Lately people have been dropping like flies in my workplace.
whether they quit or go on Short-term-disability, we are way low on people!!
I think we are missing a minimum of like 5 people.
Yesterday there was 1 person working intake on any given shift, I was the only bilingual person working for the morning and there was 1 other counsellor. And between the 3 of us we managed our second highest call volume ever!
And it must have been a full moon or something because almost every counselling call I took was about a Domestic Violence situation.
No wonder I came home with a headache and missed my run with the Running Room.
It's amazing to me that we haven't exploded or something.
Sometimes I get this weird mental picture of our heads expanding like balloons while on the phone with a caller. Then eventually the balloon gets stretched too thin, and explodes! In my weird David lynch style fantasy, nobody notices, and the caller keeps talking on the phone, business resumes as usual.
Then eventually the cleaning staff come in and just vacuum away the balloon pieces, and magically everybody comes back the next day and it all happens over again - kind of like the movie "Groundhog Day" from the darkside.
Well enough of my morbid thoughts - only 13 days until Christmas - then that's 2 days of celebrating, gifts, eating and sweet relief from work!!
I think it's also a busy time of year in general. Do people ever slow down?
7 comments:
I'm convinced that the aging process is responsible for the term: "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
I will never understand what the need to accelerate our lives is all about, but I'll be damned if it's not responsible for the increasingly deranged society we're facing daily.
Isn't the Christmas season one of the most depressing for many people? That and International Loneliness and Bitterness Day (known in some cultures as Valentine's). :)
Domestic Violence eh?
Don't tell me one of the callers was Michelle!
So help me I'll...
...
...
Umm...
Nevermind.
:)
hee hee hee.
Interestingly enough, Christms may be a stressful time for most of us, or so it feels lie, but it's usually a slower tie for us in the office.
Things pick-up in January after poeple have survived the holidays with their families, and want to do something about New Year's Resolutions.
January is our busiest month of the year, followed closely by September.
Miriam, you're so busy and tired you're skipping letters in your words ;)...s'ok, we're probably too busy to notice :)!
I told some of my students I'd go see them in the Christmas concert tonight. This will tie up some of my time, but hopefully it will be relaxing. Then I can come home and stress out about what I'm going to teach tomorrow :-P (I kid; we're going to do a bunch of practice questions with the students so I just have to decide what-all questions we're going to look at and work out all the answers to life, the universe and everything ;)). I hope all your missing people come back soon!
Is your crisis hotline during Christmas Day, too? Do you have to work through the holidays?
We are a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week operation, no exceptions.
Good for clients, sucks for employees, 'cause they always need people to work overnights, week-ends, and STAT Holidays. And remember that while we offer Crisis services, we're not primarily a crisis line, we're an employee helpline.
Yeah, I know you're not just a crisis call line...but hopefully clients would understand if the non-crisis stuff had to wait until after the holidays. If it weren't for the fact that you did handle crises(?), you could probably close for the break, or at least for Christmas.
Post a Comment