Teenager of the year

I am nervous as hell right now. I'm gunna show up at work for the first time on the night shift and have no idea what the bloody hell I'm doing. Gunna try and get there early to see if I've gotten any emails detailing what I'm supposed to do. Are they gunna put me on the phones? Am I gunna listen to other people's calls? Is there gunna be any kind of induction? Ah well, at least I'm wearing comfortable clothes.

Take the canolli

Watching the Godfather for the first time is weird. It's been referenced so often that there's so many moments of 'oh so that's where that comes from'. Not just the horse-head thing, but the way they talk, the things they mention. I gotta wonder how much 'mafia mythology' has its beginnings here.

I start the graveyard shift tonight, got five hours until I have to be there but getting up at five in the afternoon is a good start. I must have slept restlessly, I'm achey all up my neck and shoulders. I really should get up and do something to loosen everything so I don't feel like this for the rest of the day. Or night. As you will.

I got woken up by Smokey killing her bear, which appears to be rather a noisy activity involving lots of chirps. Or they might be little growls. Not proper growls because I've heard those when she's threatening to kill the neighbour's dog. The neighbours don't bring their dog by our front door anymore because Smoke's a tiny killing machine.

It's ten thirty. I should be in bed. But fuck that. Tomorrow's my last day. I refuse to do it any way other than tired.

Doot de doo. So yeah. I was unemployed in August. Made redundant. How can you be 'made redundant'? The 'made' part sounds redundant. I got fucken fired. The company took a dive and I took the shot that turned the ship around and got all hands on deck or some bullshit. I only pretend to understand this stuff.

So then I got a job somehow. Somehow. I jumped down, turned around, picked a bale of cotton and I was getting paid to listen to people's problems with their bank accounts. My take-home pay was nearly doubled. That was in September.

Then we got an email asking if people wanted to move to the night shift. I replied I would. Why not? Somehow they accepted me over others, people that had been there for years. I suspect my team leader wanted to get rid of me because I'm a fucken pain in the arse. I dunno. I wouldn't wanna be my boss.

So now I'm in the night team. Every night I start at around ten. Then I head home at around seven. This is from next week. And I'll be easily being paid more than people who've been there long enough to be team leaders. People who've clawed and smiled their way up the shitty ladder, people who've worked their arses off to get where they are. Seems weird when I think about it like that. I'd consider it good luck if it weren't for the last decade of shit I've put myself through.

But none of that matters. I'm going to night team next week. I'm sure I'll get a decent amount of entitled customers living overseas demanding I fix the problems they've made for themselves, but that's what the job's all about. The responsible, polite, sensible people don't call up because they don't get themselves in the shit I can fix.

One thing really gets me at work. Finances are complicated. Household finances are complicated. People try to juggle so much, accruing as many reward points on credit cards while avoiding interest, mortgages, personal loans, insurance payments, direct debits and more and more. And then they get stung somehow. And they ring me up and ask my why they got stung and to get them out of the situation. I usually transfer calls like that to another department. I'm not an account manager. That's what these people need.

Okay Mad Men is improving. Episode five is kicking arse. There's still the occasional Simpsons-style flashback episode moment, where they mention events or names from the era for its own sake, which is kinda annoying but I guess that's inevitable in a 'period' production, kinda like the Earp boys turning up in Deadwood. Ah well, the characters are becoming interesting and it's got Saffron from Firefly in it. Rowr.

I answered a call today, some dumb shit about some dumb shit. 'Duh duh me did boom boom in me underwoos and wah wah me needs changing.' Typical crap on a typical day. And I could hear music in the background. Bugged the shit outta me for nearly an hour but I figured out what it was. It was the outtro to this:

I've been on a bit of a dvd binge lately. I've got curb your enthusiasm, which is fun but too awkward to watch too many episodes in a row. And I got the first season of mad men. I'd heard really good things but most of the first episode was a real let down. Seemed to be a lot stuff about 'omg how quaint were the sixties?!' Lots of overt sexism and racism for its own sake. And the 'gay guy who doesn't realise he's gay' Maybe that's the way it was, I dunno, but it did seem contrived rather than real.
And then the episode ended and goddamn what a kick in the teeth. Guess I'm gunna have to watch this thing through.
Oh and anything you've heard about how awesome the wire is? It's true. Goddamn I can't wait until I get the second series of that.