Archive for May 2009
So, Tuesday was the big return to work after the three-day weekend. Y’know, there really wasn’t a point in my getting up when I woke to find that the power was out. I knew then that I should just roll over and go back to sleep for three more hours. But no, I got up, gathered all the things I’d need and went for the drive to Rosemary’s. At around 8am, we headed back to Kim’s place showered, dressed and ready for work. I did the litterboxes, dragging my feet as I went. Had everything ready, helped Kim find the missing car keys. Got in the car, picked up breakfast from Micky D’s on the way to work. Ate.
Got to work 10 minutes late, punched in for work and sat down at the day’s assigned desk after putting my stuff away. Almost two hours passed before I finished my first survey for the day. Feeling pretty happy, I dove back into the work. Another hour passed and nothing happened. Lunch came and went, an unimportant little event. One o’clock came, I still had only one survey completed. Neither Dela nor Toni came over to tell me to leave for the day. One thirty passed, still nothing. I was beginning to mentally stress out because I couldn’t figure out what was taking them so long to send me home for the day.
Two o’clock. Adam clocked in. Once all of his matters were settled he stopped by my desk and asked me to come see him after my current call. After another fruitless try and getting someone to take a survey, I got up and headed for the back of the room. Adam lead the way into an office and I obediently followed-much like a soon-to-be-punished dog. And he fired me. Not unkindly. But still. I was good, though. I kept the tears at bay until long after I’d returned to my desk, logged out, punched out, packed up, visited the restroom and stepped outside. It wasn’t until the fourth time I reached Kim’s voice mail that I began to lose my cool. I ended up calling my father and talking to him because I was so wound up.
After a nice afternoon of relaxing, I’m feeling a lot better. I’m still pretty upset that I lost my nice-paying job, but I’m kind of happy I don’t have to get up at 6:30am tomorrow morning. Still, I wish I knew I would be getting a steady paycheck.
Looks like I didn’t get as much writing done as I’d planned this weekend. It’s gonna drive me up the wall if I can’t finish chapter 10. So, I’ll probably whip up that ending tonight and then move on, just because I want to have that posted up on FF.net ASAP. I’ve waited too long as it is.
Tomorrow begins the second week at my workplace and I’m not sure if I should be excited or not. I did pretty well with residential homes, but I don’t know how well I’ll do with businesses again. Hopefully I do okay, if not great. Great would be around 7 surveys a day. Okay is around four or five. It’s really hard to get people to stay with me through a survey. Because the thing is so freakin’ long, everyone wants to quit halfway through. And it sucks.
Sooo..Orientation was yesterday. And it was a lot like school. There was a presentation and a lot of information fed into our heads. Then we were led out to the main room and guided through a fake ‘interview’. Following that, we were actually put on the phone with real people…We were on the phone from around 11AM all the way to closing at 4:30PM. Well, except for lunch and break. Everybody takes lunch and break at the same time, if they’re not in the middle of a survey with someone.
It’s also very frustrating work, I went through almost 100 responders before I got my first completed survey. About three others got halfway through before deciding it wasn’t for them. The rudest of people hung up on me while I was making my introduction. I’m not a telemarketer and it’s very frustrating that that market has kind of messed up the phone business for survey takers. All in all…It was interesting. I have a job, though. I got my schedule around 4PM and it said that I’m working the 9-4:30 shift today through Friday and Monday through Friday of next week. We have unpaid lunch, sooo…It’s approximately about seven hours a day. For five days a week. That’s not bad.
The only thing that sucks is that I have to get up at 6AM for the next two weeks just to catch the bus to catch another bus to catch a third bus in order to ride a bike almost three miles to work. The things I do for money.
In any case, after that two week mark, Jessica will be working there too (I hope). And she’ll be doing Morning shift as well, so I can move back down to getting up at 7AM. Yay!
Soooo, it’s Wednesday. And I’ve been turning in application after application since Monday. I’ve turned in near thirty of the dang things. Well, guess what? It looks like that might have paid off just today. Which is ironic. Jessica and I went to Barnes Research Center to fill out paper applications. When we were done, we placed them on the desk and left. On the way home, about twenty minutes later-give or take-Jessica’s phone rang. Obviously she’d gotten her first callback. When she hung up she told me it was Barnes. She said I’d most likely get called next. Not entirely true since I’d put Kim’s phone number down instead of my cell. But about two minutes later Kim called me and told me they had indeed called. So I called them back.
Orientation at 9am Monday. All day long orientation. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve more or less been hired at this point. Barnes are apparently known for hiring anyone. But…$8.00 an hour man! That’s a lot!!!! I’m so excited!!!!
Welcome to the…well…the…umm…the after show? The move has already happened, buuuut…I’m still going through the ‘adjusting’ period. Like, some part of my brain is still set in the idea of “I’ll be going home in a week”. So, that’s a bit troublesome. It makes sense, though, since I’ve never spent more than a week (two at most, methinks) away from home.
By the way, my apologies for taking so long to post an update. I disassembled my computer and just got it reassembled late yesterday between driving around with Jessica and applying like mad to around 10 different places for a job.
As it is, even just sitting here, typing is kind of hard. Cats are everywhere. Kim is literally the crazy cat lady. She even outdoes Aunt Cindy. Eighteen cats!!! EIGHTEEN!!! Granted, only about six of them are actually hers, but still…That’s a large number of cats staying in a not-so-big house. An old, old house, too. It used to be a carriage house and stuff.
Gotta go finish my resume.
