In which there’s a review! Of a year!

Started the year in a chat pilot program, which meant typing rather than speaking with people, which was so much better. The pilot was a success! It was approved, made permanent, aaaand given to another call center. In India.

So I got moved back to phones. They said it would be months, but it was barely a few weeks and suddenly I was back in the queue after being on chat for a year. The volume was fucking ridiculous, the policies were even more hostile, and everyone was obviously stressed as hell. An upper management-type made a video that said, in essence, thanks if your attendance is perfect, but we’re going to fire the rest of you if you keep calling out. Fuck that. You’re so understaffed you can’t afford to fire anybody. Your attrition in new hire classes is, what, over 80%? I get that you’re stressed, dude, and that you may not be getting your annual CEO bonus or whatever, but suck my dick. My attendance is exemplary, thank you very much, and what sort of moron broadcasts that level of obvious anxiety to the people in the trenches?

Working at a call center that contracts for Comcast fucking sucks: shit hours, shit pay, no bonuses, hostile policies, and (rightfully) enraged customers. Being back on the phones after a year just made it that much more obvious: while working from home is a benefit in itself, that job was awful.

So I got a job in a cheese shop inside a liquor store! Quit the call center with about 32 minutes notice (because seriously, what’s the point of notice in a job like that? It’s not like they want you to train your replacement; they don’t give a fuck about lost knowledge/expertise) and started my new job the following Monday.

It’s so great! I’m so grateful for it! Hours are great, people are great, the work itself is great. My commute is a one-block walk! I get an employee discount! I got a Christmas bonus! The owners are good people! It’s such a welcome change, to have a normal job again; to not work for evil corporate America.

And, as much as I’d like to bitch about it, the physical activity of the new job, the getting up and leaving the building, the talking-to-people and all: it’s very good for me. Very. Sure, I have the organization and self-discipline for a work-from-home job, but apparently I don’t move unless moving is embedded in some other activity, like commuting or working.

Aside: I now own several pairs of support socks! Standing up for hours makes my ankles swell!

This year I realized there’s yet another “two types of people” division: those having crazy-painful-insane relationship woes all the time on the one hand, and really nice, boring, stable couples who never have ANY drama, at all, EVER on the other. Basically two different species, and they don’t really inter-mix. I used to belong to the former group and belonging to the latter is much, much nicer. We don’t look cool, we don’t go cool places, but there’s zero goddamned drama. Whoo!

I turned 50 this year. I think a lot of my misery over the past few years was hormonal hell due to The Change and is finally tapering off; I feel like much less like shit these days, and last week I actually got up and left the apartment on all of my days off! Without, like, doing so being an intellectual choice to force myself not to lie around all day. Nothing major, just to the bakery or coffee shop or whatever, but that sort of energy hasn’t been mine since right before I moved to Minnesota. Past few years if there’s a choice between doing anything at all and just sitting around, I always chose the latter. Now I’ll just pop out like a normal person! It’s great.

Oh, and I’ve become so fat and old and slat-assed and droopy I don’t even notice my bingo wings anymore, so that’s nice! Whoo! I can, somehow, still get down into and back up out of a deep, flat-footed squat, too. Also nice. Benefit of short legs and a lifetime of sitting cross-legged even in office chairs, I suppose.

Didn’t read for shit in 2018 (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, and Plex got my eyeballs), but here’s what little I did read. There’s another probably ten books I started but haven’t yet finished.

My friends from the left coast called me last night. I MISS THEM SO MUCH. The call was nourishing and hilarious and wonderful. Later, I voice chatted with my brother. Being able to sit at your desk and still be “with” people is neat. Yay, technology!

I don’t do resolutions, really, but if I have any intentions it’s the same as ever: get out as much as possible during spring and fall when the weather’s not totally awful. Read more. Less fucking Twitter. Don’t buy any more damned fountain pens. You know, the usual.