Work Stuff

It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World

Karen

I’ve only been at my job for a little over one year and I might end up being one of the veterans in my area very soon.

Drama. Lots of drama yesterday. I went in early for a meeting and I was probably the most vocal I’ve been, and will be, for quite some time. I don’t know what came over me but all of my frustrations sort of just … spilled out. I’ve mentioned, a time or two (or 50) that my job is stressful. And my stress grows and festers to the point that I’m often times finding myself exploding over the most stupid stuff.

A new girl started the other day. And she actually used to do the job that I’m doing now. So she mentions this as we’re all sitting around waiting for our office lead to show up and, well, lead the meeting. And this girl mentions she used to do my job.

“I’m sorry,” I say jokingly and the room laughs. “This is the most complex and stressful job I’ve ever had”. I laughed, but I’m afraid it was more of a maniacal sort of laugh.

And no one disputed me on that fact. They all know, know, that yes indeed, my position is the most stressful job among all of the front office positions. And I’ve been told, numerously, that no one would want my job.

It’s not exactly comforting to hear that.

As is usually the case whenever you have a company meeting, we went over things we could “improve” on and clarified a few things that might have been “confusing” to some of us.

And then we went back to our desks and had a “mini” meeting for just the schedulers.

Only, one of us wasn’t there. Apparently, one of the other schedulers was sent home and no one really knows why. But rumor was it was due to “disciplinary” reasons. Now this girl has been working there for years and years and as with any job, duties have evolved, technology is different and things have changed. Only, this gal doesn’t want to change along with it, so she sticks to her habits. Which are inefficient and sloppy. So, she periodically gets into trouble for only doing a half-ass job or doesn’t do it at all.

And she gets disciplined, gets sent home, comes back with a “new” attitude and does a good job until the cycle begins again. So honestly, none of us were really surprised that she was sent home – *yawn* – wash and repeat.

An incident happened between two of the other schedulers and they sort of duked it out in front of our bosses. Which, actually, was probably a good thing because honestly, I would rather get stuff off my chest than allow it to weigh me down. So it was sort of nice to clear the air, but, one of the girls was very upset and quite honestly, I don’t think she’ll last much longer either as I’ve caught her filling out applications.

Hey. I’m not judging. You have to do what you have to do and if you’re truly unhappy with your job, then find another one. Just be careful because jobs are not exactly easy to find nowadays (Thanks to Obamanomics).

So that leaves me and one other girl. And though I’m fond of this girl (I’m fond of all the girls, actually), she drives me nuts because she has the personality where EVERYTHING is a BIG deal and she just exhausts me with her “issues.”

I have no idea what’s going to happen this week (the one gal was told not to come back until Tuesday) and who knows how fed up the other girl is and how long she’ll stick around and the only thing that I keep thinking is, “maybe I’ll finally be able to move into the 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. slot” because I work the 8:30 to 5:00 shift now.

I know that makes me sound insensitive, but honestly, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there right now – the strongest survive, right?

I just hope I’m strong enough.

Life-condensed

Shh. Take a Moment. Unplug. Get Quiet. Reassess.

Karen

I love this video.

How many of you get quiet? How many of you step away from your electronic toys, from other human beings, from environmental noise and just savor the moment?

It cleanses your soul. Even if you can’t get somewhere like pictured in this video, grab a chair, sit next to a window, go outside and sit on your stoop, take a drive to a park, or a nearby lake – and just sit. Breathe. Soak in the quiet.

Clear your mind.

Heal your soul.

Life is crazy. The holidays are hectic. Family is exhausting.

Sometimes, you just need to step away … and breathe.

Try it.

Abundant Life

Teaching: What does the name Lord and Jesus Christ mean?

Karen

Every Sunday I provide videos and valuable links to the Truth or Tradition teachings. We’ve been following the Truth or Tradition teachings for many years now and they have truly blessed our family. We have found peace and happiness through our beliefs and we walk confidently for God. My hope, by passing on this information to you, is that what you find here, or on the Truth or Tradition website, will guide you to a better, more blessed and abundant life.

Let’s get started:


Thanks for watching.

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More from Write From Karen

Life

I’ve Been Reduced to Wearing Falsies

Karen

How many of you read the title of this post and thought, “Pasties?!? Karen is wearing pasties??”

Um. No. Perv.

Apparently, I get more stressed out than I think I do. I mean, I’ve always thought I’ve handled stress pretty well – I think quick on my feet and I somehow get through it.

Sure. My heart pounds against my rib cage, I develop this very attractive sweat mustache and I suddenly can’t remember how to breathe properly, but … I handle it.

It wasn’t until Kevin had his motorcycle accident, (don’t worry, that was two years ago, nothing recent. The man has been FORBIDDEN to ride anything less than four wheels), that I discovered another physical reaction to stress – I lose my eyelashes.

Attractive, right??

Well. In case you’re just tuning in, my job stresses me out. A. LOT.

I work in health care. I’m a scheduler for neurosurgeons. Which, on the surface, might sound easy. But my job goes WAAAAAAAY beyond the simple inserting a patient name into a slot duty. Oh contrare – the schedulers are the dumping ground for all new procedures, regulations and really, any thing management can think up in a given day.

I help the patients in the clinic all day. I have to return voicemails. I have to answer nurse’s flags (which is an internal messaging sort of system). I have to pre-authorize radiology testing with insurance companies. I have to check, sort, file and respond to my faxes (which are a lot of VA patients actually since I work for a doctor that works closely with a VA doctor in Arkansas). I have to print medical records and refer people to other doctors … and all of this MUST BE DONE within a 24-hour period.

Because there absolutely, positively MUST NOT BE any overtime!! (*GASP-HORROR-MELTING-FACE*)

So yeah. There are days I’m so stressed that I fall asleep at 7:00 p.m.

No joke.

And when it gets really, really bad, like all I can do is grip the steering wheel in my car, stare straight ahead and wonder if I’m coming or going, my body reacts by losing eyelashes.

So, I’ve been experimenting with false eyelashes – because giant gaps in your lashes is just scary.

I put them on, for the first time, last Sunday. And it was a hot mess. But I picked up a trick or two and decided to bite the bullet – I wore them to work last Monday.

IMG_1389

I felt so … WEIRD. I just knew everyone that looked at me would KNOW I was wearing false eyelashes. But no one said a word.

I made frequent trips to the restroom to check on my lashes because I had this fear of one of them coming loose and lying at a weird angle on my face.

But nothing happened, no one was the wiser, they were surprisingly comfortable and I thought, “COOL! This is going to work out.”

Until Tuesday.

I put them on, used way too much glue and then, to try and cover that up (though the glue dries clear and you honestly can’t see it), I used liquid eyeliner to try and make it all blend together.

And that was the day my eyes started watering.

My eyes water – A LOT. Like, “oh my gosh, are you crying” a lot. Some days, they just do that. I’ve learned that I can sometimes freeze them in the morning (place an ice cube on them), then put eye drops in them and THEN take a shower (if I do all of that after my shower it actually makes it worse – I’m telling you, my eyes have been “an issue” my entire life) and that would sometimes help the watering factor.

But I didn’t do all of that on this day and they watered – A LOT.

And my liquid eyeliner smudged and I was once again making frequent trips to the restroom for damage control. But even though I wiped the black streaks away, the eyelash glue held (thank God I had the foresight to buy a waterproof glue).

And I finished the day thinking, “COOL! They stayed on.”

And then I took them off that night. And I guess the build up of the salt from my tears just gunked the ever loving holy crap out of the lashes. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know that if you’re careful, you can reuse false eyelashes several times – like close to ten or twelve. But there was so much gunk built up on these lashes that I just tossed them.

I haven’t worn falsies since then.

But I’m not giving up. Because I really like how they make my eyes look and they really aren’t that hard to put on, or take off (I bought this new eye makeup remover per the advice of one YouTuber and OMG – where has this product been my entire life) so … I’d like to experiment with more dramatic lashes, but save those for parties, date nights, whatever – definitely not for work. The lashes I wore to work are called “perfectly natural” and they did look natural – at least, I thought so. But anything more than that and I’m pretty sure people would have been looking at me funny.

You know, if my body would just cooperate with me, I wouldn’t have to go through all of this drama to compensate.