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So, guys…I hate my job. I’m sure there’s a group for that here on CS, but...I hate my job to the point where it’s making me depressed. Not like I want to kill myself, just completely fed up and utterly bored with what I do for a living. The easiest pat answer is “get a different job!” Well, I’m planning on going back to school in fall of next year and getting ASE certified, hopefully by the end of 2017.
My husband’s credit is just good enough that he got a used truck recently, and my credit’s a hell of a lot worse than his, thanks to one bad month with a credit card and years of unpaid medical bills. We haven’t got enough cash saved up to move, let alone to rent a trailer. We’re at the stage with the new vehicle where we’ve had it looked at, a little, and are confident enough to drive it to town 100 miles away to have it further checked out, but not confident enough to drive back and forth regularly (it needs new brakes and has a couple of slow leaks, among other things). We want to move a couple thousand miles away. So believe me when I say that moving is not an option right this minute.
Getting a different job here? Well, I live in a National Park, which is essentially like any other company town. Without revealing too many details, getting a different job with someone else would be impractical at best, and at the worst, they’d hire me for the summer and then lay me off all winter. I’ve been trying pretty much since 3 months into the job to get a different job with the same company, and have interviewed at least 10 times for other positions. They always either tell me they “hired someone more qualified”, “hired the only person more qualified, who applied after your interview during which we gave you false hope”, or just “made a different choice”.
So I’m not posting this to get advice on how to get out of the situation (unless you want to give me some magical deus ex machina solution – I’ll happily listen), but to ask for advice on how to deal with being a hotel desk clerk during the summer (peak season) without going completely apeshit on some idiot who’s the 15th person in an hour to whine that they didn’t get a view room, or who throws a tantrum because we don’t sell bottled water/our internet is slow/we don’t have a spa/parking sucks/etc. I tried going on an anonymous advice chat site, and the random stranger I talked to said that I should get a game (like an MMORPG or something) and play it at the desk. Uh, no…if I’m not even allowed to do crosswords during the slow season, why would I be allowed to play WoW (which is what he suggested), even if our hardware and our internet connection COULD handle that??
I’m more asking if there’s some kind of mind game I can play with myself for an entire year, or possibly slightly longer, to keep myself from either giving an incredibly rude answer to the dumbest of questions, or screaming in their face that I bloody goddamn well DID tell them on the phone that five people wouldn’t fit in a room with one full bed, or leaping over the desk and running out into the parking lot waving my arms and shouting. The only thing I can think of right now is telling myself “this is not forever. Someday you will be a damn good mechanic in an independent garage, and you can have all the tattoos and piercings you want and dye your hair blue and purple, and make over four times as much as you do here.”
I’m not sure if the part about tattoos and piercings is true or not (but hell, if I work for someone else long enough, I can start my own garage). I’m also not sure if this is incentive enough, especially since I’ve already been telling my husband that I will lose it on someone if I have to endure another summer at the desk since…oh, roughly September. I wonder if it would do any good if I told my boss this? If he’d find a way to move me to another department rather than risk me going off on someone? Or if it would just make things strained and awkward.
My husband’s credit is just good enough that he got a used truck recently, and my credit’s a hell of a lot worse than his, thanks to one bad month with a credit card and years of unpaid medical bills. We haven’t got enough cash saved up to move, let alone to rent a trailer. We’re at the stage with the new vehicle where we’ve had it looked at, a little, and are confident enough to drive it to town 100 miles away to have it further checked out, but not confident enough to drive back and forth regularly (it needs new brakes and has a couple of slow leaks, among other things). We want to move a couple thousand miles away. So believe me when I say that moving is not an option right this minute.
Getting a different job here? Well, I live in a National Park, which is essentially like any other company town. Without revealing too many details, getting a different job with someone else would be impractical at best, and at the worst, they’d hire me for the summer and then lay me off all winter. I’ve been trying pretty much since 3 months into the job to get a different job with the same company, and have interviewed at least 10 times for other positions. They always either tell me they “hired someone more qualified”, “hired the only person more qualified, who applied after your interview during which we gave you false hope”, or just “made a different choice”.
So I’m not posting this to get advice on how to get out of the situation (unless you want to give me some magical deus ex machina solution – I’ll happily listen), but to ask for advice on how to deal with being a hotel desk clerk during the summer (peak season) without going completely apeshit on some idiot who’s the 15th person in an hour to whine that they didn’t get a view room, or who throws a tantrum because we don’t sell bottled water/our internet is slow/we don’t have a spa/parking sucks/etc. I tried going on an anonymous advice chat site, and the random stranger I talked to said that I should get a game (like an MMORPG or something) and play it at the desk. Uh, no…if I’m not even allowed to do crosswords during the slow season, why would I be allowed to play WoW (which is what he suggested), even if our hardware and our internet connection COULD handle that??
I’m more asking if there’s some kind of mind game I can play with myself for an entire year, or possibly slightly longer, to keep myself from either giving an incredibly rude answer to the dumbest of questions, or screaming in their face that I bloody goddamn well DID tell them on the phone that five people wouldn’t fit in a room with one full bed, or leaping over the desk and running out into the parking lot waving my arms and shouting. The only thing I can think of right now is telling myself “this is not forever. Someday you will be a damn good mechanic in an independent garage, and you can have all the tattoos and piercings you want and dye your hair blue and purple, and make over four times as much as you do here.”
I’m not sure if the part about tattoos and piercings is true or not (but hell, if I work for someone else long enough, I can start my own garage). I’m also not sure if this is incentive enough, especially since I’ve already been telling my husband that I will lose it on someone if I have to endure another summer at the desk since…oh, roughly September. I wonder if it would do any good if I told my boss this? If he’d find a way to move me to another department rather than risk me going off on someone? Or if it would just make things strained and awkward.
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