I Finally Got A New Job

As some of you may know, my number one New Year’s resolution for this year was to get a job in which I would be truly happy. Since October 2013, I had been working in a call center, providing customer service over the phone. Although there were good moments, when I was able to help some of my customers and some of them actually appreciated it, and I loved almost all of my coworkers, for the most part it was pretty horrible. It was the most miserable job I’ve ever had. I took so much verbal abuse from so many customers that it actually started to affect me physically. I think my problem in that job was that I cared too much. It always bothered me when I wasn’t able to help someone, because the system wouldn’t allow me to, or it was against company policy. And customers knew that I felt badly about it, so they went on the attack. They were like sharks that smelled blood in the water. I got to the point where I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of having to go to work every morning, knowing what was in store for me. The thing is, I didn’t really want to change the fact that I cared as much as I did. What I needed to change was not myself, but my job. So toward the end of last year, I began looking hard for a new job, applying for a few jobs every week.

Finally, last March, I was offered a job at a health insurance company, where I was going to be doing medical coding and making sure that the customers’ insurance information had been entered into the system correctly. I thought I was going to love that job, because I have great typing and computer skills, and I am very detail-oriented. I had also been thinking for quite a while that I may want to do something in the medical field.

But the training was very fast-paced, and I wasn’t able to keep up. I think that it was really a review for people who had already had training in medical coding, who just needed to brush up on a few things, and who needed to know how things were perhaps done a little differently there from at other health insurance companies. In the end I was let go, after I failed two assessments, by a just a few points.

At the time when I was let go, I was devastated. This was supposed to be THE JOB, the job where I would want to stay for a long time to come. But when I thought a little bit more about it, I realized that I wouldn’t have been very happy there at all. I would have always been watching my back. I had noticed that there was a lot of gossip, not just about me, but about others as well. When one of my classmates, who was probably the most genuine person there, was out of the room for a few minutes, one of my other classmates started tearing her down behind her back. Then, when she came back into the room, she started talking to her like she was her very best friend. This made me wonder what she might have been saying about me when I wasn’t in the room. Our trainer was the same way. So I guess that that company wasn’t what it appeared to be on the surface.

Since then, I’ve been looking hard for a new job. I have applied for many other jobs, some data entry jobs, some mailroom jobs, and even a couple of jobs in which I would have been working with animals. I had three interviews, which seemed to go quite well, but no offers. One of the places where I had an interview never bothered to contact me after the interview, though they had told me at the end of the interview that they would be sure to contact me to let me know whether or not I got the job.

But finally, last Wednesday, I got a job offer. I’m going to be a Transaction/Data Processor. It’s just a temporary job, which will go through the end of January, so I’m looking at this as a stepping-stone. Still, it should be much easier for me to get a permanent job once I’m employed again. I think that one of my problems has been that because the last two jobs on my resume are customer service jobs, employers only want to hire me for customer service positions. All the job leads that I get from LinkedIn, and almost all the job leads that get sent to me by employers who see my resume on indeed’s website have been customer service jobs. It seems that I’ve been pigeonholed into that type of work. But I don’t want to do customer service again. When I left my job at the call center, I made myself a solemn promise that I would never do customer service again, in person or over the phone, because I refuse to allow myself to be subjected to that kind of verbal abuse ever again. Once I update my resume, I should finally be able to break out of that customer service role that I’ve been locked into.

Once I get my resume updated, I’m going to start looking for a permanent job again, and I expect to be much more successful this time. As I mentioned before, I’m not quite where I want to be yet. This is just a stepping-stone. But I’m much closer now.

I’m so thankful to my friends, who have helped me along the way. I want to thank LongLegs for his helpful advice, even when he told me a couple of things that I didn’t really want to hear. I want to thank iCuriousBabe for introducing me to a couple of websites where I can look for a job that I may be able to do from home, which would be wonderful, and for her encouragement and support. I may still apply for some of those jobs, once I’ve updated my resume. I want to thank peteythedog, who has also had some helpful ideas for places where I might find a good job. I’m going to look into those also, once I’ve updated my resume. And I want to thank all of my other EP friends, and everyone else here who has encouraged me and given me moral support. It has meant more to me than you could possibly know. It’s been a long, challenging journey, but you’ve helped me continue to believe that I can do it.