by AliD (Wed Mar 10, 2010)
My life has dealt me a strange card lately. In these horrible financial times I have been forced out of my little comfort zone to take on odd jobs to help pay for groceries. Actually it would be helpful if I could pay the mortgage but the ‘odd jobs' haven't got me there yet.
So, tah dah, I have become an Office Worker.
I still get a little flurry of excitement as I try out my new label.
But then, it's only been a month.
I go to work at a set time, and put my homemade lunch in the communal fridge (while secretly looking at what others are having for their lunch). I don't have my own name tag on my lunch which worries me sometimes - maybe one day I will return at the designated time, only to find mine has disappeared. I realized the other day that I'd left an old Vegemite jar full of milk for my tea sitting in there for about 3 weeks now. It's grown to quite a lovely shade of yellow. I know I should remove it but I'm curious about how long food can actually stay in the communal fridge before someone else tosses it out.
Just my little experiment.
I work inside an office which is inside another office, doing Customer Service for a small online gift company. While I do have windows, they all look out on to the hallway or to another office door. I sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day and also answer the phones. My only source of light comes from the computer screen and two fluorescent lights, one of which has a slight twitch in it.
I sit directly next to my ‘boss,' (a woman at least 5 years younger than me) which causes great amounts of nervous smelly sweat to leak from every pore whenever I know I just messed up royally.
Which is often.
She's a nice lady actually. She explained to me on my first day why she wears one white glove when she works: Not as homage to Michael Jackson but because it helps her to stop pulling her eyelashes and eyebrows out...ok.
The other co-worker who handles the packing and shipping of items is about 15 years younger than me and is severely bi-polar. She also talks to the packing boxes...a lot. In fact it's not so much that she talks, she swears her bloody head off. I'd never heard a simple cardboard box called a f#*king @**hole before.
Fun.
As for me, well, I take customer orders, inputting their information and generally being as friendly and as charming as possible, which is important, given the amount of time I get the darn credit card info wrong.
Did I mention that I'm number dyslexic? You tell me ‘5,' I write ‘8.' Didn't mention it to my boss either. Hence the sweat.
In my first week, there I was stuck on a phone call with a customer from Germany who was a few strudels short of the picnic basket. I felt sorry for her, so I kept chatting as she told me about her daughter and her cat. I was determined to be a good office worker so I persevered with trying to place the order, while my boss was making throat-slicing motions for me to end the call. It paid off though, when after half an hour on the line, I finally took the order.
Her credit card ended up being declined.
This is another big part of my job - calling customers whose credit cards have been declined. Oh the pain. Having had my fair share of cards being declined lately, I go about the task with the softest of kid gloves. When a customer tells me that they ‘had enough funds in there yesterday' I can only reply ‘I know, I know I believe you - I did too.'
I can't help thinking maybe that person is also an Office Worker, attempting to make ends meet, sweating nervously in some office within an office, under a twitching light and discovering that their credit cards are only good for filling an empty slot in their purse.
