Simmer Down!

[Canarr]

"You should quit and get another job" is practically the number #1 response whenever I tell anyone about my job. It does get tiresome. My job isn't that bad people, I actually kind of like it once you subtract the particularly special callers. Plus not only is finding another job a pain in the ass, but why would I throw away a decade of seniority?

Oh, no!

You are absolutely not allowed to quit! Your stories are FAR too entertaining for that!

What you could do, you know, would be to distribute your office phone no. on the Skytrain. Possibly under the heading, "For a good time, call..." Well, it would be a good time - at least, for your loyal readers over at CS...

[Rapscallion]

"You should quit and get another job" is practically the number #1 response whenever I tell anyone about my job. It does get tiresome. My job isn't that bad people, I actually kind of like it once you subtract the particularly special callers. Plus not only is finding another job a pain in the ass, but why would I throw away a decade of seniority?

I can see some parallels between your calling place and the information line I staff twice a week on a regular basis. I do get a warm and fuzzy feeling from helping the genuinely baffled, those who can be taught and do learn. I also find myself feeling good about the unhelpable customers, the ones for whom there is no real other course than to try and point them to your competitor.

The ones who scream about how a 'chemical' is bad without any sort of proof, and can't understand why dhmo.org is a funny site. The ones who are ascribing values to you that are not born out by anyone's experience (I've been described as living in a commune with my immediate colleagues once, therefore meaning I was a communist). The post-menopausal woman who asked me - a stalwart bachelor of four decades - if she could use a tampon to deal with minor incontinence. The raw-food vegans. Oh fuck, the raw food vegans.

I feel good about calls like that. Why? Because I'm not them. It may be a poor attitude to take, but I feel better for being relatively sane. I've come off certain calls physically shaking before now, but after a while I feel far better about myself.

It's probably not the tack you take, but it's my coping mechanism.

Rapscallion

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I think it all boils down to people see someone venting, they get upset about it on that posters' behalf, and they want to make it right. They want to help. A lot of people, I think, feel pretty helpless about the things that make their own lives that much crappier, so they see someone else with a problem they think they can help with, they try to jump in and help. Because if they can manage to help, maybe some control can be had over the world after all.

At least you can know that no harm is meant by it. At at least people want your life to be better.

[blas87]

And I didn't mean to sound as if I'd been offended over it. Really, the only thing that irks me are the "never wrong" people who seem to know everything about the human mind and habbits. And that was probably the frustration that came out.

I'm glad people care and are willing to look out for a complete stranger a long way away. I just wish some people would think a bit before jumping off the deep end or suggesting people drop friends and relationships at the drop of a hat, just because *you* are convinced that person is a loser or abuser or whatever.