Home Says the Sphygmo
Posted in infuriatum, mundaneity, patheticism, subservience
My 4-day vacation just got preempted when I was sent home by our company nurse one hour into my shift today. It was the last day of the week for me because my vacation leave starts tomorrow. I took a few calls and then I felt this excruciating pain in my nape and I suspected I was having another hypertension attack. Turns out I was right. While I do not hide the fact that I am a stage-two hypertensive, I am ashamed to admit that I have had difficulty managing my health. Nobody has to tell me twice; weight management and regular exercise. Sadly, I seem to regularly avoid exercise, and I have managed to gain weight at an alarming rate. Believe me, its not fun at all and I am genuinely concerned. This is what I meant in one of my earlier posts when I said I wanted a complete turn-around. I know I have got to change the way I live my life and cut down on some of the bad stuff, like drinking and smoking. But I know its gonna take a lot of patience, discipline and time. So friends, wish me luck. Or at least come to my funeral.In other news, it's been just almost twelve hours into my extended vacation and I am already utterly bored. I just have this gut feeling that my streak of rest-day dates have come to an abrupt end. I'm starting to think she's another one of those "bad stuff" that I should cut down on.
If there's one bad thing I'd like to completely get out of my system, it's stress. Especially work-related stress. I can't get rid of work obviously; and since "work-related stress" implies that there will be certain levels of stress at work, then I guess I'll have to find a way to deal with it. But even thinking about how to fight stress itself stresses me. Now my head hurts. When I think about how that next call's gonna come in the next ten, twenty seconds or so it really ticks me off. I mean, we've barely had time to breathe and forget about that last moron we helped connect to the internet and here comes Mrs. Nguyen asking why her email doesn't work. Why can't we have avail times like before? Is it too much to ask for a breather in between calls? They keep blaming absenteeism but the way I see it, they should have anticipated that. They should have had a safety net, and not have just enough agents on the floor. Then they add more calls to the queue despite having an already depleted head count. People are literally starting to get sick because of all that stress. Then the clever folks in control get calls that should have been routed over to some other call center! What the fuck's up with that? But then again who am I to complain. I'm just a cog in the machinery. Pardon the call center jargon, but until somebody convinces me otherwise, or at least sensibly explains to me why they do what they do I will continue to rant and stress over this. I don't mean to whine but I think it has really gone too far. Add to that the pressures of having to keep up with metrics. To be honest, just this week I have been so close to taking my headsets off in the middle of my shift and walking away for good, twice. I just don't know how long I can keep taking this abuse anymore. This really sucks. They say change is the only permanent thing in this world. They didn't say change was gonna come easy. I know that part of the solution would be for me to change my perspective, how I look at the big picture so to speak. And I agree with that. But there's a very thin line between changing one's perspective and turning a blind eye to the truth. I will not simply close my eyes and say everything is hunky-dory when all hell is breaking loose. Hell no.
So I'm going to see a cardiologist this Friday. I sure hope he knows how to fix perspectives.
