Slow Day At Work

It's that time of year when so many companies close down for a week or two that even companies that ARE open don't call because they assume everyone else is closed.

This makes for a very slow week in customer service.

On the one hand, this makes for a nice change. Normally, my office is quite busy, and I am taking phone calls, reading faxes and emails, and trying to work up pricing from a catalog, all simultaneously.

Normal days, busy days, seem to fly by. Every time you look at the clock, an hour or two has gone by and you're wondering how you will get every thing done. So you concentrate a little harder, multi-task a little more efficiently, and somehow you're usually caught up about 30 minutes before closing.

So, having a day to straighten out your catalogs, dust off your computer or change your calendar is nice. A much-needed mental break.

On the other hand, its a bit of a problem. Not because I can't handle eight hours of boredom. There are so many stories bouncing around in my head that I spend a solid five hours talking to myself on a slow day like today!

No, the problem is, on a slow week, on slow day number three, I've brought a book to the office. I'm all caught up and I only have about fifteen minutes of work in the morning and then I settle in with my book and I start reading. For two hours I read uninterrupted.

Then, the phone rang. A customer, with a fairly simple request, that required me to make another phone call, do a bit of math and then call them back. On a normal day, I would be grateful for the easy task and take care of it in between multiple other items. However, after two hours of doing nothing, this task seemed unfairly difficult. "Why do I get the phone call that requires math? No one else has had phone calls like this today...."

And when a colleague called me to check-in, I was completely incapable of talking to him while doing the other task....and couldn't convince myself that it was okay to stop working on the task for five minutes. . . I still had six long hours stretching out ahead of me to get it done!

Somehow slow days make me completely unproductive.

Being broke is a lot like being busy at work, for me.

Discovering I was broke was like getting hired on at this job. I had a million things to do and learn and was up all night on message boards and reading blogs and running to the library for every debt book I could find. I never tired of the topic, never got bored with the topic, and somehow, just when I thought I couldn't stand drowning in my debt for one more month, the payments were complete and there was the end of the tunnel and...ahh.

Being out of debt is about like a slow day. You start relaxing. You get other hobbies. You decide to try the $60 hair cut instead of the $6 hair cut. You buy some new clothes, pay to wash your car. You're not doing anything crazy. Not putting yourself in debt. You're just sort of. . .floating along.

But then comes that call. A leaking intake manifold gasket leak on your car. A medical bill, or two or four. Nothing huge, in fact, you actually have the cash in your savings account to handle the bill. But somehow after floating along this bump is tremendous!

I must get this medical bill paid right away and get the money back into savings because who knows what will happen!! Something is wrong with my car? My car?!? Do I need a new car? Can I really afford this repair? What if I go to the cheapest repair shop and they don't really fix it?!?

I've recently paid off my medical bills. Again. It has me breathing this sigh of relief just as deeply as if I was just making the last payment on my car. But the thing is, I had the money all along to pay ALL of my medical bill. . . I just spread it out to pay it from my HSA, rather then paying it from savings and reimbursing myself.


Today was a slow day at work. And it was a nice reminder to enjoy the downtime, take advantage of it, but make sure you're really caught up and prepared for the busy times.