Can You Hear Me Now?

I was speaking to an older gentleman on the phone. That’s all I do all day long, by the way. Talk on the phone, with people, about their money. Anyway-this particular gentleman was a little confused by some information he had gathered on his account. I was doing my best to figure out where this information had come from and I made the erroneous determination that he was currently looking at said information.

“Are you online?” I asked.

“No,” he responded in a confused voice, “I’m on the telephone.” Like I was the confused person. Like how was it unclear that he was currently talking to someone on the phone? How would he be talking to me if he was on the internet?

Way to make me feel like a moron in 2.8 seconds flat. Sigh.

I experience this a lot. Older people, who maybe shouldn’t be managing their own money anymore, calling about something very simple that is super confusing to them. “Why am I getting charged this fee?” That has always been charged and listed on the statements. “Why is my money moving around?” Because you enrolled in a managed account service years ago.

I feel bad for these people, they’re confused, and it’s not really their fault. They’re old, their memories are going, they live alone and no one has had the guts to tell them “You really shouldn’t do this anymore, let me take care of it for you.”

It used to be that you didn’t grow old alone. Generations of the same family lived in the same house. Younger people watched every day and noticed when you started forgetting to put on your pants and took care of you. Now days, people live alone. Often times there’s no one around to notice when they’re not doing so well all by their lonesome. So why, exactly, is it better to be “independent” into your old age? To live alone? To have no one to look after you.

So – is this new way, the “independence” that older people now have really better? Is it better that sons and daughters don’t see their parents every day as they age, and therefore don’t really have a clear picture of their health, mental or physical? Are nursing homes really the solution? And if sons and daughters aren’t paying attention, whose job is it to notice when things begin to go downhill? The person on the phone?

Sorry – this one turned out to be a little dark and depressing folks, I’ll try for some levity tomorrow, I promise. Today, I’m just in one of those moods.

Dolly Parton Would Be Proud

You thought this post was about boobies, didn’t you? It is national Love Boobies month after all, (Breast Cancer Awareness). But alas – I have tricked you again. This post is not about boobies.

It’s about work. Work in America, specifically. When, exactly, did a 9-5, 40 hour a week job turn into 9-6 with an unpaid lunch and mandatory overtime? And why, exactly, is this ok?

And please, let me specify at this time, that in this post I am specifically speaking about jobs at large corporations. The mom and pop stores, and small businesses that I love to support are not included in this tirade, they have their own weaknesses and strengths and maybe I’ll address those in a future post.

Now, back to the issue at hand. It used to be, back in the day (I don’t know when, exactly, my family has always been overachievers) that the standard work week was 40 hours. That meant you spent 40 hours at work, not 40 hours working. The most common hours were 9 am to 5 pm. Most people had an hour off for lunch. An hour they got paid for. They had two weeks of vacation to take with their families and paid sick days. If people weren’t exactly happy in these jobs, at least they could pay their bills, had paid benefits, didn’t feel they had to come to work sick to make ends meet, and didn’t have to spend a huge amount of time in an office they didn’t like. Then they reached the required age and years of service and they retired and got a gold watch and a pension. A ‘thank you’, if you will, for years of loyal service to the same company. Many people spent their whole lives, from right out of college, with the same company. And there was nothing wrong with that.

These days it seems like just the opposite is true. Most people my age have had a plethora of jobs over their short lives, myself included. My full job history includes 10 different companies and over 15 different positions at those companies. People are working longer and longer hours just to pay the bills. It’s not uncommon in this day and age to be a two income family, and not by choice. In many families both adults have to work just to make ends meet, especially if you have children. Many people have Vacation/Sick days, meaning if they take a day off work when they don’t feel well it takes hours away from their vacation time. This means many people come to work with a cold so as not to “give up” any time. (On a side note, isn’t it funny how the human brain works? I remember right when I started my last job they still had separate “vacation” and “sick” days. I remember people were much more likely to stay home when they were ill because those days didn’t roll over. That January the company changed to combine the vacation and sick days. The number of days given to any one employee didn’t change, they just all because usable for any reason. Way more people started coming to work sick, because they were reluctant to stay home and “waste” vacation days on being sick). And if you do stay home when you’re ill, then some “hardcore” employees look at you like “Suck it up, I do.” I really prefer not to make other people ill when at all possible. Share your scissors, not your germs.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am hugely grateful for my current job. It pays well, I have a lot of time off to take advantage of, and the health benefits are decent. But I feel I’ve paid my dues. I’ve had a job of one sort or another since I was 12. I worked five jobs all through college (RA and Work-study during the school year, busser, swim instructor and drama teacher in the summers). I have frequently worked more than one job at a time (for a year I was the resident stage manager at a local theatre as well as working full time as a theatre technician for a Union house here in Denver). Even in my current position I am frequently called upon to put in mandatory overtime or volunteer for ten hour days. I’m in my 30’s for goodness sake. Not old, per say, but not young anymore either. When is working class America going to stand up and say enough is enough? Everyone should be able to have a steady job, with benefits, vacation and decent pay. Why are we allowing corporations to work us longer and longer hours? Why is it ok? The original Union motto was 8 hours work, 8 hours play, 8 hours sleep. When did that change to 16 hours work at two different jobs with no benefits, 4 hours play and 4 hours sleep? Or no play and 8 hours sleep?

I’m ready to introduce the Latin tradition of the siesta into the American workplace-who’s with me?

A Woman in Her Natural Habitat

I am amazed in this day and age every time I’m reminded of how connected we still are to nature.

Most humans, these days, do everything they can to remove themselves from the wild, from nature. Our houses are climate controlled, food is processed, our methods of travel are fast and involve machinery instead of animals or our own feet.

And yet, I can always tell two things with 100% accuracy.

When a full moon is approaching.

And when the weather will change.

The full moon is most often brought to my attention by my job. I should clarify at this point that I work as a telephone service representative in the financial industry. I talk to people all day long about their money; my days are usually very good, or very bad. I used to think there was no way people in this day and age were still connected to the lunar cycle (besides, you know, the female stuff that’s unavoidable). I was wrong. I remember my first couple of months as a TSR, there were a few days where I thought to myself “The whole world has gone crazy.” People would yell at me for no reason (literally no reason-they’d dialed the wrong number and yelled because I didn’t know the number for where they had intended to call). I finally said something one day to a co-worker and with blinking they replied, “Of course people are crazy, it’s a full moon.”

What?!? Oh yes, it’s true, people get cranky and crazy around a full moon. It is something that I don’t even think about anymore, three crazy phone call in a row, and I know we’re on the verge of a full moon either that night or the next. I kid you not. Ask anyone who works in the customer service industry and they’ll agree. People are crazy on a full moon.

Now – the weather. It’s about how I sleep. Once again, this had to be pointed out to me by someone else. One day I was lightly complaining about my lack of sleep and my friend responded, “Oh yeah, I never sleep well when the barometer changes.”

Again – What?!? But it‘s true. Even ensconced in my climate controlled house, I feel the weather change in my bones. In Colorado this can turn into quite the week. 80’s Monday, 60’s Tuesday, 50’s and rainy and… Well, you get the picture.

It makes me wonder, what else affects us that we don’t pay attention to until its right under our noses. What wild thing drives you?

The Glamourous Life

I am a historic failure at journaling. I always wrote when life was bad and hardly ever when life was good. My journals have huge gaps in them when life was rolling merrily along with no drama or dilemmas. I’m talking years where I just forgot to write. You know, because life was normal. Came home, made dinner, read until midnight. Normal life. I go back and read my journals from middle and high school and think “My god, did I ever have a good time? Or is it all about the pain and suffering and drama? Where was the good in my life?!?”

Sometimes I think I’m just the kind of person who has to talk the bad stuff out. My hubs would probably agree with this. I have noticed recently that mostly when I talk things out with him I’m complaining about something. Or not even complaining, just expressing something I’m not happy with. Once I express it out loud, then I can deal with figuring out what to do about it. But until I say it out loud it just festers in my brain… The good stuff doesn’t require any contemplative problem solving, maybe that’s why it’s so sparse, I didn’t need to say it to figure out what to do – because it was good, nice, simple. There was no choice around it – just happiness, joy, contentment.

Anyway-despite this lack of journalistic excellence (Dad – that was for you), apparently I must look like the kind of person who journals with much more enthusiasm because I have received tons of journals as gifts. I have received journals for Christmas, birthdays and graduations. I have probably received 5-10 journals since high school. If you are the giver of any of these journals, rest assured, your gift was appreciated. Every time I received one I’d think “Journaling, I should totally do more of that, this will be awesome!”

Then, it would go the same old route. “I’ll use the new one when I’m done with this one, that’ll be soon now that I’m dedicated.” I’d think. And then the current volume would start to collect dust, get piled under stuff and I’d forget. Again.

Maybe this is because my friends think my life is more interesting than I do? Maybe my life IS more interesting than I think it is. Maybe I should write more and see.

Or maybe, I’ll just find that sometimes the mundane is nice. Sometimes it’s nice to acknowledge that nothing dramatic happened. That there was a normal day in my life with no catastrophes, or life changing dilemmas. Or even that something good happened. Maybe then, when I look back at my journals I won’t think “What I whiny b!tch I was!” But “What an amazing life I’ve had.”