Divisions and Precisions

A Day in the Life

I realized that for all that I talk about myself as a part of this journal, there's really very little information about what I actually do during my day. Granted, it's probably not terribly exciting, but.. hey, I already broke down a month, why not break down a day?

9:00 am -- Stereo starts up. Sisters of Mercy. Loud. I promptly groan and turn it off, setting the timer to go off in thirty more minutes.
9:30 am -- Stereo goes off again. More moaning and groaning and glaring at the sun outside my window. Eventually (closer to 10) I get up and start getting ready for work.
10:40 am -- I leave the house, about five to ten minutes late.
11:00 am -- (Or close enough to 11, anyway) I get to work. Spend the first fifteen minutes chatting with Jo and Michelle about life in general, and anything I need to know about the morning. (But mostly, it's just gossip. Gossip is a staple of the day. C'mon. We're receptionists, sister to the secretary. We gotta keep up the stereotype.)
11:15 am -- First email check of the day. I answer phones while I catch up on my email lists. (Answering phones: I'm a receptionist for an accounting software company. Customers call the 800 number for support and customer service. If clueless or lost or lazy or phone-treephobic, they press '0' and get one of us.)
11:40 am -- (Or thereabouts) My weird combination of breakfast and lunch. Followed by a snack of some sort around 5, and dinner around 8:30 or 9.
Noon -- Start working on projects in earnest. Projects include spreadsheets with call statistics for support for the previous day, and on Friday, carting huge useless stacks of paper all over the company (also called 'delivering daily reports' - I hate it). In between calls and data entry and sorting faxes and whatever else I'm doing, I keep an eye on my email, and find quotes for the day's journal entry. The phone calls also never stop. Included are the usual irate customers and the occasional wrong number:

"Hello? Is this Clairol? I want to know where to find the old liquid hair-coloring you used to make, because this new cream stuff is horrible on my hair!"
"Ma'am, this is an accounting software company."
"This isn't Clairol? This is the number that's on the box."
"No ma'am. We make software for accountants."
"Is this [rattles off a phone number nowhere close to one of ours]?'
"I'm sorry, ma'am, it's not."
"Well can you tell me how to reach them?"

The conversation continues for a bit after that, and finally she hangs up. If there's any justice in the world, somewhere a Clairol receptionist is answering questions about a payroll reporting program.
2:00 pm -- Okay. I've done sufficient work. Now it's time to start slacking off in earnest. Translation: Time to write the journal entry. Hey, I'm still answering phones, right? On a good day, it takes me about thirty to forty-five minutes to write an entry, barring writer's block or huge phone interruptions. Yesterday was not a good day. Tough entry. I kept getting stuck. I know what I wanted to say, but I don't think I quite said it.
3:00 pm -- Lunch time. Well, okay, I almost never eat on my lunch hour. I usually write or goof around online. This time yesterday, still writing the journal entry. And writing. And revising.
4:00 pm -- Back from lunch. Worked on projects a little more, sent some email.
6:00 pm -- The other receptionists have left (usually, the Banal One has no life, and often hangs around doing nothing rather than going home). From here on out, I usually stick to sorting faxes and goofing around a bit more online.
8:00 pm -- Quitting time! I head out. Usually I pick up dinner on the way home. I almost never cook. Never. This is one of the big things I want to change when I move out on my own again.
Evening -- I spend most of the evening online, as several friends are on and we end up causing a ton of trouble. It was fun. My projects for the night, in addition to role-playing, are two different character applications that I'm working on. Usually I end up talking to Brand, but not last night. Instead, somewhere around 3:30 am, James shows up and we got to talk for a bit. he kinda let me have it about my journal entry for yesterday. I said that the things I give in a friendship are harder to quantify. His response: "The things that are harder to quantify are usually the more important things. You're an awesome person to have as a friend. Accept it." Well.. if you insist...
4:00 am -- I finally crawled off to bed for the night.

All in all a pretty typical weekday for me. Posted by Lisa at September 3, 1999 02:13 PM