3:27 a.m. - 2008-12-11
Recurring theme: Procrastination
To say that I procrastinate is an understatement. What I do is far more than procrastination. But sometimes it has come in handy.
Most recently it came in handy in regards to moving. I was going to move up to Ashtabula to live with the roommate I had for all of two months in the cemetery house a few years ago and throughout the Summer of 2007 at Cedar Point. I'd been putting off getting a moving truck and putting it off and putting it off...Then a coworker offered to let me live at her place. That's when I realized that I didn't want to move up to Ashtabula.
I put down a deposit to get the moving truck for bright and early one morning. My alarm informed me that it was time to awaken, but I decided that I didn't have to go get the truck quite yet. A short while later I received a call from that coworker saying that her landlord was selling the house. So it was good that I hadn't gone to pick the truck up already.
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I did manage to move closer to work. I've gone through quite a few jobs since last I posted. Let's see:
I worked at a call center that provided customer service for Christian and commercial clients. Some of these "Christian" clients were: Benny Hinn; Inspiration Ministries with their Lil Jon of preachers, Mike Murdock (Give us a thousand dollars, yeah!); Rod Parsley; and Ed Young just to name a few. No, we didn't have Ernest Angely as a client. His people handle his calls. Our commercial clients were for rip offs like "Amish made fireplaces" or "free money". I worked there for seven months.
Overlapping with that job at the end, I started working for a different call center. This time it was internet troubleshooting for Cox Communications. If you're reading this post, you probably don't have Cox Communications.
In my decade of cable internet use, I've had problems connecting to the internet about five times. Mind you I've had cable internet service in Alaska back when it first became available up there. A couple of those problems were for outages in my area and one of those times was that my plan was recently changed from one service rate to another and the technician just didn't click on quite the right setting so when that caught up with the cable modem, it stopped working until someone changed that setting. I'm not counting any of the times that the entire post would lose power and my computer would be the only thing in the barracks still working. The backup battery I bought at Sam's Club for $250 has more than paid for itself.
Anyways, since our customers were mainly from the southern California market, we'd get all of these calls from people who had no clue what a modem or router were. "So there's a $1,000 - $3,000 piece of electrical equipment sitting in your house, you probably use it at least three hours a day, but you don't know how it works or what the lights on the modem usually look like?" The "best" callers were those who needed their internet now because this is for their business. We have separate business and residential accounts, but they don't want to pony up for the little bit extra to make it a tax write off as a business expense and guarantee a better level of tech support.
I only made it through a couple months at that job. The worst part of customer service is the customer. I wasn't bad at my job. Heck, I came in fifth place in our little internet department olympics which was based solely off of our call performance. I had quite a few 95s and above. I had three positive escalations, two in one day. Those are formal compliments. When the customer asks to speak with your supervisor to actually tell them what a good job you did. Yeah, people actually do that.
I tried plainclothes security for a chain of grocery stores through a private company. I almost made it to two months but still hadn't caught anyone. I almost did, but our policy for how we have to apprehend shoplifters is so specific. We're required to keep our eyes on them or if they stashed the item in their purse or backpack, we have to keep an eye on that. We also had to wait until they left the store since they can change their mind and either ditch the item or opt to pay for it. Well some chick took some items, stashed them in her purse, but made a big scene that "some guy be peekin' at her". Well, lady, don't be stealin' and we don't be peekin'. The last thing a retailer wants is a scene. Handled poorly that scene can become a lawsuit, so she, and people like her, manage to just walk out of stores with merchandise all the time. If you're going to steal, steal something valuable and be a bit sneakier about it.
Overlapping with that job is the one I have now. I'm a night stocker at a major retailer. After dealing with customers face to face all summer at Cedar Point and then dealing with them via phone at two jobs, it's about time that I only have to deal with them occassionally now. "Where do you keep the...?" or "Do you have any...?" are all I have to deal with now and that's once every couple nights or so.
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I've just moved forward a step in a little project of mine that I started in 2003.
At the time I had picked up the newly released 2003 Christmas Sophie* miniature from the on post comics shop on post. I then bought the 2001 and 2002 Christmas Sophies and a 72mm version. I decided I was going to use the holiday Sophies for my xmas tree.
[*For those of you who don't know who Sophie is, she's the succubus mascot for Reaper miniatures. Take a peek: http://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/sophie At the time of this posting she's the background image on this page as well.]
Well, like I said, I've just now gotten started on that project. I'd bought the 2007 Christmas Sophie last week because it said 2008 on the package. I figured I'd buy this year's Sophie and work backwards to pick up the rest. Well, instead I still need this year's Sophie. I also came to find that they had accidentally packaged her with two left wings. That's worse than having two left feet. I also got the Halloween cat costume figure.
I have a small tree but will be buying a larger black one on clearance after xmas. I've assembled each of the figures and looped fishing line on them with an ornament hook at the end of each.
So this year they'll at least be on my tree, they'll just still be shiny pewter instead of painted. Like I said though, it's a step in the right direction. I'm going to be stringing a red and a gold garland of beads around the tree. If I used any larger ornaments with these miniatures, they'd be dwarfed by it.
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My goal with this new apartment is to save money up to move to Pittsburgh next fall with my cousin so that we can split the cost of rent while he attends diesel tech school. In the meantime I'm trying to reduce my clutter and organize those things I'm keeping into small, sturdy, easily-labelled boxes for ease of moving. This last move was just across town, but it was a hassle because of how much stuff I have. I should be able to eliminate at least a third of it all and condense the rest down. It'll be like defragging my clutter.
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