Pink Sky and a Throw Blanket

This morning I stood at the kitchen sink, staring at the tall grass that waved in the wind just past the lights reach. We haven’t been able to cut it down yet and I think some kind of animal has its residence in there.

As I looked at this grass, a little bit of light had just started to peek out of the top of the trees, it was beautiful and has now grown into a lovely shade of pink across the sky. I wouldn’t be able to see this from our old home and it’s very calming. How can I live every morning like this?

These past few weeks with work have been extremely stressful and less and less enjoyable. I love people, don’t get me wrong, but its the people that I work with that are making it unbearable. The customers are fine, they are calling for a service and I completely understand so they get me and how I treat all my customers, with respect and caring. As for those that I “work with” I’ve withdrawn a lot from the communication of it all.

Working from home, you don’t have a co-worker sitting beside you that you can joke with. In the virtual world you have a chat room, however when it’s company owned equipment you are careful with how and what you write in that chat room. So having a friend for a co-worker in the virtual world, you’re  not sure how sincere it is. No facial expressions and watching what you type.

This along with the way that the company is going, I think I’m at the true end of my rope. I’ve always been a fan of great customer service and if you’ve read some of my earlier things then you know it irritates me that it’s less and less important to companies now.

The company that I’m working with is doing the same, it is taking away the value of great customer service and in it’s place putting numbers. How many calls can you take in an hour, how much money do you refund, coupon or credit. How many emails are you working while working on the phone. Then and only then do they look at customer reviews.

This is where it doesn’t add up to me and please tell me if I’m wrong or your opinion on it. How can a “customer service agent” get a good review when trying to quicken the call length in order to take another one and keep their number up? How are they supposed to get a good review when they have to coupon as told by a supervisor to do?

Now I’m just the opposite because I take care of the customer and I do get amazing reviews. It’s judged 1-5 with 5 being the highest score you can get. There are times that I do get a lower review but they will normally notate that it wasn’t anything I did but they gave the rating because of the company. So this entire month while moving, I’ve maintained a rating of 5 from my customer reviews. The other agents haven’t done this, but they might be meeting those numbers of calls taken and emails answered. But the customer doesn’t have a good experience!

I will not return to a company that treats me badly, why do some places not understand this. Does the younger generation not care and still return no matter how their treated? Please tell me because I don’t understand it.

I even offered to train some of the other employees on how to treat people, as stupid as that seems given it should be common sense. But it’s all about the numbers to these people.

Waking up even to work in my own home, I’m not happy anymore with them. I’ve tried everything that I can in order to help them with the service but they don’t care. It’s all money driven and to some point I completely understand that, but at what cost?

There is a show where someone is making a podcast, I’ve never gotten into podcasts as I don’t have much alone time to listen to them, but are they popular? There are many opinions that I have and would love to talk about but I have to find something that still pays the bills. Some say that the lottery would be nice, I wouldn’t want the entire amount but I wouldn’t mind trying with a little of it. Maybe enough to get me started and pay my bills while I work on writing here and learning about and creating a podcast.

My window is larder here in my bedroom, I can see the light of the sun just starting to brighten the tops of the trees. It’s truly a beautiful thing to be able to watch, now I would just like to watch it with a warm cup of coffee, a comfy chair and a throw blanket while sitting outside on a porch that I don’t have (but I really want).

Right now, I would take a lawn chair and cup of coffee, with the throw blanket though, just enough money to know that my bills are paid and food is on the table. That would make me happy.

Smells

I awoke last night at 1 am to a very strong smell of coffee. Thinking it was time to get up, I reached for my phone to turn off the alarm and that’s when I could see the real time. Thinking that the coffee pot was on the fritz due to a power outage last week, I pulled the covers back over me and tried to go back to sleep.

Every half hour or so, my eyes would open with a feeling again of the coffee needing my attention. No smell of smoke, no fear in my mind but just the strong smell in my room. I did set the coffee to start for the next morning as I normally do but this has never happened before. Was I being told that I just needed to get up, what was going on?

Whether it was just being very tired or laziness, I decided each time not to get out of bed and to try and push through in order to get some sleep. Finally, 5 am came around, I normally get up at 5:30 am so I gave in and got up. Keeping to my morning ritual, I walked out of the restroom again to smell the coffee. By this time I truly thought that the coffee pot would have hit it’s two-hour timer and turned itself off.

Turning the light on in the kitchen, I hear the familiar drip and hiss sound of the coffee pot, it was just starting to brew! There wasn’t yet the strong smell of coffee in the room as it was in my bedroom last night. This was beyond strange because I truly expected to see a full pot of cold coffee waiting for me to heat back up this morning.

Sometimes I can sit in my bedroom and smell smoke, like a cigarette. No one in my house smokes and a smoker hasn’t lived here since my father who passed in 1976. So it’s strange how smells can take over a moment and well, a night if I’m counting the hours of last night. But why coffee and why so strong that it wakes me up? Was I supposed to get up and just didn’t do it? I’m worried to find what I missed from not heeding its warning.

Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary and I actually fell asleep in the living room for 15 minutes after setting my fresh cup of coffee down. Thank goodness I didn’t sleep for longer or I would have been late for work. However, I do wish I had the day off, my desk sits beside my bed at the moment and the covers look so inviting. But the window is open and the sun is rising. Birds are chirping and happy that we filled the feeder. It’s so chipper outside I’m wondering when Mary Poppins is going to fly by! Seriously, it’s a beautiful morning and I’m having to watch it from my window, albeit better than not watching it so I am thankful. Thankful yet tired today, hopefully, that will pass just as the strong smell of coffee did and the day will continue to be beautiful.