Wherein We Make a Terrifying Discovery

[Talon]

Welcome back Gravekeeper!

SC: "I mean. Okay this is a little embarrassing. But, you know. The little blue pills."

There's no shame if he wants to stay in the Matrix. Life in the real world is hard, yo. Or not, in his case.

Pecker Chiclets? Dic-Tacs? S & Ms?

Aaaaand I died

Call centre work sucks and will kill you.

You got that right. I managed to survive 1.5 years of that, somehow I didn't resort to drinking, drugs, suicide, or homicide. How I'll never know. Most of my hair turned prematurely grey, but no big loss

[Jay 2K Winger]

Doth mine eyes deceive me? Can this be a post from the fabled Keeper of Graves? What glorious travesties, what tragic glories await me within?

*click*

...Oh. OH. SHIT.

Glad to hear you're not actually keeping a grave yet, and I hope the pain will become less and life more bearable.

[Dragon_Dreamer]

*HUG* Welcome back! Glad you're doing better, sucks as to the disabled part. Yay for retirement, I hope?

[Android Kaeli]

Oh, wow -- a Gravekeeper post! Glad to know that you are doing okay-ish.

[Gravekeeper]

Forum at my post about my health. Perhaps it was too depressing. I'll try and make it a little more cheerful before making a repost attempt. >.>

omg omg omg omg omg its Gravekeeper.
YAY!!!!!!!
I saw some really bad rappers/singers the other day that reminded me of the one that you used to write about.

I also remember YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
I remember Uncle <someone> the conspirisy nut, the certain northern provence (yeah I know but those stories were interesting to say the least), the stalker. Sir Shake and Bake (the subway singer I think) and most of the rest of the general stupidity/weirdness/WTFever you put up with.

Ah yes, MC Shake & Bake and Disaster Triforce. The scourge of Granville St. I'm not sure what became of them but I'm betting on career mediocrity. Possibly faces of meth for one of the three in particular.

The conspiracy nuts, man. Those lines were subcontracted to us by the US government. One of them made sense as it was for embassies and what not. It got a goodly number of stupid calls because if you do something stupid at the border or in customs you get a courtesy call to your consulate general.

The other one, well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Lets just say you would be shocked at which US federal agencies are pretty nonchalant at subcontracting out to random Canadians. I even had a special emergency number for terrorist threats!

But yeah, there was two career ones. One was pretty harmless and liked to call with various theories about Jesus or hot tips on how to fight Al-Qaeda or where Bin Laden was hiding. He always sounded stoned off his gourd so I assume this flashes of inspiration were inhaled.

The other was a lunatic who routinely called to scream at me about all of America's supposed crimes ( real and imagined ). While accusing me in particular of being a traitor to my country for answering the phone for the Great Satan that was America. His ability to work "cock sucker" multiple times into a single thought was pretty impressive.

And you had a nice voice (the one YT video you did)

As I have protested many times before. I am not that kind of operator. >.>

I have had clients with, er, crushes on me before. Much to the unending amusement of my coworkers. One client in particular was just relentlessly savage to everyone that answered the phone. ( "Raging bitch" I believe was the common descriptor used by our staff ). EXCEPT for me. She turned all sweet and friendly if I answered. My coworkers eventually ended up routing the call to me any time they saw her client line pop up.

The whole thing was relentlessly amusing to one of my fellow grave workers in particular. Who would tease me on the matter whenever the call came in. That coworker once told said client "You know GK is young enough to be your son, right?". To which the response was "Oh, I know, but a girl can fantasize".

<shudder>

Way way WAY back. And I mean way back. At my original company. Before it was bought out and merged with the company that brought you all of my weekly terror. I somehow managed to get asked out by a male client. A real estate agent at that. I *never* lived that one down for the rest of my time working there.

The power of Operator Voice(tm) is terrifying and immense.

But yeah, I mean I read back through my actual shift reports ( the official ones, not the filtered amusements I posted here ) and I wonder how the fark did I survive that long. In the midst of all that crap. Then I think back on how many coworkers the place drove to alcoholism or worse. Hell, I had a coworker literally die from a heart attack. She had worked for the company for something like 20 years.

I made it out after 12ish. They gave me a plaque. I intentionally left it at the office and never went back for it. >.>

[Mikkel]

Welcome back. You have been missed.

[apocolypse101]

Holy crap! A GK thread! Squeeee!

[Mr Hero]

Let me guess. The plaque said, "Don't forget you're here forever. "

[kibbles]

Just for the record..the cat would always suggest to use Mastercard, hehhee :P

[Gravekeeper]

Right, less depressing this time. My ultimate diagnosis was PTSD ( Turns out you can get PTSD from being abused for years. Who knew! ) and the physical problems were stemming from that. The muscle tension, pain, cycles of anxiety/depression, etc were all rooted in good ol' PTSD. My muscles were always locked with tension, which meant pain and repeated stress injuries.

The pain is chronic and neuropathic now ( fibromyalgia ). It doesn't actually go away. Ever. I take meds for it to keep it at a dull roar. And other meds to keep the anxiety/depression to a, well, not a dull roar persay but at least not a wall climbing pants shitting constant terror. Other fun acronyms followed PTSD as well like IBS.

I've since fled the city and moved back closer to family so I have support around me. Simple errands and household tasks are beyond me on bad days. So I need the occasional help around the house or getting around. I've tried to make life as simple and as quiet as possible. I have a cat and the internet and thats about it.

Its taken me 2-3 years of meds and therapy to get to this point though. It's been a pretty difficult road and I've had to accept that certain things are broken. All I can do is adjust around them and change my life to suit it.

Okay, that still sounding pretty depressing. Moving along.

Let me guess. The plaque said, "Don't forget you're here forever. "

Technically, it said "10 years of service". The "forever" part was an implied threat. I'm not sure how many of my former coworkers are even still there. I know one is as I talk to them from time to time. But we had the most astounding turn over rate and anyone that stayed more than 6 months would hit a burn out point regardless.

When I left there was 1 other person left from my original original company. From a staff of 20 or so. So including me, 19 gone in 7ish years. For the staff at the salt mine from when I first arrived there were....lets see. About 3 out of the original 50ish still there when I resigned. For the scope of total despair I will point out that we were only one branch/operations floor out of 14 across Canada and we weren't the largest branch.

If I had to guesstimate I would say we probably turned over 5-10 people a month on average for my entire career there. We were always starved for experienced staff since we couldn't retain people. Especially middle management for operations. I was forcibly promoted after turning down said promotion several times. Because said promotion was my entire normal job + taking on full staff management/training for what was basically an extra 40 cents an hour. Pay wise.

Basically it was "Hey, I know you run our entire operation by yourself for 6 hours a day and supervise/train the morning staff for the other 3. But how would you like to do that AND manage an extra 15 people for another quarter an hour?".

Really, their move to force me out of my own position and into a "promotion" by retroactively making me unqualified for my job because no one else wanted to do it was what threw me completely over the edge. Had they not pulled that on me they might have been able to squeeze another year or two of productive life out of me before I had a break down and ended up in the ER.

I suppose I should technically be thankful.

Technically.

[Shyla]

You're not that out of practice. Thanks for giving us one more post.

The problem isn't waiting for him to take his socks off to count to 20. It's when he needs to count to 21 that we have a problem.

[CyberLurch]

Hi, GK...

I know you're probably not 'back', per se (one can hope that you are, nonetheless!), but it was damned good to hear from you. You are indeed missed here, good sir.

[Pixelated]

They gave me a plaque. I intentionally left it at the office and never went back for it. >.>

That put me in mind of this:
"Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.”
~From Going Postal by the late great Terry Pratchett

So glad to see you again, Gravekeeper! Although I'm very sorry to hear what your years of employment did to you.

Don't be a stranger, eh?

[morgana]

Talk about mixed emotions! Great to have you back, so so so sorry to hear you're so unwell.

Missed you muchly, you know. Maybe stay around?

[Lachrymose]

It can't have been THAT long since the last Gravekeeper thread.

*Does forum search*

Nearly four years?? Holy mackerel! Where does the time go?

Good to see another one for posterity.