Negative Emotion

I haven't written much lately. I think I've been too depressed.

In the past, I've always written to get the depression out, to make it manageable by carving it into small chunks and taking it from there.

This time it hasn't been working, at least not here on my blog. I think the only way I could cope with the enormity of it all - mostly political/world/work - is by expressing those bite-sized chunks in memes on social media. Or at most having a rant on Facebook; it was just too much.

Climate change and the resulting disasters - and the heartbreaking calls at work therefrom - along with the physical aspects here in Washington State (like the eerie Volcano Day vibe I got from ash, not to mention asthma during those wildfires east of us); these were just too much to deal with except in the small chunks. One more call from someone looking for a loved one they haven't heard from in Puerto Rico, or that poor guy who was almost in tears because the iPad he couldn't find after Harvey was all he had left - those calls kill me.

The fact that the President (of the country, not the company) is having yet another tantrum on Twitter because the mayor of San Juan said some mean things about him, makes me furious. Seriously, I'm irrational about it; it pisses me off that much. I'm a struggling widowed mom, and my ten-year-old with autism has better manners than the president of our country.

What the hell is wrong with people who think this is okay?

As for struggling, this is only exacerbated by work. I've said before, and I'll say again, I have NO personal beef with local management. None. Corporate, though, they seem to be taking tone-deafness lessons from the federal government. Example: October 2nd is the beginning of Customer Service Awareness Week. AT&T Corporate seems to think that free t-shirts (more on that below) and selfie stations and such are the best way to show their appreciation of the folks dealing with all that shit up there. Not by, say, negotiating a decent contract (that has been expired since February).

The t-shirts? Oh yes. It's a nice design, pretty, ombre-blue-on-grey, and it says, "It's the Customer's World, and we're just living in it." In general, I can get behind this sentiment; customers are important. But given that we're working out of contract for eight months now, the company obviously doesn't care about the people actually supporting said customers (or they wouldn't be outsourcing everything offshore or to contractors - whose mistakes (as their training is sketchy) we have to fix without that contract), during Customer Service Appreciation Week?

Yeah, not feeling appreciated here.

I love my job, heartbreaking stories notwithstanding. I love the people and I even love the company, especially on the local level. I even applied there in the first place because I liked how I was treated as a customer and I wanted to be part of that.

But seeing the injustice in the world with everything from the president of the country demanding that people get fired for exercising their constitutional rights, to the same man preferring to weenie-wag with North Korea vs taking care of his own countrymen? And feeling like if the company I love working for really cared about its customers the way it says it does, they'd take care of the people supporting said customers?

I'm not feeling it.

I know that some of you, Gentle Readers Who Used to Work Here, will be in I-told-you-so space at this point in my rant.  No need to reiterate.

I get it.