Pumpkin's Rant of the Day: The Real Reason Your Call Isn't Being Answered & other stories

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Hello to you all. I'm sorry about ranting again (or maybe I'm not sorry at all, who knows?). For various reasons, I've been quite stressed recently. Much of it related to my job (if you read my previous rant, you'll get an idea). I'm still looking for other jobs, still getting agencies recommending jobs that don't match my location, skills, experience or qualifications. Things that look like jobs turning out to actually be apprenticeships or courses or other scheme. The jobs I am applying for all involve completing an application through a recruiter then signing up and applying on the employer's website (that's just the ones that don't require some other random step in between or the ones where they don't even want to tell you what the job is until you signed up or messaged them). I mean, I know they don't want too many people applying just because it's easy to do so but some of these applications are enough to make the most patient person decide it's not worth their time. Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm somewhat frustrated at the moment. My job doesn't pay very well (not the worst but with the cost of everything increasing so much and us losing other income recently, the wage that used to cover everything simply doesn't any more). It's not just the pay, though. It's the ridiculous expectations. Nobody minds doing a little extra, some of us go above and beyond on a regular basis. What bothers us is having extra work thrown at us (that's not our job to do) when we're already struggling to keep up with the work that is ours to do. When you have a team of 19 but there are only actually 6 people there, no support from management, and other people expecting you to do their job for them because they seem to think you sit around twiddling your thumbs all day instead of understanding how busy you are, there are going to be problems. As if that's not enough, we can add in the constant crashing of systems and people updating/changing systems while you're using them. Now we get to the title of the rant. I work as a customer service advisor for social care. For some reason, we do considerably more than the CSAs for all other departments despite being paid the same (this has been raised and laughed at by management). The main purpose of my job is responding to queries and taking referrals by phone and email, and processing referrals onto our systems). Earlier, I said we often only have 6 people (this is generally on our busiest days - every Monday and a lot of Tuesdays) out of a team of 19. Well, that's actually made up of two teams (that are merged after we were told they definitely wouldn't be merging). The idea was that people from the other team would be trained to support ours as they had more people to do less work. So those 6 people who are in are covering two teams. On an average day, we need a minimum of 1 person picking up emails, 1 on referrals, and 2 on phones for each department. On a Monday, this isn't enough. I know there are people who think that it's because we're working from home. That doesn't make sense anyway but if you're calling my department, you're on hold for an hour or you can't get through, it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference whether we're working from home or an office or a holiday villa. Your call might not get answered/take a long time to get through because: 1. There are 2 people (possibly only one if one is on a break) trying to answer the 25 calls in the queue. Some calls take longer than others, and we can only answer one at a time (although the system tried to put a call through to me while I was already on a call). 2. The systems are down. We have regular issues with the systems we use. This is because the systems are not fit for purpose. They're all remote systems - they're still remote when we're in the office. It's the same system. The system goes down for the people in the office exactly the same as those not in the office. We had to reject multiple calls on a super busy day because of multiple systems not working. 3. On the days when we are lucky enough to have a few more people, some of them are not actually that helpful. One, we're not sure what's going on but he's been put on only one task by the 'higher-ups' for the foreseeable and is not currently allowed to take calls. Another is the martyr of the group. She's the person who will find a problem for any solution. Works the least out of all of us (in terms of both contracted hours and what work actually gets done). She seems to have a high opinion of herself (which is unwarranted). I mean, I have a high opinion of myself but I am brilliant . Honestly, though, we've all said we need a team leader and most of the team have said it should be me (it won't happen but it's nice they believe in me). Anyway, yes, this one is a thorn in everyone's side. As I said, she does the least as it is. But she'll announce what she's doing and mark everything she says on our Teams chat as urgent even when it's not. She'll complain that other people haven't done/aren't doing things even though we're busy. So, that's another problem - that one person is taking it upon herself to do other things when she's meant to be answering calls then she's too busy telling us how busy she is and can't possibly answer a call because she's busy doing something she doesn't need to do. Of course, she's the one to get all the praise and thanks and claps from the managers while the rest of us are also picking up whichever bits of work we can during the elusive quiet time, we just get on with it without having to broadcast the fact that we're doing our job. I like the rest of the team. There are others who can be a bit sneaky about things but most will make sure calls are answered. 4. I hadn't thought of this until I said that last bit on number 3. Recently, our manager has been asking us to come off phones to do another task. That's all very well except for two things: most of us don't need to be told to do a task that needs doing if we're not busy; manager will ask knowing full well that we're busy to the point where she left only one person answering calls knowing there were several calls in the queue. I realise that there are some tasks that have a time limit to do them but we are supposed to prioritise calls over other tasks. Apparently the manager doesn't know this. Anyway, these are some things I want to say in response to various things I've read/heard but I'd get into trouble if I responded to them and my employer could see! Of course, I can only speak for my department but I'd also like to ask that you are kind and courteous to the people who answer your calls because it's (probably) not their fault if it's taken a long time to get through, nor is it the fault of the customer service advisor that you've been given the wrong number/information by someone else or that what you want is taking too long. We have no idea why another person hasn't called you back or why you've waited so long (honestly, while everything takes time, we get exasperated by the amount of time some things take to get done). That's my rant, it also includes some (but not all) of the reasons I am looking elsewhere for work. Other reasons include a lack of progression and a total unwillingness of anyone who could make a difference to actually do so. I told a colleague that I was looking for other jobs. Some already knew I was looking. This one is quite new. She seemed disappointed and said I was really good! She then said I was too good for Tesco when I said I might apply there . She made some suggestion which were good suggestions (like school receptionist) but nothing of the nature currently available. I'm applying for everything I can do that's within travelling distance. I was annoyed about one because it would have been perfect but you needed access to a vehicle. Sadly, I gave up my car 3 years ago because we couldn't afford/justify the cost to keep it. Now if I could get a job that supplied a vehicle (but that's highly unlikely). Maybe I should sell the husband and children. I'm sure I could get a few pennies for them then I'd have a few pennies and I'd possibly be able to cut my hours and go back to college