The value of those lost hours

I’m exhausted, on the way home I took the wrong train, cunt (male) told me the vehicle was going where I wanted, it was 90 minutes before I was altered I’d been travelling in the wrong direction, the woman who helped me was wonderful but it was still another 3 and a half hours before I was home. I can’t be too annoyed since it’s not like I have anything to do at home.

Work wasn’t overly productive either, for the first time in 7 months, I went below target, only by 10 emails and my manager said it was acceptable so I should just be happy that I get to relax and no-one is displeased. The Muslim woman who works part time and sits near me informed me that “Punish a Muslim day” is coming up and she changed up her shifts so she wouldn’t need to leave the house on Tuesday. I told her she was over-reacting, she tried to show me a YouTube video. At the end of the day I finished the second stage of my application to a higher class call centre. At the start of the day, the guy on the social media team tried interacting with me but I failed to reply to either of his two attempted. Nice chocolate guy gave me a cold look too.

The only other event of the day was we dashing around town on my lunch break to get to my laser appointment on time and back within an hour, I failed by 30 seconds. Guess I shouldn’t have taken the patch test on my hands/arms or paid for the new course (just a few hundred quid) but the most skippable part was surely buying triple chocolate cookies for lunch.

Trying to assess where my life is right now, I’m trying to get a better job and I’m still working on my transition. Making friends is on the back burner but my probation worker will push it one I meet her again.

Low profile

No shower today, I needed the sleep. I took the bus to work, comfy ride, the ride had leather seats. Not many others on board, guess I’m one of the few unfortunate souls who don’t get the bank holiday off. There were few people in the office too but it created a cosier atmosphere, I suppose. The guy who sits in the bay behind me spoke to me a few times, tried to generate conversation and “banter”, he asked me which fish I’d like to be, I couldn’t answer, ex-bully told me not to bother, that it was pointless and silly. He asked another questions later, my favourite song, easy, Iron-man. I’m sure that earned me some respect though I may have lost it when I said I didn’t like all of Black Sabbaths stuff. Ex-bully likes Toxic, he’s gay.

I hit my target before 3pm and spent the rest of the day watching Netflix anime and wrestling. The woman sitting next to me asked what I was watching and I quipped “how many other shows are there with half naked men running around?”. She then followed up by listing trashy reality TV shows.

The other series of interactions were worse, I took my lunch early to avoid everyone, turns out not early enough, as I was eating a tuna baguette in the break room I was greeting by the quirky guy. He was accompanied by the young woman who sits next to him. We spoke earlier of the company IM service, the call centre head had contacted him but not me, I explained that we were on bad terms and shared some stories. On lunch, he asked for more details and then brought up the topic of my university expulsion again. He brought up suggestions and I insisted it wasn’t plagiarism and this drew me into dropping small details and then eventually the entire story to control the story. I said that there was a mass murderer in America, he had a manifesto that was funny and I parodied it, people couldn’t take the joke, they didn’t get the reference and took it at face value.

They got some laughs at first but ultimately concluded “that’s boring”. I should be happy but the quirky guy did hint he was looking for the website. Best to set to private for a short while during the day at least. The worst part was when I admitted to there being some racist stuff and that it was against white people, I tried to qualify it, quirky guy said he didn’t care. Lot of small interactions like about my job application.

I enjoyed all the interactions throughout the day, just wish I’d showered.

Walking home I saw a man driving dangerously and a woman in the car being thrown around like a rag doll. It went by too quickly for me to catch the licence plate.

When I arrived back at home, I heard my mum speaking a Pakistani language in the kitchen, I responded to this by speaking in gobbledygook, it’s a running joke we have. After a minute of getting no response, my grandmother walked through the doors, she’s been unwell for a long time so this was shocking. I tried communicating a little with her to overcome the earlier shame and embarrassment.

This can’t be winning

It’s only 7pm and I’m tired, I’ll turn in an hour.

I finally got what I wanted at work –  a day working on the new queue Stacy has been hogging. It turns out it’s rather time consuming, I didn’t get hours to kick back like usual, however, I did get more done than Stacy usually does. I did mildly screw up on one email but I’m sure it’ll be fine, the real danger is having screwed up and not realised it. Felt a bit like I had been deceived at the end of the day when the queues over the Easter weekend had gone out

My manager spoke to me but I was even more detached than usual, it’s probably shame. I didn’t interact with anyone else, I took an early lunch to avoid it. I think everyone may hate me, I got some strange looks and the woman sitting next to me said “he needs to get a haircut” when a guy walked passed, possibly a shot at me.

At home I ate a couple of jacket potatoes and suffered stabbing pains in my heart. Under 2000 calories at least.

Was it a mistake if a single positive result is born?

I’m still dazed following the events of yesterday. I didn’t speak to any co-workers during the entire day with one exception. There was some Easter stuff going on, a free little competition to guess the number of chocolates in a jar. I was far off, I guessed 133 but there were over 300.

During lunch, I kinda wanted to interact with the quirky buy, I grabbed my lunch and got back to the work break room fairly swiftly. When I arrived, I saw him huddled with a group of normies. No space to sit near him. For the best probably, just normies talking about normie stuff, no space for me by any metric. I just played Hearthstone and for the remainder of the time we’re on the same shift pattern I’ll be staying outside the office building the entirety of my lunch.

Towards the end of the day, my manager and I had our one-to-one, she pushed ours forward due to me concerns. She’s actually a nice person, I knew that all along, I just didn’t agree with her decisions. I started off by saying I had an overly high opinion of myself, she replied “don’t say that” and offered me tonnes of positive re-enforcement by complimenting my stats and my work habits. As usual, no eye contact, I probably came across as a freak. The last moments were awkward, she asked what my ambitions were in terms of career and I said that I didn’t know, she then responded that usually when people tell her what they want to aim for, she’ll give them assignments that compliment their ambitions such as giving training tasks to those who want to be team coaches. The point was brutally true but unfair since this was my first one-to-one with her.

A series of small victories that I’m not sure I much care for anymore: Stacy will lose her queue, it’ll get shared out among everyone, my manager used the word “fair. Team coach sounded like she was criticising Stacy when she asked if she was on a late shift (a reference to her stats which keep getting poorer. Finally, the most significant one, sounded like Stacy screwed up again. All Stacy related but it’s just stuff that happened that means something to me.

The head of the call centre typed out an email response to my concerns voiced yesterday, didn’t really answer my specific issues so I responded “Thank you for taking the time to type that up”. Later in the day he sent out an angry email to everyone over something petty. I must have got under his skin.

At home I got to spend the entire time in my room uninterrupted for once. I spoke to my mum when I got in so she’s not upset. Watched Raw and AT4W.

Stupid Estrogen

Today was grim. Utterly grim. I haven’t had a worse day in over a year.

The journey to work is becoming more difficult, it’s getting warmer and I’m getting closer to fainting. Once actually at my desk, I fired off an email HR, I made it clear I didn’t want to speak to my manager, she’s the problem, I stated I wanted to speak to anyone else, my expectations were correct, now that I escalated the issue to gender discrimination, the head of the call centre approached me within an hour for a discussion.

I grabbed my notebook from my bag and followed the smaller man. He allowed me to speak and made it clear he just wanted to hear my issues with my manager, so that was 4 pages of my notes out the window. I didn’t feel nervous or uncomfortable but from the start my voice was break and I was fighting back tears this was made worse when I was told that my tone was offensive. He also was offended by my use of the word “fucked”, I said I got it but he kept harping on – clearly some power game crap. I tried reading my points but asked to leave for a moment. I went to the bathroom to calm myself.

I returned to the room and eventually left again, this time to cry and without asking permission. Back in the room I finally found my voice for a minute but the conversation still didn’t get off the ground as far as I’m concerned. I was quizzed on the source of my evidence and came across as suspicious when I wouldn’t disclose information. He also didn’t understand why I was upset about certain things (Stacy & the queue), I feel like he may have just been playing dumb, if not, then he might actually be completely oblivious, though based on his other behaviours I can safely say he is a manipulator.

Eventually he just asked what I wanted, I said I wanted the queue to be split among everyone like any other queue. He said this was always the plan and he’ll look into getting me onto it. I didn’t ask for my manager not to interview me on Thursday for the job vacancy and I didn’t ask for an admission of fault. The only request I relayed was that I wanted to be treated fairly and to understand what I’m doing wrong and what others are doing better than me. He provided criticism, said my problem was my attitude and that when he thinks of me the thinks of those emails I sent out back in January. I tried to defend myself by explaining that all of that was in retaliation to me being annoyed about the new queue and trying to make a point – he didn’t get it and queried if I’d behave the same way if I became upset about something again in the future. He also ignored my previous 4 months of productivity and good behaviour.

In response to me being upset about not training people, he said he wouldn’t have thought I was interested in it.

I asked if I could leave since I was getting upset again. It was over. I spent the rest of the day unfocused and upset.

I sent an email to HR asking them to remove me from consideration from the internal vacancy I applied to. The contact centre head contacted me again and asked why, I became upset again so gave the shortest response. Said I was feeling unmotivated. He asked if there was anything else, I said there wasn’t and pointed to leave. He also amended information previously given about this meeting being between ourselves and HR – now he said that I did say something that would need to be shared with my manager. I’m guessing it could be my claim about her fiddling the books to get extra pay for the pregnant woman. The real reason for me not going for it is that I simply feel uncomfortable around my manager, I still believe she has a bias against me and it is actually true that the motivation has been sucked from me, I don’t want to do more and I don’t believe I can. This stuff is all documented so I probably should have tried to tell the truth but I couldn’t, I just wanted to get out.

The woman sitting next to me tried to converse with me but the results were poor.

My mother kept bothering me when I was in my room after work, I initially made polite conversation but eventually got sick of her not leaving and just asked her to “fuck off”.

I ate a Toblerone for lunch since I needed a pick-me-up, 800 calories.

I feel in the midst of a true depression that I may need to leave work entirely for in order to recover.

War Wagon is rolling again

There’s officially a problem with that job I tried to apply to so I can be down on myself for not completing it yet. Instead I watched a bit of DragonBall Super, played Hearthstone and constructed 5 pages of notes for my “discussion” with the call centre head. After finishing up, I realised that this may be a case of discrimination based on gender, with one exception, she had shown favourable treatment to women on the team. Myself and the quirky guy to my knowledge have not received any benefits comparable to female co-workers who as far as I can tell do an equal or inferior job.

My 5 pages include an opening statement about favouritism/cronyism copied from the internet, the outcomes I want from this discussion, the problems with Stacy, a list of biased/discriminatory actions taken by my manager and lastly just a handful of general issues I have related to my original complaint.

Not sure how to follow up my previous email. Something along the lines of “I have been producing notes relating my managers behaviour and decisions over the last 3 months and have concluded that she as potentially discriminated based on gender as there appears to be a pattern of behaviour where she gives preferential treatment to female co-workers. At the moment, this is just what it appears to me based on my observations, I am open to being proved wrong. During my “discussion” with the call centre head, I ask that he bring along facts and figures advising on why X decisions were made in favour of female co-workers.”

Looking forward to some drama. If this fails I can go to an employment tribunal, that’ll scare ’em.

Even ignoring the above, my day was incredibly productive, I made several phone calls sorting out mobile phone contract issues, arranging a dentist appointment and sorting out my Pokebank by calling Nintendo.

My mum is repeatedly checking up on me throughout the day to ensure I’m alive and not up to mischief.

I bought couple of tickets for an upcoming football game, hoping to take someone from 4chan. They were more expensive than Hearthstone card, put it into perspective.

Productive but still far short of my targets

The day got off to a rocky start, I argued with my sister when I tried to use the shower, she called me out on not having any friends and that our parents encourage my sisters to interact with me, they’re desperate and afraid. Can’t feel to much sympathy for them, they’re the ones who made me this way and now they’re pushing their toxic behaviours onto others.

Admittedly though, I did feel bad when I refused to fill out a form for my dad but I’ve been doing it for 25 years and he has said some incredibly cruel things when I attempted to refuse before such as “if you won’t do this for me then what do I need you for?”.

I assembled my chest of drawers, it took hours but it should improve my quality of life, I’ve also set some Pokemon plushies on top to boost my mood too.

The “fun” part of the day was watching DragonBall Super and overeating. The constructive part was completing my apprenticeship application. Would have completed the job application too but there were website errors. The application was horror, I only had 6 minutes to complete 24 mathematical questions, I did just over half but I threw away the last minute due to feeling so defeated. I’ll pin my hopes to the job instead.

Haven’t touched my PS4 in weeks.

I’m planning on writing out several pages of notes to take in with me when I have my “discussion” with the call centre head, I’ll write about cronyism and it’s effect, Stacys incompetence and how her “friends” have covered for her. The final segment will be what I want out of this discussion (a confession and to rotate the queue Stacy was given among all the team – fair and realistic).

Might be able to arrange a meetup with an /r9k/ poster for a football game 4 weeks from now.

A real, normal, healthy, progressive plan

I woke up just before noon, my mother bought Subway sandwiches, a delicious start to the day, unfortunately though, not a healthy enough one since I later stuffed my face with shortbreads and crisps.

Back in my bedroom, where I spent 10 of my waking hours, I epilated my legs (and bum) completely while watching DragonBall Super. Still on the parts that are just retelling the recent films, not bad stuff but the films weren’t bad, it’s just that I’ve essentially seen it before. I’ll do my torso tomorrow.

I researched cronyism a bit and what I read is an accurate description of what I feel is happening at work, I’ll quote to the authority figures at my workplace if possible.

There’s no question that favouritism is a bad management practice: It breeds resentment, destroys employee morale, and creates disincentives for good performance. Once employees see that benefits flow from being on the manager’s good side — rather than from doing a great job — there’s little point in working hard. And favouritism leads to lost productivity, as employees who aren’t getting the plum assignments spend more and more time gossiping and griping about how unfair the system is rather than doing their work.

The day wasn’t a complete bust, I searched for some jobs, I found one that I’ll be applying to and also an apprenticeship. I should complete the applications tomorrow. I’m feeling optimistic and already imagining telling my current employers to get lost. Also fantasising about encouraging the call centre workers who are on the phones to apply to other jobs, screwing over the company.

My mum is till unhappy about my hair but she bought me a face mask (she picked it up for £1), I feel my skin does look better. Might make this a regular thing but with proper masks.

Had an argument with my sister, as soon as she got home, she took the remote and changed the channel.

Shots fired (again)

I went through the day being mostly anonymous, I noticed an email from the HR department a few days ago and thought I may as well drop an email since they’re inviting people to do so. I brought up that I thought it was unfair that Stacy was given what was effectively a promotion without an interview or assessment when similar roles require exactly that. I also stated when raised with my manager that she only explained why I didn’t get the role and not why Stacy was suited to it above my other colleagues who had seniority and other merits. There were 3 short paragraphs, I made a sound logical argument and it’s what I should lean on if this goes further.

A reply was received after around 3 hours, I was told my line manager was consulted and she then discussed with the call centre head (my former manager) and he would then discuss with me. It was a bit suspicious that he started emailing me after this about work stuff, he hasn’t done that for a long time. I’m going to feel uncomfortable during the meeting I get with him since I’m not sure what more there is to be said.

On my own for the late shift, I almost fucked up, forgot to check one of the systems, a guy accidentally reminded me. Fortunately all went well. Playing a dangerous game to make myself look better but it’s not really wrong if my enemy is playing the same trick.

Ate Belgian chocolate cookies because I needed a pick-me-up.

Older gay guy at work held open a door for me and made a joke.

Watched Last Week Tonight and skimmed through comic books.

My mum hates me hair. Says I look like her or an old woman.

 

The tables are nearing a 180 degree turn

Despite not needing to wake until 10pm and getting more than 10 hours solid sleep, I’m finding it difficult to wake. I eventually arose, showered, ate, put on some mostly clean clothes and departed for work. I’m still doing the “oldest” emails in the queue, it’s pretty much one of the worst ones to be on but I’m still tearing through it will ease and hitting my target within 4 hours. The remainder of my shift is just spent relaxing, mostly bored though, resorted to playing Hearthstone.

Another female who joined the team after me was given the responsibility of training new people on emails. Annoyed I didn’t get to train even one person. Various higherups informed Stacy of a new upcoming vacancy, it’s a nice little job and step towards the big leagues. This once again confirms my theories, not that I needed any more confirmation. Good news on this front is that the errors I’m logging are actually being fed back to her (by our team coach, I knew she at least hadn’t drunk the Kool-aid).

Everyone is pals on facebook, they talk outside of work, it’s infuriating, I don’t even want to be part of the group.

Hearthstone barely uses any mobile data, it’s amazing.

My life outside of work is mostly non existent right now. I won’t be attending any football games in the near future, might look into clubs to join again. Hoping to arrange laser on my hands/arms soon.