It isn’t the end of the week yet

I have to work tomorrow, for the sixth day in a row this week, and the second of those weeks straight.  As we all expected and feared, the mess created by the advance Child Tax Credit payments last fall has sent erroneous returns falling out of the processing system through the roof.  Batches with close to thirty percent bad returns are normal this year, and batches running into the forties are nothing unusual.  The only good things I can think of about this state of things is that it means overtime started two to three weeks earlier than it normally does, and will probably run later as well, and all the extra work means that I’ve just about regained my processing chops.  Tonight, because it’s Friday and I’m just about exhausted from a week of nights with maybe five hours’ sleep in them, I was in a mood not to be so nosy and thorough investigating the causes of errors.  I just wanted to get the returns done and off my desk.  When I get in those moods my processing rate goes up, because I don’t waste time looking for fiddly bits that usually aren’t there anyway.  I figured it up at night’s end, and found I averaged eighty-seven returns an hour tonight.  That means I spent an average of forty seconds fixing each return.  It’s still nowhere close to the rate a former work leader of mine used to manage in the groove—she could run 120 1040s an hour out—bit it’s still respectable.

I seem to be getting my “voice” back as well—the one I worked on developing when I was at KCOM.  Once yesterday and twice today, my opening script (“Thank you for calling The Empire’s Auric Technical Support, available on the Web at support.theempire.com.  This is Sam; may I have your Service Code?”) met with a few seconds’ startled silence and then the hesitant question, “Is this a person?”  I sounded polished enough that they thought I was just another automated recording.  Another person asked me “Don’t take this wrong, but have you ever thought about working in radio?”  I told him that I had worked in radio in a prior life.

Every day this week seemed to include at least one nasty call, whether the particular nastiness was a software issue that didn’t want to get fixed, a wireless configuration or setup question (I barely know the first thing about wireless and how to make it work), or a customer who was already on the prod from frustration when I got to him.  The worst days are when I get two or three of that kind of call in a row.  I begin to feel that I don’t know anything about these goddamned computin’ machines and how to make them work

I’m also feeling frustrated and anxious because I can’t get any time to attend continuing-ed training at The Empire, save in bits and scraps, so I’m not learning things I badly need to know if I’m to be effective.  Even though the new fiscal year has started and the new budget is now available, management has yet to approve anyone for any overtime to be trained—and because the phones are so busy (our group of 320 level-one techs took 74,000 calls in February), overtime is the only way that any training can happen.  I’ve talked with my manager directly about my frustration; he knows and agrees, but when higher management policy is “no overtime,” we’re all hamstrung.

I’ve been so eaten up with work that other important stuff is getting by me.  I missed early voting for the Texas primary elections, which ended today; I thought it ended tomorrow.  Now I don’t know quite how I’ll manage to make the time to vote on Tuesday.  Maybe I can pull off the interstate as I’m driving back down from the Empire and dodge across to my polling place.

And what’s far worse than all that is I never see anyone any more, outside work.  (I generally don’t socialize with co-workers, both on principle and because we mostly don’t have any common interests.)  I get up at half past five, leave the house by half past six, work from seven until four-if-I’m-lucky or sometime-after-five-if-I’m-not, struggle back into town and through the midtown rush-hour traffic jam, get to IRS (I hope) in time to heat up and eat the frozen dinner I’ve been carrying around all day, work from six to ten, get home by half past and hope that I can wind down enough to go to bed by midnight.  Often it doesn’t come out that way, and I can’t get to sleep until half past twelve or one.  And the next day I get to get up and do it all again.

There’s no time in that schedule to see any of my family, friends, or acquaintances, or to do anything that might possibly be fun or relaxing.  All I get to do is work and sleep.  It’s the most miserable existence I’ve had to suffer in a long, long time—worse than crunch time at IRS the last two seasons, because it never gets any better.  This is how it is, and how it will be.

It’s getting on toward one, and I have to be at IRS as early as I can today; seven o’clock is ideal, and I’ll have to put in eight hours.  I’m worn out and I’m horribly lonely.  I’m going to bed, and once I’m there I’ll probably cry.

Jack the Ripper fled the persimmon for the imitated dumpster.  Fnord.