Hi there

[Kezzaz]

Hi, I have just discovered this and its great that there are supportive networks out there who can listen.

I am really stuck atm, I am 40 years old next month, and been in the same type of career all my life. I suffer with Social Anxiety, and had a lot of support over the years. At the moment, I am in a full time position working in a contact centre. Its pretty challenging and it is making me quite tense and on edge before I begin the shift, what callers I will be receiving etc. Everything is time managed including breaks, log in log off times, and reporting via email if your schedule was altered in any way, a meeting for example.

I find it hard working like this, and want to quit, however with the current COVID situation and lack of employment opportunities, I guess I need to stick at it for the time being. I own my own house, very grateful I have a years worth of savings (due to two redundancies over the last 2 years), plus I have a supportive housemate who has lived with me 14 years, and pays 60% of my mortgage payment, thru renting a room in my house to him.

I am unsure if I should leave yet.. I really want to work in Aged Care or as a Personal Care Assistant or as a gardener doing less stressful work. Are these good choices for someone in my position. I have a very caring, quiet personality too.

Thanks for your advice and thoughts.

Kezzaz

[uncut_gems]

Hi Kezzaz,

Welcome to the forums. So glad you found us here and were willing to share what's on your mind– you've definitely come to the right place.

It sounds like your job is really stressful and draining, and doesn't afford you a lot of opportunities to use your strengths or your creativity. Luckily, it seems that you are in a good position to make a more meaningful career change. Without knowing the specifics of your situation and the ins and outs of how supers work, the fact that you own equity in your home and have substantial savings means you are well set up to make this move.

However, I think it will be much easier for you in the long run to wait until the COVID situation improves here (as it has mostly continued to do), or at least stabilizes, before doing so. In the meantime, it will be important to find ways to manage your anxiety. What has worked for you in the past?

Would love to hear more and keep chatting.

Warmly,

Gems

[Kezzaz]

Hi Gems,

Thanks so much for your reply.

At this point, I will stay in this role for now. I have just clocked up one month there, and I am working from home at the moment, due to COVID, in fact, I have not met any of my colleagues or Team Leader in person, only via virtual meetings, and we also had to sit through the initial first two weeks with all day training knowing nothing about the job at home also. I take the calls from clients through my laptop, and no one physically there to assist if I get stuck, so instead I message them on a teams chat on my laptop, where we arrange our virtual meetings.

I do find change difficult and challenging, but not sure eventually how I will tackle leaving a full-time position and go back to study. Luckily this organisation I am working for, offers online courses for which I can take advantage of at a discount as long as I get through the probation stage, so it will be November this year. I may keep working whilst studying then eventually give this up.

I find a lot of this type of work quite stressful so I am worried this won't work out before the probation period is up. I guess I am grateful to have financial backing as well from both my roommate and some savings.

Moving forward, I really want to feel happy and look forward to working in a job that I really love. Money is not the main driver just the sense of job satisfaction. If I consider Personal Caring/Aged Care, I worry that it will be a complete leap of faith from what I have been used to doing and wont be sure I will like this and will be a bad mistake. But taking risks I feel is important in one's life.

This current position at the moment, leaves me quite anxious in the morning prior to commencing, ie. many bathroom visits!, stomach upset, and also not having much of an appetite as so many thoughts are swirling around in my head as to how the day will pan out.

Warm Regards,

Kezzaz

[Croix]

Dear Kezzaz~

I am glad you came back and talked more, if Gems does not mind I might reinforce a bit of waht was said. At the moment the employment situation is up in the air, and I suspect will get worse before it gets better, so from a purely economic point of view hanging on to what you have makes sense. It could be a hard road though as many contact centers do not have a good reputation for valuing staff.

Against there is the fact this job does demand a lot of those things that tend to trigger anxiety, isolation, timed responses and working to a rigid clock without others to interact with apart from formal or ad hoc Team meetings

May I ask if you have medical support for your social anxiety? I found my anxiety condition worsened until I did. Also if you have family member or friend to share your feelings with , someone who just cares ? Trying by yourself is not good, you can end up isolated and without perspective (that's what I found anyway)

Your ideas of aged care, gardening and personal caring could be good in exactly the right environment, then again in the wrong one they will simply make thngs worse. Not all facilities are the same.

Could I suggest when isolation restrictions are lifted in your area you investigate the possibility of doing some volunteering in those fields, dipping your toe in as it were may help you make up your mind.

I hope you come back and talk to us some more

Croix

[Kezzaz]

Hi Croix,

Thanks for your message. I'm lucky I have good supportive social networks, mainly my housemate who has lived with me many years, and provides a calm and reasoned approach to my thinking pattens and response to stress. He has the opposite personality to mine, and tells me things that I might not like to hear, and I do react emotionally and without thinking about my reaction. In saying this, he is very much aware of my vulnerability and wants me to grow into a strong person. I think its good to have that support.

My parents live 1 hour from me and both are retired now, so I try not to shoulder any burden onto them. Most of my friends (who dont live with me) have their own mental issues, once having Bipolar, shes great and a lot of fun to be around, but sometimes not the right person to unload on, so I guess I need to be mindful.

I have had numerous therapists over the years, and was once prescribed antidepressants, a mild dose about 6 years, however I elected to stop taking them as I felt they were not effective or that I worried I could get dependant on them.

In my own time, I go for long walks around my neighbourhood, usually at night when no one is around, and seldom drink alcohol, only when socialising.

I will stick with this job for now, they seem pretty pleased as I have taken the most calls, and was given special mention of this at the all staff meeting this morning. I feel like I "Fake it till I make it" a lot of the time, because I do not have the exact answers for the clients who call. I really would love to help them more, but theres so much to learn in this job, its so hard as you need to juggle several things at once, wrap the calls up and move on to the next one. They are lenient at the moment as we are now, but they expect by around 4 months, (I have been now 1 month), we should be up to speed.

That's what worries me, as I don't want them to say to me It wont work out, and then suddenly be back on the dole queue. I am fortunate to have a large cash reserve on hand, but guess don't really want to be unemployed again during this pandemic.

Thanks for listening,

Kezzaz

[Croix]

Dear Kezzaz~

Thanks for coming back and saying more. It sounds as if you have a pretty good support network, which makes an amazing difference.

I think on the whole I'd disagree about stopping meds because you might become dependent on them. I've been on them for very many years, I get in poor state without them and they are just part of life. As they have few side effects and are quite effective I hardly think of them.

That being said if they disagree with you, do not do what is expected or have marked side effects that is naother matter.

With the job I'd have mixed feelings about being held up as an example. It puts pressure on you to keep it up and makes fellow workmates feel bad. Supporting everyone privately is a better system.

As for how much you improve, again this is something that is not hard and fast, from an overall perspective fewer customers given the exact right information might be best rather than just the most customers. On a more narrow track if you company has a contract to answer X calls per day then their priorities might not be yours.

I guess time will tell. Let's see if you are happy going to work there in a while before making too many judgments.

Croix

[Kezzaz]

Hi Croix,

Thanks again for your thoughts. Sorry I haven't been online lately, I am still going through all the motions of this new job. I've now been here 7 weeks, and lately It's been quite draining. A lot of concepts get me confused still, and I get very frustrated within myself, because I still don't know everything and sometimes I make an educated guess when confronted with a case I work off emailed cases that come through to me + calls at the same time, however some hours doing the day you just work on cases, where you are not interrupted by the phone. All these cases and calls (your daily output) are added up by management to form a score each week. You need to be over 85% in effectiveness. Currently I am doing 90, which they are pleased with so far.

If you are under you need to provide a please explain to the team leader, I am glad I haven't had to do that, at least not yet.

But sometimes I feel I fudge things to make it look good, although my intentions are honest, the system I don't think is calculating things correctly, such as calls dropping in, it says I took them but I actually haven't. I either cant get to the call or it is ignored and goes to someone else but it appears to still count it and I feel very guilty for not saying anything. I don't know whether I should tell them.

Because of the pressure, they encourage us to chat amongst our team, its very hard as its all online and working from home, and have to type an question and wait for an answer. Things are arriving back in my inbox from clients, who hadn't completed things correctly when requested , and have to be redone and sent back. I get so stressed, that jobs cannot run smoothly. This virus has had a bad impact, even hearing from students who cannot complete their course because of not being able to attend a workplacement facility to do their training because they wont allow them onsite because of the virus impact, it affects their time to complete and we hear all the stress in their voice or email, its very hard for them, and I feel for them, as I wish to be a student again myself and learn something different.

I am hanging in there. I so don't want them to tell me to leave before the end of probation, because what other job is out there atm. I really wish I could do something more simple and straightforward and being able to help people.

Thank you for listening again.

Warm Regards,

Kezzaz

[compassion_always]

Hi Kezzaz,

It sounds like you're really going through quite a stressful time at the moment. It also sound like the virus is really impacting your life, and the lives of people you interact with. I can empathise with the feeling of 'what other jobs are out there' because it does seem like the reality at the moment. It sounds like you are meeting the benchmarks that your work is setting you, even though sometimes the system is difficult to work with and isn't calculating your hours correctly. I work in an area where I have record everything I do in a day and add up the hours, which I'm held accountable for too. For me, I try to think of the fact that I can only do what I can do with the system I'm given. No system is perfect and so I feel I just have to the best I can. If this is happening to you, its possible that its happening to your colleagues too and so maybe that makes it more of an even playing field (if that make sense).

It does sound like a difficult situation, and from what you're saying, you are handling things the best you can at the moment. I hope that in the future you're able to do what you're passionate about, but maybe for now just hanging in there is okay?

[Croix]

Dear Kezzaz~

I'd have to go along with a lot of what Compassion_always is saying, basically you are doing the best you can in a job that quite frankly is terrible (as is the one Compassion is doing)

Humans are not designed to be run as machines against a clock, and to do so is bad for anyone's mental health, and particularly bad for anyone with an anxiety condition. If you add isolation then the whole thing starts to become toxic.

As a result one would expect a high staff turnover.

So I think you would agree if something else (not anther call-center) came up you'd seriously consider it.

It is pretty obvious you have great deal of empathy -your comment on the student's finding it impossible to do their work but are still penalized as to time makes that clear. It may well be your thoughts about caring for peple are exactly right.

Have you ever considered training as an Enrolled Nurse -a Certificate IV level course I believe?

In the meantime, if you can keep an exact log of dropped calls, so you have an ace in the hole if you are ever criticized for your performance.

So while you are hanging in there is there any possibility of doing something you enjoy at the end of the day -drawing a barrier between work (and worrying about it) and the rest of your life?

Croix