The Comedown is Hard!

Olaa!

Driving Mr. Warehouse to his doctor's appointment on Friday morning I could feel the blues setting in already and it has not even been twenty-four hours yet. As the chill of autumn crept into my bones and the spitting rain settled on the windscreen of my car only to be wiped away with my automatic windscreen wipers. I remember the comedowns from the other holidays that I had, and on recalling just how bad coming back to reality after Las Vegas, I knew that I would soon change my tune. Besides, the leaves are now falling and Halloween is well on its way. Fireworks will soon be in the shops and cold winter nights will replace the long summer days. And then before you know it it will be Christmas!!! 

But enough about what the next few months entail, I know that you really want to know what the rest of our holiday in Tenerife was like you nosey-beggers! So the last time we spoke Mr Warehouse had become exceedingly drunk, and to what I recount, ate a family sized bar of chocolate only to vomit it back up moments later. After we cleaned up (and when I say we I actually just mean me) and awoke the next morning, Mr. Warehouse feeling a little bit worse for wear, we decided on a relaxing day by the pool. Now you may think that lounging  by the pool all day would sound like a blissful dream, however there are always those aforementioned parents that do not think their children need to start school at the same time as everyone else and as a result are encroaching on my holiday space, taking up sun beds and generally being a annoyance when trying to catch some rays! 

On said afternoon as I was lounging by the pool on a bed which can only be described as made from flimsy plastic, barely able to hold up my posterior. Enjoying the sunshine and enjoying exactly how hot it was in comparison to what was previously a very cold office on a Monday afternoon. Thinking about the constant ringing of the telephone and customers calling in with problems and issues put a smile on my face all in the knowledge that I did not have to deal with it for another week (and as wonderful as that may have seemed I think I was more than happy to get back to the daily Grind today). Plugging in my headphones I was loving life jamming away with my toes to Dizzee Rascal or something by Calvin Harris pretending I was at a cool party in my head, all the while covering my head and face with my large beach hat so as not to burn my forehead and nose again. 

Suddenly I felt a large drip on my belly. "Surely it can't be rain, its barely clouded over all week" I thought, "probably one of those annoying kids spraying water at me whilst their parents try to ignore them as much as everyone else" I questioned as I prepared to sit up and check. Looking around there was no children in my vicinity and not a water gun to be seen. "Hmmm" I pondered as I lay back down to crisp up. But just as I laid my head back under my massive sombrero I felt a splash of cold water hit me on the stomach and legs. There was only one person that could be. Gasping for air as the shock hit me just as much as the water had done, I whipped off my shades to look up and see Mr. Warehouse standing on the balcony clutching in empty glass and looking fairly pleased with himself. Angry, cooled-down and humoured all at the same time I dashed in and wrestled Mr. Warehouse into a tickle fight. I suppose that this is what holidays are meant for the silly occasions where you are able to be yourself and have fun. 

Tuesday Mr. Warehouse and I headed out early to get one of the first buses to the local water Park. Obviously when I say local water park it probably brings to mind silly little rides for kids, dodgy plasters floating around in the pools and nearly slipping over at every turn. But this was different. This was Siam Park. Siam Park is the best Water park in the entire world, at least according to TripAdvisor anyway. Spending most of our day on the lazy river getting burnt further, Mr. Warehouse and I did venture into the Beach area where we were knocked head over heels in a man-made tidal wave which is every combination of emotions from hearing the horrified screams of people waiting to be hit by the wave, to the excited squeals of children (OK and me as an adult) as they watch it hurtling towards them, ready to sweep them away. Mr. Warehouse braved a few rides with me as well including a dreaded "red ride". The Park as a whole follows a very simple traffic light system whereby the rides are labelled from Green which is very plain and simple family friendly rides, all the way up to read which is death-defying, exciting and wet all at the same time. I attempted a few videos of some of the rides and experiences we had in the park as well as the other things we did about the week, however despite being on the continent where buying drugs on the street is seemingly readily available they still take health and safety very seriously and as a result I was not allowed to film on most of the rides in Siam Park. 

Our last full day on the island I planned to spend in Paradise on mine and Mr. Warehouse's little private beach we found, however the boyfriend thought that it would be a good idea to gain some cultural knowledge about the island and Discover some of the delights surrounding the resorts. In a last ditch attempt to find something to do we booked ourselves on an excursion to tour the volcanic mountain range of Teide national park as well as visiting the mountains it's self. As beautiful as it was it was nothing in comparison to the Grand Canyon, for I am afraid to say that once you have seen one rock you have seen them all. When you look at the fact that Mount Teide national park could fit into the Grand Canyon national park over thirty-times, it certainly gives you a bit of scale. Travelling across the mountain range we headed to some little seaside towns where we got to have a spot of lunch before soaking in the beautiful island of Tenerife in all its tropical glory. Tackling the treacherous roads that lead up and down of the mountain range I was certainly glad of getting a coach and not hiring a car as I am not sure that I would have been able to hold my nerves whilst going round some of the hairpin turns we had to manoeuvre. 

Alas though our holiday had to come to an end at some point. We had our pooch to come back to and our lovely little flat which Miss Tweedle-Dee had been looking after the both of them whilst Mr. Warehouse and I were away. Since being back I think people are accustomed now to thinking that Mr. Warehouse and I are constantly holidaying and are planning next years already. Whilst I would love to have a job of simply writing reviews and going on trips to just write and blog and vlog all the time, that is not reality and thus I need to return back to my normal office job in order to save up for the next time we go away. Where Mr. Warehouse and I will go nobody knows;; Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Bratislava. But one thing is for sure that the next few weeks I will certainly be keeping my eyes peeled for a good deal through one of the budget Airlines. 

'Til next time, Love A.Lou xx

Work Hard, Play Hard!

Afternoon All, 

I hope you are all well and toasty where you are currently as here in Britain we are in a teeth-chatteringly cold snap to which I hope ends soon. I wish that I could just make like a door-mouse sometimes and just hibernate until spring arrives. Safe to say that in the first week of February, winter now officially sucks!

What doesn't suck though is working at a call centre with no rewards for nearly half a year. Of course I am joking with this one. Working at the call centre day in, day out, week after week with nothing to show for my hard work is taking its toll. So far I have saved up a fair chunk and am now not only hitting triple figures but very nearly quadruple digits in my 'Vegas Fund' bank balance. I am sure that with now less that six-weeks to go before I board my British Airways flight bound for Sin City (Floppy fedora and oversized sunglasses accompanying me) and with even less weeks worth of working I am sure looking forward to getting back to a normal life of coming home after work and still seeing the sun. 

In all honesty working at the call centre isn't all horrific crackly lines and being hung up on. In several instances it has been a very enjoyable time and one of which my day has been made between the hours of 5.30pm and 9pm. I am grateful of course to whomever decides that they would like to complete a call with me but even more so if they can have a laugh and maybe a cheeky flirt with me too. 

On one occasion, only a few weeks into my job I called a business address by mistake and upon answering a gruff Scottish voice answered in testosterone tones. After sadly confirming it was a business line I was asked a question that took me by such surprise I ended up fabricating a complete lie and feeling chuffed about the response. 
"Ohh, Waait. Before yee goh Miss can I ask yeez a question?" The manly Scot asked (Spelt as said in his thick northern accent). Humouring him I agreed to answer, praying it wasn't something lude or vulgar. 
"Aare yuh maarried? Cas tha' vooice o' yours is prrroper seexy. I'd marry yuh ... " My masculine caller purred down the phone. Trying my best to answer in a polite and professional manner I thanked the gentleman and swiftly put down the phone before having to take a moment to compose myself and gather my scatty thoughts. I had never, nor have I ever been someone to fall for a Scotsman before, but I could somehow imagine him beefed up slightly only wearing jeans a size too small and a hard hat in some sort of hot, sweaty, oily construction site, surrounded by his equally hot and seductive friends. 

Another call I took once was from a man who played with me throughout the call and answered my questions promptly and productively only for me to get to the end of the call and I then had to take his email address for contact purposes. Jotting it down the now familiar voice asked down the phone for me to read it - but only in my head. I read it back to him phonetically as I clocked what was happening - 'sean sports therapist' was part of his email address (obviously would not disclose all of it ... you might all email him) but when written down correctly and as I had taken it it looked like a very VERY different sentence (Take out the spaces in 'sports therapist' and you'll see what I mean). Shocked and at a loss for words my caller immediately realised what had just happened and apologised profusely throughout the rest of the conversation and explaining many, many times that he was not what it looked like. All in all he calmly, although sheepishly finishing off by letting me know that I had his email address and that I could contact him any time. Although it probably breached some sort of data protection I did email him and to my surprise he seemed like a very nice lovely man in his mid-late twenties, clearly buff from all the 'sports therapist' work he had been doing. 

I think it is those sorts of calls that make the shifts go faster. I mean sure I will have days where I want to hang myself with the phone line because some grandma has a problem with me calling at 5.43pm because Countdown is on or that a Londoner "just simply does not have time" but there are also the funny people that make my adrenaline run sky high when they are yelling, quite literally, down the line before I have even introduced myself. One women thought that my questions (I work in Market Research call centre if you hadn't already guessed) were far too personal - I had asked her whether Boris Johnson was a good mayor of London - And so proceeded to interview me asking if I was a lesbian and if I fancied having sex with a girl. Another women wailed down the phone that her dog had died because the phone rang and he had a heart attack and she was just too distressed to talk to me right now. 

Some of them are hilarious. Including the ones where the person on the other end of the phone is doing something completely unorthodox whilst you twitter on about lifestyle choices and the war in Syria. I have spoken to several people on the toilet who have either half way through or ended the call by allowing me to hear them flush, or worse, deposit their contents. One man was even in the bath and after openly telling me it was a good time to call he continued to splish and splash about and make me fully aware that he was in the tub. The funny thing is, as when someone is on hands-free whilst driving, you can hear the echoey sounds of the water closet. You may think it a secret and nobody knows, but we know alright when your taking a dump and answering some questions on your poor customer service of late. 

And that is the joy of working in a call centre. Asking the questions and getting the answers that everyone wants to know. On the front-line of hard hitting studies and surveying I class myself as a fully equipped and well trained soldier, fighting the war on hanging up the phone and lies of being too busy. I am the Queen when it comes to Telephone work. That is all I have for you today, thank you and goodbye ... *Booooooooop* <--- Call ending tone.

'Til next time, Love A.Lou xx

Laid Off and Fighting Back!

Bloggers Note: I have recently decided to start a thing going whereby if you yourself have a 'Trial or Tribulation' that I can help with then feel free to drop me a free and fully confidential message by popping it on a mini form in the right-hand sidebar or email me at: Abbbey4@gmail.com :) xx

Heyy Everyone, 

So after the last couple of weeks being an emotional roller coaster and with disagreements surrounding my blogg content regarding my relationship with my mother and generally my family values life has not got much better. Yet again I am back at square uno and in the same situation I find myself all the damn time. I am, yet again, unemployed. 

This happened on Friday and was a culmination of many weeks slaving through overtime including ridiculously early mornings and tiring late evenings at work putting in the hours just to try and attempt to make a difference in my work load which was all in vain as when your part of what is meant to be a four or five person team running on two maybe three people you can imagine the stress and strain it caused. And so after ten-weeks in the new job role as Credit Control Administrator I was formerly considered unable to cope with the amount of pressure put on me as a team member and cleared my desk swiftly saying goodbye to work colleagues that I had come to love and admire. Safe to say I shall miss working there a little bit however there are some things (and some people) that I shall not miss. 

All in all whilst I sit here by my window in my little flat I am panicking. I have less than enough money in my bank account, I have bills coming out my arse left, right and centre and to top it all off the rent is due in less that three weeks. I am slowly slipping into my overdraft and have very little food in my kitchen to sustain me for much longer. I have no savings and spent all my driving lesson money on moving into my new abode of which not a penny of it has been put back. I think I am starting to get very, very concerned about my life now and how I shall manage on what a menial allowance the government in the UK pays people with no jobs. 

However I do not plan on investing in tracksuit bottoms just yet as I have had a rather proactive Monday whereby I have sought advice from the CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau) as well as the local council and have obtained a stack of paperwork to fill in and return first thing tomorrow morning. On Friday evening I was able to bag myself a telephone interview with a large company based and conducted myself so well this morning over the phone that they have offered me a second interview at their offices just outside Bedford. I have also been put through for a handful of other positions ranging from admin and Secretary work right down to good old customer service. I would love to go back to doing credit control and have stipulated that to the agencies in the town; But at this very moment I cannot be choosy as to where my next pay-cheque comes from. 

Other than that life has not been easy over the past few days although that wonderful Mr. Cheese of mine has been able to make life a little more bearable with his company. I thought that when it comes down to situations like this that I am quite an optimistic person, always seeing the silver lining in things and making the best out of a situation. But Mr. Cheese on the other hand brings a whole new meaning to looking up - No pun intended! Naughty! After chatting to him on Friday night, I dreaded even telling him thinking that he would no longer want to be my boyfriend because of my change in circumstance. I thought to myself as I rang his number for the fifth time that evening forcing myself not to hang up for lack of words, that somehow it would be much easier to just tell him that I no longer wanted to be with him any more. Yes. I know it sounds stupid because I'm more crazy about him than I am about Starbucks (and I fucking love Starbucks) but somewhere in my head it equates that I wouldn't want to date someone unemployed, so why would anyone want to date me with no job. I know. Silly really! Mr. Cheese's optimism shone through when he mentioned that the weekend is the weekend and that logically speaking I'm not classed as unemployed until Monday morning, which is a nice way to look at it, but it didn't stop my stomach from flipping the entire weekend knowing that bills still have to be paid and rent will become due soon. 

Life for the young people of Britain is hard. I'm not going to lie I hate being here again. Unemployed, Unwanted and Undervalued. It seems that the culture nower days is simply that employees, in particularly those under thirty are just too disposable. Even when you get a job its hard as employers know that if you don't want it that there are hundreds of people lined up behind you that are waiting for you to slip up. The benefits system in England is something I believe is a good thing and is there for people in desperate times to make ends meat and pay for things to help the survive. It is something manageable, not livable. Social security is not something I want to be on and I would like to think that the majority of people I plan to see at the Job Centre over the next week will be in the same boat as me. But all too often you see the iconic characters including velour track-suited mom's pushing a pram with a screaming child whilst two other tag along behind, the alcoholics and drug abusers whom with the money the government has just given them will go straight towards the tills of the nearest seven-eleven and the thugs that hang around in groups only to intimidate and scare those in society that should be respected and honoured. Yes. It is these people that I loath as I am sure many of you do. Why? Because unlike myself and other hard working individuals who have found themselves out of work, these people have no intention of getting a job instead claiming that they are unable to work due to health reasons, child care or some other phantom excuse. 

The Job Centre itself is about as much help as a chocolate teapot. Whilst the job-seekers loitering around the entrances of the lurid green institutes and you take your first steps inside what is meant to be a place of helpful information and advice you feel every little shred of joy you had left in your sole sucked out, turning you as grey and defeated as the cigarette ash coating the pavements outside. As studies have already proven the Job Centre is a failure in its own right. Jobs are rarely updated when filled, staff are unhelpful and the processes are complicated and confusing even for the best of people. Their job is to find you a job but seldom does that ever happened. Usually you are pointed in the direction of a website or machine that you can look at vacancies in the local area and towards information you could have picked up using Google. 

Whilst I have gone off on a slight tangent I do hope that with all this in mind I shall not be out of work for very long. Actually scratch that. You know what I know I wont be out of work for very long. I can do this. I can beat this and make something better for myself that sitting on the sofa eating CoCo Pops at 9am watching Jeremy Kyle and his guests battle it out for a DNA test. Seriously though! No. I plan to get up and fight this with everything I've got. I will make this better and have a job where I am appreciated and rewarded for my hard work. Fuck you life! I'm biting back - Rawr!

'Til next time, Love A.Lou xx