AK47, Please!

I've got to make a little confession, folks. Betland has been under some stress lately. In fact, Betland has become something of a frayed nerve.

Well, not Betland as such. More like the Queen of Betland, Bet herself, she who takes the tickets and operates the rides and makes the corn dogs. (You didn't know I made the corn dogs as well? Hey, I'm a one-person operation here.)

I was going to tell you it all started last week. Then I realized I was wrong, that it actually started on Dec. 14th, the day the "new system" came into being at TheCompanyIWorkFor. Then I realized I was wrong again, that it probably all started back in late summer, when "I thought she was my friend up until the time she departed" Kath left our office.

Because, since then, I've been working hard. There have only been three people in our little four-person office at TheCompanyIWorkFor, and though it may not seem like such a big deal, having one person less makes more of a difference than you'd figure.

To be honest, it probably took me about 3 months to catch up on my huge backlog of stuff - all the notes and papers that began piling up on my desk after Kath left. There was a point during all that where I thought I'd never be caught up, and that maybe I could just sneak into the office one night and start a small fire, thus removing the backlog, but I'm very nice and ethical, and so I just worked myself into a tizzy and got it all done.

Then, as the last call was made, file was filed, and form was filled out, the "new system" came along. It's hard to explain all of this, but basically, this new system involves everything we once knew as rating and quoting being turned upside down on its ass. This new system has a name, but I'm not allowed to mention it. See, there's part of the problem. Somehow when TheCompanyYouWorkFor rolls out an entirely new way of doing things and the first thing they tell you is, "This is called [name of system]. The first thing for you to remember is to never actually use the phrase [name of system] to your clients. They won't understand it, and it will cause more trouble than it's all worth to you," well, you know that this new system is not going to be problem-free.

And in a word, or two, it's not. In fact, in a word, or two, it's problem-filled. When a new client comes into our office, we've been used to the fact (for about 2 years now), that we have to, even to give a quote to this person, know their entire life story. There's a template, a computer template, we use, and if we don't have the life story, the template won't let us get to where we need for the quote. But now, it goes like this. If anyone wants anything, we have to do the same thing. If someone who's been a client of ours for 20 years is thinking about buying a car and wants a quote on it, instead of hitting the "6" key and then putting some car information into the computer, we have to have the poor schmoe's life story. And that's not all.

Now, because this person is already a client of ours, we basically have all the information we need anyway. So then we have to get up our "new client" template, fill it in with everything we need, life stories of every single person in old client's household, all their cars, plus the new one, then go into a "new client" quote area to tell the person what their added car will cost. And this involves transferring back and forth from the "new client" screen to the client's file screen, back and forth, back and forth, gathering bits of information and typing it all into the template.

And that's a very long way of telling you what I wanted to tell you, which is that besides the mind-numbing tediosity, what used to take approximately 1.5 minutes now takes about 25 minutes.

And of course, given the two options, hanging on the phone for 25 minutes or getting a call back, 99% of our ever-unhappy clientele chooses the call back. So up goes another note, and phone number, and before you can get to this client's needs you have the 18 other clients ahead of him who want the same thing, plus the phone calls of people wanting other things, and the people who come in face-to-face to want this, that, and everything else under the sun. And so, things are piling up again.

I keep plugging along though, hoping against hope that within the year TheCompanyIWorkFor will realize that this Next Big Thing will be a complete and total failure, just like the 271 other Next Big Things were, and that before long we'll have a new Next Big Thing that will revolutionize our offices and make things perfect.

Last week, our boss went on vacation. That left two people in our four-person office. That would be me and my friend and workmate San. I love San dearly, she's a great friend and fun to work with, not to mention being my mother figure when my mom is down in Florida or when I need to discuss things with San I'd never dream of mentioning to my mom. However, San is a "front person." She's not licensed. She does the daily office tasks, and does them well, but that left me as the only person in our four-person office who quotes, rates, writes, writes checks, does bank deposits, does any kind of TheCompanyIWorkFor banking products, and figures out any myriad of problems that come along. Last week was not a good week.

When Monday of this week began, I realized two very upsetting things. The first was that I was coming into my office to face a brand-new week with six full pages of my composition book of stuff I didn't get solved from last week. And that's with all the busyness that a Monday brings, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday showing no signs of letting up.

And the second upsetting thing I realized was that I am just fucking-ass burnt out. My job is killing me. Not like a Dick Cheney-administered gunshot to the face, but slowly, methodically, and painfully. I will die, I know not when, but I will die, at my desk, pen in one hand, other on the computer keyboard, phone to my ear, which will probably be on musical hold to Humana Medicare Part D's hotline, where I spent most of my phone time today.

That was fun. I called them four times today. I never got through. Once I was on hold for 27 minutes before being summarily booted off their line for a high volume of calls, once I was on hold for 18 minutes before the same happened, once I was on hold for 32 minutes before the same happened, and once - well, once I was on hold a staggering 1 hour and 5 minutes before being told I was "upsetting the lunch schedule" and had to hang up, giving away my coveted place in the hold line. Humana's hold music is about 40 seconds of a piece of jazzy big band music played over and over, I'm sure to try to keep us all peppy and happy, but it sounded like theater intermission music to me, and I kept yelling, "Goobers, Raisinettes!" during the whole 2 hours-plus I was on hold. Yet, still was I not only not entertained, but that snippet of music is so indelibly etched into my brain that I'm still humming it as I write this. Without the shouts of "Goobers, Raisinettes!" because I'm sitting here by myself.

I woke up this morning. I guess that was a good thing. What wasn't good, however, was that it was 9:04 when I woke up. Now, I am a person who has three alarm clocks in various spots around my bedroom to ensure my rising as I'm supposed to. This morning I slept through all three, slept through them so long that they just stopped buzzing. I called work, and because I'm very nice and ethical but apparently not that nice and ethical, told them my electricity had gone off during the night so none of my alarms went off, then I high-tailed it into action and got to work about an hour late.

My nutrition lately has turned into "what nutrition?" and so subsequently I don't have enough energy to scratch my nose, and my hair seems to be falling out again.

And you know, it's a shame I can't seem to summon up the gumption to scratch my nose, because since yesterday I seem to be afflicted with a rather itchy rash over the whole of my body. I know this is nerves, but it doesn't make me any less lovely, sitting around with a face like a pepperoni pizza, scratching various parts of my body at any given time.

I was so happy to have a Community Band practice last night. I'd made a promise to Mr M I was going to practice my clarinet more, and I've been really dilligent about it, so dilligent, in fact, that I've bitten a rather deep hole in my bottom lip. But I thought, "Yes. Finally, I can get out of town for a few hours, relax, blow my brains out, musically speaking, and have some fun."

I don't think I've ever played so badly. And I forgot my music to Die Fledermaus. And I never got relaxed.

But tomorrow is Friday, and hopefully I'll be able to chill a little. And I have Monday off, I scheduled it because I have an outing planned this weekend that will hopefully come off and be that fun occasion I need.

And maybe I can forget about the stress for a few days. I'm sure it will wait for me till Tuesday.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* I went to band last night, so I didn't see any action. However, I will mention:
* In the summertime, I alluded to the black people's Olympics and the white people's Olympics. In the wintertime it's more the gay people's Olympics and the straight people's Olympics.
* How come no one's mentioned yet that the medals look like CDs?