Warning: Blog Cliche Detected

I realized today that it has been nearly a year since I've written anything in my blog. Therefore, I apologize for not keeping up very faithfully (and that gets the cliche out of the way). Brittany (new window) has become the more prolific blogger, and while I am very proud of her for it, seeing her success and satisfaction at her writings has made me realize that I need to do better at it as well. I'm not jealous of her abilities or extensive posts, but rather motivated and wanting to get my own e-pen back to e-paper, so to speak. The silence ends now.

Things have changed quite a bit since I last wrote at the end of summer 2009. Brittany and I are no longer aiming to return to Georgia in May 2010, obviously. Brittany landed a very good position with he employer and is now managing our apartment complex. There is a possibility that she will be transferred to another complex, as the property where we currently live is bank-owned and up for sale. Should the sale go through, she will be moved within the management company to another property. She enjoys the job, but she feels a lot of pressure associated with it and is just now learning to cope with this sort of stress. Brittany, however, is a very determined individual - for better or worse, it is a family trait - and I know that she will overcome the stress and will succeed in her new role.

On my end, I became fed up with my day job at a Phoenix call center (mostly medical) back in January and decided to quit. Brittany stood by me in the decision to do so because the stress and negativity from that job was beginning to leak over into my home life - I would come home angry, frustrated and just in a foul mood, and it came to the point that I wanted no more to do with it, despite what I was being paid. There were a number of factors that prompted my burnout, but it all boiled down to getting tired of corporate BS and lack of human decency.

The company's management style was one of "motivation through fear and paranoia" and communication between the Operations Managers and their subordinates is generally limited to negative reinforcement when errors were committed or complaints were made. Positive reinforcement was rare-to-non-existent, and casual conversation could only be had if the Ops Manager was the center of the topic at hand. Despite purporting to have a "family culture," very few employees actually were able to feel that way because there was a very clear line drawn between management and employee: hourly employees were passively made to feel inferior.

Beyond that, the company's business practices were often "shady" at best. For example, on the surface, the company assures its clients that annual reviews are done on their accounts so that contract adjustments can be made if usage needs change. This was the responsibility of one of the Ops Managers, who coincidentally was the owner's adopted daughter, but was never done so far as I know - at least not in the case of my client list. This manager would tell renewing clients that after a "thorough review of their usage history," it was determined that their current package fit their needs exactly, and that their new contract would reflect the same usage. In reality the review was blatantly never done, because if it were, the disparity between contracted amount and actual usage would have been easy to spot. This was apparently done in the hopes that the clients wouldn't be keeping close enough tabs on their after-hours calls to notice the fact that they were paying for time that they didn't need.

One of my smaller-volume clients, however, did keep track, did notice the difference, and surreptitiously installed an automated system to take over when their contract expired. We didn't notice the system until a check of the lines was conducted and the new system was discovered. The business manager, in response to my inquiry on the matter, angrily informed me that we had basically "forced [their] hand on the matter" by presenting a contract offer that he felt was clearly meant to make the most possible money at the expense of the "stupid doctors' office." When I reported this to the Ops Manager in question, the response was "Oh. Wow. I guess I didn't check them very thoroughly. Please call them and apologize for me, because it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to talk to them at this point."

On another occasion, a high-volume office discovered that they had been billed for twelve months for a service that they had never used. As one would expect, they requested to be credited for the erroneous charge. When this was reported and the credit was requested, this same Ops Manager told the Customer Service Rep to offer them a "refund of three months or a free year of [the service] moving forward." The client was understandably furious at the offer and replied that anything short of a full refund of the service fees would adversely affect the two companies' future relationship. At this point, the Ops Manager took over and through a wall of e-mailed corporate double-speak said that only three months were initially offered because that was all she had approval to do at the time. I was dumbstruck that a company would try such a tactic and decided that it was time to go.

I initially signed on with a funeral motorcade company as a motorcycle escort, but the company folded after just three months of operation. I then had the fortunate opportunity to drive home the owner of an aftermarket truck dealership in April. As we talked on the way home, he said that his company was looking for a porter/mechanic apprentice to do grunt work around their shop. He said that they would provide training as well to increase my skills, and I said that I would gladly take on the job. I start that gig next week, and am very glad to finally be headed into the mechanical realm, even if it is working with trucks rather than motorcycles. It's experience either way, and I'll gladly take it.