Dream Theater

Perhaps aided by the St. John's Wort and the Valerian, I slept deeply and well last night, and I had one of those rare dreams where I can point to most of the elements and identify them as being related to things that had been on my mind lately. For instance, part of it involved a comic book or TV show or something involving a "living ship" (obviously from Farscape)...oddly enough, in the dream the series was being written by my friend frobozz.

But the part of the dream that's stayed with me most involved a crowded and noisy department store, where I met some friend of mine—one of those acquaintances who knows me but whose face is only vaguely familiar to me—who worked at MCI, too (though it wasn't the old acquaintance I met in real life who works there). Though she was complaining about her shift, as soon as I told her that I was working at MCI too, her whole mood changed and she told me that I'd do great there (though I couldn't hear her too well over all the noise of the department store).

Maybe it's my subconscious trying to send me a message. *shrug* If so, it's darned nice of it. I hope I can live up to its expectations.

Blargh

I feel like an idiot. I've just taken half a dozen calls from annoyed to irate customers, none of which (I feel) I have handled particularly well. My average handling time is gonna be through the roof...and I feel like an idiot. Oh, and my voice is going. :P

Maybe it won't be quite this bad by next week.

Home again...I like to be here when I can...

Irony is when you can't get through to your parents on the phone because they're on that darned computer all the time. I mean, geez, I've been trying since 9:00, and it's been constantly busy. You'd think they didn't realize I might want to call them after I got off my first day of work or something.

Well, as a whole the day wasn't as bad as that earlier journal entry of mine might seem to suggest. There was plenty of frazzling, and plenty of panicked calling out to my trainer for help. But on the whole, I had a decent time with it, despite the two or three really irate callers whom I couldn't really help. The high point of the evening was one lady in Texas whom I was able to save a total of about $14 a month while upgrading her main line from local plus 14-cents-a-minute long distance to the unlimited long distance Neighborhood Complete package. She needed it to call her daughter in Florida, who was expecting triplets. All the while I was setting up her account, she gave me the auditory equivalent of baby pictures, telling me about the sonogram on which someone had written "Three heads are better than one!" I think that got me through the rest of the day.

You know, for all that I complain about it, and for all that I'm kind of annoyed at sacrificing virtually all my free time on four days of the week, there's a certain satisfaction to knowing that you're doing something worthwhile that people want you to do, in exchange for getting paid. My co-workers are nice people, and the Abay trainer is nice and helpful. I'm helping people sort out their long distance problems, and hopefully giving them some good deals. Assuming I don't screw up, this really could work out for me.