Yes. The job.
First off, lo how the temp world doth suck. Pay is pretty great actually - but as far as the whole mental stimulation thing was going it went from zero to zilch in two months flat. Let's all give thanks then, to our luckiest of lucky stars that the amazing-superjob for which I had applied so many months ago came back to me asking if I was still interested after all!
My response to this was, naturally, much euphoria and some stuttering and some mild bouts of dumbassery brought on by so much more euphoria. This time, the mental stimulation is much like what the soil feels when a bolt of lightening passes plumb through it. I swear I haven't learned this much in two weeks since college. The compensation is - let's just say it ain't what most 30-somethings look at and say "super!" with fists clenched delightedly at their cheekbones. Alas. It's just this side of dire.
But holy crap I'm learning tons. Heaps. Absolute gobs of information are squelching into my brain every minute of my time there and that's saying a lot since I've been averaging roughly 55 hours a week! My head is just oozing with new information and the best part is that I'm surrounded by wierd-o's who all speak at least 2 languages in addition to english and roughly half of them hail from countries like Russia, Israel, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan. Freakin' UZBEKISTAN! I know! I'm just as surprised as you are that it's a real place that people can be from and junk. She's actually super cool and works in my small division of the department and I just adore her down to her perfectly polished toenails. I'm surrounded by accents, language jokes, and all manner of international double-entendres and I'm just as happy as a pig in a poke. This pig, you might say, has found her poke.
Don't forget though, I still REALLY want to be a trainer. Hillariously, amidst my brain-loading these last two.5 weeks I've also been showing folks how to do this that or the other with this that or the other program or phone or printer. Again - are you really that surprised? They teach me the job, I teach them neato party tricks for excel. It is a lovely relationship. SO yeah, ultimately I want to be a fully fledged trainer and though it looks like this position can't really grow into that sort of career... it's certainly an interesting company to be involved with until I can really sink my teeth into the training position that I'm ultimately destined for.
Back to the job. Like working for the muppets it is. It's actually not too different from what you might imagine it would be like working backstage at the muppet show. They're that wierd. OH do I ever fit in there. The job itself has much more of a stock-market feel to it, what with the urgency of the daily tasks and having to manage roughly 60-70 cases at a time with new ones coming in every day and old ones closing out every hour. We're super-duper busy, and even though I'm a mere 'newkid' I still feel like my meager attempts to pick up grunt work are helping tremendously. I'm contributing. Like, a lot. and it's disarming how easily a person can feel uplifted by that sensation.
I'm not just punching numbers on a printer or dragging benign folders into other benign folders for hours on end. I'm helping Gramma relocate from Dubuque to Dubai. Holy Crap! ANd let me tell you, she's got a butt-load of stuff too!
Anyway, the job is all kinds of super awesome and the overtime (though aggressive) will still help remedy the low wages. Yeah, it's a clerk-y customer service job and yeah I don't really get to be part of the big cheese newsreels anymore but at this stage in my life I'm actually pretty danged okay with it. It. Feels. Good. to be a part of something. REALLY a part of it, not the planner part of it or the secret backstage curtain-puller... a really real part of the company to whom office memo's go out and for whom little messages about being tidy in the lunchroom are intended.
It Feels Good.
and my team likes me.
and I like my team.
and we spend all day being horribly horribly busy and horribly, absurdly strange.
and I love it. :)
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