Whiney

No, not Sweetie. Me.

My second shift mail processing job is.... fine. Easy enough. Repetitive. Fast paced. Pressure to reach certain (insanely high) nightly quotas. 

The people there seem nice enough. And I do mean "seem", as there's no occasion during working time to have any sort of conversation or idle chatter with them at all. Work, work, work. Process, process, process. Quota, quota, quota. No radio playing in the background. Just the steady hum of the computers and envelop-cutting machines. That's it.

As I said in my post last week, I don't mind consistent, reliable job duties. I like knowing what my time will be spent doing. I'm not big on changes or surprises.

But this worker-bee, always "on" function as a mail processor? Yeah - I'm not so much lovin' it. At all.

Especially considering that I'm not making any more money by performing these tasks than what I'm receiving in my unemployment checks anyway.

Especially because I know that, as the work load increases the closer we get to the holidays, the more likely they'll change our shift to end at 11 pm instead of 9 pm.

Especially because I barely have time to get anything done on my own during the short time Sweetie's at school each morning. Then I barely have time to play with/tend to her while attempting to get things done for myself after she's home from school. Then I either have to drive her 20 minutes to my mom's house in time to drive 25 minutes back to work OR my mom has to drive out to our house to get Sweetie in time for me to head off to a 3 start time. Then I get home shortly after 9 pm and see that there's a sink full of dishes to do, or 2 loads of laundry to take care of, or writing to be done, or a carpet desperately in need of a vacuum sweep the next time I have 5 minutes to spare during daylight hours (ha!). Then off to bed to get as much rest as possible before getting up the next day to do it all over again.

I'd so much more like to have a standard day job - with Sweetie-friendly hours, of course (for school morning drop off, that is) - and be able to come home to my family, have dinner, and enjoy a typical family evening together, then to have my day awkwardly cut up into crazy bits of unsatisfying time restraints. 

Ya know?

I went to the class/orientation/interview at the MDA this morning. Other than getting completely lost and being 20 MINUTES LATER - AT LEAST! - I think it went swimmingly. There were 6 of us there. One guy's voice was just made for doing over-the-phone sales/recruiting. But they're looking to fill 2 positions. I thought I did well enough to hopefully get that second position.

I also thought I'd hear by the end of today's workday that I did or did not earn the job.

I didn't hear either way.

I suppose I'll call my employment agency rep in the morning to see if he's heard anything. And then I'll go from there.

I don't want to continue with the mail processing job. Not because it's too difficult to do. It's not even that boring, in that my mind constantly is "on task" without a second's break to think about what's going on in the outside world. Not even because I hate it. I don't necessarily hate it. But I certainly don't love it. At all. It's pure busy work. It's pure grunt work. And I'd much rather be with my family during those quiet evening hours, using any extra time I have in the pursuit of work that "matters". To me. To others. To an honorable and worthy cause.

And, yes, I may be a quiet person who is far from socially graceful. But I do see now how much I prefer a work atmosphere where I can interact with my coworkers - joking around with them, gaining knowledge and reassurance from them, as well as helpful professional tips from them -then a production-oriented work environment where I'm surrounded by people who, like me, have only one thing to do - get those numbers up, process the paperwork, and be a human computer.

I am not a human computer. I don't want to be a quitter. But I don't want to settle either. I want to be satisfied with the work I'm doing - on a temp basis or permanently - at all times. Right now, I am not satisfied. And I wonder when I ever will be - and where and how I can find it.