The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The New Job
We’re going on week three now, so while things remain inconclusive my impressions remain positive on the whole, so I’ll give it a go.
Starting with the good, the pay/benefits are quite decent, and life-changing compared to where I was at the service tech job. Working at the terminal I’ve been training at strikes me as unpleasant but doable with time. The terminal I’m going to be working at/have spent some time at is much easier to deal with, such that I dare speculate that this job won’t be that bad: occasionally annoying, tedious, and/or boring, yes, but not that bad. My boss is the sort who likes to leave early. This isn’t so much a good thing as indicative of the workload, but I’ve watched more Fox News in the last two weeks than in the last two years.
Neutral, dispatching in this context is a totally different exercise than dispatching a food delivery company. The theme is sort of the same, but it’s a different skillset, one that rewards long-term planning and resource management than sheer speed and/or clever route choices. Trucking is paperwork/regulation heavy and not all tanker trailers are the same. There will be a learning curve before I can do my job reflexively, but with time and practice I believe it to be an achievable task. The software they use makes the software I used to use look brilliant in comparison, but it can be learned.
Annoying/bad, onboarding has been a grind/exercise in helplessness. I’m assured that this is perfectly normal and that nobody expects me to contribute for another month or few, but we’re two weeks in and I still can’t log into the company intranet; allegedly this is an HR issue and IT has washed its hands of it (But I can’t put in a ticket with HR because that’s linked to the company intranet account that I don’t have/have access to.). I had to call IT just to get the login credentials to my company laptop/email address. My work-issued laptop does not have the dispatch software I’m expected to use installed on it (I don’t know, but I kind of expected to get an onboarding packet with all the usernames and passwords on a piece of paper and the laptop to come with a standardized image pre-installed with all the programs I’d need. I may be able to install the dispatch software from the vendor’s website if I have login credentials for that program but so far I don’t know if those exist or if that is possible.). I don’t even have a desk at my home terminal. I’ve spent the last two weeks watching people do stuff, but otherwise aside from assigned training videos have literally done nothing. I’m going a bit stir-crazy and, again, while I’m assured that things happening slowly is the expectation I can’t help but fear that I’m wasting time during which I need to actually be learning how to do my job and am going to wind up thrown into the fire and failing. My goal for the entire week was to get the dispatch software installed and acquire a working account for it and it’s looking like that’s going to be a failure given that I got no response to the ticket I sent yesterday and the guy who was supposed to be training me (but was in fact far too busy) also got no response to the ticket he sent. I’ve been told by other dispatchers at the big terminal that they’ve spent months waiting to get all the permissions they need and still don’t have them. Even higher ranking people don’t seem to have a useful answer as to how to get what I need done other than suggesting that I directly email somebody in the IT department that they know personally instead of submitting a ticket.
More importantly, what do I do with my life?
This is the first time I haven’t worked two jobs in three years, and while University to Go was an easy gig I put in more hours there than I’m going to here (It really does seem be to be in the 40-45hours a week range, roughly 8-4 M-F, whereas I worked 6-7 days a week at the old gig/gigs.), so I find myself with a bunch of free time that I’m not used to having. I’m currently working on catching up on personal maintenance backlogs (clean the car, clean the house, set up my plan to get out of debt), but that’s going to run out soon and then what? I’ve never been one of those enviable souls who enjoyed watching TV all that much, nor am I really into videogames. There’s only so much time Reddit, Youtube, and X can waste. I used to be an incorrigible barfly (This was easy when I didn’t have to be at work for University to Go until 11AM.), and admittedly have yet to case out all my town’s happy hours to see if one exists where people my age instead of 20+ years older than me actually go, but the signs haven’t been overly encouraging on that front (The place I used to work at is a nursing home/sausagefest during happy hour.) and 8-4 isn’t exactly compatible with late night drinking on work nights (and, frankly, mid-30s me isn’t as interested in closing down bars as I used to be; aggravating this, many/most of my friends have moved on from the college town I live in). I’m being a bit blithe or cynical here, but am I going to have to join a dating app just to find someone to hang out with?
Hanging out was a 20th century activity. Since 1/2025 it's finally the 21st century now. You're supposed to be doomscrolling or compulsively watching short AI generated videos on tiktok, utterly hypnotized.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link