TL;DR: Likely going to quit my current job soon. Will continue with commissions likely soon once I've recovered

TW: Talks of SI

This is kinda a vent journal, sorta just getting my thoughts out there for now. I've been in an extremely emotionally rocky state of mind lately, and it's clear that won't be fixed anytime soon. I am taking therapy and it's been extremely helpful. This likely won't be that interesting of a journal, no juicy drama or life-altering story here, and no real "OMG I can't believe NCL is this evil everyone boycott them" zinger in here either. It's not like they're the only company with these kinds of practices, and honestly they're far from the worst.

I guess I'll just start at the beginning. We started with a 4 week long training course which was, admittedly, pretty fun. It made the job feel really relaxed and interesting. Admitedly, I thought it went a little slow at times, and went over information that even the instructors didn't think would be relevant. Like, why do I need to memorize that Icy Point Strait in Alaska has the longest zip-rider in the world? We weren't salesmen, we were "Cruise Specialists" which was a fancy word for a more technical customer service rep.

In any case, much of the class was just going over different itineraries, what each ship offered, etc. Not so much the programs we would be using for 99.9% of our time working here. We made a handful of new reservations with Seaweb, and we were only graded ONCE to see if we were even doing it right. The other 9-10 times we made new reservations for practice, we had literally no idea if we were doing it right or not. The other program we would be using everyday, Salesforce, was touched on like... once or twice in the entire four weeks.

Still, the training was so slow, and the content easy enough to memorize, it looked like this job would be a slam dunk. After training came transition, and that's when I realized we were in for a world of hurt. How to do repricing/redrops, how to use half of Seaweb, how to pull up the latest price programs and promotions, how to properly bundle Air or add transfers, how to navigate the fucking NCL.com web browser or app, none of that was covered. I felt like an absolute moron on the phones. The four weeks of training did not prepare you for any of it. I was literally learning with the customers half the time. My second monitor was FULL of sticky notes that I'd be writing down during calls. Our only helpline was that during transition, we were allowed to put the customers on hold for a maximum of 5 minutes to ask in a group chat for help.

Problem was, a LOT of people needed help a LOT of the time, and we only had 3-4 advisors available to assist. There were times I got glossed over, so I had to figure it out on my own, either through reverse engineering or just through intuition. Throughout Nov-Dec it was like this, and the entire time I was told it would get easier, that it would stick, and I would need to ask for less help as time went on it. And to their credit, they were right. It DID stick. Hell, later on when I did have to ask a complicated question, I even went through the group chat and answered some of my colleague's questions just in the hopes that the supervisors would get to my question faster.

Of course, I never got any praise for being a go-getter or a team player, whereas others did for helping each other the same way...

In any case, while it got easier, the stress was still prevalent. I'd gotten kind of nasty lately. My patience even outside of work just... wasn't there anymore. I like to playfully banter and tease my friends and vice versa, but sometimes I'd just suddenly snap and scream at them and cuss them out. It felt horrible; these were my closest friends, my literal bestmen for my wedding, and I was treating them so terribly. I've had to apologize to them so many times, promise them and myself that I would find my footing too, that I'd adjust and get over it.

January came and I was finally out of probation and into a real team. And with it came wave season. We were very busy in Nov-Dec, but after New Years, we were all averaging 80-100 calls a day. There is literally no time in between calls. The SECOND a call ends, another immedietely begins.

An example of what a call would be like:
1) I'd state the greeting while Salesforce pops up with their info
2) The client identifies themself. For this case we'll say this is a travel agent looking to make a payment on an existing reservation.
3) I state "I can help you with that" and ask for the res# while writing down the travel agent's name earlier
4) I listen for the res# and put it in Seaweb. When that pops up, I ask them to verify the sail date and name of the ship while writing the res# in Salesforce next
5) They give me the info. I ask for the name of one of the passengers on the ship while also verifying they're giving the correct info, while also making sure Salesforce pulls up the reservation. If not, I have to do a manual log for the call.
6) They give me a name. I ask for the agency phonenumber while also selecting the name they gave me of the passenger they're calling for.
7)I listen to the agency phonenumber, while reading it in Seaweb to identify it is the correct agency phonenumber, while also writing in Salesforce that the caller is the travel agent who wants to make a payment.
8) I thank them for the info, then pull up the payment page. I verify how much is to be paid. Then I ask for the card number, date, security code, and billing address (the easiest part so far because no multitasking)
9) If the payment is successful, I quickly write a note in Seaweb that I'm a cruise specialist, taking a call from the Travel agent, writing the name down, that i took a payment, and will send a confirmation. All while asking if they want a confirmation email.
10) They say yes. I ask if they want both guest and agent copy. I then send whichever they want, or both (another easy part: just click check marks)
11) "Thank you for calling Norweigian Cruise lines" *click*

And then immedietely another call. This is the amount of multitasking I have to do for 8 hours a day, with two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. And this is what I would consider an easy call because it's just writing down what I'm hearing/seeing. No real thinking involved, unlike many other calls. Of course, I didn't have to multitask, but we are graded on call handling time, and I was already on the lower end even with all of the multitasking...

The callers stress me out sometimes. A lot of the direct guests are very entitled. "I lost my medicine bag on the cruise and left the port." Ok well you need to fill out a form onli- "No I can't do that. Let me drive back to the port and pick it up." Ok well I can't guarentee it'll be there- "I can tell you what stateroom I left it in just give it back to me." Unfortunately that isn't how we handle Lost and Found objects. The ship has already left the port too. You will need to fill out a- "Omg you're no help. Let me speak to your supervisor" Then I call the supervisor and they're like "Yeah we can't help her" and they'll hang up on me lmao.

Travel Agents are usually better because they know the whole song and dance, but there are those who are weirdly extremely loyal to their customers and will fight me constantly even when I'm in the right. I've had to explain to a travel agent that rescheduling a reservation less than two weeks before the sailing date is considered a cancellation, and given that the client didn't purchase travel protection they won't be reimbursed for the voyage fare, etc. And then they brought the client ON the phone for a conference call just so I could tell him myself, and the client would yell at me while the travel agent was like "yeah that's why I reccomended against NCL". This has happened multiple times now. Yesterday a travel agent tried doing it and I flatout said I would disconnect the call if they made a conference call. They didn't listened to I disconnected lol.

I thought I could handle it, and for a while I was. January was fine for me, with me only taking a sick day on the 29th for my birthday. But then the month rolled around and cracks began showing. I was getting bitter towards my friends again. There would be times at work where I would just... stop and stare blankly at the screen. No movements, no thoughts. Just feeling absolutely crushed and overwhelmed. I would start thinking really politically too, how I have a bachelor's in IT and this is all I have to show for it. This job is so much work, so much stress, for $18 an hour. The words "I'm better off without this world, and the world is better off without me" began to circulate in my head a lot. I'm an asshole to my friends and fiance, my parents think I'm a burden since I can't get a real job. I have no alternatives, no way to get a different job that fits my skillset. I may as well just vanish entirely and make everyone happier.

Dark thoughts, yeah. I'd take a day off, and then I'd be ok. I started taking therapy then too, and it'd give me a bit of motivation to keep trying. Then it happened again the next week: dark thoughts, unable to think or concentrate, thinking REAL hard about the gun in my fiance's closet. I even called my mom to tell her I was having thoughts of suicide, and she came over to talk with me and console me. I took another day off work, brought it up with my therapist. And again, I thought I could handle it.

This week. I couldn't make it two days in my job without it crashing down on me. I cried in the middle of a call. It wasn't a stressful call, the person on the other line was polite and easy going, not being demanding or rude at all. Just asked about shore excursions or something like that. And then I just started crying, and again those thoughts from earlier came back to me and then some. I felt like I was watching myself from third person, I just got up and walked around the house (this is a Hybrid position) and then I walked into my fiance's room and told him I was going to shoot myself soon if something didn't change.

After my shift finished I crawled into bed and texted both of my parents I would be quitting. Dad is furious. Mom is asking me to at least make it until March. I don't think I'd last till then. Something is broken in me now, and I can't get it fixed in time to keep this job I feel.

Right now, what's keeping me in this job is guilt. I'm angry with myself because this was a job I COULD do. I got this far, I overcame so many hurdles in this job to get to this point, and only now is it becoming too much. I handled the barebones training, the stressful transition, the entitled and rude callers. But now I'm just feeling broken and hollow. I pushed past my limits, and now it's all catching up to me. Every since I've started this job, I've barely went to the gym or played tennis anymore, I only write in short RPs with friends, I eat trashy junk food, etc. My health has fallen so far, I have no energy for anything because I feel like I NEED to drink a lot of caffine for this job, otherwise I'll just not be able to manage it. My body's chemicals are all over the fucking place I bet.

This journal has just been for me to consolodate my thoughts, something to reference whenever family ask me about why I quit, or something to bring up to my therapist when i see him next. But if you've read this far, thank you so much for taking the time to do so.

Denya will be back <3