Since graduating college, I’ve had a lot of jobs in many different fields. Overall, most of my jobs are in the customer service sector (even as a tour guide at a film studio), but the jobs themselves have varied. But most recently, I have mainly had direct customer service or data entry jobs.
Some of these jobs have been jobs where there is a lot of downtime because my responsibilities are mainly when a customer is reaching out. My box office job is like that. We can be extremely busy at times, but there are other times when we only have a handful of customers and several hours with nothing to do. That’s why my data entry job has been perfect for me. I have the ability to work that job between customers. And the data entry job is one where I have no downtime while I’m working, but it can also be done on my own schedule so I can do the work whenever I can fit it in.
When I started my new customer service job, I wasn’t sure if it would be a job where I was always busy or one where I had a lot of downtime. And it has changed from the time I started almost half a year ago until now. When I started, there was a lot more downtime because my focus was just on customer support so I was really only busy when we had customers reaching out to us. And that worked for me because I was new to the job and needed the extra time to keep learning the different processes and not feeling rushed or stressed when trying to help a customer. But as I’ve been at that job, things have been getting busier and busier.
Now, besides my regular work, I’ve been taking on some extra projects. I’ve been working on helping to organize certain work systems. I’ve been working on helping to create a training manual for other employees who aren’t as familiar with how the customer service team works as well as future customer service employees. I’ve built some systems to help us track clients and other things we need to track. I’m really being kept busy during the hours that I’m scheduled.
All of these things are being done during my work time, so I’m not doing anything outside of my work hours. But I’m now really busy for the hours I’m scheduled to work. And I know this is pretty normal for most people. Having a job like my box office job with a lot of downtime is the weird situation. And I know I’m lucky that I have had a job like that where I could do other work during work. But it’s also nice to have a job where I am busy during my work hours. I like feeling like I’ve accomplished a lot each day. I can see progress being made in the bigger projects and not just that I’m answering the same thing all day long (like at my box office job where I am always saying “the sold out show is sold out of tickets”). And I do still work some hours each week with my box office job where I do have that downtime. So there is a balance in my life.
As much as I complain sometimes about being overscheduled or too busy, it is nice to have a job that makes me busy. It helps to have a clear delineation between work time and my time. When I was mainly working my box office job, when I finished work I could stay on my computer doing a lot of the same things I was doing between customers. But with my customer service job, when I’m done with work I might still be on my computer to do other work, but there is a much clearer line between my work time and non-work time. And that’s something I have needed for a long time. Especially lately since I don’t have much planned in my life after work time each day.
Just like I always do when I write about being happy to be busy, I’m sure I’ll hit a time of burnout and being overwhelmed. And that is a bit more in my control because I can take more time on some of the extra work projects I’ve taken on so I don’t feel rushed or overwhelmed. And I also have gotten better about being an advocate for myself and speaking up when things are getting to be a bit much.
But at least for now, I’m so grateful to feel productive like I do now. This is a feeling that I haven’t had in a while and it’s just another thing that makes things feel a bit more normal and less like I’m isolated and not doing much with my life.
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