Month: August 2020

Call Center

For a few months I was working at a bank call center. Initially it seemed like a great idea, 401k and paid time off would have been a dramatic change of the treatment I was used to in service industry work. We bought a new car for the occasion, that my husband used while I took the van.
The training days it was all technical, learning how to navigate their software and appropriate conversation points to expedite communication, building up social relations because once you’re on the phones there’s no time to get to know your co workers.
We didn’t touch the phones for a few weeks while the company used all of its “educational” tools to indoctrinate you into thinking everything was swell, that the corporation supported equal rights, ethics, and individual advancement… but the getting there is the challenge.

The Enlightenment,
Even though we’d get an occasional moral boost with takeout lunch, past the training point you were expected to be a well oiled matched. Get logged in and clocked as soon as possible to pump out as many card service calls as possible before a 15 minute break from callers, after that lunch is an hour whenever your scheduled, and another 15 minutes before the end of your shift.
Sure some of the callers are just paying off debt and don’t care to talk to me more than necessary, but others are yelling at me, calling me bitch.. I can hear the echo of my voice in the headphones trying to keep up composure. Others were lonely elderly who were so lonely and disadvantaged in their home lives that If I let them, they could talk to me for hours about their loneliness for a space of comfort. The number of fraud claimed and attempted account takeovers I processed would really shock you.
Internally it just felt alienating though, they try to make your sole point of focus them. They’d make it competitive to make it feel like you’re playing a game ,but really it’s just the demand to get the worker to process as much as possible, so you can see how man calls your group members are taking and how they’ve been revived, but no matter how positive the reviews when you get sat down for review there’s always the input of…well can you take more calls. Though they’d try to set up little games here and there ultimately the callers themselves were what set the tone.

I think part of what made it so grueling for me was the rush hour to get my kid from daycare before closing in rush our. A 20 minute drive turned into 2 hours and more than once I had close encounters with catastrophe.
The first week I was attempting to leave and another car tapped bumpers with me in a blind spot, the woman was initially going to drive off but turned around when she saw me get out of the car. This black lady in a different department just starts screaming at me that her cars a rental and wailing about how could I do this, before even looking to see that neither of us had damage.

About a week before I was taken out by a malfunctioning van that turned off every time I turned left, we start having some really strange glitches in the system that would leave us unable to do our job, just totally unresponsive but I find it a relief because now I’m having trouble with my left ear..like tinnitus I imagine.

Then I get a cold, but I haven’t earned my vacation/sick time yet and the van is at my dads shop ( not getting repaired ever because he really proved he doesn’t care to be helpful) So I’m borrowing the new car for the day and it ends in disaster as I’m driving home on the interstate in bumper to bumper traffic and the elderly man in front of me breaks suddenly, it would have been fine but my heel slips off the brake and I total our new car. Thankfully the man in front of me is unharmed and there doesn’t appear to be damage but I’m just..done. our resources have been stretched unsustainable thin and I have to make the choice if this is the kind of stress I can deal with and I decide that no it’s not for me.. would have liked to reached that conclusion before the accident but here we are. The new car was able to be repaired and was completely insured and I’m still alive but had the luxury to embrace a new focus on trying to create a body of art man to attempt to sell and homeschooling our kid now that I could use more than half of my paycheck on preschool.
It looks like that’s not going to change in my immediate future, but maybe my ability to be my own boss and help bring in monies will improve, thankfully I have some great figures to look to for advice and guidance there. So long as we maintain our health.

overwhelming

i’m feeling overwhelmed asf.
too much to clean, too much to pay, too much to think about.
i’m tired.
i’m sick.
i’m fucking over trying to keep my full time job happy, myself happy, him happy, all at once during a pandemic while society is anything but falling a part.
worldly issues have me depressed on top of being depressed.
i’m not sure how to pause the cycle, nonetheless fucking stop it.
i miss my dad.
i miss my friends.
i miss my life.
i miss being a child, not worrying about where i’m going to find my next $20 to make ends meet.
i miss being a teenager, getting high with my favorite people surrounded by nothing but love and laughter.
i miss January of 2020, only 8 months ago but it feels like a lifetime.

Game

It’s such a shame. There is most certainly a tragedy here. I said what I said for peace, not because you are deserving of It. You weren’t. But how long would I let you think you had the upper hand? Even though you did. Even though sadly , I let you have it. The worst part is that never should have happened. You are just not who I thought you were. You are not who you led me to believe you are.

Oh and I lied. I said I am ok with it all now and I sounded fairly good, didn’t I ? It is only because I have no choice. I choose me. I should have chosen me all along. I see what you do. What you are still doing. Seeking an endless supply of attention. How many women can make you feel like you’ve still got it, throw you a bone. How many can you get into bed? How many can you con like you did me? The possibilities are endless , because there isn’t an iota of thought in you for who is on the receiving end and what your shit does to them. Only how you feel, how you benefit , how you get your needs met.

I could never be like you and I am so beyond happy for that. I truly care how I treat others. It’s important to me. For you, they are only casualties of your war. The war inside your head that you deny to others exists. You divulge nothing, making it seem like everything is ok. You imply that if life weren’t so tough on you with responsibility, you’d be great. You make it everyone else’s fault, then fill the emptiness with attention, the women, the lies. Instant gratifications that are fleeting , or faking real substance only to tear into the soul of someone who truly wants to be there. Once you’ve killed and captured the prey, game over.

Yes, there is a tragedy. It was for me anyway. That this is how you are comfortable living and I let you catch me. I thought I would be loved. Instead it’s as if you cut off my head and mounted it on the wall with the rest of the forgotten trophies. It really was game. I was game.

Same Old

Do you ever listen to yourself? This is what I hear. “Nope, not my fault, that’s the way the universe wants it.” “Nope, none of my concern, you brought it upon yourself.” “Nope, I’ve never affected or influenced your life in any way, that just a product of your sick mind.” Basically, deflect all blame, accept no responsibility, and merrily carry on just like the president would.

You know what would help me? Hearing you say “Sorry”. Once. 8 years not once have you ever expressed contrition or remorse for anything. Not your vindictive punishments when you don’t get your way. Not for all the times I’ve been cursed out by you and your family. Not for never ever doing anything to support me. Me, crying at my graduation because you didn’t come, but went to another one instead. Me, crying at my mother’s bedside because you wouldn’t talk to me. You, calling me weak minded and refusing to be a part of any solution that doesn’t require me doing all of the work and shouldering all of the responsibility. I don’t have any problem accepting 50% of the blame for the things that have happened and will happen, if you can even accept 1%.

I’m sick of it. Your sanctimoniousness. Your condescension. We may be very different people, raised differently, whole different experiences and situations and people we encountered throughout our lives, little epiphanies and bits of wisdom we picked up along the way. But I’ve always valued that about you and seen how it could complement me with you as my partner. You don’t recognize any of my value. Its painfully obvious the way you absorb absolutely nothing at all that I say and turn around and criticize pretty much everything about me and expect me to change. And its literally been that way since day one. You don’t see me as anywhere close to an equal, and that really hurts me a lot. You don’t get to tell me otherwise. I am not going to ignore the negativity you’ve injected into my life because its easier for you to only focus on the good.

That’s it, rants over. You can go back to pretending that I don’t exist.

Pop

I miss you. I miss having someone to talk to, even if only one night a week. I miss looking forward to that night throughout the week. I miss the way I felt when I was with you. Being with you made me feel special, but not like in a ‘hey everybody, look at me’ kind of way. More like an everybody fades away and its only us kind of way. Those brief moments felt timeless to me.

But that was a long time ago. You don’t make me feel special anymore. You make me feel like a loser. You’re unavailable emotionally. I feel entirely unheard anytime I try to say anything to you at all. There’s never a time, a good time or a bad time, when I feel like I can go to you. I don’t think you even like me anymore, you don’t ever act like you do.

I don’t see any kind of clear path forward for us. All this time I’ve tried to become more mature, more patient, more understanding, less angry. I thought maybe I could reach some enlightened level of growing up where you would finally respect and value me. But things are more or less the same. And Im getting tired of expending time and energy on this when you could change everything by pushing a few buttons. Of everyone who orbits around your life, I think you actually treat me the very worst, with the most disrespect, or maybe even contempt. Whatever, I’m more used to being alone at this point, I don’t really need you to exist, and you clearly don’t need me to live your best life.

Things I couldn’t tell you

Dear K,
I don’t know where to begin. You were a stain on the fabric or society. You were an avid, proud drug addict (only using pity when you could use it to manipulate others), you were a piece of shit mother to your multiple kids…none of which you had custody of. You were surrounded by amazing people bending over backwards to make concessions for you…but you blamed them for every 8 ball up your nose, syringe in your vein, or pull down the hatch.

What happened to you, you completely deserved. You were never going to be a good human being. You were always going to be a manipulative junkie crashing on people’s couch. You had a fiance. He was wealthy and older, and you manipulated him with his heart and he took you in and tried to help you.

But you didnt want help
You wanted an sugar daddy.

You were in your early 30s when you had a heart valve transplant. Something you didnt need if you had chose to live your life right and not become the party girl you tried to maintain much long after everyone else and after your body gave up.

You were in medical rehab with a pic line bc you couldn’t stop doing drugs. Even when your choices to not heal from your surgery landed you…so young….in a nursing home so they could monitor you and make sure you were trying to get better from your complications from surgery, you sat your skanky ass on any man that could sneak drugs into you. You overdosed while in the nursing home numerous times. You tried to seduce my husband and then had the nerve to tell me, a mom to young children that I raised myself, a mom who chose not to be a junkie …a mom who knows she wouldn’t end up on the wrong side of a consensual 3 way with drug dealers for your drug of choice…and then getting beat almost to death by the drug dealers bc you were trash to them.

You had 2 chances to start over and straighten yourself out. When they found you barely breathing and unconscious behind a dumpster, and when your jobless, junkie ass had to have a heart valve transplant. So many better people with meaningful lives to live deserved those chances more than you, and you just threw them away bc all you wanted was to get high again and not care who you fucked over to get it. You didnt care about anyone in your life…they were all means to get drugs or money for drugs. You stole children’s network donations, a young woman credit card, and countless other thefts. But you still wanted to come at people like you were special and above them.

The day you died, I never felt like anyone else deserved more to leave this earth and finally let their family and children to not have your bullshit hang around your neck. Its heartbreaking that you call yourself a mom, yet wouldn’t lift a finger to get better to finally be a mom to your kids. But I’m sure that’s someone else’s fault too.
Deep down, at night before your family falls asleep, they probably thank god that he took you, bc that was the only way your family could have peace.

You did everyone a favor by leaving this earth.

Sincerely,
Society.