I can be so mean!

I can be really mean sometimes, but dang if it didn't make my day! So, as I mentioned in my last post, I've been extremely stressed lately! Tonight, I was driving home from work and something happened that normally would have made me even more mad. Instead, I had some fun!

Background, for those of you that have never driven in a car with me, I am not a slow driver. I hate to drive slow! Don't get me wrong! I'm not a huge speed demon either. I mean, I've been driving for almost 12 years and have only had 1 speeding ticket. But I always drive between 5-10 over the speed limit. I go crazy if I have to go too slow! But, one of my main pet peeves are drivers that tailgate. Usually when that happens, I just get mad. Tonight, I had a bit of fun.

Anyways, so I was driving home from work. I was on a regular street, one lane each direction, 35 mph speed limit. I was going 45. This girl pulls up RIGHT behind me. She was so close to me that I couldn't see her headlights! That's pretty dang close! For a minute, I was livid! I just wanted to yell at her to get off my ass! Then, I had a better idea. I slowed WAY down. In fact, I slowed down to 25 mph! She was getting so mad. Stayed right on my tail, starts swerving back and forth. I was laughing so hard! Then, when I got to the light where I should have turned left. I figured that I didn't want my fun to be over yet! So I went straight, and stayed right in front of her! She finally went taking off down a side street that I'm pretty sure wasn't her original destination.

I know, I shouldn't be mean to people. But sometimes it just feels really good! I needed a good laugh, and I got one tonight!

The Craziness of 2010

Wow! Has it really been over a month since I last updated my blog? I don't know why that surprises me. So far, 2010 has been an extremely crazy/busy/stressful year!

I'm sure most of you know (or at least could guess if you follow me on facebook), that my job with JetBlue has been a bit stressful right now. Ok, "a bit" is an understatement! Last summer they announced to all of us employees that we would be switching to a brand new computer/reservations system. At first, I was pretty excited. I love learning new things, and looked forward to the challenge. It was quite a long process to get all of the reservation agents trained on the new system, over 4 months! My two week training were the last two weeks of December. I finished on January 3rd. The new system was scheduled to come online January 30, so I figured that I had a month to relax before the cutover.

Nope! I was wrong. My trainer emailed me several times asking me to consider doing an advance training to help out with a specialized team, called RED (Refunds / Exchange Desk). That sounded like fun. So that was another 5 days of training. Next, I ended up being picked to cross-train on another specialty team IAD (a help desk for the rest of the reservation agents). Another 3 days of training. By this time, I had a few days off, and then cutover!

I had no idea how difficult things were going to get!!! Let me explain this the way that I try to tell our customers when they don't understand what's going on. On the day that we switched from one computer system to the other, the thousands and thousands of reservations that were in the old system all had to be moved over and converted to the new computer system. Well, those reservations aren't quite compatible with the new system. So, when a customer calls to change or cancel their reservation, it causes major issues! Not to mention that it took a couple of weeks to get some of the bugs out of the new system, plus we were still amateurs at this system. Not a good combo!!!

Those first few days of cutover were probably some of the most stressful days I've had. It took an average of an hour to just change a customer's flight! Very nerve wracking! Also, in one day I went from being extremely good at and confidant in my job, to feeling like I knew absolutely nothing! My mantra for that weekend was "I can't quit! I can't quit! I can't quit!" Believe me, I was tempted to! I think that I threatened to quit probably 20 times in that first weekend. Added to this stress was the mandatory Overtime that we all had to work. Because of that, in the first two days of cutover, I worked 23 hours! Still not quite sure how I survived!

Thankfully things have improved immensely! Part of that is because a lot of the glitches have been fixed. But also, now when I get those odd errors, I know how to fix them! Or at least most of them. I still have a reservation every once in a while that pops up and really gives me fits, but I can handle that. As long as it's not on every call!!!

Also, I have to say that this whole thing has just reminded me of why it is that I LOVE working from home! I had to work at the center for the first couple of weeks. I really missed working in my PJ's! Plus, when you work two jobs it's really nice to not have to worry about two separate commutes! So glad to be back home!

That has basically been all that I've done this entire year so far! Oh, one afternoon I had a great lunch with my cousin Amy. But other than that, I literally have done nothing but work for the last 6 weeks. Hopefully things will calm down a bit now!

BTW, I fell completely off the wagon with my New Year's Resolutions. Been a bit too stressed to be thinking about them! But it's time to get back on track! Wish me luck!