668 - Neighbor of the Beast

Well, work turned out to be stunningly good this week. The problems I'd feared all but vanished, but we got dumped with yet another new client to handle calls for. It seems like every time they just finish telling us what we need to know for one client, another gets dumped into my lap shortly after.

As a result, I probably have to handle about 35 different lines at work. Granted, a vast majority of those calls will only come in over a few of those, but it's still annoying. Lots to remember, and I get paid the exact same amount.

Worse, this new client is one who we can't be "ourselves" for. For a lot of clients, we can actually use our company name, which makes things easier to remember. A few of them, though, the clients want us to brand ourselves as if we were them. We thus have to remember the proper greeting and closing, or we'll get docked for it on our call grading. Aside from the naming thing, though, not much differs, and I'll probably only run into a smattering of those calls, like for most clients.

I did apply for their internal posting for a Quality Assurance opening, though... if I get that, I basically will just be grading the floor's calls all day, and I'd much rather do that as it's "less" responsibilities and less to remember. The same quality metrics apply to every call regardless of what line it's on, after all.

I also got to move $900 into my paypal, thanks to having two bonus checks and my regular check. This means I'm actually about halfway towards purchasing the new laptop I'll want for college and working my new job. Overkill for that? Absolutely. But I'm also a gamer, and as long as my hands work, I probably always will be. It's basically serving triple duty, in case I go somewhere extended for a few days' trip or something; I can always log in to Steam, download stuff onto it before the trip, and have something to play.

The bigger news of the week, though, and one I didn't find out about until I returned home from work on Thursday, was that my brother's father had died that morning. (We have the same mother; we're apart by about 13 years or so). He took it extremely hard, especially as he had seen his father that previous Saturday. I've notified my work; I've got to call in on Monday to confirm that they'll allow me two days of paid bereavement leave for Monday and Tuesday, when the actual funeral is.

He's held up pretty good Friday and Saturday, but he also had my current stepfather's 16 year old son over to help distract him a bit. How he held up this weekend isn't really a judge of how he's doing mentally; it's how he'll hold up at the wake and funeral.

So, in short, I might have a four-day "weekend." (Sunday and Wednesday are my normal days off.) I wish it were under better circumstances, admittedly. But this may be a good thing long-term for my brother, who's a bit immature for his age. I doubt that's going to last much longer thanks to this, especially given that there was a rather large argument with our mother just the previous Tuesday, and I had a good 2 1/2 hour talk with him on that, and about how one can always choose friends or lovers, but never family. I have a feeling that his father's death cemented that in his head.