea is to make them acknowledge and either they set the expectation for you to only need to handle so many OR they take something off your plate because these folks do not keep track of who is doing what.

Re: "eat-nothing-but-ramen" part of the pay cycle

[mistressofmuses]

FUCKING RIGHT? Every damn time. I had to dip into savings (and my savings is piddly... enough for like, one rent check) twice over the last couple months, covering unexpected expenses or shortfalls. Mostly not even serious emergencies, just things that had to be done right away. I'm trying to build even that slight cushion back up, but shit just keeps happening.

Lmao, I love that he was also baffled. Wonder what series of errors caused that one!

I do have a vague hope that at *least* I'll be better at filtering the obvious spam. Half the time they forward them without looking, and so every once in a while the message is all in cyrillic, or is just random characters and a bitly link, or "want hot sexy girlfriends near you now!". (Most of the porn spam ones seem to have died off, at least, and the others aren't terribly common. Just funny.)
I think I'll see how the first weekend or two of doing the emails goes - if it's pretty comparable to the number they usually forward to me anyway, then it really doesn't change anything. But if it IS significantly more, then I think that probably is the best way to handle it, to ask for a set number, or for something else to be taken off my list of tasks.