work sucks and i'm close to doomed

work-the evil necissity. even now i feel a dreaded prescence come over me as i think about what may be in store tonight. winter storms, delayed flights, passengers wanting compensation because of the weather. my talk time this month is already high. my hold time this month is already high. my not ready time is already high. and all about to go higher. failure is upon me.

all agents (yes i'm an agent, don't fuck with me!) are judged each month by several factors. one is talk time. the amount of time you spend on one call cannot go over three minutes, forty-five seconds without affecting your job performance review (JPR). the problem here is, you cannot force people off the phone. you can control the call with various techniques but if someone wants to have you wait while they muddle through booking online or rummage through their purse or shuffle papers on their desk-all things they could have done BEFORE calling-you can do nothing about that.

hold time cannot exceed a factor of 11 (i think that is percent). hold time is the time you have someone on hold. duh.

not ready (NR) is the amount of time spent not on a call. this includes break and "discretionary minutes" not to exceed 8% of total time on calls. you can control not ready by coming back from breaks early but with the new compliance standards management put into place controlling NR becomes difficult. you cannot come back from a break early without falling out of compliance. you are expected to take the break on time and use the entire break. here another problem lies. you can't take your break on time if you are on a call. if you go over your break by say 3 minutes, you only have 12 minutes left on you break. if your call goes over 15 minutes, too bad! no break for you!

quality assurance (QA) counts each month on the jpr. you usually get QA'd twice a month. acing the first QA means you can coast the rest of the month. normally i ace the QA but this month on my first QA i forgot to verify the dates on a reservation before cancelling, so i was counted off. dang.

now a bit about shrinkage. it's not just what happens to guys when they get out of the pool. shrinkage at work is about taking your lunch and not going over. at all. period. if you go over your scheduled lunch by one minute you get a zero for the month on shrinkage. shrinkage has no forgiverage (my word). i don't have shrinkage. either kind.

so what's my worry? none, really. if i fail this month's jpr i will be at three failures for the year. my first two months on the job i failed the jpr each month by a fraction of a percent because my talk time was so high. if you fail four jpr's in a calendar year, you are toast. my first two months of failure were for january and febuary. if i can hold on until then, the failed jpr's will drop off.

and if i do fail twice more? i will have achieved my goal of becoming a househusband! i keep wheedling amy about letting me stay home all of the time. she's not gone for it yet. even when i use my best beguiling ways. mind you, i'm not trying to fail just to stay home, but if, forbid, it happens i won't be fretting about it. being a househusband was not what i had in mind years ago when i was trying to become a rock star. when that didn't pan out i settled on professional musician (PM). when i needed to change jobs to stay home during the day even the PM had to take a back seat. it all works out in the end. if i do become a househusband, i'll be free to become the PM again. see! now, to convince amy.