musing about work

Today I am sans pants or purpose.

Believe it or not I actually feel guilty about it. What is wrong with me?

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Yesterday I had somebody completely Lose Her Shit with me on the phone. Actually I had a whole series of Shit Losing go on. This has been a week for screamers. I assure you; this is a huge improvement over all the cryers I was getting last week. The sick and the poor make me hide in the bathroom and weep like a baby at my assimilation by the dark side. Give me the death threats any day, they are much easier to deal with.

It is the first time anybody has demanded to complain to my manager. Which might sound like a threat, but it's totally not, all our calls are taped. She was just mad because she couldn't force the universe (ie me) to admit that she didn't have to pay her bill through sheer force of personality alone.

The thing is, I actually bend over backwards to help people who are genuinely going through financial hardships. I've talked to lots of people who need more time or whatever and I do my level best to sort something out with them. But if somebody's just going to phone me up and yell at me and call me names in response to every suggestion I make? I am sweet, polite and just bustin' all over with customer service friendliness as I send their rude ass to a collection agency.

I did get an adrenalin rush from the whole thing though, which I thought was really interesting. I wasn't upset about it at all, but I still got the automatic monkey-brain endocrine response from being yelled at. Is that just my childhood memories making me triggery, or does everybody get that?

musing about VD

I had this conversation with the_axel about Valentine's Day. Because I really don't do Valentine's Day at all. I don't care if other people do it and like it, I'm happy if something makes my friends happy. But it just doesn't interest me.

When I lived with the wife-beater, he was huge on the romantic gestures. Valentine's Day, Christmas, birthdays, Flag Day, the first full moon after the third Thursday of every second month - all occasions for flowers, useless gifts[1] and gawdaful off-key serenades in the middle of the damn street.[2]

It's not that I particularily associate Hallmark Day with the wife-beather. It's just that the irony of receiving all these romantic gestures from somebody who treated me like a punching bag the rest of the time wasn't totally lost on me.

So now I just... don't care.

[1]A useful gift would have been food.
[2]I coulda' died.