As y'all know, I work for a call center for a major healthcare company. To go into further detail, I specialize in the dental benefits. I thank this job for several things, like a further awareness for the health of my mouth and also the tragedy that is little kids getting root canals. So obviously, I take calls. Quite a few in fact! I speak to a variety of people from rushed providers' offices to disgruntled members to chipper third-party agents. But lemme tell you about the week where I took maybe only twenty calls overall. Why? Read on below!
My company holds a huge annual week-long thing that celebrates everyone that works there with lots of food, silly games, and an excuse to dress up our desks with fun colors. This year's theme was the Olympics. Each team was assigned a country and we were given a chance to decorate our areas to celebrate it. My team got the Philippines, which is funny since we do have a call center in that country. We went the understated route but I liked the final product.
But that wasn't the only decorating to be had. There was the matter of the whole building. For a week by that point, some of my colleagues were pulled off the phones to work on things like building giant paper-mache macaws and cutting out palm tree leaves. One night I was recruited to "feather" smaller paper-mache macaws. My efficiency (I got two-and-a-half done to everyone's barely one) became "legend" and soon I was spirited away to the Land of Arts and Crafts.
I did everything: paint fake tree trunks, cut out flowers, hung up pennant banners, glitter up macaws, hot-glue pipe cleaners, spray-paint paper-mache rings, trace out palm tree leaves, tape up finished pieces, and stuff swag bags. I could go on, but you get the gist, I hope.
During this maddening week, I came to my desk with either a note or a change in my schedule. No phones, only projects. I joked that I would forget how to do my job by the end of it all. I survived with the help of the remastered deluxe release of Fleetwood Mac's Mirage and the occasional breather where I got to shoot the crap with my colleagues.
There was one major snag in this epic week, something I honestly I thought I would never be the victim of: lunch theft. While helping out, I went to grab my favorite first-break snack of string cheese when I saw my lunch bag looked awful light. I checked inside to see my pre-made salad was gone. I first thought I was a goof and left it at home, but I confirmed it when I returned. Since the food truck wasn't on the site that day (yes, there is a food truck that hangs out around the building) and the on-site cafe was closed for the day, I had to order pizza. That was the first time I ever ordered pizza and it didn't make me happy. I spent eighteen bucks to cover a three-dollar loss. Now y'all may think "oh whatever, that's happened to me before, so stop yer whining". Okay, lemme be clear: I have been major fortunate to have only this and my credit card number stolen. So yeah, it's kind of a big deal when it does happen.
I did learn shortly after that I was named my team's Top Performer for August, so that helped ease the sting and boosted my confidence.
About two days before this, my team moves desks to where one side was all Dental reps and the other was all Vision. So along with all the above going on, I was busy rearranging my desk and hanging up all my personal decorations.
The week ended on a relieved sigh when my boss asked me to meet with him about twenty minutes before the shift's end so we talked about stuff while walking around the near-empty building. My boss is a cool dude, especially for letting me and several of my team-mates jump on the crafting bandwagon.
So that was how September ended for me. I didn't need to wake up, but I sure was tired enough coming home every night.
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