autobottrixter

I make a point of not doing too much occupational whining here, because I am well aware of all the stories of assorted people having their employers read their internet scribblings. But my problems at the moment are more about my job rather than my employer, and anyway I only care so much right now.

I've been sick the past week. Last Tuesday I came down with a rather nasty cold, missed most of one day and all of another, finally got over my fever in time to work on Thursday and immediately developed a sinus infection so bad that it killed my voice. Stayed home Friday, went to the doctor (well, an urgent care clinic) on Saturday and got antibiotics, spent Friday and the weekend hardly talking above a whisper, tried to work today and ended up coming home a couple hours early because talking was unpleasant and painful and it's all I do. Which is great and all, but as a call center they're really fussy about unplanned absences, and I was already toeing the line - had in fact probably already gone over it - with my bout of not-swine-flu last month on top of the normal day-here, day-there of the year before. Even taking off two hours early today I was made to feel like I was doing something completely unreasonable. What exactly am I supposed to do? When speaking is paid for in a currency of pain you pay close attention to your accounting. These were not avoidable sick days, but on top of them I have to deal with the stress of waiting for the shoe to drop. Because being sick isn't bad enough, I guess. I have the fortune to have a good performance record at work, which for the time being balances out the attendance issues, but it's still a frustration I don't need when I'm already ill.

What I need to do is use this as further impetus to get my ass moving to the next phase of my career plan: Get my A+ certification and get away from constantly being tied to the phones ASAP. Because many of those sick days - like my couple hours today - would not have been incurred if I had a job with any flexibility whatsoever. I already have to be able to be tied to the phone for hours at a time, which can be a problem sometimes due to things that have tempted me to bring the word "disability" down on them. And having to talk to end users constantly is something I already find tedious because it's not really in my personality. During times like this when my chronic sinus problems are acting up it becomes literally painful. The tech support thing was a lovely halfway point from bookstore lackey to PC tech. I need to let these frustrations push me on to the next step. And I have to be open to the idea that it may not be with my current employer, because I get the feeling I would probably be able to find something outside sooner than I would be able to move to a different department.

Other than that the personal side of things has been going well. Right before leaving for BotCon Andrew picked up a refurbished 42" HDTV from his work, and that new addition to the living room pushed us to finally get the place out of its post-move entropy and make it livable. Also we got a $15 loveseat at a yard sale. And then we actually had friends over. I realized that my beautiful but ancient DVD player didn't have widescreen output, so I picked up a super-cheap one at Big Lots to fill in until we can get around to getting a BluRay one and it turned out to be region free. I am going to buy such imported Transformers DVD sets! It'll give me a reason to keep it around even after we've upgraded.

Our Naxx group is still going well, having finally cleared the Construct Quarter for the first time this weekend. I think we have the fights down and I think we have the gear, we just need to streamline things so we'll have enough time to work up to a full clear. Andrew and I make a really good Razuvious tag-team, what with not having to use Vent to time our trade-offs. It makes him nervous 'cause he's really not used to raid-tank levels of responsibility, but we managed to one-shot him last night, so I don't think he needs to worry. My guild angst has settled down a little, possibly because others have shown an interest in taking on some of the responsibilities, possibly because Andrew and I have taken up a side-project of leveling Alliance alts on a server with some of my coworkers, and possibly because I was just too damn sick to angst last week.

I am so going to go eat a popsicle now.