Tuesdays Suck

Yay. I'm getting complaints at work.

Apparently, I've been letting my frustration show when it comes to certain customers, because they've been sharing their unhappiness with me with my boss. And I've been in this situation before, where customer complaints have cost me my job. I'm not in a position to lose this job at all, and I really don't want to keep having this mistake bite me in the ass. So how do I move on from it?

First of all, I am not sugary sweet, and in fact, in the times I am, I get just as many complaints because people think I'm not sincere. I do wear my heart on my sleeve; it's the sometimes unfortunate byproduct of growing up as an actor. And combine that with depression and anxiety, and that makes for a volatile mix. I completely admit that. I know I'm a pain in the ass, and can be unyielding at the wrong times, and I know exactly where it comes from. If I feel like I don't know something and I should, or I feel like I don't know something and no one can help me, then I get angry at myself and the people not helping me, and some customers will think that it's directed at them. Yes, I'm an actor and can become different characters, but when I'm just me, I have a much harder time dictating my emotions.

Secondly, I've been in abusive relationships. Granted, they've not been destructive romantic relationships, but they have been every other kind: friendships, familial, business relationships. They've come up because I have a hard time standing up for myself. By default, I feel like everything is my fault or my mistake, and I have had people take advantage of that, effectively convincing me just how stupid I am and how badly I've screwed up or hurt them. I live my life on the defensive, and that's not healthy. Rather than try to think objectively about what I've done and if it did cause problems, I assume they're right and I am the mother of all failures and/or assholes. So now that I've been conditioned to be weak, when I try to stand up for myself, I can't do it very successfully. Instead of getting people to back off and admit that they're treating my unfairly, I put them in a position to feel victimized in return, and they take it from there. I'm also the lowest on the totem pole, and have pretty much no authority, so if the person I'm talking to isn't happy, there's always someone else for them to complain to. (This can be a good thing, in that if I can't keep myself calm, I can pass them along to someone else so I don't have to screw it up and it can be someone else's problem, but that's not been the atmosphere here because of how busy we've been.)

Third, we've been swamped here. I mean, crazy busy and short staffed and still trying to get this fucking system to stop being so buggy, and that has taken its toll on all of us. I am by no means the "rudest" person here, and in fact, I'm amazed I haven't heard customers complain about one person in particular, because she is hardly ever nice or polite to me, and hearing her conversations on the phone sometimes are just... whoa. The powers that be are looking for more help, especially for the one job that three people are trying to cover after the other person retired a few months ago. It's been months of trying to get all of our 4000+ customers to accept the fact that the way they're used to things being done for the last 15 years has changed, and when I have to repeat myself to the same person 4 or 5 times before they get it, I get so immensely frustrated. I like being able to fix things and finish things, and when I can't, I feel like I've done something wrong.

Fourth, and probably most important, I hate being misheard or not heard at all. I made a list after the first month here of all the names people thought were mine, and it was something like 10 different names that had only a passing similarity to my name. I have struggled with this issue (not being heard) in so many different areas of my life, and I have yet to figure out how to resolve it in any of them. I don't need to be the center of attention at all times, and if I was, I would not be able to deal with that very well. I do, however, need other people to acknowledge me as someone that matters. I have imbalanced self-esteem, and rely on the perceptions of others when I can't tell if I'm being fair with myself or not. I have a strong sense of self, am more self-aware than most, celebrate my strengths, and have rarely if ever given in to negative peer pressure. At the same time, I constantly battle feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, and have a hard time identifying my faults in a constructive way where I'd be able to make changes for the better. So when I'm expressing myself in any way and am met with silence or ignored completely or run over, I lose it. This has been happening a lot at work, with customers that don't listen to me until they hear what they want to hear. That drives me absolutely bonkers, because it means I can't do my job, and they're even more unhappy, and I'm the one in trouble.

Most of the morning is over now, and I did make some changes to my tone and how I deal with some of the more complicated customers, but I still am scared because I have no control over how other react to me, and I can still get the fuzzy end of the lollipop if they decided to complain. I hate being in this position, feeling like I'm in a professional limbo, because in the past it has gotten out of control very quickly and ended very badly, and I don't want to have to go through that again if I know I can avoid it. I guess I'll have a lot to work on with my therapist this weekend.