I'm sitting at a table at the Balfours shop in the Citi Cross Arcade having just eaten a cornish pastie with tomato sauce (ketchup) on top, washed down by a 600ml bottle of Coke No Sugar.
My teeth are still chattering with anxiety, but not at the same levels they were this morning.
This morning I walked into work with the sole goal (or is that "soul goal"?) of quitting my call centre job.
Every day for a month I'd been having anxiety attacks, because at the beginning of every working day I'd be reminded, via Key Performance Indicators and other statistics that I wasn't good enough.
During their training academy I was told that I wasn't good enough for the sales floor, was nearly fired, didn't graduate (but was invited to the graduation anyway as a backhanded slap in the face) and offered another 2 weeks in their academy, where I was continually reminded that I wasn't good enough. I had to beg for that opportunity too.
I did manage to scrape through to graduate, and was treated to a game of Ten Pin Bowling (I got a strike and came 3rd), Laser Tag (I got the highest score), and pizza and hot chips.
I was on the sales floor for a total of one day on Monday and it was more than apparent that I was out of my depth. I was drowning in a sink or swim environment and my anxiety levels rose through the roof.
Yesterday was a publiic holiday (see yesterday's blog) and it gave a chance to reflect on things. It was also a day, despite having a cold / flu thing, where the anxiety was reduced to almost zero unless I started thinking about work.
"Don't think of it as a defeat, think of it as having achieved from where you started!".
Ever the salesperson...
It was a defeat because I just didn't fit in that environment. It was a defeat because other people had to start picking up the slack for my incompetence in placing orders.
It was a defeat in the realisation that I couldn't do the job to their standards and that nothing would ever be "good enough".
It was a defeat in the realisation that I was in an environment where I couldn't win and that I needed victories for my self esteem.
It was a defeat in that I felt like I had no other option but to quit a job for the first time ever and now I am riddled with guilt for it.
The process for quitting was a series of mini interviews. Each one progressively more difficult, having to explain why I could no longer work there, and each initiated with an email or text message declaring my wish to cease employment.
I took a couple of selfies out of boredom at the end of one of these interviews. In the first, my right eye had turned blue and in the second it had returned to normal.
I'd never experienced this before. I even made sure there were no reflections on my mobile phone that could have caused it.
I found it rather telling that new employees to the call centre would be laughing, before the pressures of the job had set in.
It reminded me that I had forgotten to laugh. Finding a reason to laugh every day is a victory.
Sometimes I have to remember to embrace the silliness.
I'll be OK. I have a lot of support and I know how to convert HIVE into Australian dollars if I need to.
Have a great day.
Thank you for reading.
Shaidon
PS. I am a real person and I refuse to use AI in my posts. All photos are taken by me where possible (sources are cited for other people's property).
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