I hate my job.
I know that's not exactly the right way to say it. For the most part I like the type of work I do, which is helping people.
I would not automatically hate that I am helping people over the phone, either, except that it is just too much. We are too busy.
That means that before I can finish logging one call, or any time I want to take a moment to check something, my line jangles again. That happening multiple times a day takes a toll on my nerves.
Sometimes at the end of a day, my ears are ringing. I can try and adjust volume to match what is needed for each caller, but it doesn't always work out.
Generally, my body -- even though I did purchase a better chair -- tenses up so much over the course of a day that I end up stiff and sore.
Consistently I grow hoarse from all the talking. I try and mitigate this with cough drops and water, but the cumulative effect means that when I am off work and wanting to talk socially, I get hoarse too easily. Also, I have never been a great singer, but I enjoy singing and this doesn't help.
Even worse is the mental tiredness, which seeps into my off hours when I should have time to do what I want for me and my life. I can't pull myself together right away. Writing may have taken the biggest hit, but I notice more when I can't focus on reading. That's a bad state for me.
I am not sure that five days of work to two days off is the best proportion, but if a large part of the two days off is required for recovering from the five days, then I want at least one more day. Flipping the ratio entirely would be even better.
As it is, too much of my waking life is now frustration, exhaustion, and despair.
Plus, because it is a public-facing job, every now and then someone will just go off on me because they can, or try and guilt me into things that I really have no power to do. Mostly, though, the interactions are fine; there are just too many, coming too close together.
I recently had a review where I expressed these concerns. They said they wanted to keep me, and that they were looking to hire more people soon, but last year that was me. It took a solid two months of training, we lost one person in the middle, another right as we were getting on the phones, and one just dropped out last week. Many other people have been leaving, and I don't know if it's because they feel the same way, or if I am the only one struggling this much.
For health and time reasons I am glad to work from home, but you don't get to know your coworkers in the same way, or get the same sense of how they are doing.
As it is, when they send around trivia games and getting to know you things, I have tried to participate, but lately I am usually too stressed to even consider it. In fact, I get angry. It's not reasonable, but I created a file for it and had a hard time coming up with a name for the folder other than "Nonsense". (I ended up using "Social".)
Yes, I am looking; no, I have not had any luck.
I could be looking harder; the time and energy crunch is not helpful, but that's to be expected.
Another concern is that I want to continue telecommuting. For a while it looked like the plague was going to let up, but that's not happening. So a job with commuting, travel, or lots of time physically present with others, I could not consider safe.
I am concerned about money. Right now, my house payment is 60% of my take-home pay. Yes, that is also considered the wrong ratio. Regardless, it means I can't afford a pay cut.
My biggest concern, though, is that it won't help; that I will end up in another understaffed/overworked place after I have started over with training.
If it were super-busy, but the kind of busy you could concentrate on -- like answering e-mail in high volumes, or proof-reading, or checking files for accuracy and then publishing -- that would be okay. I might still have to take a pause at the end of the day to recover my concentration, but taking the pressure off my nerves and my voice would be huge.
I just don't know that I have any good options.
I am trying to find something out there before the phone call that makes me burst into tears, or swear at someone, or just hang up and walk away.
If that got you down, please enjoy this interesting thread on the long history of people not wanting to work!
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