Saturday, October 3, 2009

Employed, sort of.

I was recently contacted by the Callos Companies for a temporary position for one of their clients.  The position that I was asked to fill was for customer service over the phone, and when I presented them with concerns that this was not only what I didn't want to do but also that it was exactly the sort of work that I wholeheartedly despised I was told that it might open up various other opportunities.  Eventually they won me over with the hourly amount which is considerably less than I feel I should be making at this point in my life but considerably more than my last job or unemployment.  I do have bills to pay, after all.

While I can't discuss the identity of my employer or the specifics of the job, the people there seem to be really nice, though most have done little to assuage my fears that it is a stressful and unrewarding task.

Now they're cutting back hours.  After one week I dropped from 40 to 32, which financially puts me back to what I was making while I was unemployed, but with the conscientious satisfaction of not being a burden on the state and the added stress of having to perform a service that pains me with every fiber of my being.  In truth, I told management that they could give some of my hours to a fellow Callos temp, because they had originally sidelined him with only 16 wage hours for the week, and I believe him to be a far more competent customer service agent than I.

If anyone from Callos is reading this, I will not simply abandon the position because my hours have been cut for one week.  I am far more professional than that.  I will be calling my local Callos agency with this concern, and I will continue with my job search -- I will be damned if I let any employment agency pressure me into a permanent position that I don't want just to get me hooked on mediocre money (like the last temp agency tried to do to me for less than nine dollars an hour).  The reduced number of hours is not what I agreed to when I said that I would do this job.  I will continue to act as a representative of your company's interests  and to meet or exceed their expectations, until February when I have been told the temps will be let go.

The job has already impacted my recent explosion of entries in my other blogs, but this might only be a temporary slump while my sleep schedule, time, and anxiety levels even out.