I should be asleep right now. It's after midnight, and instead of sleeping (I'm working at 7:30 a.m.), I've been staring at the ceiling and lost in the thoughts that are circling around in my head. Well, that's not entirely true. I've been on the computer for the last 45 minutes, looking at job postings that I can apply for. Despite my...well, lackluster efforts in school, I can't do this anymore. I can't sit at this dead end job for the rest of my life.
I was searching through some job sites, and I almost cried when I realized that, at this point, I'm really only qualified for sales/call centre positions, and those are the ones I'm trying to avoid. I get frustrated a lot at my own inability to be able to focus enough in school to do well. I know a lot is at stake. I know that my future career and my life with Tony will depend on us having stable jobs and savings. And yet, I always feel like a failure in school, like I'll never be as good as anyone else, I'll always be the one against the wall while everyone else moves forward.
And that scares me. I don't want to be a loser forever. Last weekend at my aforementioned dead end job, Saturday was extremely busy and things that should have been done by the five of us working over the course of the day (and night) ended up getting missed. The largest incident that came out of this flub was that a client who receives an hour of service on the weekend for a support worker to give him a bath never got booked. The client in turn took his anger out on the girls who were working on Sunday, and they in turn got yelled at by our Scarborough supervisor, who then filed a complaint with our Toronto supervisor. When a coworker and I got to work on Monday afternoon, our supervisor was waiting for us with one hell of a lecture (not even joking, we were in her office for a good 15 minutes while she yammered on). I'm not saying we didn't deserve to get into trouble. We damn well deserved it. Some of the things we missed really shouldn't have been. There was no excuse for that.
The other women who worked on Saturday were also lectured, and our supervisor told us that if Scarborough writes our office up, we in turn (individually) would also be written up. My thoughts during the whole lecture are probably an indication that I need to leave this job. While my supervisor was talking, my way of making amends was to simply look contrite even though I don't care if I'm written up. If they actually follow through and write us up, it would one of the first things they've ever followed up on.
This is an agency that really lacks any management style. If one of workers is doing something wrong, our supervisors hide under rocks. No, they can't simply speak to the worker and explain what the issue is. No, they think the best solution is to stop giving the worker hours with no explanation so the worker will quit. This is an agency that expects us to accept all new referrals but won't let any worker go over 44 hours or the worker gets yelled at. Honestly, I don't know how they even function like this. Staff morale is low, everyone is miserable. And yet we all trudge along, putting half the effort in and counting down the hours until we can leave. It's sad.
I've been struck by a burst of energy this evening though. I've been subscribing to a website called mediajobs.ca for a few months now. It sends an email out almost everyday with new media related job postings for across the country. Most of the time, I skim it briefly and then delete the email, because there are rarely any job postings that apply to students/those just out of school. But tonight, the email contained two potential winners. Both are internships, and neither of them are paid, but they would be good experience and potentially get my foot in the door for a job in journalism.
I'm also applying for a short internship with the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. It's again unpaid, but it's a photography internship that would give me some great experience. There is on call centre job I'll be applying for as well as a a back up, and it offers some media experience as well.
I'll end this here because it's late and this post is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. Oh, confidence, don't desert me now. I need to find my way out of this hole.
Mich
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