Alright, so, here's the deal. Turns out that I'm *not* as Anthrofest-bound as I thought that I was!

So, when last I talked about me going to Anthrofest on here, it seemed like a sure-fire thing, right? Well, turns out that I was wrong.

It all started out last Friday. It was announced that, as the telesurveying company that I now work for is planning on moving buildings (which I was not aware of), they finally found a new building to move into. The move is being planned for September. However, before the move happens, they've decided to move to a new operating system for when they move into a new building. This new operating system (moving from DASH to VCC, and don't ask me what they stand for, I dunno), is apparently going to cause a rewiring of the entire computer system, because it'll be running on all-new hardware. They had been offered to move to the new OS some time ago, apparently, but had decided not to, because it would be too much of a hassle to require the entire center. However, since they're moving to a new building, they can do it then, and the timing for it is perfect. I get that. I understand why this is an opportune time to do that.

This is where everything started to fall apart, though. See, in order to move everything onto a new OS and new hardware, they've decided to send our two biggest surveying projects to the call center in Winnipeg, because they already have the new system, and they want to test it out, and make sure that no bugs are going to arise unexpectedly. What does this mean? It means that now we're stuck with our 3 smallest projects. This leads to less work, which then leads to the only available shifts being 4:30PM-9:00PM shifts, instead of having 1:00PM-4:30PM shifts as well.

So, when this was said, I'm thinking "Okay, fine, no biggie. I'll be budgeting a lot tighter, but I should still be able to make it to Anthrofest."

Guess what? It gets worse...

Oh, and they're only going to need 15 people per shift (Keep in mind that this center has somewhere in the vicinity of 25-30 employees).

...and worse...

Oh, and the scheduling is going to be done in order of seniority, according to how long you've been working there. There have been no new hires since the training class that I was in... meaning that I'm the very bottom of the totem poll here.

Okay, so, that was bad enough. But you would think that they would have the common decency to at least give me one shift per week, at the very least, right? I mean, it'd only make sense, right?

Too bad logic doesn't come into play for call centers, apparently. When I went online on Sunday to check my "new and improved work schedule" for the coming week... I had NO SHIFTS. So I call up the center, and ask that they double-check it for me, to make sure that something wasn't screwed up on the online website. Nope, everything is honkey-dorey, with me having no shifts. So I check on the announcements page of the online scheduling site, and what do I see? Basically, and explanation of what had already been brought to my attention regarding shift changes for the coming month... oh wait, with an added bonus!

"This means that we will really have limited shifts while we are testing out projects in Winnipeg. This could take a month or two or three."

That's right, this fucking bullshit could last up to THREE MONTHS.

So... what am I going to be doing about this? I'm going to be calling the call center, and asking Lana, the woman in charge of scheduling, if she can guarantee me at LEAST 50 hours per month, by the end of the month. If I can't even get that, then I am going to be looking for work ASAP (although I've already started as of today). 50 hours of work is what I need at BARE MINIMUM in order to be able to pay my rent, bills, and food. I'm not even saving any extra money on the side with that.

So, I guess that I'm not going to Anthrofest anymore, because my job has decided to fuck every single employee over, and not give them the money that they need to live. Congratulations, Leger Marketing, on adding to the employee-friendly work environment that already *thrives* in Edmonton. Way to go above and beyond for your people.

* * * * *

So, all that being said... I'm tired. I'm tired of trying to go out of my way to be the nice guy. I'm tired of being the shoulder that people cry on all the time. I'm tired of working for employers that don't give two shits about the health of their staff. I'm tired of having to scrape by, eating nothing but pasta and oatmeal. I'm tired of people saying "Hey, it looks like you've lost some weight!", and them not knowing it's because I'm eating one meal a day, because I can't afford any more than that. I even joke about it sometimes, because if the topic is brought up, and I don't chuckle or laugh at myself, I'm scared of breaking down into tears. I'm tired of not being able to go to sleep until 4 or 5 or even 9 or 10 in the morning, because if I go to bed any earlier than that, I wake up 4-5 hours later. I have to exhaust myself before I'm able to get a decent 5-6 hour sleep.

And you know what the weird, stupid part of all of that is? As crappy as things are right now, and as little as I have... I still go out of my way to give money that I barely have for myself to buy stuff for my room-mates when I know that they've been having a crappy week, or hell, even when I just plain feel like it. I'm generous when I don't even have anything to be generous with... how stupid is that?

(As a side-note, if you see me on a constant basis, please don't bring this up in person... I'll just feel weird talking about it. Feel free to comment here if you want to, though. You know who you are.)