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About Me

Name: A E

Location: Ontario, Canada

blue eyes, crooked teeth, intellectual, goofball, slacker, socialist.

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From the ghost land of the easy life.

29 January 2010 I heard the news today Oh Boy : Err well rather we all heard the news Monday. Our crappy call center is closing and all the jobs are moving to the Philippines. My funny meter went off when it was announced that not only are the phone agents, whom management have run into the ground with glee - were getting canned, but management themselves are also getting axed. It's the first time I've seen any of them acting like human beings rather then royalty and it's a nice change. Well most of them are. Of course I've been looking half heartedly for a job in non call center work for months now and have achieved not even an interview. I'm stepping up my applications but now I have 800+ known people competing with me for most jobs, not including all the other unknown unemployed in the city. Supposedly the City Council is lobbying to keep the jobs, but unless they are willing to give us a city contract and accept by and large we are unilingual then I doubt they will help at all, it's just a press drive for them. It's no secret that we here can't compete with places like the Philippines for a companies profit margin. Our Minimum wage is high, so is the cost of living. My rent went up January 1st. Milk Eggs and Bread have just gone up at the stores nearest me as well. So I cannot afford for a cut in my wages so the company I work for can increase their profits from the company they contract to, which if we are honest is all the move is about. When the dollar was lower it was easier for American company A to have us take calls for American Company B and now the dollar is higher ( although not as high as it was earlier on) and doesn't seem to be taking anose dive Company A says gee we can make a lot more money if we take this call center over here where we pay out less of what we get to take the calls. So that is what they did. Leaving 800+ indispensable people in their wake. As a worker bee, someone who actually deals with the clients on a daily basis, I have been constantly made aware of how dispensible I am. It's a little happy making thing to see the management that like to throw around 'fired for (this)' now whining and sobbing about how unjust it is they too are getting tossed out like the rest of us. It makes me happy because they needed to be cut off, they have ridiculously high salaries compared to us and do nothing but go to coffee all day long and talk down to us about how they understand how hard the job is but we have to jump through this hoop and that just to maybe gat an extra .25 cents next pay. And let us not forget if it seems too many can achieve that they'll just alter the stats to make sure they don't, since the actual structure of the 'incentive' is no formally written, passed down or incorporated it can be changed at any time to make sure the company gives the front liners a little as possible. Greed. It will kill a business everytime. This time it killed us and next time it could kill you. I can't decide if I want to work for someone else or start my own business at this point. I do have the skills to pull it off but I'm a bit scared and have no one to support me in my waffling about my abilities. That alone could keep me stagnant for years, let me tell you! In the mean time I am working on that blog move and redesign and IF you are still following me after last year I will be back. Better and more organised :) We can hope right :) Keep blogging. ghost writer Ambrrrr at 2:11 PM 0 Bright Shiny Things 02 January 2010 Happy New Year I'm still here : I've been bad. I've been neglectful. Last year was one of melodrama, stress and bullshit and I decided that I didn't want just a bitch blog so I'm back now that things have settled and I've had to reorganise my mind. A dirty mind isn't bad, a cluttered mind makes it hard to sift through to the meaningful and important and make sense of the things going on. I have a new apartment, a new exercise regime and a new stress level so we will see how this goes. In the mean time here's what I am thankful for getting through last year: 1) the obvious mental breakdown I was suffering 2) almost breaking my ankle and settling for a 3rd degree sprain 3) deciding work was not as evil as my making it the center of my existence had made it become 4) breaking from old habits 5) finding a way to express my creativity through homemade crafts and food 6) leaving bad influences and toxic people behind Hopefully I'll actually get around to reworking this blog in the near future. We'll see :) Keep writing. ghost writer Ambrrrr at 1:32 PM 0 Bright Shiny Things 18 January 2009 your a heartbreaker dream taker : There was a time I was confident that whenever something happened to me that if I went to a doctor and told them it would get fixed or at least they'd figure out what it was that was wrong. After 4 plus months of bouncing from GP to neurologist to Eye specialist to ER to MRI and back, I am convinced that only people who have few interesting things going on are actually doctors and that they spend years learning only how to be contemptuous and dismissive. Out of all the appointments I have had to PAY to get to because of Ottawa's beyond STUPID transit strike, all I have to show for my illness is a variety of forms saying that after looking at me I have been pronounced not ill. We're not talking about being tested here, we're talking about having a drunk test (walk in a straight line, hold your hands out and touch your nose, jump on one foot test) and a reflex test done I have been told that I am not suffering migraines, numbness in my hands feet and face, buzzing in my ears, nausea, dizziness, burning pain in my eyes, eye sockets and hands and arms, seizures in my right hand, jaw spasticity and facial ticks at all. In short I'm suffering unrelated symptoms and have been told that my problems are psychological. I have seen a shrink who says I don't need to see him either because I am not suffering psychologically. To add to my joy I was forced back to work during this scary time, by the insurance company because the stroke neuro says I didn't have a stroke and the MS neuro says I don't have MS (PS from both - DON'T COME BACK) - while NOTHING else has been examined at all as a cause. I went to my GP friday to be told there's nothing he can do and no he won't test me for anything because I had some blood tests done on or before September last year and I was fine then so I don't need it. Well I'm worse now then I was then soI DO NEED IT. I got so mad I stormed out of his office. He told me if I wanted something done about the seizures I have in my right hand and arm that last for about 2 hours each and leave me unable to use my arm for the better part of 24 hours after - then I had better call the neuros I had already seen and ask if they can be bothered to see me again. I went there thinking that even if he couldn't do anything he would at least pretend that this was a) IMPORTANT NEWS, B) SCARY to me and not to be smirked at and c) say he would get me into a neuro to get this checked out. Apparently proactivity from a doctor these days is ABNORMAL. If I advance from focal to Grand Mal seizures he will believe me. And he also accused me of lying about wht the shrink said, saying "I haven't gotten his report yet so I don't know what he said." If there is a lawyer out ther reading this can I sue any and all of these freaks for their inability to look for a reason that after 37.5 years of never having these issue I am having them? Can I sue for frustration and plain old malpractice? I can't believe out of the lot of them only one Doctor has found anythig out of the usual and he is an opthamologist. Not the one I expected to believe me after all this or to work hard to determine what the issue is. I totally hate Doctors all together now and IF it turns out they missed something severe I will sue, that will wipe the smirks and attitudes right out of their universe ( I hope but probably not). Keep blogging. ghost writer Ambrrrr at 2:29 PM 0 Bright Shiny Things