I am going to start filtering some of my more private musings. Since blogger does not have a tool for that, you will need to visit my Live Journal and ask to be friended there. I will continue to post Daily Gratitude and other subjects here. There is also a FAQ for my Journal at the same link.
processing hell
| Monday, March 13, 2006 @ 20:01 A lot has happened in the past month. Rather than trying to do a monster catch-up, catch-all post, I'm going to break it into pieces. This is the first one. Due to my ongoing desire to receive unemployment, I have been diligently applying for work -- including temp-to-hire positions. I told the agencies I preferred temp assignments, but I ended up getting placed in a temp-to-hire position with an annuities company. Now, I'd had other interviews and skills tests for other jobs. The same day that I was told of this temp-to-perm situation, I was called back for an interview for an admin asst job that would probably pay less, but offered many benefits that take effect on the first day of employment -- and included domestic partner benefits. So, one of the questions I asked when filling out the agency paperwork, was if I could still schedule interviews, since even temp-to-hire positions aren't guaranteed. Their response was "no." In fact, I had to sign a document saying that since this was temp-to-hire, I would notify any other potential employer that I was no longer available. This was what I refer to as "warning bell #1." I've worked in HR and the first thing you consider when you hire someone is that they may still get offers leave you within the first 4-6 weeks. It's just how the world works. This agency made me to commit to staying in this job long-term and stop pursuing opportunities that were in progress. After agonizing for the entire weekend about how I hated signing a document that was a lie, I went to work on Monday. I told mysElf (and boy) that I have done processing jobs in the past and that I can work any job for six months. Warning bell #2: I was given no real orientation or introductions to co-workers, just told to read a booklet explaining how annuities work and a few pages of department proceedures: we were supposed to complete 90% of the previous day's worklist; everyone must have an inbox and a printing box, and a bunch of other rules and quota information. No one ever explained this document or walked me through what was expected. No one gave me an overview of the software, they just told me what I needed to do for each step. On day two my section supervisor, T, was out with the flu. This was warning bell #3. By the end of the day, I was feeling a bit under-the-weather and by bed-time, I felt miserable. I ended up calling in sick for my third day of work. This is not something I have ever done in my life. I have gotten sick early in a job before, but I always stuck it out. It just sends the wrong message if you don't show up in your first week. I felt miserable and I didn't want to spend a day breathing on my trainer when I might be contagious, so I stayed home. I was a little bit better and returned to work on Thursday. I knew from day one that I didn't like this company. I tried to tell mysElf that I was afraid of getting stuck in Kansas and objected to the office mentality on principle. By that first Thursday, I felt this place was just plain icky. I couldn't figure out if I felt this way because I was sick or because the people were so f***ing "nice" or because I hate processing. I spent several days trying to sort it out in my head and in discussions with boy. Was this illness a result of my negativity toward the job or was it the Universe's way of telling me I'd made a mistake by taking the job in the first place? Or was it simply the fact that I haven't been around many people this winter and thrown into a closed environment with hundreds of emplyees, I picked up germs? More on this introspection in future posts. By Monday I'd decided that I couldn't continue in this job and left a voice-mail with the agency before work that they should find someone else. It took until the following Tuesday night before the agency finally said they were going to replace me. This was over a week of trading voicemails because the company wanted to keep me and the agency wanted to keep the company happy. But I finally got thru to them and only had to work through Friday. A total of three weeks of my life, though it seemed like much longer. It was a very frustrating, exhausting, and illuminating experience. One I hope never to repeat in any context. One thing I realized from this job is that there are 6 billion people on this planet who have to document their lives. It is frightening how many people spend their work day simply processing documents and requests. The section that I worked in had four employees and two temps and processed only a fraction of the work of this company. And the regular employees were required to put in five hours of overtime a week as well as work some weekends. With all that, they were terribly behind on several of their processes (ones that I did not stay long enough to have to learn). By the last day, I was reading legal documents so that I could fill out an informational worksheet and pass it on to my supervisor so that she could read the document and approve my worksheet as correct and I could then send out a letter verifying that we'd accepted the legal document. I also spent time each day proof-reading letters to make sure the bank account numbers referrenced were accurate. And quite a bit of time typing labels, stuffing envelopes, and filling out overnight delivery slips (these were the departmental slips that were then given to the mail room to fill out the actual overnight slips). The redundancy was insane. This company prided itself on being "paperless" (everyone worked from scanned images rather than the actual forms or letters) yet every print job had a full-page cover sheet, even envelopes. My tolerance for the office structure has completely disintegrated. I am now outside the box.
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