A New Chapter

Today is my last day at my current job. I have worked here for 6 months which was the lenght of my first contract. I had the possibility to keep working with a prolonged contract but have decided to quit. It is time to try something new.

My job was/is located in Enschede. Enschede is a small city far east in the Netherlands, just by the German border. It takes me 1 hour by train to reach Enschede, but first I have to bike for 15-20 min. Since my work-shifts have been from 09.00 until 15.30 it means I have had to start biking around 07.20 in the morning to make the train and be on time at work to log in to my computer and all the programs. I also arrive home around 17.00 because of the travelling time. This has been one of the reasons for me quitting my job.

But, I am used to travelling and I knew about it before I said yes to the job, so of course it is not the main reason for my decision. Before telling you the main reason I should however tell you a bit more about my job in general: I have been working at a callcenter as a customer service representative and with order-entry. Now, the job itself is perfectly fine, it is very changing and even exciting at times. I did not have the kind of service job where "the customer is always right", in contrary we are and we are allowed to "tell them off", in a nice way of course. You see, the company I have worked for is one of the biggest distributors of electronical components, and most of our business happens online. Once a customer does call it is usually because they have a question about something, or perhaps because something has gone wrong with their order. I am in other words never swarmed with phone-calls, which is nice. Mostly our job is about processing orders, and requests, by email, and phone. Of course the company still wants us to make business and sell more etc, but it is not a company that actively calls up people and tries to sell them things, so there's no need for us in customer service to act all nice and fake. We are tought that we are superior to our clients since we are the ones with the facts and information, and we shouldn't let ourselves get "walked over". So, in many ways, this has the potential to be a very nice job, so why did I quit?

Well, I quit because I, together with one other collegue, have been the starting force to the Scandinavian market, mainly Sweden. The two of us were the first customer service representativers for this region. The company has had Scandinavian customers for long, but they have just recently started actively trying to grow their market there, and we were part of that process. The only problem with this has been that since the market is still relatively small, we have had very little to do. We have been told to be patient, and I have been, but this added up with the long travelling, have just made me realise that I do not feel like I have the patience, or need, to wait for this to grow. The last couple of months have mainly consisted of me sitting in front of my computer trying to pass time every day. Now, a lot of people are now thinking "wow, that  sounds perfect, you get payed for browsing the internet or wasting time in general", well the problems are many for why this is not something to say "wow" about...

• Firstly, I have 3 different browsers to use, but all of them tend to crash frequently (and we are not allowed to update or change anything on our pc's). This limits my possibilities to entrtain myself online by reading articles, browsing websites, etc etc. I also have no possibility to have any sound on, so I can't listen to music or watch videos. (I have however spent some time watching rugby games, but it gets kinda boring without any sound too). 

• Secondly, reading might seem like a good option, and I thought so too, until I had spent two weeks reading constantly for 6-8 hours a day...my eyes and head were not happy and I was coming home more tired than usual. A little bit of reading is of course possible, as a distraction and a pass-time now and then, but the risk is that I miss an incoming email, and don't see it in time to pick it up, and then it goes to another representative and my statistics and "status" gets affected. So that was not a good option either. 

• And, thirdly, a day, maybe even a week, it can still be nice to have nothing to do at work, it's easy to pass time for a short time like that, but after a few weeks, well you kinda run out of ideas of what to do, especially when your possibilities are limited. I have spent a whole week playing different solitare games for instance, but then that got boring. Any game I do play needs to be without flash player in order to not crash the browser, and it might still crash it anyway. 

So, I hope that the reason for my decision is a bit more clear after you have read this. I am sure some people would thrive in a job like this and enjoy it very much, but I need something to do, I need to feel like I am actually working. Therefore, my hunt for a perfect job goes on and a new chapter begins. Now I have to go back to work, or well, find something else to pass my time with, writing this at least killed some minutes ;)