Jump and the Net Will Appear

Maybe it was getting too claustrophobic working at home for the past year and a half. Maybe becoming socially isolated during the pandemic chipped away too deeply at my mental health. Maybe it finally hit me that after six years on the job with the same company, that company was keeping me in poverty. Whatever it was, whatever caused the final snap, a major change had to happen. Life needed a new direction.

There have been a lot of interesting jobs in my time: I started working as a teenager at a ranch shoveling horse stalls (which I actually loved because hello - horses!). On to retail work which lasted just under three months - it is not something I'm cut out for. After college, I started doing data entry and discovered I was quite fast and accurate however it was absolutely mind-numbing and there was no real opportunity in the field to grow. Landing a job in finance defined the next 20 years of my career as I worked in everything from auto finance (writing loans, collections, repos in the field) to corporate collections. That's where the real money came in. As much as I loved seeing myself as a negotiator, that job ended after eight years due to the owner's passing away. Enter the call center.

Anyone who has survived working a call center for more than a year, you get mad props. Working schedules that do not fit your life, call after call of angry customers who want to take out everything on the unsuspecting representative on the other end of the phone, the high pressure metrics, endless rule changing and lack of communication - I praise you. You are stronger than you know. Call centers will break you.

I spent six years at my most recent position - a call center job dealing with over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. Some of my customers were nice - they were the highlight of my day. Some were downright abusive and threats of violence because something was not in stock were common. I got called every name in the book, had my intelligence questioned, and my favorite: "I'm gonna need you to transfer me to someone else because you sound too white for me." I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was a thing.

Worse than the nasty customers had to be the way the whole circus was run. Being trained in multiple departments, that meant having multiple supervisors - none of whom could properly communicate with each other. Often I found myself doing one task only to have another supervisor getting snippy that I wasn't doing their task while another one was trying to pull me for yet another task. It made me crazy. What do you do when every supervisor thinks their task is priority and you're only one person? You shut down. And that is exactly what happened. It got to a point where I started doing what I wanted to do. I started prioritizing and organizing my day around what I knew needed to be done and when the work would arrive. It made my day more productive and pissed off everyone around me. I got labeled "troublemaker," but I was done being stressed.

Thankfully, one happy side effect of the pandemic is that after businesses began reopening and trying to get back to full staff, something unexpected happened. The lack of folks willing to return to low paying jobs caused many companies to take a look at their compensation packages. Higher paying jobs opened up little by little and more companies, in an attempt to stay competitive in the market for workers, also raised their starting pays. Some, like Burger King, even offered large sign-on bonuses, something that has never happened before in some industries.

This was the signal that it was time to make a change. After working six years for the same company with no advancement and no cost of living or performance based raise, the dead end job had to go. I was tired of working full time and still living on starvation wages. The job search began in earnest and I was surprised at how quickly I had a legitimate job offer where the pay was based on my experience and would effectively triple my income. It was the offer I couldn't refuse.

So I jumped at it. This new position means obtaining a state insurance license which will triple my current income. It's going to be challenging but I keep telling myself I'm up for it. I have to be. I don't have a choice at this point. I've left my starvation job already, not burning any bridges mind you, but that's in my past - the future is now. So if it's such a positive change then why am I so scared?

Some people embrace change, they are driven by taking chances, and I envy those people! However for someone with crippling social anxiety and a mountain of self doubt (that I'm trying to work on), the voices are powerful:

Am I doing the right thing?

Is this going to work out?

Is this too good to be true?

Will I fail?

What if I fail and have nothing to fall back on?

The OCD kicked in. Spamming the refresh button on my e-mail looking for any signs that this new job actually wanted me. Looking for the welcome letter, the confirmation of the start date. It all came but the back of my mind told me it wouldn't. Those voices will break you - and it's hard not to listen to them. Your logical mind must be louder than those little negative thoughts if you're going to move forward. By telling myself repeatedly that this is absolutely something I can do, that I have no choice, I have to make it, and that I WILL make it, I got through the doubts to meet the arrival of that welcome letter.

Leaving a dead end job for a completely new career, I now feel empowered. I'm proud as hell that I've made a decision that will for once change my life for the better. I left my old company in their own ashes and a much better opportunity appeared. I smile now, convinced this was the right decision.