Apparently the side effects of a highly toxic job are beginning to dissipate. I made it past the shocked and depressed stage and have been remarkably relaxed all week. I had lunch with my former co-worker (who's now my fellow deadbeat), spent some time at the pool, did some gardening and scoped out the thrift stores. It's been a good week.
I'm feeling pretty restless again today, probably because I need to do some house work and wish there was something more pressing to keep me from it.
Tonight I'm going out for drinks with my former coworker and an attorney who also got laid off recently. But if I don't do some laundry, I'm not going to have anything to wear!
My mom is keeping my nephews during the day all summer...this week their mom is on vacation, but next week they'll be back and things will pick up tremendously. Charlie is still the bubbly kid who can't sit still and requires a constant audience. Talon, on the other hand, has become a sullen 11-year-old who hides behind long blonde locks and doesn't want to play or talk or do anything but sleep and watch TV. He's too cool for Grandma's house, apparently!
It'll be nice to have some quality time with them...with their splitting time between divorced parents and my splitting time between Tulsa and OKC, I haven't been able to see them nearly enough lately.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
What You Wish For
It appears that--for the time being, at least--I'm through writing blog entries about how much I hate my job. That's the good news.
The bad news is I'm back to writing endless posts about the angst of job searching.
I was laid off last Wednesday. I saw this coming, and I was hoping for it...hoping very hard, in fact. So I can't explain why it threw me for such a loop or why I've spent the last few days in a state of depression, confusion and shock.
We'd already been told we'd have to start taking two furlough days a month, and everyone was pretty discouraged by that. It took over a week for someone to find time to speak to us face to face about the furlough days and other cuts, and by then I was thoroughly disgusted. Summer vacations combined with everyone's furlough days made big cuts in our staffing on a daily basis, and the boss was managing it all terribly, as usual.
Then a couple of attorneys suddenly vanished. And two days before the bomb dropped, I learned one of my coworkers was training some CSRs to do my job. I thought that was poor timing and pretty tacky, but I chalked it up to one of my boss's crazy ideas on how to manage the staffing shortages caused by furlough days. I was past caring at this point, and way past anger, so I didn't think much more about it.
The next day my closest coworker and I couldn't log in to the system and therefore couldn't do much of anything. Our boss told us someone in the corporate office had accidentally deleted our login IDs, and that the only person who could fix it was out of the office for the day. She proceeded to print off a bunch of intakes for us to work from, a ridiculous solution as our system is used to track every step of the process, note every phone call and record every change of status. A slogan we often heard was "If it's not noted in the intake, it didn't happen."
So I guess a lot of work didn't happen that day, and it was beyond frustrating, as the other two people who could do our job were off that day. The boss, of course, was nowhere to be found, although her ass should have been helping us deal with the mess.
Around 4pm, my coworker appeared with a pale face and said she'd been called into the boss's office. At that point, I just gave up trying to work and waited with my stomach in knots. Sure enough, she eventually reappeared with a tear in her eye and nodded...and I knew they were letting her go.
I was completely stunned, and all I could do was stand next to her desk thinking "NO!!! It was supposed to be me!"
Then the boss came for me, and I felt an enormous relief. I'm told the boss cried while breaking the news to my coworker, but I saw no tears when it was my turn and I certainly didn't shed any. It was all a blur after that...we both quickly cleaned out our desks, said goodbye to everyone and went out for a beer.
I've spent the last few days moping, staring into space, and wondering why me? But I'm getting past that phase now and starting to enjoy the prospect of waking up in the morning and NOT going back to a job that was slowly killing me.
I still don't quite know what to do with myself, but I guess now I have plenty of time to figure it out.
The bad news is I'm back to writing endless posts about the angst of job searching.
I was laid off last Wednesday. I saw this coming, and I was hoping for it...hoping very hard, in fact. So I can't explain why it threw me for such a loop or why I've spent the last few days in a state of depression, confusion and shock.
We'd already been told we'd have to start taking two furlough days a month, and everyone was pretty discouraged by that. It took over a week for someone to find time to speak to us face to face about the furlough days and other cuts, and by then I was thoroughly disgusted. Summer vacations combined with everyone's furlough days made big cuts in our staffing on a daily basis, and the boss was managing it all terribly, as usual.
Then a couple of attorneys suddenly vanished. And two days before the bomb dropped, I learned one of my coworkers was training some CSRs to do my job. I thought that was poor timing and pretty tacky, but I chalked it up to one of my boss's crazy ideas on how to manage the staffing shortages caused by furlough days. I was past caring at this point, and way past anger, so I didn't think much more about it.
The next day my closest coworker and I couldn't log in to the system and therefore couldn't do much of anything. Our boss told us someone in the corporate office had accidentally deleted our login IDs, and that the only person who could fix it was out of the office for the day. She proceeded to print off a bunch of intakes for us to work from, a ridiculous solution as our system is used to track every step of the process, note every phone call and record every change of status. A slogan we often heard was "If it's not noted in the intake, it didn't happen."
So I guess a lot of work didn't happen that day, and it was beyond frustrating, as the other two people who could do our job were off that day. The boss, of course, was nowhere to be found, although her ass should have been helping us deal with the mess.
Around 4pm, my coworker appeared with a pale face and said she'd been called into the boss's office. At that point, I just gave up trying to work and waited with my stomach in knots. Sure enough, she eventually reappeared with a tear in her eye and nodded...and I knew they were letting her go.
I was completely stunned, and all I could do was stand next to her desk thinking "NO!!! It was supposed to be me!"
Then the boss came for me, and I felt an enormous relief. I'm told the boss cried while breaking the news to my coworker, but I saw no tears when it was my turn and I certainly didn't shed any. It was all a blur after that...we both quickly cleaned out our desks, said goodbye to everyone and went out for a beer.
I've spent the last few days moping, staring into space, and wondering why me? But I'm getting past that phase now and starting to enjoy the prospect of waking up in the morning and NOT going back to a job that was slowly killing me.
I still don't quite know what to do with myself, but I guess now I have plenty of time to figure it out.
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