Category Archives: Frustrations

Peeved much?

Celebs

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The other week I went out for dinner with one of my long time beautiful friends. She lives in North Queensland and I see her approximately twice a year, which by the way, sucks. When I saw her, she exclaimed ‘It’s a celebrity, it’s the girl from the pictures’. I was momentarily confused until she explained that for so long, all she’d see of my life was social media. Instagram pictures, facebook posts, this blog.  She asked me if my life was as wonderful as it looked. As much as I spent the whole night enjoying her fine company, in the back of my mind I was thinking about my presence in social media.

Every now and then I have an ‘ah-ha’ moment when I think of or hear something revolutionary. This was an ‘ah-ha’ moment for me. 

I want everything that surrounds my life to be an accurate reflection of who I am.

I want the words I say to accurately reflect what I think. I want the pictures I take and post to accurately depict the kind of life I lead.

In a world that has become so consumed with social media I find myself swept up and frustrated at the lengths we will go to to make our lives appear awesome. To make ourselves popular on facebook, to take instagram worthy shots. We structure ourselves so well that we end up portraying a slightly different version of ourselves to the world. And unfortunately, different is not always better.

I would hope that when people meet me, they think.. This girl is exactly what she seems. I know that doesn’t sound exciting or mysterious and it probably won’t win me a boyfriend anytime soon but I hope my internet life is an accurate portrayal of my real life.

I guess what I’m saying is.. I want to the be the real me all the time. What you see is what you get.

Pet Peeves

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Top Ten Pet Peeves of an Office Receptionist

  1. When a colleague repetively asks for you to “hold their calls”
  2. Always being interupted for projects you are working on with the phone. You can’t hold your calls if you’re a receptionist.
  3. Needing relief for lunch breaks and bathroom visits. It’s especially bad if you need to go a lot – everyone knows about it.
  4. Phone callers who won’t answer where they are from or where they work or what it’s in regards to. “Just tell them it’s Ben” is annoying when you’re just following telephone procedures.
  5. Telemarketers you can’t hang up on. Door to door salespeople you can’t hide from.
  6. Phone callers who make bad jokes like. “How are you today” “Good thanks” “Yeah you’re looking pretty good too” – Stupids, you can’t see me! I’ve heard this joke before!
  7. People stealing your pens. Hole punch. Stapler. Etc. Just send me a request and I’ll order those items for you.
  8. Despite the “wash up after yourself” sign – receptionists always end up washing up people’s disgusting lunch leftovers.
  9. Colleagues who lie and then ask you to lie. “Just tell them I’m in a meeting.” How about – just take your phone calls!
  10. Being a receptionist. Full stop.

Actually don’t hate my job – just some observations I managed to make on a not so great day.

If you are a culprit of any of the above – stop it. Just stop it.

Love all receptionists, past, present and future. xo

Community Service Announcement

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Just a note to all those skinny friends and family of fat people. “Encouragements” about shedding a few kilo’s, or “hints” that maybe you shouldn’t eat that chocolate, or “commenting” about what you’ve eaten throughout the day. Is never seen as an encouragement, hint or just a comment. Just don’t. Ever. It doesn’t help, encourage or motivate anyone. In fact, it makes me want to eat more chocolate.

Unreasonable

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Word of the Day

1. Not reasonable or rational; acting at variance with or contrary to reason; not guided by reason or sound judgement; irrational: an unreasonable person.

2. Not in accordance with practical realities, as attitudes or behavior; inappropriate

3. Excessive, immoderate, or exorbitant; unconscionable: an unreasonable price; unreasonable demands.

4. Not having the faculty of reason.

Synonyms

absurd, all wet, arbitrary, biased, capricious, contradictory, erratic, fallacious, far-fetched, foolish, full of hot air, headstrong, illogical, incoherent, incongruous, inconsequential, inconsistent, invalid, irrational, loose, mad, nonsensical, off the wall, opinionated, preposterous, quirky, reasonless, senseless, silly, stupid, thoughtless, unreasoned, vacant, wrong.

Blogging

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I’m going to be honest, something pretty new for me. Blogging gives me grief. I really like reading other people’s blogs, but maintaining my own blog is such a pain, for a few reasons.

1. I get in trouble when I don’t update enough.

2. I get annoyed that when I do update regularly, it’s all nonsense.

3. I get frustrated because I forget my password and it takes me so long to remember which password I used, that by the time I’ve figured it out, the inspiration I once had to blog, is gone.

4. I get annoyed because the kind of posts I want to do, take forever to do.

5. I get annoyed because I don’t have a camera. 80% of the blogs I read and made up of posts that are 80% full of pictures that people have taken. No one writes blogs anymore, they take pictures. It’s a pity I don’t have a camera, and that I can’t do anything to take a picture of. All I can do is write, and in this day and age that makes for a boooorrring blog.

6. I laugh because I actually don’t care about most of the things I wrote about above, I’m just really stretching the boundaries of what an acceptable blog is. But still.. I really do obviously need to get a camera to stay hip and happening.

Does anyone bother to check my blog anymore? I have no idea. Haha.

Lost

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For the last 24 hours my internet has been acting beyond slow. We’ve either reached our download limit (has never happened) or our network is down. It’s quite frustrating. I’ve been at home sick for the last week and other than sleeping, I’ve spent most of my time watching TV online. It’s been pretty great until now. It takes about 6 hours to download one episode, rather than 6 minutes. I’m fairly bored. I should be working on my assignments I guess, but the internet is so slow that it would be painstakingly pointless. I’ve watched everything that I already own. I’ve already coloured my hair today, made cupcakes and read a book. I’m pretty bored. How sad is it that when my internet is down, my life is down. So much of my life revolves around technology. But I guess there really isn’t an option of going backwards. Life will only get more technologically advanced, and you have to keep up with it otherwise you’re out of date. I wonder what would happen if I just stopped using a computer and my mobile. Like permanently…

Off the Radar

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to anyone who regularly checked my blog in the past, i’m sorry. ever since i was made redundant at my last job, i’ve been a little bit mia. it’s been an interesting stage of life and while parts of it i have greatly enjoyed.. i’ve sort of felt out of the loop for the last 2 or so months.

SHOUT OUT TO ALL THOSE IN HOSPITALITY.

I have been meaning to do this post for  a while. I have a few friends in hospitality who whinge a fair bit about the industry. Blabla long hours, blabla sore feet, blabla lame customers. I kind of thought they were all cry babies, no offense guys, but that’s what I thought. I would like to take back my thoughts, which thankfully were rarely verbalised until now, and actually congratulate you on what is a difficult industry to work in.

In this current job climate, I didn’t want to take the risk of being jobless for the next 6 months and as Centrelink has screwed me over time and time again (Laura, that Centrelink expose is still in the works) I got a casual job as a waitress. Having had little hospitality experience (try none actually) but decent connections (the good old family kind) I got a job at a fairly classy joint serving rich and snobby people lots and lots of alochol and other assorted foods. It’s kind of hell.

Seriously though, really short breaks, 11 hour shifts, cranky customers, cranky coworkers, being felt up by some drunks, 4am wake ups, losing your car in carparks at 2am, excruciating pain in the foots, spilling champagne all over snooty guests, working on a four level building and not being able to use the lifts, stinking like beer, wine stains. It’s not a job I will be sad to say goodbye to.

However – I am grateful to have some source of income, which is more than a lot of people can say. I’m looking forward to some more blogs… my inner nerd and need to talk about myself has been suffering.

::Warning::

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Opportunity Lost due to lack of Business Card

On Thursday afternoon at approximately 1.30pm a receptionist lost out on an amazing opportunity due to a lack of stationery. Steffany Willis was carrying out general tasks at her place of employment yesterday afternoon when a stunning looking gentlemen arrived for an appointment. She made him his coffee and while he waited for his appointment they engaged in a lovely conversation and Steffany said she was amazed at how easy it was to talk to someone so good looking. “It’s like, I wanted to faint and go all gooey and mushy, but the conversation was so lively that I managed to keep my head” Miss Willis stated. She believes that the reason she hasn’t received a call yet from this gentleman who she’s sure wanted to ask her out, is because of a lack of business card. “I’m quite sure that if I had of had a business card, I could have given it to him pretending to be of receptionistic service – giving him the perfect excuse to call”. Steffany wants to warn other receptionists out there that they should also request business cards for such situations as this. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to be caught in the same position, perhaps there is a need of personal cards – you know, like business cards but with a model like picture and your mobile and facebook link”.

Facts were edited in this story to make it a touch more interesting.

Feeling superior – A story

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Considering my age, financial position, level of education, work experience and job title – you’re going to find this post a little haughty. Which is maybe a good thing – I’m feeling a little haughty.

Once upon a day not so long ago in a lunchroom at a workplace a girl was reading a book. As she paused to take a bite of some boring noodles, one of the few other book readers at work, asked her what she was reading. They then engaged in a conversation about their holidays and whether they were able to read many books and which ones etc etc. The contents of this conversation are not central to the story. The girl had read about 8 or 9 – which she thought was a pretty good effort. And he had read 3 or 4 – which is also a good effort, considering he does have 3 kids under the age of like 5.

At this point in the conversation, a  coworker pipes up with “Well it’s nice for you guys – I’m just too busy to read”

So I just simply said “Well.. I guess I mostly read instead of watching television”

“I don’t watch television either, but I’m still too busy to read, you’d understand if you had children Steff” replied the haughtier than usual coworker.

I shut my mouth at this point. One, because I’m trying not to be a stuck up cow and two, because all the other parents in the room were nodding in agreement.

End of Story.

This frustrates me SO much. I had so many comebacks for what I wanted to say in return. The best one was me rattling off a list of all the things I do like work full time, study part time and all the things I do with church etc etc and how I still manage to find time to read and the worst one something about if she didn’t spend so much time being haughty and… etc etc. If you really wanted to read, you would. Even if it was a chapter or so every couple of nights before you fell asleep.

I hate that line – ‘I’m just too busy’ and my new favourite line to hate -  ‘I’ve got kids you know’. Just because I don’t have children doesn’t mean I’m not busy AND just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you CAN’T read.

If you don’t like reading, then say so. Don’t pretend like you enjoy it and you can’t find a spare 15 minutes every day. If  you loved reading so much like you claim, you’d find 15 minutes for it.

Thankfully ungrateful

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Do you think that there is a word that exists to describe when you are a true blend of opposing emotions. I guess that’s just like being conflicted or something. I find myself at one of these points in my life. There are so many things I am thankful for yet so many things I am frustrated over.

Perhaps this is how everyone actually feels. Perhaps this is how we are supposed to feel? We need to be content enough to enjoy the things in life that are good – but find the rest of life frustrating enough that we get off our butts and do something.

I only wish the frustrating things had an answer, a solution. That all the running around, the fussing, the emotions weren’t in vain. I think that most of life’s, or at least my life’s, great problems don’t actually have answers. At least not answers I’ve been included in.

I’m really thankful for my new house, my new car, the holiday I’m taking with Bec in March (66 days baby!), good food, The Office. I’m not going to the list the frustrating things for fear of becoming frustrated and ruining the semi peaceful mood I’m in.

I read this book on Friday at work by Joyce Meyer about Strife. I never really considered myself to be a person who wasn’t at peace, but the more I read it, the more conflict and strife I realised I had in my life. Now more than ever I’m craving that peace. I’m prepared to get rid of almost anything to have it.

However I think a month’s long cruise through the Carribean would settle the strife in my life? Don’t you think?

Carribean