It's been a rather intense weekend. And there's still more to go...
Thursday night I ended up meeting mostly the same crew from Monday night, Professor Awesome included. This time I managed to go the whole night without disremembering, falling, or otherwise injuring myself. I did spend money that I really shouldn't have, but besides that it was fun. I kind of wish I'd gotten to know my classmates a little sooner.
Unfortunately this led to another day of sleeping and being useless on Friday. I managed to be well rested and ready for work this morning though, so again, yay me!
This is where things get a bit schizophrenic. My shift started pretty well, actually. I got my assigned rooms (a reduced number since I was basically starting back at square one after re-training) and actually got them all done two hours before my shift was due to end. I was quite proud of myself. I offered to help out with anything outstanding since I was scheduled to be there a while longer, and was assigned another room.
That's when it all fell apart.
Basically, everything that could go wrong with the room did. I could not get the fucking duvet cover on properly, so it took me ages to do the bed. That was the first time my supervisor popped in and told me I needed to go faster. Then the vacuum (sorry, Hoover) barely worked. Then my back tried to give out on me while I was cleaning the tub, so that took longer than usual as well. By this point my supervisor had been in two more times, making sure to say "you need to go faster" at least once or twice per visit. Finally one of the spray bottles of cleaner fell apart in my hand and spilled all over the carpet.
I still managed to hold it together, in spite of my supervisor lurking and making sure I knew I had to move faster.
Finally all I had to do was put away the trolley (the stuff with all the linens and whatnot that maids drag around the halls to avoid running back and forth to the linen closets) and vacuum the hallway. Unfortunately the porters hadn't bothered to empty the thing of dirty linen the entire day so it wouldn't fit in the closet until I called to get someone to clean it out already. Meanwhile I ran back to my section to finish the vacuuming while the porter emptied the trolley, which was where I was confronted yet again by the supervisor, telling me I need to go faster.
If anyone heard a CRACK around 5:30pm GMT (that's 11:30am back home), that was my sanity giving way.
A meltdown ensued involving lots of crying and several other supervisors trying to convince me not to quit. To be honest I have no idea why they even cared if I stayed or not... the only feedback I've ever gotten from this any of them is that I'm not fast enough. Even the assistant head of housekeeping got involved and basically tried to prop me up by saying that he knows it's a stressful job, but that's good because it prepares you and makes you stronger.
Uhm. Ok.
What I wish I'd said at the time is: "Seriously? If that were true, I'd be the motherfucking Hulk by now. Stress =/= strength, stress = more and more anxiety until I end up in an institution screaming HULK SMASH at the motherfucking orderlies."
Instead I told him I'd think about it and get back to him. Not that I plan to do either. I'm so very gone from that place.
So, I'm unemployed again. Now I just have to figure out What To Do Next. Fortunately I have a list started, so I'm on the way. Number One is to concentrate on getting my end of term papers done. Once they're in the bag, I'll intensify the job hunt and make a very careful budget for the next month or so.
Also at the top of my list: pretending that I do not have a sore throat or a mouth full of cold sores. (HULK SMASH!)
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
December 15, 2012
December 9, 2012
What a difference a competent manager makes...
I think I figured out a way to conquer the snooze button problem... adding my cell phone in as an alternate alarm so I have to hit snooze twice as often, which wakes me up more effectively. Worked like a charm this morning!
Today was an interesting day at work. Which is saying a lot because let's face it, being a maid at a major Mystery Hotel Chain is not that interesting.
Thanks to my skive day yesterday, I was oblivious to the staff meeting that started at 9am this morning. I showed up at 10am and had missed most of the meeting already, but I did get there in time for the Housekeeping manager to basically chew the entire maid staff a collective new asshole. Then I got called up to her office for a one-on-one meeting, which made me pretty nervous after my lateness, my skive day, and the fact that I know I'm well behind the curve as far as work performance.
It turns out she just wanted to straighten out all the lack of training I got as a result of being the only part-time new hire. She had been away my first two weeks so hadn't been able to check in until now, only to find that nobody bothered to actually train me properly. Rather than sending me off on my own again, she paired me up with an extremely skilled and very nice gentleman maid (about 85% of the maids are dudes, which is sort of hilarious) who taught me some actual useful tricks that required very little short-cutting to get the rooms clean. Frankly, they should have sent me out with this guy much sooner because I finally learned the real trick to putting a duvet cover on in under 30 second, without breaking your arms - or even a sweat - in the process.
I'm still going to keep looking for another job, because this one is really just too physically intense for me at this point, and also it pays terribly (just a hair above minimum wage and about 25% under London living wage). But at least I feel less stressed about this job in the meantime.
Random observation of the day: I always feel kind of bad when people tell me their English is "not so good." I've yet to meet someone who told me that whose English skills are not perfectly acceptable. Not to mention the fact that I certainly don't speak a second language, like, at all, so as far as I'm concerned they're a hell of a lot better at languages than I am. I wish they'd stop being so hard on themselves... I admire the hell out of them.
Today was an interesting day at work. Which is saying a lot because let's face it, being a maid at a major Mystery Hotel Chain is not that interesting.
Thanks to my skive day yesterday, I was oblivious to the staff meeting that started at 9am this morning. I showed up at 10am and had missed most of the meeting already, but I did get there in time for the Housekeeping manager to basically chew the entire maid staff a collective new asshole. Then I got called up to her office for a one-on-one meeting, which made me pretty nervous after my lateness, my skive day, and the fact that I know I'm well behind the curve as far as work performance.
It turns out she just wanted to straighten out all the lack of training I got as a result of being the only part-time new hire. She had been away my first two weeks so hadn't been able to check in until now, only to find that nobody bothered to actually train me properly. Rather than sending me off on my own again, she paired me up with an extremely skilled and very nice gentleman maid (about 85% of the maids are dudes, which is sort of hilarious) who taught me some actual useful tricks that required very little short-cutting to get the rooms clean. Frankly, they should have sent me out with this guy much sooner because I finally learned the real trick to putting a duvet cover on in under 30 second, without breaking your arms - or even a sweat - in the process.
I'm still going to keep looking for another job, because this one is really just too physically intense for me at this point, and also it pays terribly (just a hair above minimum wage and about 25% under London living wage). But at least I feel less stressed about this job in the meantime.
Random observation of the day: I always feel kind of bad when people tell me their English is "not so good." I've yet to meet someone who told me that whose English skills are not perfectly acceptable. Not to mention the fact that I certainly don't speak a second language, like, at all, so as far as I'm concerned they're a hell of a lot better at languages than I am. I wish they'd stop being so hard on themselves... I admire the hell out of them.
December 8, 2012
A little bit of skivving never hurt anyone
Sometimes you just need a skive day, ya know? Especially
after the day I had yesterday.
Without going into too much detail, I ended up calling an
ambulance for someone last night around 3am. Long story short, the person in
question is totally fine and the story isn't actually that interesting. But it
did result in a night of insomnia which further resulted in an unexpected day
off from work.
Things could be worse, really.
While researching for one of my final papers, I got
distracted by the source material and ended up having an accidental Hellraiser marathon. It's been deliciously
nostalgic… I adored these flicks and this mythology when I was a teenager. Hellbound: Hellraiser II was the second
horror movie I ever saw (the first was Poltergeist
2), when I was maybe twelve years old. Hellraiser:
Bloodline (the fourth movie) came out around the time I graduated high
school, when my infatuation with Fangoria was at its peak and I was consuming
horror movies like they were going out of style (which, for the record, they
weren't). Bloodline (aka Pinhead! In! Space!) is the only one
I've seen in the theater… after that one they were just churned out straight to
video and are now up to… oh, nine? Ten? At any rate, the first four movies were
pretty important to my development as a horror connoisseur (doesn't that sound fancier than fangirl?), so it's
been a load of fun revisiting them.
Sadly it means I'm not getting much work done. Just for the
record, I have a 3000 word essay due on Wednesday, another 3000 word essay due
on Friday, a 1750 word essay due on Saturday, and a 2500 word essay with is
thankfully not due until January. Plus one final exam on Monday. No pressure!
Random observation of
the day: Say what you will about the NHS (National Healthcare System) here
in the UK, but I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to be able to summon
an ambulance knowing it's not going to put anyone in debt. This is what we're
missing out on in the US and it sucks.
August 26, 2011
Closing one door, opening another
Today is kind of a big deal. It's the last day at my job of nearly two years… but really it's ending a chapter of my life that started more than seven years ago.
In early 2004, I stopped mucking about and decided on a career path. Time to stop all this mucking about! I thought determinedly. I'm 26 now and it's high time to be an adult! I then promptly began to go about it in the wrong way.
I went to community college and plowed my way through a year of generals just to get them out of the way. My second year of school I was working a 40-hour week, taking 16 credits at another school 50 miles away, and commuting four days a week to go between the two. I look back on that year and honestly, I have no idea how I didn't go completely mad. (I reserve the right to assume I'm not mad on my own blog, so there.)
By the third year I had begun to realize that I wasn't doing as well as I wanted to in school (despite quitting my full-time job and moving much closer to school). But I had already invested time and money, and I wasn’t going to just give up. I graduated by the skin of my teeth and started to slog my way through a field that was showing its true (and not so pretty) colors. After two years of clawing and scraping, I backslid into a position which was related to my field, but not doing what I had been aiming for.
I've spent most of my time at this job slowly and painfully coming to terms with the fact that I had failed at what I wanted; that I'd wasted my time and money on a career that was not meant to be.
Fear not, faithful reader, this isn't one of those tragic emo stories.
With the help of a therapist, I finally figured out that I already knew what I really wanted to be doing. Writing. Acting. Creating. I discovered that all those dreams I'd had when I was a kid were still there, they'd just been buried under years of defeat and self-doubt and forced adulthood. So I dug them out and dusted them off and put them back on. The coolest part was that they still fit, even though I hadn't worn them for the better part of two decades.
The end result of this seven-year process is that I'm starting over. I'm off to school at the University of Minnesota, entering as something between a Freshman and a Sophomore. Because one thing my first try at school gave me, besides a hell of a lot of hindsight perspective, was enough credits to skip most of the boring stuff (like Math… we hates Math, yes we do precious). I'm giving myself a few years off from being an adult to give my childhood dreams a second – well, really, a chance.
All of this has been about six months in the planning, and now this denouement is at an end. I'm about to turn the page on this chapter after a long, long time. Too long, perhaps; or maybe just long enough. I cannot wait to see what the next chapter has in store for me.
In early 2004, I stopped mucking about and decided on a career path. Time to stop all this mucking about! I thought determinedly. I'm 26 now and it's high time to be an adult! I then promptly began to go about it in the wrong way.
I went to community college and plowed my way through a year of generals just to get them out of the way. My second year of school I was working a 40-hour week, taking 16 credits at another school 50 miles away, and commuting four days a week to go between the two. I look back on that year and honestly, I have no idea how I didn't go completely mad. (I reserve the right to assume I'm not mad on my own blog, so there.)
By the third year I had begun to realize that I wasn't doing as well as I wanted to in school (despite quitting my full-time job and moving much closer to school). But I had already invested time and money, and I wasn’t going to just give up. I graduated by the skin of my teeth and started to slog my way through a field that was showing its true (and not so pretty) colors. After two years of clawing and scraping, I backslid into a position which was related to my field, but not doing what I had been aiming for.
I've spent most of my time at this job slowly and painfully coming to terms with the fact that I had failed at what I wanted; that I'd wasted my time and money on a career that was not meant to be.
Fear not, faithful reader, this isn't one of those tragic emo stories.
With the help of a therapist, I finally figured out that I already knew what I really wanted to be doing. Writing. Acting. Creating. I discovered that all those dreams I'd had when I was a kid were still there, they'd just been buried under years of defeat and self-doubt and forced adulthood. So I dug them out and dusted them off and put them back on. The coolest part was that they still fit, even though I hadn't worn them for the better part of two decades.
The end result of this seven-year process is that I'm starting over. I'm off to school at the University of Minnesota, entering as something between a Freshman and a Sophomore. Because one thing my first try at school gave me, besides a hell of a lot of hindsight perspective, was enough credits to skip most of the boring stuff (like Math… we hates Math, yes we do precious). I'm giving myself a few years off from being an adult to give my childhood dreams a second – well, really, a chance.
All of this has been about six months in the planning, and now this denouement is at an end. I'm about to turn the page on this chapter after a long, long time. Too long, perhaps; or maybe just long enough. I cannot wait to see what the next chapter has in store for me.
July 18, 2011
Life on the Couch: A whole new couch
There's been some big changes in my life recently, which is part of the reason I disappeared from blogging for a while there. The changes are all for the good, but no matter how awesome change is it takes some getting used to. (Translation: change=hard, depressing, and very very scary.)
One thing that happened, less than a week after returning home from a trip to Europe, was that I moved. I am no longer in the dungeon, folks, but in the upper apartment of a lovely old house in south Minneapolis. I have a new roommate and now live with five cats (including my two). We refer to the apartment as the Treehouse. Each room is a different color and it's all very cozy and Bohemian. Possibly the best part of all is that my wretched futon went into the dumpster, and I have a whole new (to me) couch to blog from:
Complete with cat.
Adjusting to living with a new person is always a bit of a challenge, but with only a month behind us we seem to be doing pretty well at it.
The other, less fortunate change is that I've been spending a LOT of time on the aforementioned couch in the past few weeks, because I'm an employee of the State of Minnesota. In case you've missed the news (or don't live in Minnesota), that means I've been laid off since July 1 due to a government shutdown. Which is not my fault at all, but nonetheless brought on a wave of guilt and despair the likes of which I haven't experienced in a long time. Fortunately the shutdown is apparently ending some time next week, so I can go back to work and stop feeling like a useless git.
For about six weeks. Then I quit my job and start college.
A prospect that fills me with a mixture of joy and excitement and anticipation and absolute terror.
I've been to college before, but now I'm going to a Proper University. The majority of my classmates will be fresh out of high school, and I'll be a 33-year-old single woman. I'm going to have to dye my hair blue pretty quickly to keep up. Wait, is dying your blue what the cool kids do these days? Maybe I should do purple instead.
There's also the math placement test I took earlier today... it turns out that the class I took in technical college, seven years ago? Didn't stick. I stared at the questions, sure that I had learned all this at some point. Numbers and fractions and graphs and trains 738 miles apart floated dreamily in front of my eyes as I struggled to remember what a logarithm was and how one went about finding it. Each question had "I don't know" as an answer option, and I picked it for almost every question. In the end, I got 3 correct out of 41.
3.
Out of 41.
It's a good thing I'm majoring in English.
One thing that happened, less than a week after returning home from a trip to Europe, was that I moved. I am no longer in the dungeon, folks, but in the upper apartment of a lovely old house in south Minneapolis. I have a new roommate and now live with five cats (including my two). We refer to the apartment as the Treehouse. Each room is a different color and it's all very cozy and Bohemian. Possibly the best part of all is that my wretched futon went into the dumpster, and I have a whole new (to me) couch to blog from:
Complete with cat.
Adjusting to living with a new person is always a bit of a challenge, but with only a month behind us we seem to be doing pretty well at it.
The other, less fortunate change is that I've been spending a LOT of time on the aforementioned couch in the past few weeks, because I'm an employee of the State of Minnesota. In case you've missed the news (or don't live in Minnesota), that means I've been laid off since July 1 due to a government shutdown. Which is not my fault at all, but nonetheless brought on a wave of guilt and despair the likes of which I haven't experienced in a long time. Fortunately the shutdown is apparently ending some time next week, so I can go back to work and stop feeling like a useless git.
For about six weeks. Then I quit my job and start college.
A prospect that fills me with a mixture of joy and excitement and anticipation and absolute terror.
I've been to college before, but now I'm going to a Proper University. The majority of my classmates will be fresh out of high school, and I'll be a 33-year-old single woman. I'm going to have to dye my hair blue pretty quickly to keep up. Wait, is dying your blue what the cool kids do these days? Maybe I should do purple instead.
There's also the math placement test I took earlier today... it turns out that the class I took in technical college, seven years ago? Didn't stick. I stared at the questions, sure that I had learned all this at some point. Numbers and fractions and graphs and trains 738 miles apart floated dreamily in front of my eyes as I struggled to remember what a logarithm was and how one went about finding it. Each question had "I don't know" as an answer option, and I picked it for almost every question. In the end, I got 3 correct out of 41.
3.
Out of 41.
It's a good thing I'm majoring in English.
March 13, 2011
Life on the Couch: Work is hard.
This is going to be a short-ish one, 'cause I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with the plague which makes me cranky and unmotivated. Unlike how I usually am.
I've worked a myriad of customer service and retail jobs. I don't tend to stay at them very long, because I seriously suck at customer service. The problem is that I really don't care. I'm terrible at upselling, because what's it to me if the large corporation emblazoned across my chest (or worse, stitched on the breast of my company polo shirt GAH) makes an additional four dollars? I also have this utterly irrational idea that the customer should already know about the place they're in and what it sells or what the program does, which makes them a lazy, ignorant idiot for asking me about it. Doesn't take long for me to succumb to the seething rage.
As a customer, if I ever had to ask myself for assistance, I would think I was the rudest, most disgruntled employee ever.
Of the thirty-odd jobs I've had in my life, almost all of them have been retail or customer service of some sort. And for those of you who just gasped, “THIRTY???” I offer you a list (from memory, so probably not complete):
Paper delivery
Grocery cashier at a small-town store
Pizza-maker/delivery
Telemarketer
Grocery cashier at a warehouse grocer
Taco shop clerk
Pizza-maker/delivery
Temp
Toy store clerk
Reception/admin at a job placement company
Book store clerk
Reception/admin at a computer training company
Video store clerk
Music/video store clerk
Lingerie store clerk
Temp
Admin at a federal office
Lotion store clerk
Temp
Admin at a mental health facility
Temp
Dispatcher for a cab company
Admin for a technology firm
Rental video store clerk
Box office staff at a children's theater
Sign language interpreter at a high school
Large media/electronics store clerk
Group home attendant
Sign language interpreter at an elementary school
Admin at a state agency
I'm quite excited to start my next job: professional student. Not much customer service involved in that one.
I don't even think this post made sense. I blame the plague.
I've worked a myriad of customer service and retail jobs. I don't tend to stay at them very long, because I seriously suck at customer service. The problem is that I really don't care. I'm terrible at upselling, because what's it to me if the large corporation emblazoned across my chest (or worse, stitched on the breast of my company polo shirt GAH) makes an additional four dollars? I also have this utterly irrational idea that the customer should already know about the place they're in and what it sells or what the program does, which makes them a lazy, ignorant idiot for asking me about it. Doesn't take long for me to succumb to the seething rage.
As a customer, if I ever had to ask myself for assistance, I would think I was the rudest, most disgruntled employee ever.
Of the thirty-odd jobs I've had in my life, almost all of them have been retail or customer service of some sort. And for those of you who just gasped, “THIRTY???” I offer you a list (from memory, so probably not complete):
Paper delivery
Grocery cashier at a small-town store
Pizza-maker/delivery
Telemarketer
Grocery cashier at a warehouse grocer
Taco shop clerk
Pizza-maker/delivery
Temp
Toy store clerk
Reception/admin at a job placement company
Book store clerk
Reception/admin at a computer training company
Video store clerk
Music/video store clerk
Lingerie store clerk
Temp
Admin at a federal office
Lotion store clerk
Temp
Admin at a mental health facility
Temp
Dispatcher for a cab company
Admin for a technology firm
Rental video store clerk
Box office staff at a children's theater
Sign language interpreter at a high school
Large media/electronics store clerk
Group home attendant
Sign language interpreter at an elementary school
Admin at a state agency
I'm quite excited to start my next job: professional student. Not much customer service involved in that one.
I don't even think this post made sense. I blame the plague.
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