In which I’m working full-time and NOTHING (in terms of domestic chores) IS BEING DONE!

Floors are filthy. Sheets really need to be laundered. Tub could use a scrub. Not sure when I last brushed my hair. Have done zero Christmas shopping and don’t even have Christmas cards, let alone have any of them addressed and ready to mail.

I’m working 40 hours a week, and every minute is tightly scheduled because I’m in training. Five weeks of training. Five weeks of Power Point, PDFs, videos, interactives, lectures, TeamSpeak breakout sessions, and teach-back presentations.

And a firewalled VPN that has the shortest whitelist I’ve ever seen. (Honestly, it’s amazing I’ve never worked behind a tight firewall before, and I not only understand but respect why they feel the need to keep the network, distributed as it is, as secure as possible. But there’s still this sort of vague sense of rage about not being able to surf on your own machine when you realize you can’t surf, not even for a second, even if you are on the clock. #firstworldproblems)

While the training itself is of very high quality, and the instructor is freakin’ amazing, for me a lot of stress comes from the fact that you have to clock in and out EXACTLY ON TIME. All lunch breaks are EXACTLY thirty minutes, never 29 or 31, not ever. (Thirty minutes is barely enough time to eat, let alone prepare anything. And since lunch break keeps moving, good luck getting delivery when you have to order 45 minutes beforehand.) The ten-minute clock-punch leeway given by, like, every other employer in the world, ever is simply not present: if you’re too early — you’re not allowed to clock in more than 5 minutes before your scheduled start time — or too late, you’re fired. Period.

My class of 20 new hires is down to 12; four just never turned up at all (which is weird to me, considering all the crap you have to do, including proving your machine meets standards and going to have employment documents notarized, to even get hired in the first place). The other four have dropped out at various points during the past three weeks, probably, I’m assuming, due to simply not being back from breaks and lunch on time.

It’s so rigid it’s basically killing me, except for the weird perqs: I can go to work unwashed and barely dressed if I want (which I don’t. I usually get up, dress in something I could probably wear to a real office only without the bra, tidy up the place, and eat breakfast and make coffee or tea before my shift) and my commute (from bed) is about two feet.

I can look out the window and see the season change and watch the neighborhood. When I clock off at exactly eight-thirty, I have no freezing commute home in the dark and Scott doesn’t have to come pick me up because I’m already home. He never has to come home to an empty apartment. I never have to wear uncomfortable shoes.

And I’m making a buck more an hour than I was at The Home Depot!

But the time micromanaging — which I understand, in context; this is a distributed call center and they probably have a huge number of employees who just don’t give a fuck about the company’s scheduling needs — is quite wearing. I mean, I get to work on time when I’m working normal jobs, but having never been required to be accurate to less than 60 seconds, it’s stressing me out. I live in fear of something happening that makes me 5 minutes late — spending a couple extra minutes in the bathroom, having to buzz in the FedEx guy, losing track of time while standing over the sink horking down a sandwich — and getting instantly terminated without even finishing the damned training.

Once I’m “in production,” their in-house jargon for being trained and “on the floor” taking calls, though, I’ll be able to drop down to part-time and get my nasty floors swept and mopped. (I know that some women work full-time and keep their floors clean; I am not one of those women. I can barely even stay top of the dishes.) I understand breaks and lunches will move around a bit if one’s stuck on a call, and that it will still be important to be back on time, but I think it’ll feel a bit more loose, subjectively, somehow.

At that point I think I’ll feel very fortunate to have a work-from-home job, even if it is taking customer service calls for Comcast, a company almost universally loathed. (I’m lucky enough to be supporting their home security products rather than, say, doing retention for enraged cable internet customers under contract or whatever, so I doubt it’ll entail getting screamed at for 24 hours a week.) I’m sure once I’m fully familiar with the various tools and call expectations I’ll be fine and my sense of stress will go away.

As long as it’s part-time. I’ve done too many years of call center work already in my career and there’s really no way I can be truly empathetic for 40 hours a week for very long. I know my call center customer service limitations (and so do you, if you’ve ever worked with me before. I can be a horrible, condescending cunt over the phone, and nobody wants that) and I respect them! So I’ll work F/T for just as long as it takes to really get a handle on production and then I’ll try to get down to 20 hours, if possible, but I’ll do 24 if they really insist. After all, what’s four more hours if don’t have to wear a bra.

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Scott and I stayed up absurdly late both Friday and Saturday nights this weekend, so when I got out of bed this afternoon and realized that HOLY SHIT, SUDDENLY IT’S THE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING!!!1!, I went ahead and paid InstaCart to bring me my groceries since Scott was still in bed. They took hours to get here, but when they did all I had to do was put things away!

Even after taking an hour to form my shopping list, I still managed to forget the baguette for the spinach-artichoke dip and soda for the cranberry vodka, but otherwise all the Thanksgiving day shopping is done, and I have stuff to eat for breakfast and lunch for the next three days. I also did the shopping for my internet Secret Santa recipient today, so that’s basically sussed. GOD I LOVE THE INTERNET.

Because I have the great luck to be in training just now, I actually get four days off for the holiday weekend, like a regular grownup adult-type person. (But after I’m in production, I’ll probably never get another holiday off, ever, unless I request it off a quarter of a year in advance or trade somebody for it. (Apparently most holidays are dead, though, and if they’re dead enough you might be offered voluntary time off so you’re not stuck sitting at your desk for hours doing nothing.)) So excited to have four whole days off together! So looking forward to our second Thanksgiving together!

Our Thanksgiving menu is going to be completely traditional this year: the usual relish tray items, from deviled eggs to olives to stuffed celery. The spinach-artichoke dip we made last year and decided should always be our T-day tradition because it’s amazeballs. Ham steak (for him; I’m having tofu, of course), mashed potatoes, sage and onion dressing, green bean casserole, and mushroom gravy. Cherry pie (or cobbler — I haven’t decided yet) and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. Potato skins in the evening when we’re peckish again with our celebratory adult beverages.

Friday I’m going bring the tree and decorations up from the basement. Super excited! No idea where I’m going to put our little tree (because I really fancy the idea of somehow getting it right in front of the living room window so it’s visible from the street) but I’m sure something will present itself.

I need to go order Christmas cards and see what else I can have shipped so I don’t have to go anywhere in person. Happy three-day work week, everyone working traditional schedules in America!