Amanda Unvarnished

I figure since I have the day off, I’ll take this opportunity to post. Things are fucked-up as usual at work. I came down with something this week, still haven’t figured out whether it was food poisoning or some sort of stomach virus, but either way, the end result was the same. Lots of output … uh, I mean, pukage. And you’d think that the folks I work for would have let me take the two days necessary to get over it, right? Wrong! I had to go to work, and literally go puke between phone calls. I was pretty muchy over it by about 10:00 last night, but I honestly have no idea how I made it through the last two days. I know I took the phone calls, though, and that I still have a job, so it must not have been below Convergys standard. What a bunch of bullshit. I do know that puking on my supervisor seemed like a really good idea at the time, but I just never managed to have to puke when he was around. Puking on the operations manager would have been cool too. We have a bunch of new people at work for the AT&T project, and they’re pretty much the same kind of people, except they’re loud and obnoxious. Or maybe that was the fact that I really wasn’t feeling good coming in to play. Probably a little of both. Anyway, they’ve turned the pattio, which used to be a haven for smokers and other normal people in to some sort of … well … an extention of the floor, without the beep. So no more peace after 7:00. They’ve switched my lunch to around 8:00 or 9:00, and that used to mean peace and quiet while I ate. That was the only good thing about it. But not any more. And now they’re telling us that they don’t want us hitting the mute button to make comments about pharmacists being stupid, because it damages the morale of the other employees. Pretty soon, they’ll make it a rule. YOu know how it is, they know that most of us, even the smart ones, do the bare minimum, because, what’s the point of working extra hard when they’re going to screw you anyway? My supervisor was blocking the door last night, asking those on their way out if they would work some overtime. He got a resounding “no” from most. So he and the other supervisors had to get on the phone. That was funny. John was watching the cue, and got on Terry for being in aftercall. That was hilarious, but what was even funnier was Terry’s response. When John asked him what he was in, (aftercall or auto-in), Terry told him that he was in whatever he wanted to be in. It’s funny what happens when you put one supervisor in charge of another. It’s like a mini-agent-supervisor relationship on display.

As the subject says, this has been an interesting one. Andrew got bitten by the Bohican, (for those who don’t know, “Bohican” is an acronym for “Bend Over Here It Comes Again”, signifying the monster that inhabits Convergys, seeking to get any employee, and screw them in whatever way possible, having a fond taste for the hard-working employees, and is probably in the direct employ of Human Resources, but obeys the business manager, operations manager, service level, and any other supervisor who chooses to harness its power). We were in cue as usual Wednesday night, but the supervisor in charge had an extremely low level of competence, “when is that ever a surprise), and thus didn’t realize that Andrew was in the wrong split, and consequently, wasn’t taking as many phone calls as the rest of us. So, said supervisor takes the logical course of action, and brings the matter to the attention of Andrew’s supervisor. After all, we can’t have acting supervisors being shown as incompetent, can we? As a result of the acting supervisor going to Andrew’s supervisor, Andrew was fired the next day. There were two supervisors who tried to come to his defense, but by the time they found out what was happening, crucifixion-on-the-down-low had already begun. But Andrew didn’t go like a lamb to the slaughter. When he cam back on the floor to get his stuff, he announced to every agent there that they need to watch their back, because Convergys has a knife ready for each of them too, and they have no problem sacrificing their employees in order to avoid looking idiotic, or better yet, better one man go than actually spend the time and effort to fix the system already in place. The human Resources director informed Andrew that he had two minutes to get off the floor. Andrew asked if it looked like he was dallying, and told the HRD that they could take his money away, but they weren’t getting his turkey sandwitches. The whole thing was tragic and funny at the same time. Andrew was a hard worker, and his not being there makes a difference. AFter all, when 85 percent or more of the other people there don’t work, it’s hard enough. But when yo lose a hard worker on top of that, it gets even more difficult. Andrew says he’s willing to take me back and forth to work, for which I am very appreciative. But, apparently, the Human Resources director cursed Andrew with the power of the Bohican, because when he was taking me home from work Thursday night, his radiator blew. As a result I’ll be cabbing it back and forth, and everywhere else I need to go, until further notice. very very expensive. On top of that, I was informed by my supervisor, (who happens to be the same acting supervisor from the story just told), on Friday that “we’re having a pot-luck” on Tuesday. How the hell am I supposed to provide something, and have enough for sixteen people, given the current situation? Any ideas would be appreciated, as well as overall suggestions. Everybody take care.

Well folks, the moment we’ve all been waiting for arrived last night at
work. It was finally my turn to leave the floor for some quiet time, except
I had to send myself away, because it was after 11:00, and there are no
supervisors on the floor at that point, or at least not any who give a shit.
Not that most of them give a shit, but, you know, it’s relative. Category
three verbal melt down, that had the potential to turn in to a break-things
situation, and would have if I hadn’t went outside to cool off, which only
slightly worked. I was still extremely pissed when I walked back in, but
levels were no longer critical. Here’s an excerpt from an email I sent last
night, which was closer to the events, and which I composed while I was
still pissed:
I got in from work a little while ago. I fucking hate that god damned job.
I hate the fact that nothing ever fucking works right around that den of
trash, and I hate the fact that half the fucking people that work there
don’t do any work, and I hate the fact that I’m getting screwed every chance
I fucking turn, along with the other people who work hard. I hate stupid,
trashy people. And I hate rude fucking idiot pharmacists who think they’re
better than everybody else, and rude fucking members, and idiotic
supervisors, and listening to the same ghetto shit every god damned day, and
headsets, and Americans who can’t speak English because they were too lazy
to finish high school and decided to go have tons of kids instead, and the
fact that they’re aren’t any better job options around here, and the
headaches, and the tention, and this shit town, and this entire fucking
region, and customer service, and Express Scripts, and Convergys, and poorly
maintained computers over which I have no control, and fat-ass former
janitors-turned-network-admins who don’t know how to do their fucking jobs,
and even if they did, wouldn’t because they’re too busy fucking agents, and
the fact that I have to continue putting up with this shit because I have to
pay my bills, at least until they decide to lay us off because they can’t
manage to get a permanent fucking contract with anybody, because upper
management can’t figure out how to run a business professionally, and the
fucking business manager brags about the drugs he does, and Hr pukes who
walk around trying to find people to fire, while totally overlooking the
people who put pharmacists on hold, and release incoming calls, and give out
wrong information, because they’re too stupid or lazy to do any real work,
and so they can finish their little talent shows because they happen to be
the right skin color. I’d like to kick something, or break something right
now. I’d kick a hole in the wall, but I don’t have the wherewithal to fix
it, and that would be really irresponsible. I should be asleep, but I’m too
pissed off. And I have to do this all over again tomorrow, and wednesday,
and Thursday. By the time Friday gets here, I will have worked nine days
straight, with no overtime pay. It’s one thing if you decide to do that
because you want the extra money, but for them to do it, and then pay you
the same rates is re-god-damned-diculous. Fuck them. Our supervisors get
unlimited paid-time-off, unlimmited sick days, and most of them don’t even
do any fucking work. Fuck them too. People better be glad I’m not world
fucking dictator. Otherwise, the state of california would be turned in to
a camp for all the stupid people to be segregated from the rest of society.
People who don’t bathe, or who bathe in cheap perfume and/or cologne, would
go to the same place.

Finally got a chance to catch up on the journals. Sorry I haven’t been around for a while, but it seems you’re all doing relatively well. I remember telling myself that I’d probably post more when I started working, because there’d be more to tell. That hasn’t happened, do to my extremely screwed-up work schedule. I’ll have to get used to doing this again. Is there any way any one of you can tell me what email address you use to post via the email gateway, as well as how to cross-post between journals? Thanks, and, I’ll try to write more.

I was listening when the news broke. Paul Johnson, after being abducted by terrorists, was beheaded. The video has already been released to Al Arabia, and will probably be on the ‘Net shortly. There are also pictures. This is sick. But the fact that, not only his family, but tens of Saudi Arabians and other Muslims pleaded for his release, (one Muslim man even going so far as to take Johnson under his protection and guarantee as a Muslim, even though he wasn’t officially a Muslim), was extremely heartwarming. Kind of makes you stop and think. We all get carried away with our individual squobbles. But Paul Johnson’s family has to start dealing with the fact that they’ll never see their loved one again, until they meet him again in Paradise. I think anyone who has any amount of sense or decency should stop and think about that for a moment, at least for today. May Paul Johnson’s family, along with the families of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, (both of whom died in the exact same fashion), be comforted among the mourners of Tziyon and Yerushalayim.

It’s almost five in the morning, and since I’m not asleep, I figure I’ll post. I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve worked my normal hours, as well as putting in my share of overtime to try to stem the cue. We haven’t been successful at doing that until this week, and even at that, we still haven’t managed to go more than thirty minutes without fluctuating between cue and sane call volumes. The pharmacists are pissed at Express Scripts for taking on the tricare and Triwest contracts, and are petitioning the government to take those contracts back. I don’t thinkit will happen. As a result, I’m thinking of renting my cubicle at Convergys outright. I spend more time there than I do here. I get home after midnight, so by the time I unwind, it’s two in the morning, so I go to bed, and don’t wake up till noon. Which doesn’t leave much time to get anything done. They’ve asked us to voluntarily work our lunches and breaks to try to stem the cue. Right. I’m not in to putting in charity time for Convergys. They screwed up my pay check again, but this time, my supervisor admitted it was his fault. Progress? Probably not. Anybody who’s ever been a Convergys bitch can simpathize. Feel free to share your Convergys horor stories here.

Hey all:
It’s been an incredibly long time since I’ve posted, and read, for that matter. There’s been a shitload going on here. Work’s extremely hectic, and there’s a ton of baby-mama-drama to go with the rest of the work-related chaos. We just took on 800 more companies, one of which is Tricare, which handles all the insurance for the Department of Defense. Our system’s been shakier than an epaleptic man in an earthquake with Parkenson’s disease for the last two days, and that has resulted in our being in cue constantly for that length of time. We haven’t dropped below 150 the whole time. When I left work today, we were 198 in cue. Last night, the record was 297. As far as the chaos goes at work, let’s just say that the HR manual is a joke. Jerry knows what I’m talking about. Also, let’s just say there’s been some “fraternization” between members of the chain of command, within a direct hierarchy. Jerry, if you’re interested in the gossip, get in touch. I think you’d find it quite Jerry-Springer-like. It involves one of our favorite people. I worked some overtime last week, and that pays $12 for every hour of over time. I worked six hours. More pay is good. I watched the Austin Powers movies this weekend, and saw Gold Member for the first time. It started out good, but ended really badly. Oh well. I think we’re done with the Austin Powers saga, although I have to say I liked the part where Britney Spears turned out to be a fembot, and that part at the end when she asked Minime if the kick-stand comment was true, and then begged for his cell number. Made a couple of friends at work: Crystal and Andrew. Andrew’s hilarious. He’s always making up some song, or joke, or something like that. And there are nicknames for everything: For example, fundamentalist Christians are known as “churchers.” Headaches, (which I’ve had a lot of lately, some pretty bad ones), are “Convergys cramps.” Well, I’m going to go for now. I can’t say when I’ll post next, because for the foreseeable future, the only thing that’s coming up on the agenda is work, and more work, and more work. If you have something to say, leave it in the comments. Bye for now.

I just finished reading the last book in the Left behind series. It was
good, except it was missing one thing: Some serious editing. The rest of
the series could use some serious editing too, but the other books were
nowhere near as annoying as the last one. The thing that kept going through
my mind was: Get on with it. They spend four hundred and some odd pages
covering about a week. Definitely not worth keeping on the drive. On to
the next book. Haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet. Probably
something scientifically fictional, though.

Continue reading →

New info on the job front: Hurry up and wait some more. Apparently, they want to see if their software’s goign to work with Jaws before they give us any answers. From what I was told by the NT admin a few weeks ago, they’re still using the same database and interface, so what’s the deal. Who knows. To be honest, the cynical side of me says: “You’re about to take the gree one.” But, we’ll see. We had an adventure with the keyboard yesterday. The down-arrow key on the craptop keyboard decided it doesn’t want to communicate anymore, and things looked bleak. But, I managed to get in touch with the techy from our local services for the blind, and he happened to have some stray keyboards laying around. He’s the man. Things could have been disasterous if he hadn’t had those keyboards, and wasn’t willing to bring one over. Those of you who use Jaws, try to do it without a down-arrow, just to see what a craptasm it is.

Shalom all:
As the subject says, it’s the first day of Passover, about two minutes after sunrise. I always love Jewish holidays, especially Passover. This is the first Jewish holiday I ever celebrated. I didn’t get my Menorah until after my conversion, and Passover was where I got my first glimpse of Jewish communality. I spent my first Passover and participated in my first Seder with the folks from ECU Hillel, at the organizational advisor’s house. That’s where I got my first taste of matzah ball soup, matzah, kugel, and gefilteh fish. Ah, the memories. As I said, I didn’t do anything myself for Passover, but it’s still been nice to take this time to remember why we celebrate this festival to begin with: We celebrate it because G-d brought the Jewish people out of Egypt, with miracles, so we could serve him. More later.

Well folks, looks like we get to keep the hair. It turns out that using shampoo with conditioner in it already is a bad thing, because it doesn’t really condition your hair like separate conditioner would. Got my grocery shopping done today. No Pesach items, but we’ll think of something to commemorate the festival.

Looks like I have to go get a haircut sooner than possible. I’ve got a huge knot in my hair, and I have no idea how it got there, because I always make it a point to brush my hair out thoroughly. I didn’t notice it until yesterday morning, when I got out of the shower, and went to brush my hair. I’ve gotten most of it out, but my head, neck, shoulders and back are killing me now. because of where it’s at, and because of how long my hair is, I have to flip it up and over my face to completely brush it out, and keep it from tangling. So I’ve spent the last day or so trying to get this damned tangle out, and I’m just not making very much progress. So I’m going to Walmart to get this taken care of. That’s going to cost me $19 in cab fair alone, plus the price for the haircut. I’m really hoping something good can come out of this. I may only have to cut my bangs, (which are about shoulder-length), but as long as it doesn’t get any worse than that, I suppose I can deal. Maybe they have some sort of miracle detangler or something. Everybody keep your fingers crossed, or hope, or pray, (or whatever you do), that I don’t have to completely destroy my hair today.
Pesach (Passover) starts tomorrow night, and, for the first time since I first started studying for my conversion to Judaism, I’m not doing anything for the festival. Not that I’ve ever gotten the chance to go all-out, (have a huge meal for the Seder, or Passover service which takes place in the home, around the table, have a ton of people over to enjoy it, have plenty of Passover delecacies), but to do nothing is weird. While I’m at Walmart, I’ll see if I can pick up a few things. I’ll keep you guys posted on all this. Maybe it’ll all turn out better than I’m expecting. Things do that sometimes.

Shalom all:
It’s time for me to regale you with yet more tales from the steak house, which could also be classified as bobular blunders. As the above suggests, Ray and I went to Ryans again last night, and the food was considerably better. Note to self: Don’t go to Ryans, or any other restaurant for that matter, any later than two hours before they close. we ended up going after making a trip to the Sprint Store to have our phones configured with reliable sighted assistance. Bob would not have been good for that one. Things would have straight down the drain, without delay at that point. So anyway, we get the phones configured, and then go get some dinner. Begin bobular blunders. We sit down at the table, and Bob starts to discuss the current case of the cross-burning, and oppines that a man who happened to be a witness to the crime, and didn’t stop it, got too harshly judged. Apparently, eight years in jail, where you have cable and ‘net access, and eat better than a lot of people on the outside is just too much to deal with. Then, the conversation spirals down to the statement, made by Bob, that the law is as corrupt as could be, and that someone who witnesses a crime and does nothing is not as guilty as the other miscreants involved. Furthermore, when I brought up biblical support, (Bob relies heavily on the King James translation of the Bible for the underpinnings of a lot of the choices he makes and encourages others to make), for the concept of guilt by association in a case like that, Bob promptly declared that “do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is shed” is a spiritual law as opposed to a civil law. That tends to be the way a lot of Christians, though not all, explain away the non-ceremonial requirements, (which, consequently, make up the majority of what Christians like to refer to as “the law”), when confronted with the question of why they don’t follow the law when Jesus specifically commanded it, or when you ask them how Jesus was supposed to have fulfilled commandments like that. But, I seriously digress. The point is, a statement like “do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is shed” is very obviously a civil law, even if one does not take the time to look the verse up within its proper context. Ray didn’t say much during this point of the conversation, which I find interesting, given that Ray has an oppinion on most things. As the evening progressed, the conversation spiraled to yet new levels of depravity. Bob decided to tell Ray and I a story about a local woman, in her late twenties, who married a man in his eighties. He extolled this as right and proper. In order to impress upon you all the complete depravity and perversity of a statement like that, (yes, Bob has a nack for special nack for taking a situation or idea that’s already depraved in and of itself, and bringing it to new and completely unfathomable depths of indecency), I need to give you a little background. It goes without saying that Bob holds some extremely screwed up views. For instance: Vlind people all have bad childhoods by default; blind people shouldn’t date other blind people because, if they get married and spend the rest of their lives together, they become ultradependent; blind people have an extra license to sin than the rest of society because we’re all frustrated, lonely people who need some sort of opiate; and so on, etcetera. So, when Bob suggested that said woman did the right thing by marrying the octagenarian, neither Ray nor I were surprised, although it does continue to shock me, at least, every time I hear views like that expressed. This stems from Bob’s view that women need to date older men because men their age are going to just screw them over. Well, OK, I can’t say that one’s totally flawed. But, the way it gets borne out is disturbing. I date older men, but there’s a limit: Namely, anyone older than nine or ten years is excluded due to the fact that the number of commonalities starts to dwindle, and at that point, we’re getting a little too close to the generational gap. “Who’s your daddy” is not a line I want to hear, especially when it’s coming from someone who is supposed to be playing a totally different role. Fortunately, thanks to the ending of dinner, the conversation didn’t have any more oportunity to downgrade any further. Ray and I got back here, and promptly tuned in to No Holds barred Radio, and listened to the further torture of Ellis 2.0. Watch this space for more on that. Because I’ve spent the last little while on this entry, and I’m not sure, after reporting last night’s episode, you can really add other, unrelated incidents to the same entry, I’ll go for now. Thanks for reading.