Jericho: Have a Coke in the file ...
So, about three weeks ago, I went to talk to my doc. As some of you might remember, I had been considering a sabbatical for my health a while back. I have about 6 weeks of "Extended Sick Leave" at work. They lump all of our vacation and sick time into one pool they call Paid Time Off or PTO. However, if you are really sick, and are going to be off work for more than a few days, you can dip into your ESL time. I've been there for coming up on seven years and have never taken an ESL day - thus I have my six weeks.
I told my doc that I am in a bad way and need to do something. I'm weighing in at 515, I have all these health issues and the stress at my job just seems to get worse. I have this six weeks of time that I need to use, or I will lose it when I walk out the door - and I am so ready to walk out the door! So, I can see two ways to go; she could give me a prescription for time off and I can spend that six weeks dieting and really exercising. It would be a good jumping off point, and then when I'm done, I could find another job. It wouldn't be a cure - but it would be a good start. Or, we could use that six weeks to recover from some type of stomach surgery.
She chickened out almost instantly and told me to go talk to a bariatric specialist. Great. She had been against surgery the first time we talked - I thought I had a lock. Nope. I'm the only one on the planet that thinks time off from my job will help me get my health back together.
So, I spoke to a friend that had had this surgery. She wanted me to talk to someone besides the person my doctor recommended. She even set up my appointment. She is a big fan of the lap-band surgery that she has had. I don't know why she is such a big fan - it has been a three year struggle and seemingly endless surgeries and she has only lost a portion of the weight she is trying to lose. The more I thought about it, the more this felt like just another diet.
All diets restrict something: fat, carbs or calories. The lap-band simply restricts the portion size you can eat at one time. If you fill your little pouch with 3 oz. of celery you will lose more weight than if you filled it with 3 oz. or Oreos. My friend even confessed to me that she was just shoveling ice cream into herself at one point, it melted and ran through - she was still eating large portions of ice cream - just slower. So what the fuck is the point of putting up with the surgery, the recovery, the barfing and all the other crap if it's just another diet?
I canceled the appointment. My friend was quite angry with me. When she did talk to me again, she disagreed that it's just another diet. Maybe she's right, and I might have to go that route one of these days - maybe soon. But, I just couldn't do it right now.
Steph and I are dieting again. I've been on for two weeks-ish. The scale said I was 500 on Friday, down from 515 before I went to see the doctor.
I have also started looking for a new job. Don't tell my many bosses, but I spend a good portion of the day at work looking for a job and talking to placement agencies. I'm hoping to find a job closer to home and maybe something less stressful - a call center or something. At least with a call center, when I go home, I'm done. I'll probably have to take a pay cut - but not the first time that's happened. I might have a 2nd interview today - we'll see.
This weekend was my 6th wedding anniversary (and it was Laura's birthday, too - Happy Birthday, Laura!) I got Steph some pretty flowers - she got us a trip to Vegas in a few weeks! Woo! Very cool! ( I love you, Honey!) So, Steph and I strayed from the diet a bit. But in all, we were still pretty good. When I'm dieting, I do a lot of liquid foods; Slim Fast shakes, yogurt smoothies, yogurt, sugar free pudding, etc. So, my stomach seems to shrink up and I just simply can't put the food away. I get full fast - which is great! But, there was some higher carb foods and a little candy and one very special treat.
This is going to sound stupid, but it was a big deal to me.
I had a Coke.
A simple fountain Coke. And, man, was it ever good! Last year I went off caffeine. I do very little caffeine - maybe some green tea here or there and maybe black tea now and then. At the time I went off, we thought the caffeine might be contributing to my heart palpitations. It was certainly cutting into my sleep. When I'm not dieting and want a full sugar soda, I've been drinking Sprite or 7-Up. I don't need the caffeine and I shouldn't be having the sugar, but at least I was doing one thing right, right?
Well, I had the opportunity and I took it. That Coke tasted fucking great! I didn't have any heart palpitations or anything - but that was also the first real dose of caffeine I had had in forever - and I stopped at one and a half glasses. I'm off caffeine and I plan to stay that way. I look forward to my next Coke sometime next year!
I told my doc that I am in a bad way and need to do something. I'm weighing in at 515, I have all these health issues and the stress at my job just seems to get worse. I have this six weeks of time that I need to use, or I will lose it when I walk out the door - and I am so ready to walk out the door! So, I can see two ways to go; she could give me a prescription for time off and I can spend that six weeks dieting and really exercising. It would be a good jumping off point, and then when I'm done, I could find another job. It wouldn't be a cure - but it would be a good start. Or, we could use that six weeks to recover from some type of stomach surgery.
She chickened out almost instantly and told me to go talk to a bariatric specialist. Great. She had been against surgery the first time we talked - I thought I had a lock. Nope. I'm the only one on the planet that thinks time off from my job will help me get my health back together.
So, I spoke to a friend that had had this surgery. She wanted me to talk to someone besides the person my doctor recommended. She even set up my appointment. She is a big fan of the lap-band surgery that she has had. I don't know why she is such a big fan - it has been a three year struggle and seemingly endless surgeries and she has only lost a portion of the weight she is trying to lose. The more I thought about it, the more this felt like just another diet.
All diets restrict something: fat, carbs or calories. The lap-band simply restricts the portion size you can eat at one time. If you fill your little pouch with 3 oz. of celery you will lose more weight than if you filled it with 3 oz. or Oreos. My friend even confessed to me that she was just shoveling ice cream into herself at one point, it melted and ran through - she was still eating large portions of ice cream - just slower. So what the fuck is the point of putting up with the surgery, the recovery, the barfing and all the other crap if it's just another diet?
I canceled the appointment. My friend was quite angry with me. When she did talk to me again, she disagreed that it's just another diet. Maybe she's right, and I might have to go that route one of these days - maybe soon. But, I just couldn't do it right now.
Steph and I are dieting again. I've been on for two weeks-ish. The scale said I was 500 on Friday, down from 515 before I went to see the doctor.
I have also started looking for a new job. Don't tell my many bosses, but I spend a good portion of the day at work looking for a job and talking to placement agencies. I'm hoping to find a job closer to home and maybe something less stressful - a call center or something. At least with a call center, when I go home, I'm done. I'll probably have to take a pay cut - but not the first time that's happened. I might have a 2nd interview today - we'll see.
This weekend was my 6th wedding anniversary (and it was Laura's birthday, too - Happy Birthday, Laura!) I got Steph some pretty flowers - she got us a trip to Vegas in a few weeks! Woo! Very cool! ( I love you, Honey!) So, Steph and I strayed from the diet a bit. But in all, we were still pretty good. When I'm dieting, I do a lot of liquid foods; Slim Fast shakes, yogurt smoothies, yogurt, sugar free pudding, etc. So, my stomach seems to shrink up and I just simply can't put the food away. I get full fast - which is great! But, there was some higher carb foods and a little candy and one very special treat.
This is going to sound stupid, but it was a big deal to me.
I had a Coke.
A simple fountain Coke. And, man, was it ever good! Last year I went off caffeine. I do very little caffeine - maybe some green tea here or there and maybe black tea now and then. At the time I went off, we thought the caffeine might be contributing to my heart palpitations. It was certainly cutting into my sleep. When I'm not dieting and want a full sugar soda, I've been drinking Sprite or 7-Up. I don't need the caffeine and I shouldn't be having the sugar, but at least I was doing one thing right, right?
Well, I had the opportunity and I took it. That Coke tasted fucking great! I didn't have any heart palpitations or anything - but that was also the first real dose of caffeine I had had in forever - and I stopped at one and a half glasses. I'm off caffeine and I plan to stay that way. I look forward to my next Coke sometime next year!
14 Comments:
Coke Zero, homie.
Caffeine, yes?
I've been doing more water recently, anyway. I don't need the sodium, either.
WAIT WAIT WAIT:
"something less stressful - a call center or something."
WTF?? You obviously have NEVER worked in a call center before. I've had a lot of jobs, but that was one of the most stressful. The angry customers on the phone think it's not a person on the other end of the phone... it's just a voice, so it can be yelled at for no good reason.
Jer,
Please don't hurt my wife.
I won't hurt her. Laura has never seen my rez.
Laura, I have worked for two call centers at Maritz. I worked for Sprynet's call center. I worked at Boeing's call center for over two years. The job before this was telephone based support, until the last six months. This job was telephone based support for the first three years.
And, looking back - every one of those jobs was less stress than my current job. Tells you something about my current job, yeah?
Yelled at by angry customers is nothing. You are not a person to them - this is true. They are not persons to me, either. They are problems to be solved.
When I worked at Sprynet, it was wall to wall yelling customers. Average wait times of 45 minutes on a TOLL line will do that. There was nothing more gratifying than letting a customer bust a gut yelling for five minutes and then saying: "Okay, now would you like to actually work on your problem?"
As a (for now) supervisor, I would have to smack you for saying that.
I was probably nicer than that back then. More diplomatic. But, that's what it boils down to: "You've spewed your impotent rage all over me - now can we do something useful?"
I did however one night convince a drunk caller to take his Packard Bell computer back to the store he bought it from and buy himself a nice Compaq ...
I know what you mean. I have listened to more endless, pointless rants that I care to remember. But when the customer gets pissed off and asks for a supervisor, I'm the one who gets the call.
Sometimes I let the calls go to the supervisor. Sometimes I took the chance of saying something like: "Sir, you can talk to my manager. You'll feel better. It won't fix anything. Or, we can just work on your problem and get you out of here faster. I'll do what you want."
Usually worked.
To toot my own horn further, I can think of very few times I couldn't control the caller. The caller just wants his junk fixed. I just want to fix his issue so he never calls back.
Of course, I haven't been in a real call center in nearly a decade. I know I have lost my patience with people. Getting into a call center environment might be the worst idea possible! :)
I honestly don't know what is worse, being on the frontline or trying to run the show.
Just today, one of my people, we'll call her K, told (told, not asked) me to over a call her friend, P, was on so they could go to lunch together. I was going to lunch to and I wasn't about to get involved. P just recently got her IT degree and approaches every issue as a major project. Her average call time is 120 mins. Mine is 10. I check the simple things first, she causes six other problems in the process of proving how much she knows.
So, when I wouldn't clean up P's mess so K could have lunch with her buddy, K called me a slacker. I had spent the last four hours alternately combing through old trouble tickets to find whatever stats the suits decided they needed today, talking to irate customers and generally putting out fires. But I am a slacker for not doing yet another person's work for her instead of taking lunch.
In other words, it was a typical day.
Why, oh, why do they have you supervising others. You hate people ...
Oh. Right.
I get it now! :)
Of the various troglodytes that comprise this team, I drool the least.
Happy Anniversary!
And good luck staying with the weight loss. I think if you can drop 15lbs in two weeks the only the you could gain from surgery would be the possibility of side effects. It seems like you have a good handle on it. Also, if you drink the caffeine free diet coke for a about a month you kind of stop noticing that it tastes funky and still get a regular quota of bubbles, (bubbles are important to me.)
Also, good luck with the job hunt.
Thanks. I need all the luck I can get on the job hunt.
We've discovered Diet Rite. No Calories. No Caffeine. No Sodium. Tastes a lot like RC Cola. The other flavors are good, too. Bubbles are indeed important!
Sticking with the diet, that's the problem. I'm most of the way through week three. I'll probably jump on the scale late next week. I need numbers, but I also need BIG numbers. I'm hoping for another 10 pounds.
It's too easy to get tempted. It's so easy to get junk food and a lot of it. I just got back from a stupid meeting about an hour ago. All I wanted to do was go find a cookie. Instead, I drank my green tea with Splenda, ate some string cheese and some veggies. My tummy is full and I still want the damn cookie - but the tummy is so full of raw broccoli that there would be no place for a cookie.
The Holidays are going to be a real challenge. Here's hoping ...
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