Feather Stitching

Unfortunately I only got about 5 hours quality sleep last night/this morning as my bladder decided to almost explode at 8am … followed by a wake-up call from a mystery caller at 9.45am – me thinks it’s going to be a loooooong day today haha. I thought it was Mum calling, as she never leaves a message, so I called her up in NZ and told her the great news about the job, and ended up talking for almost 1 1/2 hours 🙂

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments – I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing … I finally feel as though I’m back on track with my career, which is awesome. I’m still technically tied to the phones all day with a permanent headset on, but the calls are totally different. When we’re on ‘normal’ calls, we’re talking to the passengers directly – but I get bored. Now don’t get me wrong, the majority of the passengers I really enjoy chatting to and helping out, especially those that ‘need’ extra help ‘cos I’m generally very patient on the phone … it’s just that the type of calls we get I tend to get bored with. You can spend, literally, 1 1/2 hours trying to find seats around the world using their membership loyalty points, and after 6 calls in a row doing the same sort of thing, I kinda switch off and do everything by automatic pilot. Normal calls are still very varied, and as a “multi-skilled” Consultant I deal with both domestic (ie travel inside Australia) and international bookings, both paid and loyalty bookings, also hotels, cars, insurance etc if required. We also do a lot of ‘servicing’ calls for those people wishing to change their flights once they’ve left home, and get all the “remote” calls from overseas offices when they’re closed, eg once our Tuscon office closes, we get all the USA/Canada calls, and when our London office closes, we get all the UK/Europe calls, plus Asia, South Africa etc … we also deal with other airlines and worldwide airports when they need assistance. It’s basically the role of a travel agent, but over the phone. When a normal Consultant gets stuck, doesn’t know how to do something or can’t find a procedure etc, or the call has escalated, and they need fares originating outside Australia etc, they call the “Supervisor Hotline” … which is the role I’m now taking on full-time. I’ve been relieving in the role off-and-on for just over two years here in Aussie.

Anyway, the Hotline is the most challenging role in the Call Centre, in my opinion – you just don’t know what is going to come through on the next call, and it’s always something to keep the grey matter ticking over. Within a space of 15 calls last night I had to deal with a suspected credit card fraud case, rebooking people in Cairns/Townsville due to Cyclone Larry, a passenger having problems on the internet, a fare quote from Accra to Sydney, quarantine issues for taking plants from New South Wales into Western Australia, carriage of pets into Perth airport, urgent travel for someone who’s mother had been taken seriously ill, a passenger at Beijing check-in with no ticket issued and they need to close the flight, as well as many other more mundane queries. Because most of our ticketing is done electronically now, it’s up to me to reassess the fares and build all the ticketing data into the bookings manually to allow us to reissue the ticket, which is pretty complex. With this role you need to know a lot of stuff, but we deal primarily with internal staff only – so the Consultant has the passenger on hold, while they fix things up through us – although we do deal with groups bookings after hours, and other areas such as the airports etc. We also deal with some of our VIP travel agents and clients. It’s a very busy role, and aside from taking the complaint calls, I love it – but even the complaints sometimes are because the Consultant didn’t handle the call well, or didn’t have enough experience/knowledge to look at other options, so it’s an opportunity to come to a resolution when it comes through to me. We basically have the authority to waiver certain things, as we’re classed as ‘Supervisors’ except we don’t have the Supervisor salary LOL. The Supervisors don’t deal with things, though, unless it escalates further, which isn’t often – they’re there more to oversee the running of the office, making sure people are taking calls etc, and liaising with other departments about flight disrupts etc.

I have to say after being told the news, I’m still in a bit of a daze about it all – but it’ll be more real when I go into work today and find out more things such as rosters etc … that’s the GREAT thing now – whether I’m on the day roster or the shift roster, I’m only on ONE roster … no more finding out two weeks beforehand what I’m going to be working to cover someone else – I can actually plan my life now woohoo! And there’s only really one week where the shift turn-around time is poor, so no more doing one roster up until the middle of the week, then another roster then rest of the week, and having to work 8 days straight or losing my RDO’s etc … double woohoo!!!

One great thing about day work is that the earliest I start work is 7am, and the latest I finish is 6pm … but on the negative side I have to work 24 minutes (yep, that’s right, it’s not a typo … it’s actually 24 minutes!) extra each day to get an RDO every 8 weeks (ie a 3-day weekend) – it means I can get to Guild meetings more easily … but I’ll be spending about an hour or so extra in travelling times as it’s peak hour traffic (that’s the great thing about 5am starts etc – everyone else is still in bed LOL). It amazes me how much extra spare time I seem to have doing shift work … But, all-in-all, I don’t care! I’m just happy happy happy that I’m finally in that role. After being told I didn’t get the job last time one of the Consultants went and complained to the Supervisors, saying I was the best person on the Hotline, and they needed their heads reading haha – then last week another one came to me and said she couldn’t get her head around seeing me taking ‘normal’ calls, as it was so stupid wasting my time and wasting resources that way (that was also said by another Hotliner the previous week too) … so that’s been keeping my spirits up.

Anyway, I suppose I should be getting ready for work, as I’ve got a 10-hour day today, and need to call into the Guild on the way to work. And besides, I’ve probably bored you all senseless now LOL … I promise it’ll be back to stitching again soon – although my time this week is limited due to my shifts and social occasions (dinner straight from work tomorrow, and out on Saturday night, then my friend from NZ arrives on Tuesday for two nights stay). It’s a good job I got so much stitching done last weekend, to make up for it LOL.

It’s 2.40am, and I’ve just walked in the door from work, and I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow to blog about my news! The Hotliner who is on from 6pm-2am called in sick, so they asked me to cover his shift … I was on 4pm-midnight shift on the phones, so I said I’d take on the extra 2 hours at the end as overtime – and that’s a good thing, as it looks like I’ll need every cent I can get my hands on for a while …

At 11.30pm tonight I got a call from the Hotline Supervisor, Sally, to say she couldn’t go to sleep without calling me – she finished work at 3pm, so left before I arrived at work … anyway, earlier today they gave the approval to fill another Hotline vacancy from the last interview intake, and I was next on the list for the job, so I got offered the job straightaway as it was inside 3 months of the original jobs being advertised. Unfortunately, as we’d already guessed, the job is a full-time day shift Senior Consultant role, which is a drop in pay due to no shift penalties, but I’ve accepted it anyway as that’s the role I really want – and I’ve put my name down to be switched to shift work as soon as a vacancy comes up (which will hopefully be soon, as they’re advertising for a Supervisor position at the moment, and it’s likely a shift Hotliner will get that job, leaving another shift Hotline position open).

The hardest thing about being told so late tonight is that I couldn’t share it with anyone! So my work email was getting worked overtime as I let my family, Fraze and Hayles know … I’ll have to crack open a bottle of wine tomorrow to celebrate properly … even though I’ll be getting home after midnight again after another 2 hours overtime (this time from 2pm-4pm) – that means hopefully tomorrow will be my final day ever on the ‘normal’ phones, as I’m relieving another Hotliner for 3 weeks from Wednesday, then my new day shift roster will probably kick in.

Anyway, just wanted to share the happy news! 😀 Dunno how I’m gonna get to sleep now LOL.

Today was my last 5am start, and I now have two days off work – it was supposed to be 3 days, but I’m doing 4 hours of overtime on Sunday yippee!! My guests will be leaving on Sunday, so then it will be back to ‘business as usual’ – my apologies for not being around much on the blogs at the moment, but that’s the main reason … my hours of work have been appalling, and the time I have had at home has been spent with Hayley & Peter – today, however, I have a few hours to myself and I should be catching up on blogs, but I want to catch up on TV viewing from during the week that I’ve been missing, partly due to the fact I’ve been sleeping while my fave shows have been on, and partly because I have lost access to the remote control as it is owned by the current male of the household and have had to watch programmes I don’t normally have any interest in … so tonight I’d like to at least catch up on a couple of taped shows, and get a bit of stitching in – fingers crossed I’ll see the last stitches completed on my Star of Wonder ornament if nothing else … The latest progress is here – I managed to pop in a few extra stitches last night while in bed trying to wind down ready for sleep at 7.30pm – I couldn’t find my skein of GAST Black Crow, so I replaced it with plain old DMC 310.

I have the day off tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on some blogs again – I’m dreading looking and seeing how many have piled up for reading again … but I don’t want to skip any and miss out on anything good! LOL.

I should say, too, that last night was the opening of the Commonwealth Games held here in Melbourne – I taped the opening ceremony last night, so I can watch it in full, and the write-up was that it was a huge success. Some of the cycling and road events are taking place about 15 minutes walk away from me, as well as the swimming events, so I might get chance to wander down and soak up some of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, where sporting events are concerned, I can’t barrack for my Aussie brethren, even though I live here – my true colours are “All Black”, so I’ll be barracking for the Kiwis … unless the Kiwis aren’t in a race, of course, then the Aussies get my vote LOL. We’re very well known for our trans-Tasman sporting rivalry! 😀

Yet another Little Britain line LOL … but the title reflects my day yesterday – had a wonderful day out, once I recovered from my hangover!! H & P arrived Sunday lunchtime, and once I got home from work at about 7pm, H and I sat and had dinner that I whipped together, followed by a nice bottle of chardonnay … followed by another bottle of chardonnay … after that I quit drinking, but H put another bottle away as well as half a bottle of red – how the heck she managed to walk, I don’t know!! After about 5 glasses of wine, I was suffering the next morning – I’m just not used to drinking anymore as I don’t do it very often … I didn’t sleep too well, and felt decidedly seedy yesterday morning 😦 But we caught a tram into the city and spent a lovely afternoon in the fresh air having a bite to eat and lovely coffee with a friend of H’s at Melbourne University – then went shopping for a while at Melbourne Central … it’s quite a nice shopping complex now – I was really surprised. Then after a quick nibble of sushi we came home, and went to Dan Murphy’s and a supermarket and stocked up for the week. A dinner of very healthy chicken wraps followed, and not a single drop of alcohol … phew! I’ve told H she can’t come back to stay again for at least six weeks until I get released from rehab LOL – we do this every time she comes round, ‘cos we don’t see each other for about six months at a time, and nearly kill ourselves on the first night.

Anyway, I was supposed to be having an early night last night, and ended up picking up my needle at 10pm for an hour … and have some little white blobs to show for my efforts! I’m finally stitching the Star of Wonder ornament that I had planned to stitch with the Friends Gather BB last month, but my fabric didn’t arrive in time from Silkweaver – anyway, it’s finally started, and is a nice small thing to pick up while H & P are here. No stitching tonight, though, as I won’t get home from work until 6.30pm, and I have to be in bed at 7.30pm ready for a 5am start … that sucks big time! I HATE this changeover in shifts … mutter mutter mutter … Rightio, off to work I go …

Seeing as I don’t have any stitching to post, I thought I’d take up Kim’s challenge and post a piccie of my current favourite mugs. The sunflower one is a china one and I use it for my teas, and I usually use the cat one for my coffee and milo, ‘cos it’s quite huge. Unfortunately my absolutely favourite pair of mugs got broken by Andrew and Fraze in the last flat … I requested that Fraze buy me one for Christmas, which would have been a nice cheap gift, but I guess I’ll get around to ordering them again myself one day. It was a beautiful hand-made pottery mug made by a potter in Coffs Harbour, Queensland, and was the perfect size, perfect shape, and perfect colour – blue with a purply tinge towards the top … The cat one I have now was just a cheap one on sale to use until I replaced those hand-made ones, but I’ve ended up loving drinking from it – the shape and size is great 🙂 Those are the coasters that I use as well – they’re glass with turquoise stripes on them … I adore turquoise!

Well, my first guests arrive today – I ended up spending all my time last night rearranging the lounge furniture, as I came home from work to my missing lounge chair sitting outside the front door, much to my surprise, as I had no prior notice that it was coming until it had arrived! … so this morning I am up very early to get all the things done that I had planned to do last night, before they arrive. I feel pretty exhausted, but at least I was so exhausted last night, I slept for 9 1/2 hours solidly, which is the first time in over a week – yippee! Better enjoy it while I can, as I’m coming up to 5am starts this week … groan. Don’t know if I’ll get any stitching done this week while H & P are staying here – I really hope so, though … I think I need some good stitching time to restore my state of peace, as I’m feeling a bit ragged!