Monday, May 30, 2011

When The Job Gets Fuckity


You know what's stressful about a job, when you are us; besides everything?

Working for an organization that's had its head up its ass for the better part of its entire existence, only to finally, this year, decided that they will write things like policies and actual god damn job descriptions, and start tracking where the money is really going, creating forms and procedures to do it with, etc; and then within less than 6 months expect over 20 years of mismanagement to be fixed by its currently underpaid, under-appreciated, staff.

It's really a pain in the ass that we are in constant fear of losing this job; we've NEVER been this way before - this is completely new to us; but then usually we hate our job more, or get out before we wreck ourselves. Maybe we just desire some stability in our life finally and the thought of having to find a new job, somewhere we want to all stay, is frightening; and looks impossible to us.

When we first got this job, one that The Other Girl got us, we started off at a pretty low wage, and working once a week for 8 hours doing something all the rest of us hated; at that time that small pay check was sustainable for us, in the short-term.

A year later our job is a completely different job within the same company. They've created two job positions for us, ones we are neither fully qualified for individually, or sometimes completely, depending on which one of us ends up at work. They've increased our job from 8, to 40, then to 32 hours a week in the past year. We've written about this and other job hurtles plenty of times within this blog. (All relevant job related entries can be found in our archives at the bottom of this page.)

While they have developed these new job positions for us, they have not come with job descriptions which are required to determine wage base. This, having no description, no prior position, is why nobody really knows what we do, despite the fact we have provided them with a list detailing what our tasks are, because to actually execute these tasks, requires knowledge that only we, currently, can access. With these two new positions and job duties came an increase in things to do, responsibilities and hours; but not an increase in wage.

Today, Important Boss once again had us sit down for a chat, to let us know that despite our yearly required wage increase that came with the job offer a year ago, in a contact we signed, that there is a potential for a decrease in our wage dependent on the review of our new job title(s). He informed us he is required to let us know that there is this possibility; cruel.

Given that our job title(s), if taken almost anywhere else, would mean a pretty sizable increase...this made our system buckle. We held our shit together, this time, not like the day a couple of months ago, when they tried to decrease out hours from 40 to 8 a week, all the while making us maintain the same job duties we had established.

We told Important Boss that if they indeed decrease our wage we will take it up with the labour board, if only because we'd been hired for a job with less job duties at a very small wage for 8 hours, and are now working 32 with more responsibilities, without a wage increase for over 6 months doing this new job, and without an updated job description or new contract; and if they decrease our wage at this point there is some definite injustice involved.

Some days the fact that we are staying with the company makes our head reel,  that they can jerk around their employees like they do. The higher ups are completely out of touch with what goes on, they do not maintain offices on the site, and despite the fact that so many of yousee us on Twitter daily, we are indeed accomplishing our duties; we're just usually pretty good at multitasking - though occasionally we are not, and on those days you see less of us on Twitter.

It's unfortunate that these small things stress us out, also unfortunate that we have to deal with a company/organizations lack of awareness about what had been going on within the organzition, and now we are the ones, all the staff, that have to suffer because the people who had been in charge of running the place had not been properly doing their job for at least the last 5 years.

Anyway. Not a mental health entry, certainly a mental health stressor - it's not really interesting, but hey, it's our blog here, and it's also our journal; your just along for the free ride;-). We can't always write about titillating, scandalous, and/or fucked up things that happen to us; because for us, this IS fucked up, and our life really isn't that interesting sometimes, because we're just like everyone else...well...mostly. Some of us are bat-shit crazy.

This event stressed us out, and not everyone here handles stress well; but we handle stress by writing it out, by organizing our life with words; writing therapy.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Keep your fingers crossed that we can keep making a couple dollars over minimum wage, so we don't have to resort to becoming a hit-man to make extra money.

And, no, the first hit is not free.

The fucking end.


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For the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be posting this at he bottom of each of our entries, to help provide additional information about us, and about Dissociative Identiry Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder.

10 Things You Should Know About US That MIGHT Surprise YOU:
  1. We used to be a Baptist missionary (yeah, can you fucking believe that shit?!) [we are NOT religious]
  2. We were once married (didn’t last long) [one of our stories talks about him]
  3. We have had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult (nothing could contain us in the early days) [we actually own a house, but choose not to live in it]
  4. We’ve lived in 2 countries: 1 province and 6-7 different states (running much)
  5. We have lost 120 pounds since the age of 24 (100 of it when we were 24) [and it's close to 140 pounds now)
  6. We have a full time job (well, now it's 32 hours a week - but they actually let us work around the other humans!) [it get's harder everyday, and this is the longest we've ever had a single job since we were 17. We've been there almost a year]
  7. We deal with social anxiety type symptoms every day (and these days we choose not to leave home much, but for going to work) [there are about three people we feel comfortable with being in public with and sometimes we have to be out there alone]
  8. We have multiple “mental illness” diagnoses (doesn't everybody?) [p.s. all misdiagnosed]
  9. We have two beautiful cats, who piss us off every day (but they are special, because they put up with us) [though one of us hates them beyond belief]
  10. We have struggled to survive, over and over, defeating the odds thrown against us (read our stories) [seriously, how are we not dead yet?]
We've copied the stories written here that are specifically about our past (mostly abuse) and moved them to our other blog, called:

Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"  
(this blog also contains our artwork/photography - the following links will take you to that blog)
Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote (consider them highlights), these are those entries since mid-January 2011. There are bits of writing in this blog that we do not actually promote due to embarrassment over things that some have written - they are here for our own tracking - they are angry, mean, scary things - usually. If you feel like it you can find them on your own (they are in the What We've Been Up To over on the left). Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:

The Mental Health Entries:
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder
Health:
Work:
Opinion:
Art/Poetry:
Humour/Random Fun:
If you have any questions for us we are very open and will answer to our best ability - this is totally the month to ask us questions. You can either ask us on Twitter, in the comment section of a blog entry here, or e-mail us at justcallmefrank2010 (at) gmail.com.

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Resources for You - facts, figures and personal stories of other people can be found on these sites:
National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml
American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
Canadian Mental Health Association: http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp
Mental Health Europe: http://www.mhe-sme.org/
World Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org

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