My Trip To Chicago, September 8-11

I had the opportunity to go to Chicago for the first time in my life to train for a company I am now working for called 'Books Are Fun' The company is owned by Reader's Digest, and has corporate offices in Skokie, IL

Day One I woke up early to drive down to Portland International Airport so that I could catch the plane that was supposed to leave around 10:47, but it was two hours late, so I spent a long time waiting in the airport doing nothing, except reading the newspaper and the magazine that I had bought. By the time I got to Chicago, and then caught my shuttle ride to the hotel, it was around 9 or 10 local time. The driver was cool who took me to the hotel in Skokie, and the room was nice. I didn't stay up too late, but I went to bed because it had been a long day.

Day Two, I was the first one ready of the group. I went down and had breakfast, went back to my room and watched a little tv, and then went to where we were supposed to meet. I thought for a moment that no one else from the group had shown up, but finally I met Patty who is from Kelowna. I didn't know it, but it seems to me that Canadians do have a distinct accent. It seems they sometimes over pronounciate things. Then I met the rest of the group.

Cheryl Peterson was the trainer. She is a sweet lady probably nearing 60 who has been doing books are fun for about 8 years. We basically covered the software for Bstar, and also some other basic things like ordering books and doing reports for the job.

In my group was Jonathan, also from Washington, David from Tuscon, Maria from Kansas City, Art from Houston, Catherine from Bradenton, FL, Michelle, from New Jersey, Lisa from Cincinatti, and Patty from BC of course.

On the first evening after class, I went and actually worked out in the gym, watched some TV and went to bed.

The 2nd day, a group of us went down to downtown Chicago and saw the Navy Pier. It is kind of like a mall, with a big ferris wheel outside and a bunch of ships for cruising on Lake Michigan. Chicago is one big city, with lots and lots of skyscrapers. It is much bigger than Seattle or Portland. I thought with the traffic we dealt with it was too big to deal with for my tastes.
I ate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp place, which is completely based on the movie Forest Gump. It was good food. I ate an appetizer. One of the other places we looked at was very expensive, with plates starting at 50 dollars a piece.

Then the next day we packed and took our items for the final day. The trainer, Cheryl had to leave early with Art, one of the other class members because of Hurricane Ike bearing down on Houston to the South. So we just basically sat around waiting for our shuttle. A group of us did go over to Old Orchard Mall, which was kind of cool. There was this interesting older guy who lead us around for a few minutes. It is an outdoor type of mall, and has some cool artwork and statues there.

It took us an hour and a half to get down to Chicago O'Hare Airport. What a nightmare that place was. The lines the check in luggage are too big, and the security is horrible. I barely made it to my plan to leave. Then the flight seemed too long. I sat next to a couple of computer nerds talking with each other, and I kind of listened and snoozed. Then I came home, got my luggage, and drove for and hour and 1 half home. I almost fell asleep at the wheel a couple of times, and probably should have pulled over to the side of the road for a rest on the way.

Well, I must say Chicago is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I have a serious case of I hate my Jobitus

Well today I had a monitoring of a call and I thought for sure that I was going to be fired, because sometimes when I am talking to complete idiots, my finger has a bad habit of hitting release. So I am sitting here listening to this call monitor, where I am thinking...

"Please FIRE ME, PLEASSEEE FIRE ME!!!"

Silently. I don't know why I want to be let go of this job other than I feel that the company screws people royally and finds ways to nickel and dime people and has dumb policies that make it hard to enjoy it.

I have done things like put through credits (that were obviously deserved) without trying to negotiate minutes or bargain with the person for them when I felt that they were deserving. I also tend to try and re-rate bills I think are unfair quite a bit too. But, alas, I have no toleration of idiots.

So anyways, when it gets to the part where I disconnect the call, the supervisor says "Oh they must have hung up on you."

Then she marks me up on all the score stuff. Talk about giving me an incentive to continue this bad behavior in the future. STUPID COMPANY.

I have been applying at other places, but still nothing really that looks like my THING. I guess that's just life.

People Are Really Stupid Sometimes

So I have been working doing customer service for Verizon Wireless for the last little while. I absolutely hate it. Not that the people I talk to are bad for the most part, though some of them are real space cadets, but some of the policies like getting a supervisors permission to contact a supervisor are just plan stupid.

I have been continuing to try and look for other jobs, but I am not really seeing that much other than maybe sales jobs, where I would have to get more training. I am looking at doing probably 3 or 4 different things. One is to become a Financial Planner. I will contact New York Life about that probably tomorrow. The other thing would be to go into accounting, and the third thing I thought of was to become a dietician or a nutritionist, which I was thinking of, though I don't know where I would end up working. Maybe I would just be a glorified cook?

I also like psychology and have thought I could become a counselor, though the people would be something else. I just don't have a high tolerance for stupid people.

For example today someone called up to setup a Bluetooth. When I informed her that she should have the two devices she wanted to link near each other she threatened to call the better business bureau and then hung up on me. I also had someone who said they didn't know what email was. C'mon, this is the year 2008! Get up with the times.

One Year Since Murder Of Amy

This may ramble

I think I have figured out why I have such a hard time forming attachments to people, including my family. I always freak out when even my Dad tries to give me a hug, so my skin really crawls when someone in church does it.

So I think subconsciously I have decided for my own mental sanity not to form close relationships, my wife being the exception, though sometimes I am aloof to her too.

Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of the murder of my coworker at the place I used to work at. I was especially close to her, and I knew I had a crush on her (yeah, I know, lock your heart)and think that I may have been in love with her. Not one day has gone by when I haven't thought about her since then.

Then this week a kid I drove to school got hit by a train and was killed. This brought back the memories of course of all the other people who died before their time, including my former coworker.

One who died trying to avoid a deer
One who shot his brains out in high school
another one who committed suicide
My cousin who died in a tragic gun accident
My cousins wife who was murdered (though I didn't know her as well as the others)

My wife keeps telling me that maybe they accomplished what they were supposed to while they were here and it is their time to go, and we should be thankful of the time we had with them.

To compound that, I am still trying to find a decent job, and we are still repairing from the flooding that happened up here in December.

My wife says that things will start going better when I put my full trust in God. He hasn't really given me much to put my trust in. I have been a bit more participative at church, mainly because that's where my friends tend to be and I am getting something social out of it despite my lack of a testimony.

I wish I knew for sure what happened when we die. It may be very wishful thinking on my part, but I would like to see my friends and loved ones again who had been so tragically taken away.

I swear the place I work at is ran by Monkey's

So I have been working at this place called ACS, which runs a Verizon Wireless account Customer Service floor.

I think it's more customer disservice if you ask me. They have these really stupid call sequencing models that you are required from Verizon to use. I got a 2 on the call, but it was monitored by a customer who gave me a 9 out of 10. Actually that means more to me than what the stupid Verizon setup was.

I was marked down for saying ummm. They will find anything to mark you down on so they don't have to pay you as much per call. Then because I didn't SOUND like I knew what I was talking about. So you can give them misinformation, but as long as you sound like you KNOW what you are saying, you are fine. If you give them CORRECT information, but don't SOUND like you know what you are saying you get marked down.

And I think that they purposely develop barriers to customer satisfaction in order to save money. For example, if you call in with a complaint, you can expect to be on hold waiting for a supervisor for about an hour or more. I think the reason they do this is so that hopefully the person will hang up and forget about asking for a credit because of the aggravation. Also you have to get Supervisor approval to order equipment for a customer. Because of the LACK of these supervisors, you end up waiting 10-15 minutes. Then if they find something wrong on the account they will deny the order AFTER I have already kept the person on the phone waiting forever.

I think Verizon is a really dishonest company, and I hope to eventually go elsewhere soon to work. The other day I talked to a person whose account had been frozen by Verizon with Bank of America because of a late bill. He couldn't buy groceries as a consequence of this and had been on the phone with different reps for about 10 hours off and on by the time I got him.

Also, I will submit credits, which will go up to an escalation que. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS BEEN DENIED. And they find the dumbest reasons to deny them.

Gawd I HATE THIS JOB!!!

The Dawn of A New Day

Well, actually losing that crummy job probably was a good thing. I have now become a fully licensed insurance agent and next week I will be attending a class in Bellingham all week to learn about the corporation. I am looking forward to getting started. It looks like a great company where I get to determine what my worth is, NOT some silly bureaucracy like my old job. YAHOO!

Oh what a tiring month it has been

Well at the beginning of December we were hit with floods up here in Centralia, WA. It came up into the house about 14 inches. We had to get the kids out on boat and I was able to get one car out, but not the other one. We spent a while at the Salvation Army, and then a few days in the shelter at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints shelter. I am still sleeping on a small single bed. It's actually not too bad for comfort. Then last Friday I was fired from the job that I had had for almost 8 years. I don't think that the supervisor that had taken over for my murdered friend liked me all that much and was trying to find any little thing to get rid of me.

So today I got guaranteed a new job as an insurance agent. All I need to do is get the life a disability licensing done and take the tests. It shouldn't be hard I don't think. It's pretty interesting stuff to me which is a plus. I get to work with people in person, and get driving in. I am NOT stuck at a desk in an office all day. Gosh! I hated that.