Why is customer service so poor? March 17, 2009
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Gibberish, Life, Superfluous musings, Work.add a comment
Why is customer service so poor so often nowadays? I’d imagine that in a time when customers are become a rare breed, any potential buyer would be treated with more deference than ever. But no, it seems that increasingly I run into rude, short, presumptuous people who assume that you are about to damage or steal the goods.
Oh, well, perhaps we are all on edge lately. There is plenty of anger and heavy helpings of blame to go around with the economy tanking, scarce jobs, tight budgets, health care woes, homes in jeopardy, and a worldwide crisis hitting nearly simultaneously all around. Perhaps everyone’s attitude should flip to the positive – and perhaps we can start as customers and maybe it’ll then rub off to the grumpy customer service reps. Finger’s crossed.
On a related (or not) tangent, I noticed tonight – when chatting with a friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years – there were two things I didn’t consciously recognize before: 1) people grow apart, in just a few years, and really don’t have much in common, making any run-ins somewhat mildly uncomfortable, as you try to feel out each other for new character traits… shouldn’t be that way; that was probably more me than the other person’s approach; 2) I’ve been very stealthily avoiding to mention that I’ve been laid off – in any circumstances, really – from a career networking casual event, to job fairs, to catching-up encounters with friends. I am not sure how to analyze that exactly… I feel ashamed a bit, as though I wasn’t strong enough of a link in a company to be kept on… I know that’s not the case, but I can’t help the subconscious voice in my head. Maybe that’s the key to the full-force “recovery” we all need – a collective attitude change and a resurgence of self-confidence, power and determination.
The tangential frustrations of unemployment March 11, 2009
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Family, Gibberish, Life, Superfluous musings, Work.add a comment
When you are unemployed and feel you’ve taken all the right steps, but the right opportunities just aren’t aligning yet, you begin to get frustrated. You try to catch yourself and take a deep breath every time exasperation creeps in, but it’s tough. Especially when loved ones – who only mean to help – begin suggesting the leadership phrases you should include in your resume, and where you could look for jobs, etc. You want to take it out on them for not giving you enough credit that you’ve done all of that legwork already, all of the preparation, all of the networking, all of the job application submissions with customized cover letters each… But you can’t, because it’s not fair. They mean well. And they themsevles have a good job … in this economy. It’s not a derision on your accomplishments, it’s a good-intentioned helpful hand. Take a deep breath. Pause. Think about that. And it’s probably better that you say nothing if all you can muster to say is either a knee-jerk overreaction or a sarcastic comment that would offend the helpful, sympathetic friend or relative.
I guess the tougher challenge is to keep up your own good spirits. But the answer is definitely not taking out frustration on those around you who are genunitely supportive, even if their way of demonstrating support frustrates you.
The whirlwind of inactivity March 9, 2009
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Gibberish, Life, Psyche, Work.add a comment
Lay offs are part of life, and a very common one of late. It has affected me in strange ways. At first, friends of mine were impacted. It was surreal and I wanted to help them, but I knew the workforce would be struggling for a while. When it was my turn, I had so much in terms of foreshadowing and forewarning that I had been wringing my hands for long enough to actually feel relieved when I finally knew the certainty. Then, the first reaction was guilt at that feeling. The second reaction, very strangely, has been complacency. Anecdotal this could be a blessing in disguise – giving the type of time one always wish they had to catch up on reading for fun, to research graduate school programs, to volunteer, to examine in-depth where to take the career track next. But that’s just anecdotal. After only a short while, one begins to feel restless, anxious to move on to the next productive phase of life and all of a sudden, even though one’s out of a job, the rat race feeling descends back almost mysteriously.
After a beautifully relaxing weekend, Monday morning started off with snow falling in such big rags the the wind was actually picking it up and raising it up before it sank lower than my third-floor window.
There are things that one does find time for that are useful – joining a massive social networking site that has been on the back burner for years and reconnecting with long-lost friends; actually catching up on for-fun reading; organizing the home abode, shifting furniture around, and resurrecting board games; re-energizing the gym membership with regular classes; cooking more; spending more quality time with family and friends, etc.
There is just one thing that appears to be on the back burner now – job and grad school research. Strange, isn’t it! And definitely very guilt-inducing. But for some reason, the most effort I have to put in is for this seemingly natural activity. I worry, most days, that I let the news cycle, Twitter, the blogosphere, overwhelm me with “there is no hope and there will not be hope for economic recovery for a long time to come” and find that it is futile to look. How sad that the deterrent is actually getting to me. Or perhaps it is an excuse? How awful would that be.
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act January 29, 2009
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Civics, Life, Superfluous musings, Work.add a comment
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law just a few minutes ago. I watched it live on TV. It brought me to tears. I am so proud.
Historical moments January 26, 2009
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Civics, Elections 2008, Life, Work.add a comment
Inauguration Day 2009 is one of those dates taht I believe people will recall with the “where were you when …” prompt. I was at home, then listening to NPR on my commute (on foot and Max) and then at my desk at work, watching the event on NYTimes.com. That evening, my boyfriend and I went to the Oregon Democratic Party celebration (the dance party at a local club one, not the $100+ per plate dinner). The sight and sounds were incredible. Young and not-so-young people, dance music, live DJ. And then they stopped all and replayed the President’s inaugural speech on two large screens. Everyone listened, everyone applauded right at the natural pauses. It was elecrtifying. What a difference a crowd makes – feeling connected and experiencing other people’s reactions elicited one more wave of emotionally overwhelming thrill.
The one morsel I would like to take away from the experience is the call to action – to volunteer and to keep a strong work ethic in these trouble times. May we all remain as driven and active as the President has demonstrated to be the day after.
Nostalgia for a type of writing art April 24, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Food, Grad school, Media, Reminiscing, Superfluous musings, Work, Writing.add a comment
Took my lunch at a nearby mall, as I often do, a few days ago. I like to go there because there’s a Starbucks on the top floor that I like and if I’ve brought food from home I can either get a coffee and sit there to read my book or go to the food court, not buy anything and sit, read, and eat my packed lunch. Of course, if spring would come around, I would start eating my lunch in the park outside the office. 
I digress.
What’s also nice about going to that mall is that frequently there is something going on outside in the town square (a festival or protest with a whole bunch of horse-mounted policemen patrolling) or in the mall itself. So this particular afternoon there were several perishable food sculptures in the small fountain and plant area in the mall. I saw them from the second floor and was on my way out by then, but I wanted to take a picture of them and talk to the slew of junior-high-aged students standing around them… and I wanted to write a blog about it and partner it with some photos. The next day I went back, this time with a camera, and while I didn’t take pictures (I had lunch and then went shopping with a coupon that was expiring, leaving me next to no time to get back to the office after my long break), I did look at one of signs and it turns out they are world hunger awareness projects, like a competition for sculptors who arranged canned food, spaghetti and boxes of Crisco into: two giant robots boxing inside a rink, an oversized monopoly board with dice, etc., a humongous red apple with a curled worm coming out of it, and a crusie ship.
I guess my pangs of nostalgia for journalism surface when I see something cool like that, especially given the world food crisis that’s all over the news lately. This would be a story of how some local companies (well “local” being relative) like Whole Foods partnered to do this competition and raise awareness.
It’s strange because I don’t have a strong desire to go back to journalism. It is a dying art and the pay is pretty deadly too. But at the same time I am worried I don’t have a niche yet. The comfortable feeling of writing features is starting to stir up again and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
At least there are steps being taken toward the grad school path, which is helping me breathe easier – GRE class starts this weekend! Yay!
Paranoia & distress November 20, 2007
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Psyche, Work.add a comment
I had a very stressful day at work. I’ve been working on a project for more than a week now that is very detail-demanding and it has been changing literally every day, sometimes multiple times a day, with many unknowns and a very respectable list of deliverables. I’ve been working on this with several colleagues, but I was to keep track of most details and do a lot of the e-mailing to clients. So, as detail-oriented as I am, all of the uncertainty and changes, drove me crazy. I’ve been commiserating with one colleague who’s been helping me tremendously with logistics and I felt really bad by this afternoon for how much I’d been hogging her time and “complaining” about every twist and turn.
But before I left for my day off and then Thanksgiving break (the project has a due date of Tuesday after the holiday), I got a message from my boss to leave my work laptop at work… just because. I was planning on taking it home to follow e-mail tomorrow once in a while and provide any documents that may be needed in my absence. That didn’t matter. SO, now I am paranoid about the reason for the request to leave behind my laptop. I’m feeling doubly guilty for being so stressed out and stressing out my colleagues along the way and now I’m composing all sort of scenarios where the leaving-the-laptop-behind is some sort of punishment-in-the-works. I can’t bear failure and I feel like one right now.
Most likely, it is all just in my head. But this kind of thing happens to me often. How to avoid it? How can I prevent this self-doubt, reading too much into coincidental happenings, and really preventing some of the trouble in the first place by not complaining (even if politely and always diplomatically) when I am under pressure. I think this is a flaw that is much more visible to outsiders but the question (as I’ve recognized it for a long time) is how to control it, how to start mending it? Any ideas?
The promised Halloween picture November 13, 2007
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The Dorothy’s cousin Lucy picture (with Tito, not Toto) costume that won me the company Halloween costume contest.
Rainy days and bitter news October 28, 2007
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Grad school, Life, Reminiscing, Work.add a comment
How fitting? I am sitting in a Starbucks in the Pacific Northwest on a rainy afternoon, working… I am also taking a small break to blog this – probably to be finished later tonight…
On such a gray afternoon, I got an e-mail announcing a colleague has been laid off. How sad and unsettling. It is true our clients have been shrinking budgets lately but even if there’s an independent reason such as this, it is still very difficult to swallow. It shakes one’s confidence in their own value to the company and clients.
On a slightly uplifting note, which helped me get through the day without moping, I found a lonely neat napkin on the table I picked (out of all the ones, as the coffee shop was practically empty when I first went in) at Starbucks. On the back was a handwritten message in black pen with a squiggle as the underline and the ink bleeding slightly into the beige recycled paper. “what do you want from this life?” The question was a philosophical summary of what Nate replied earlier the same day in an e-mail to one of my blogs – or perhaps it was a “deep” e-mail I wrote to him while sitting with a cup of tea in front of my monitor first thing in the morning at work. *shrug* He basically wrote – as he has done before and I should heed his advice – that life is about finding a balance between planning and enjoying the moment and the key is to figure out what we want from life.
The signs have been overwhelming lately – I need (and desperately want) to get my grad school plans in active motion.
On the feeling of despair October 23, 2007
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Despair. It’s a strange sensation and I’m hating it. Work was going a little better lately, I was feeling like I could even kick procrastination out of my way and sustain the functionality that I was finding myself absorbed into. I knew it was too good to last. I knew that when we had our refresher course of efficiency training, things would just rain back into an overwhelming pool of monstrous amounts of work.
Incompetence is something I get a tinge of once in a while and I wondered about it again tonight as I worked until 10:30 p.m. on a project that was only supposed to take “not too much time this afternoon.” Instead, all of my pre-scheduled to-do items got obliterated because I stayed on a call for a half hour too long and too many ARs came from that I didn’t expect, then a staffing meeting that went way, way too long followed (and had the outcome of no substance), and finally I got wrapped up into the unforeseen project that should have been “easy and quick” and I don’t even know if I did it correctly – new client I’m unfamiliar with, plus the fact that I’m rusty on this particular document creation.
Ahhh! And the ranting and complaining here – I hate that. Sometimes I wonder why I can’t just handle a heavy workload and shine through it all. Perhaps I’m not cutout for this business of jobs and careers. 
