Category Archives: Work

I Might Be Coming Back (or A Blog Anniversary And An Unexpected Fresh Start)

Posted on July 16, 2024 | Comments Off on I Might Be Coming Back (or A Blog Anniversary And An Unexpected Fresh Start)

Hello again!

My last post on here was about 4 months ago when I said I would be taking a bit of a break. I wasn’t sure how long the break would be, but I knew I was becoming burned out with this blog and I never wanted to write just because I felt like I had to. But I felt motivated to get a new post out today for a few reasons.

First, today is the 12th anniversary of starting this blog! Even though I haven’t kept up with daily posting, I still wrote over 2900 posts here over those 12 years! That’s impressive to me considering I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep up writing. So much has happened in my life over the 12 years since I started here. I know that there were so many times that writing out my thoughts and feelings was what helped me get through whatever was happening in my life. The blogging world introduced me to so many amazing people through different events and groups I got to be a part of. No matter what ends up happening with this blog, I am forever grateful for the time that I have been writing because of what it brought to my life. I still don’t know what the future exactly holds for me with this blog, but I don’t plan on bringing down the page any time soon as I can see that people are still discovering it and enjoying what I wrote.

The second reason I felt motivated to write a new post is because today is my first day of unemployment from what has been my main day job for almost 4 years. There was a layoff at this company and I was one of the people affected by that. It wasn’t expected and I think I’m still in a little bit of shock over it all. I know this wasn’t due to my work or what I brought to the company, so I do wonder if maybe they’ll change their mind and re-hire me soon. But I also know I can’t just think that so I have to get back to looking for a new job.

I do still have my part-time job and I have asked to see if I could get more hours there. I also will be filing for unemployment this week, so that will help me a little. But I know that I cannot survive on just that little income alone so I need to be very proactive in looking for work.

This is different from the last time I was unemployed, which was in 2020 due to the pandemic. The amount we get paid for unemployment is much less because 4 years ago they gave more than double the normal amount because of the pandemic assistance. Having that much more in unemployment made those months much easier to get through. I don’t have that luxury now. But I also know that the job market isn’t quite as bad as it was in 2020 either. So I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find a new job soon or somehow my old job will hire me back quickly.

And I do plan on trying to stay busy while I’m out of work. I still have my workouts, although I’m looking at going a little later in the morning so I can sleep a bit more. I’m going to spend time every day looking for work, but I’m hoping I can also find cheap or free ways to stay busy and see my friends since that’s something I know I haven’t done as much with a full work schedule.

I know that I’ll be ok and I always manage to find a new job, it’s just so scary when you really felt like your job was secure and then you find out that it wasn’t. I know that many people at my job wanted me to stay, but due to factors out of our control, that just wasn’t an option. I’m very lucky that I can ask family for help if it comes to that, but I’m going to do my best to not rely on other people. I don’t like asking for help, especially financial help, and I want to get back to a situation where I feel like I can manage life the way that I have. And maybe I’ll find a job that is a better situation with higher pay or fewer hours. You never know. I felt like I was in a good situation before the pandemic and then I got into a much better one when I was hired for the job I just lost.

I’m not sure if being unemployed means I’ll start writing on here again regularly, but it has felt nice to write this post and get some feelings out. I might just write when I have something to share or I might go back to just posting twice a week or so. I’m going through a fresh start with my work life, and it’s feeling like a little bit of a fresh start on this blog to kick off the 12th anniversary.

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Default ThumbnailNext Month Will Be A Bit Of A Fresh Start (or What Is Coming For This Blog) Default Thumbnail8 Years In (or Another Blog Anniversary) Default ThumbnailAnother Blog Anniversary (or When Will This Stop Surprising Me) Default ThumbnailAlways Wondering About The Future Of This Blog (or Not Sure If It’s Time For A Change) Default Thumbnail5 Years Old (or My Blog Is A Kindergartner) Default ThumbnailGoing Out Because I Blog (or What Came First?)

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Work

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A Delayed Annual Review (or Thankful For Some Job Security)

Posted on April 25, 2023 | Comments Off on A Delayed Annual Review (or Thankful For Some Job Security)

Normally, annual job reviews come at the end of the year or just after the new year starts. Because of a few different things happening at my main day job, our annual reviews were delayed so that they would be a bit more accurate. The executive team knew that looking at our performance during a time when things are not normal and we were doing different tasks wouldn’t be the best way to review us. So we were told in January that our reviews would be delayed until April.

I didn’t mind the delay since I wasn’t worried about how my review would go. I know I’m not perfect, but I have been feeling more secure about my job as changes have happened and I’ve been given more responsibilities. I handle a lot of things now that were done by someone higher up than me. I also have created a lot of different projects of things that I have noticed needed to be done. And I’m always being trained on new procedures so I can take that task off of someone else’s agenda. I know that being given extra responsibilities doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t have to worry about your job being safe, but it is a reassurance that things are going well and that the people higher up than you have trust in you.

Before my annual review, there was a self-assessment that I had to fill out. It was almost the same as past assessments I had to do for this job. Most of the questions were about how I felt like my work was going and if I felt like my time was being used efficiently. There were also questions about how communication was going with those higher up, but I tried to focus more on questions that I had more control over such as how I was doing. I tried to be as honest as possible about where I had setbacks or difficulties. I didn’t say that I was doing everything right, but I also tried to problem-solve a bit when mentioning a problem such as what steps I was waiting on from others to be able to do my work. I had to turn in my form a few days before my review, but I finished earlier since I used some free time I had to get it done.

And when I had my official review, it went pretty much how I expected it to go. My main concern was if my boss felt my self-assessment was accurate or if they felt like I was too hard or easy on myself. Fortunately, she said that she agreed with everything that I wrote and that I had a good grasp on how I was doing with my job and as a part of the company. Even though I felt pretty certain this would be how my review went, it was a relief to hear her say that. I’ve been doing better about not being worried about being fired whenever I have a meeting coming up, but I still have that fear in the back of my head from time to time. I’ve been lucky that it’s been a very long time since I lost a job randomly, but I will probably always worry a little bit that it will happen again. But I just try to tell myself that I wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing within the company if I was going to be fired soon.

Because I’ve had some job responsibility changes recently, there weren’t a lot of other things to go over in my annual review. My job title isn’t changing since I’m already at a senior staff level and right now we aren’t getting raises because that will hopefully be coming at the end of this year. But last year I had more than the average number of raises, so that makes sense to me. And I know that I’m making more than I did before the pandemic with my other jobs, so I’m happy. Of course, I think everyone would like to make more, but I’m lucky that I’m comfortable right now.

I know that things can change quickly, but after my review, I feel even better about being in a good spot with my job. The higher ups recognize the work I’ve been doing and they have been happy with the results. And hopefully, when I have my next review, things will be just as positive as they were this time.

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Busier Work Days (or Continuing To Take On More Responsibility)

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Comments Off on Busier Work Days (or Continuing To Take On More Responsibility)

Since I started my main day job in December 2020, a lot of my job has changed. I started part-time and moved into full-time. I started with solely doing direct client communication and slowly shifted into spending a few hours each day with direct communication and then the rest of the time doing other projects and tasks. And eventually, that shifted into no direct client communication outside of very specific messages I sent and almost completely focusing on projects.

Most of the projects I’ve focused on have been regarding managing our client records. This has a lot of different components to it, but I do tracking for clients from the time they sign up until the time they cancel. And there are a lot of things to track during that time and I feel like what we track has only increased recently. This might be because before this was my main focus, nobody had the time to do this work. So it’s something that we probably needed to do for a while but never had the ability to do. Some of these tasks can take a lot of time because I’m going back through a few years of past data to update our systems, but I know it will be worth it for us as a company when it’s done. And once I finish the old data, it will be pretty easy to update each month going forward.

Earlier this year, my manager reached out to me to let me know that they wanted to add some additional responsibilities to my role. This process has taken a bit longer to get set up than expected due to some unexpected things with work that took up more time, but it’s finally starting to be in the works. I’ve had a few training sessions to learn the new tasks I will be taking over, but the work won’t be my responsibility for another month or so. I also will be taking over a few other tasks that a co-worker was doing before but they have left the company. Many of those tasks were things we were working on together, so it’s not a huge change for me other than I’ll be working on them alone.

I remember pre-pandemic when my main job was my box office job and I would spend a lot of time reading or doing other things while I waited for the phone to ring. I know it sounds weird to be doing other things while I’m being paid for work. But I could work a 7-hour shift and only have a handful of calls. So there would be several hours where I was doing nothing and I needed to do something to fill my time. And yes, it was nice to get paid to essentially do nothing at times, but I did get bored quite often. I don’t think a lot of people realize how boring it is to just sit and stare at a screen all day and not really do much.

And now, I’m pretty busy for the entire time that I’m working at my main job. It can get hectic and I have to balance a bunch of projects at once sometimes, but at least I have something that is taking up my day each day. Time does go by faster when I’m busy, so that is nice. I don’t have as much time to do silly things as I did before, but that’s ok. I know I’m still very lucky with my job because I get to work from home and I don’t have a lot of issues that many of my other friends have said their jobs have. I work with people who understand this is a day job and not my entire life. If I have an audition or something else that is a conflict, it’s not a big deal like it’s been at other jobs. And even with my new, busier schedule, I don’t think it’s overwhelmingly busy. I do get stressed when there are a lot of things that need to be done at the same time, but it also isn’t life or death if I have to ask for an extension.

I’m sure I’ll figure out a new groove with work once I fully take on these new tasks and I’ll have some days that are crazier than others. But I’m excited to be continuing to work my way up at this job and have more opportunities to do some good work. Even with it just being a day job, I do take pride in what I do and make sure I do the best of my ability. And I’ll have more chances to do that now and to make sure that I make my mark with the company.

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An Unexpected Day Off (or Enjoying Some Free Time)

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Comments Off on An Unexpected Day Off (or Enjoying Some Free Time)

I’ve been pretty lucky with my day job situation for quite a bit of time. Things haven’t always been perfect, but they have been better than what many of my friends have dealt with. Even losing my job during the beginning of the pandemic isn’t the worst thing since so many of my friends who kept their jobs had to be around people. That wouldn’t have been my situation, but losing my job at that time led me to the job that I’m doing full-time now. And when that job came back and things started to get better, they worked with me so I could work limited hours and make it work with my new job. And I do feel like my efforts and contributions are appreciated at both my jobs.

I have a few more positive things to say about my main job, but that’s mainly because I have benefits that my part-time job doesn’t have. I get paid holidays, which is something that a lot of jobs don’t provide. And while I don’t have health insurance, I do get extra money once a month to help with the cost of insurance. It doesn’t cover it in full, but it’s significantly better than getting no help at all. And I think because of the type of work I do at my full-time job, I get a lot more feedback and feel a bit more important to keep the company going.

And I know that job appreciates us too from a lot of things that they have done for us. The most recent thing we got was an extra day off last week for employee appreciation day. I didn’t know I had this day off until the week before when some of my meetings were getting moved around. Because it was on a Friday, I still had to work my part-time job, but it gave me a lot of extra free time that I wasn’t expecting and I took advantage of that.

I did allow myself to sleep in a bit, but since I get up so early almost every day, sleeping in isn’t really that late. I think I was still up before 7am. But it was nice to not have to rush to get out of bed to get to my workout or to log in for work. So I enjoyed the morning and took my time getting things done. But I couldn’t be too lazy because I had an appointment that morning.

As soon as I found out about having the day off, I messaged my friend about getting my hair done. I was going to message her soon anyway, but I figured I’d have to go one day after work in the evening. But since I had the day off, I asked if she had any appointments that would work around my other job and she had something in the morning so it was perfect! It was nice not going in after being tired from working and other things going on and just getting to relax while getting my hair back to how I like it to look.

I did have to work for 2 hours in the afternoon for my other job, but I was much more relaxed working than normal since I wasn’t doubled up for my work and I didn’t have any stress from my main job affecting me. And I was done with work by 3pm so I had a lot of free time in the afternoon.

I didn’t do much else with my day, just spent time reading and then watching a bit of tv before going to bed. I also received a very nice card and generous gift card from my main job, so I did do some exploring online to figure out what I want to use the gift card on. I haven’t decided yet, but I’m sure I’ll find something cool.

It really was a nice and chill day off that I didn’t plan on having. I did get a few things done that I needed to do, but it was just nice feeling like I had the ability to relax a bit more during my day. Normally, I feel pretty rushed from 5 in the morning until about 6 in the evening. And even though I had a day off the week before, I will always appreciate any paid time off that I can have.

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Having Less Of A Weekend (or Taking My Day Job Seriously)

Posted on January 18, 2023 | Comments Off on Having Less Of A Weekend (or Taking My Day Job Seriously)

Even though my main day job is still a day job, that doesn’t mean I don’t work hard at it. If anything, I think I work harder because I want to show my value in case I have to take time off for booking acting work. I’ve heard of so many friends who couldn’t get time off that they needed and still have their job, so they had to quit in order to take a role they were offered. I never want to be in that position, so I really want to make sure that I’m always working hard and making sure that I do all my work to the best of my ability.

In the 2 years that I’ve been at this job, things have changed quite a bit for me. I started working part-time and my responsibilities changed frequently as I got more and more familiar with the company. Then I became full-time and got more work. And my biggest and most recent change was transitioning out of direct customer care work and more administrative and systems-based work. While my background has always been in customer care work, I’m really happy with the new type of work that I’m doing and I feel like it’s a much better fit for me. I also like that I don’t have the same time restrictions as I did before to do deep dives to figure things out. It’s nice to be able to look really hard at all aspects of a problem you are trying to figure out and get a full picture. Then I can share my findings with my co-workers who do the direct work with customers so they can provide the best answers possible.

There have been people who have been hired and left in the 2 years I’ve been working. And now, I’m one of the most senior employees in my department. That’s a bit crazy to me because it feels at times that I’m still new at all this. But I also know that I am familiar with what I’m being asked to do, especially since many of our systems are things that I have designed or created for us. It still feels weird to be in charge or this high up, but I know that I’ve taken the steps to get there and I wouldn’t be thought of this way by our executive team if they questioned my abilities.

Because I have senior status, that also means I sometimes have to do more work. We had a bunch of changes that happened in the past week, and there was a lot of extra work that needed to be done in order to make sure we stayed on top of everything for the month. There were some nights I worked later than normal and I had to work over the weekend even though I have weekends off (and this was a holiday weekend). I was paid overtime for doing all this extra work, so I didn’t mind it too much. And I didn’t have any plans for the weekend so I wasn’t missing anything that I was looking forward to.

I know that putting in those extra hours was appreciated by the executive team. And I know I don’t have to prove myself to anyone, but I also know that this showed how seriously I take things even if this isn’t the career that I am working toward. I know that many people with day jobs aren’t as lucky and either don’t get a chance to prove themselves or it doesn’t help if they need to take time off in the future. But I’m grateful that I have been in a good job for these past 2 years. And if I have to give up a weekend once every few years, I think that’s worth it for everything that I’m getting in return.

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Gearing Up To Wind Down (or I Think I’ll Need These Days Off)

Posted on December 22, 2022 | Comments Off on Gearing Up To Wind Down (or I Think I’ll Need These Days Off)

Because in the past I didn’t always get holidays off, I am always extra grateful when I get an extra day off. So many holidays are on Mondays and my box office job already has Mondays off. And there have also been a few years where Christmas and New Year’s fell on days I already had off so I didn’t feel like I had any real time off, I only had my normal weekend.

With my social media job, I do get holidays off, so that’s already an added bonus. So the Mondays that are holidays finally feel like a day off since I have time off from my Monday-Friday job. Between the two jobs, I do have slightly different holiday schedules and days off, but most of the days overlap so that helps a bit.

But for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a real break. It’s not a long break, but it’s more than normal. For my social media job, I have Friday-Monday off, so that’s 2 extra days. And for my box office job, I have Saturday off. I will still need to work on Friday for the box office job, but that’s only 2 hours in the afternoon so that’s not too bad. I might actually work a few extra hours depending on how I feel to bank some extra time off I can use in the future. But I don’t have to decide that in advance.

I’m really looking forward to having all this time off. I don’t have any plans, and that’s ok with me. I just want to have time to rest and relax. And I’m honestly so happy I will have so many days in a row that I can sleep in a bit later because I’m still struggling with getting to bed on time. I am going to work on getting to bed earlier on my days off, but at least this way I’ll have the ability to sleep in a bit if I need to, and hopefully I will feel so much more rested by next week.

Because of all the extra time off, things have been extra crazy at both of my jobs this week. I’ve been getting a lot of stuff done so it’s not waiting for me on Tuesday because I know there will be a lot that comes in over the long weekend. I already know next week will likely be just as crazy because I’ll be catching up plus there is still one more holiday to go. For my box office job, this is one of our busiest times since so many people want to get a gift certificate to give as a holiday gift. At least I know that will calm down a bit next week. And for my social media job, I normally have a lot to do at the end of the month so I’ve been trying to get as much of a head start on that work as possible. But I know that since so many things can’t be done until the start of the new month, a lot will just have to wait and I will have my usual busy beginning of the month.

I know having a crazy week this week will probably make me appreciate my extra days off even more. And I’m fully planning on taking advantage of not having to do much for those days and getting myself ready for whatever craziness happens after the holidays.

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2 Years In (or Still Grateful For My Job)

Posted on December 8, 2022 | Comments Off on 2 Years In (or Still Grateful For My Job)

Yesterday was my 2-year anniversary at my job. Just like everything else in life lately, it seems like it hasn’t been that long but at the same time, it seems like I’ve been at this job for longer. And it’s been a pretty crazy journey so far.

Before the pandemic, I had been saying for a while that I should look for a new job. I was doing ok with the work that I had at the time, but I also knew that I wasn’t making enough and I was going to continue to have financial issues if I didn’t make a change. But I also know I wasn’t motivated because I was comfortable in the situation I was in. But then the pandemic hit and my hours started to decrease until I was officially out of work in August 2020. I had already applied for unemployment, so I knew that could hold me over for a while since unemployment was paying more than normal. But I also knew I couldn’t just wait and see and I had to be productive in finding something else.

I spent a few months applying for jobs every day, but everyone was doing that so I wasn’t getting any interviews. And I also didn’t want to find a job where I had to go into an office so that limited my search even more. But I kept applying and hoping for the best. I also would occasionally post on social media that I was looking for a job in case someone knew of something. And eventually, my friend responded saying there was an opening at the company he worked for. I interviewed with him and the person who would be my manager, and I really felt good about how things went. And a few days after that interview, I had my first day.

When I started at my job, I was hired to do customer service work part-time as well as another side project part-time. I actually didn’t know I had gotten the job on my first day. I was told to join in for the all-team call so I could meet everyone, and after that call, I got a call from the CEO offering me the job. I didn’t want to assume that I had gotten the job after my interview, but I felt really good about my chances. And I’m glad that I was right.

For a while, I worked those two part-time positions until I realized that I could only really devote time to the customer service one. And a few months after I started, I was offered my old job back. I made it work by doing the new job in the morning and the old job for the hours after. It worked out really well and I felt like I was really back to what I had before everything shut down.

After about 8 months at my new job, I was offered the opportunity to go full-time. I let them know about the other job, and they were ok with me essentially doing both for those few limited hours a week because my old job only needed my attention when we had customer calls. I was so grateful I was able to make that work, and I was doing full-time customer service at one job and then part-time customer service at the other.

I’ve been doing both jobs ever since, and it’s never been an issue for either job (and both jobs are very aware of what is happening). So my hours have been steady ever since I went full-time. But my job title and responsibilities have shifted a lot.

After doing customer service at my new job for a few months, I noticed things that either didn’t make sense or seem efficient to me. I’m very lucky that whenever I brought up an idea like that, they were heard and often acted upon. But by doing that, I think my job realized that I had some skill sets that weren’t being used while doing customer service. They had to hire additional customer service employees as our client base grew, and I started to transition more away from what I had been doing. And eventually, I stopped doing direct work with our clients and only focused on doing administrative work as well as helping to design work systems and procedures.

This is very different from a lot of day jobs I’ve had before. I have mainly done customer service work, and even though I’m still doing work that could be considered under the customer service umbrella, I’m really doing a lot more with my skills and abilities than I have been able to do before. It is still a day job, but it’s a job where I actually see my work making changes besides just answering customer questions. I have different projects that I work on and even though some of them can be challenging, it’s so much better than being bored. At my old job, I spent so many days just reading or watching videos online waiting for someone to call in. Now, I’m usually pretty busy most of the time doing a variety of things.

And yes, I’m making more money than I did before. This isn’t the most important thing, but it’s a big deal to not have to be stressed about money the same way I used to. I still have to budget and save, but I’m not feeling like my bank account is getting dangerously low anymore. I can pay my bills and not worry about how much is in my account. Not having that sort of stress on my mind anymore has been so great for my life.

In the past two years, I have been able to really grow into my job and find my place within this company. That’s something I’ve never been able to do before and now I understand why I felt so stuck in jobs before. I’m so lucky that I get to work with some awesome people and that everyone seems to enjoy their work and have fun. And I know that I was so lucky to get a job when so many others were in the same spot as me and there was a lot of competition for every single job opening. But I feel like this was the way it was meant to happen. I wasn’t supposed to find another job sooner because it wouldn’t have been this job. And I was the one meant for this job because I have been able to go from working in customer service to being a senior staff member helping to make the company better. Things fell into place the way they were supposed to. And all of this has been in just 2 years, so I can’t wait to see what will come next.

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Working On Being More Efficient (or Learning Not To Do Everything Myself)

Posted on November 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Working On Being More Efficient (or Learning Not To Do Everything Myself)

Happy November! It’s so crazy that we are almost at the end of this year, but as always the months are flying by! I feel like October was even faster than most months, but I think I say that every month. But this time, I felt like the month was just getting started as the month ended. But even though the month felt like it went by too fast, I still made an effort to get as much as I could with my monthly challenge.

I challenged myself in October to get out of the rut that I’ve been in and to try to say yes to doing more stuff. I did try to say yes to things that fit into my schedule. I couldn’t say yes to everything because I had plans or other things I had to get done, but I tried. I hung out with friends when I could, but it wasn’t as often as I would like. I said yes to dates even if I wasn’t totally sure about the guy (I never agreed to a date if I felt like it would be unsafe, but if I felt like I would be safe I gave guys a chance). When I saw things come into my inbox, I tried to see if I could make plans to do something. It wasn’t as successful as I would have liked it to be, but I think that was because I was dependent on other people inviting me to things and I didn’t do enough outreach on my own.

I’m hoping to be a bit better about reaching out to friends to go do things moving forward. I do know how important it is to continue to try to be social because it’s so easy to not do that. And just considering going to my workouts isn’t enough to really have a social life. For a while, that was all I did and I know I need to do more than that. So I hope that I can continue to work on making plans and not just be lazy every day after work or spend the weekends recovering from my week.

For this month, my challenge might be more related to my work than anything else but I also might find ways to incorporate it into my regular life. I want to find more ways to be more efficient in my work and to be ok with asking for help more often. I have realized with some recent work tasks that there are things that I didn’t have to spend as much time doing if I had asked someone if there was a better way to do them. I haven’t had a lot of tasks I couldn’t do, but there’s no need for me to spend days working on something if someone else can help me do them in minutes or hours.

A good example is how we tag our clients in our database. I was working on updating and adding specific tags which were taking me a lot of time. It wasn’t something that was difficult, but it was time-consuming. Someone mentioned that there might be a way to do mass tagging in our system, so I set up a meeting to talk to a member of the executive team to ask about it and they were able to get all the work done for me in minutes. I also learned how to do what they were doing, but there were some tasks that they needed to do since I don’t have full editing permissions in our database. But it was so great to see something that I was expecting to work on all week be done in a single meeting.

A lot of the work I’ve been doing lately are things that take up time and are very repetitive. And I know that for some of this work, there isn’t a shortcut or easier way to do them. They just have to be done one at a time and there’s no way around that. But it never hurts to ask if there is a better way even if I feel sure that there isn’t because I might be surprised. So I want to focus this month on asking for this type of help so I can make sure I’m using my time the best way I can.

It’s hard for me to ask for help because I don’t want people to think I can’t do my work. But I also know that asking for help doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it just means I’m making sure I’m not missing something that might make my life easier. And this could be applied to other areas of my life such as hiring someone to clean my place every so often. I can clean my house on my own, but it’s nice to have someone else to do it too if I’m too busy. Of course, things like hiring cleaners also involve money, so it’s not as simple as asking for help at work.

But I hope that even if it’s just about my work stuff, I can make sure I’m asking to check that I’m doing things as efficiently as possible so I’m maximizing my time each day. And hopefully doing this during November will help me find better ways to organize my work day and really get the most out of my time so I’m not worried about what I didn’t finish when I step away from my computer at the end of the day.

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Another Day Of Being Shadowed (or Making Some Positive Changes For My Day Job)

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Comments Off on Another Day Of Being Shadowed (or Making Some Positive Changes For My Day Job)

About a year ago, my friend and boss came to my house to observe a day of work with me. It was a great day and we got a lot done to make the workflow a lot simpler and streamlined. He was able to see what could be automated and what might be causing duplicity when it wasn’t necessary. I was so happy with the changes we were able to make and I think he agreed that it was very productive. And when that day was done, we mentioned how helpful it would be for the founder and CEO to do the same thing since a lot had changed since he was the one doing this side of the business.

It took a bit of time to coordinate when he would be able to shadow me for the day, and since then my job responsibilities have changed, but we were finally able to make it happen earlier this week. My friend who shadowed me last time was there for the full day and the CEO/founder was there for the second half of the day. And again, it was a really productive time.

Since switching to doing more administrative tasks, I have noticed more things that could be done differently or easier. But a lot of changes needed to be made once the shadowing day happened because we all wanted to make sure that we were on the same page and that the changes we were making wouldn’t affect anyone’s workflow. But I think the bigger part of it was having the CEO/founder understand some of the requests that myself and my co-workers had about changes because I knew that the roadblocks we were encountering were things that he hadn’t experienced in the past.

I’m so grateful that everything went smoothly and that almost all the changes I was hoping to see happen did happen. I think it can be tough to explain what we wanted to see changed over a Zoom or phone call. But once someone is there in person and sees the exact workflow that we go through to accomplish some things, then they understand what is happening and changes can be made. And there were new changes suggested by the CEO/founder and my friend that I hadn’t even considered before that would make things easier for myself and my co-workers when we needed additional information. And once they suggested it, they were very simple changes. Most of the time, it was just moving information to a Google Sheet that the rest of us could access or putting things in a new order so we could see the most important information first and the information we don’t need to see would be out of the way.

Even though most of the shadowing was during just half of the day, I think we got a lot accomplished, and only a few things were left to be handled at another time. But we’ve also already discussed that there will need to be another shadowing day soon because there will be some new team members joining that will need to observe and contribute to this coming up plus some current team members that we realized should have been there to help with some of the other problem-solving.

I know I’ve said this before, but I’m really lucky at the day job I have now. I’ve been able to basically create my own job position within the company and I know that my input and ideas are valued and heard. And they also know that this is a day job and not necessarily a career, so when I have wins in my acting career those are celebrated and not seen as issues. I am working more hours than I ever did, but at least I’m still working from home and I have been able to focus on the work that I enjoy doing more and helping to make changes that benefit everyone within the company. I don’t think I could ask for a better situation for my job right now, and I am so happy that this shadowing day resulted in a lot of positive and productive changes.

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Sometimes Work Is Just Funny (or Having Some Crazy Customer Stories)

Posted on August 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Sometimes Work Is Just Funny (or Having Some Crazy Customer Stories)

I have worked in some form of customer service for most of my adult life. Sometimes it’s a side version of customer service like when I worked as a tour guide for a movie studio or I was a helper at a children’s art studio. But I have almost always worked with customers directly and have been the person to whom their compliments or complaints are directed at.

Sometimes there are some stories that are amazing and I will never forget them. Once I answered a call from a customer who was at the dinner theater show that past weekend and had a heart attack during the show. One of the actors knew CPR and started it immediately while someone else called 911. Because that actor started CPR so quickly, the customer was able to be revived and they were able to have a necessary operation and they were going to be ok. They called in because they wanted to thank the actor that saved their life. I will never forget that call and being able to share that message with the owner of that location.

Obviously, it’s better when you get compliments but sometimes the complaints are so crazy that they just make your day. I remember in a job years ago where a customer claimed that when they installed something over a decade before, it killed their cat and they were promised free service for life. They paid every month and said they believed they would be refunded when they canceled. They really were trying to convince me that they paid thousands of dollars over a decade even though they believed they were supposed to never pay and that they would be refunded. That is one of those stories that I will always share when people ask me about crazy customers.

At another job, a customer was trying to be refunded for something that was non-refundable. We’ve heard dozens of excuses, but what this customer did made me feel disgusted once we figured out what happened. He said that his child was shot and he needed to be refunded to have the money back. I don’t know if he got his money back or not, but a higher-up let us all know not to engage with this customer again as it was discovered they lied about the shooting and they might not even have a kid.

I don’t work directly with customers as much as I used to. I only have direct customer contact at my dinner theater job now since my social media job is more about data entry and systems and I don’t directly answer customers. So I don’t have as many crazy customer stories as I used to, but I still get them from time to time. And we had another one this week.

Without going into too many details, there was a group at the dinner theater that was not happy because they felt like our show was trying to stop their fun. But the way they were having fun was by using water guns on the actors. The actors asked them to stop or they would need to leave. To me, I couldn’t imagine going to a show and using a water gun on a performer to get them wet. I have no clue if anyone who wasn’t an actor got wet, but I would think it would be possible. And if I was at a show where I dressed up and someone got me wet, I’d be upset. So the entire situation doesn’t really make sense to me. But I think most of us had a laugh because we do have a policy of no weapons allowed at the show and now we feel like we need to add a section about no water guns as well.

Even with the crazy customer situations I’ve been in, I know I’m lucky compared to some people who work in customer service. The negative stories are so rare compared to the positive stories or the boring situations (like just needing to help a customer find something on a website). And most of the time, I have not worked in a location where I am face to face with customers or they can come to see us directly. I’ve had one situation at my old ticket sales job where someone came to the location to try to find us as they were unhappy with a policy, but that’s the only time I can remember something like that happening.

Sometimes, you just need crazy situations to add some variety to your work day, especially if the days blend together. And I think I will always appreciate the crazy stories that make me smile even if they might be a bit stressful at the moment helping the customer.

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