Starting Monday

I'll be starting training for five weeks at the new/old job at 7 a.m. Monday. Training goes from 7 to 2:30, which means with lunch, it's only 7 hours a day, not eight, so that's $40 a week less than a full week's pay. That's pretty minimal. Good thing Oregon has one of the highest minimum wages in the country, and I'll be getting all of 20 cents an hour more than that.

Oh joy.

At least it's the kind of job where I don't have to take it home with me. I show up, do the calls, and leave at the end of the shift. Training should be simple, since I was there before, and they're probably using the same systems, which Cingular/AT&T uses.

It should be interesting to see who I'll be spending the training time with. Typically it's late teens and twenty-somethings, many of whom have absolutely no work ethic whatsoever. Probably more than one won't make it through training, and probably a good third of them will be gone in six months. I'd be surprised if, out of a class of twenty or so, more than six make it to a full year. Hell, I'm not sure if I will make it a full year myself, although I was there a bit more than two years last time around.

The pay's crap, the benefits suck, but one thing is good - they're so desperate for workers due to the extremely high turnover (over 100% annually, I'm fairly sure), that they can't afford to engage in age discrimination, at least in hiring. And for me, there's another good thing - I can lock my apartment door, and less than 10 minutes later I can be in my seat ready to take calls.

The more I analyze it, the more the higher pay for the Cingular/AT&T job, which was downtown and required a 35-minute MAX ride and 10 minute walk, plus waiting time for the MAX (a longer wait going home), wasn't so great an increase over what I was getting when I left the new/old place the first time. And if I hadn't gotten a MAX pass paid for each month, it wouldn't have been any better at all, probably. Of course, then there's the fact that I didn't last at AT&T, and that wasn't my choice.

I don't know what I'll do about Ren Faires and Faerieworlds this year. I hope I can go to some of the events by switching days off. Faerieworlds has expanded to three days this year, but I may have to cut back to one day without staying over at a motel in Eugene as I've done the past two years. The problem is I signed up to work both Saturdays and Sundays, with Monday and Tuesday off. But I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't happen. I do hope I end up working Sundays, though, because they're usually easy days.

I spent a lot of the last three days with the cell phone close by, expecting a call, more so each day. The job offer came by e-mail. Now I've got three days where I can do pretty much as I please without having to wonder if I've got something to do Monday.