What's up everybody. I just got my account approved and it couldn't come at a better time as today I had yet another panic attack at work. I have a terrible job that has just been driving me crazy. It's off the books and I don't get any benefits. I asked my boss to take the rest of the week off which he approved and wished me the best, but that, of course, means I won't get paid this week.
I do customer service for a company that purchases refurbished electronics and resells them on eBay. The problem is that they advertise some of them as "new" or "new other: open box" when they clearly aren't. They also tend to oversell more than what our staff is able to test so defective units do get shipped out, unintentionally. Sometimes there's a shipping mistake as well that I need to do my best to rectify the situation. Regardless, I am responsible for resolving all of these matters.
My job is to convince the customer the phone they purchased is, in fact as described, to troubleshoot the problem, and to do whatever it takes to prevent the customer from leaving negative feedback while at the same time being firm on company policy (no discount, 30 day return and restocking fee if late, buyer pays return shipping, etc).
The other problem is, in fact, the buyers themselves. Not all the merchandise that we sell is advertised as new. A huge chunk of it is in fact in seller refurbished and used condition sold in grade C or D condition for dirt cheap but the buyers are still insatiable with the cosmetic condition despite the fact that these listings are an accurate representation of the item.
I also handle returns, which are a nightmare. Buyers like to break phones and return them, claiming they received it like that when in fact they've been using the phone for 2 weeks and weren't smart enough to delete their personal information from the device. They also like to return their existing broken phone and keep the one we sent them. One time, someone purchased an iPhone 6 from us and claimed he received an iPhone 6 Plus. My boss went crazy yelling at my coworker, who is responsible for shipping, and paid 10 bucks for a return label. The guy ends up sending back a counterfeit iPhone and my coworker gets no apology. I think the only positive thing about that transaction was how much we laughed when we turned the phone on, went to the Facetime application, and it ended up launching Skype instead. Actually, I never ended up giving the guy a refund. Thankfully, his return request timed out. Usually, things end on a bad note.
As you can probably tell, this is a pretty stressful job having to answer 150+ emails and handle 20-30+ returns on a daily basis. The added nightmare is that we're mostly selling iPhones now and I obviously need to check every single phone that is returned to make sure the buyer removed their iCloud account.
So yea, I had my first panic attack about 1-2 months ago. It was around 4 AM when I was trying to sleep. Ended up going to the hospital. I thought I was going to die. Instead, I was told I was perfectly healthy and that I'm just developing anxiety issues. The problem continued. About once every 2 weeks, I'd feel uneasy or have a minor panic attack at work. As a result, I've been leaving early which means I work fewer hours and get less pay which isn't helping my depression. I do have a referral to see a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, the earliest appointment is in July which is a month away from now and I'm on my last legs. I'm currently working with my primary care physician to find someone who can take me in immediately.
Now, enough about the negative, and I'm sure you all can understand why I'm so excited to be a part of this community. Despite not having the ability to post, until now, I have been lurking on here for about a week and what I've seen is a huge amount of support and positivity from this great community. It really feels great to finally be a part of it.
I'm a huge tech enthusiast, currently mining Ethereum with 2 GTX 1070s. I'm also a huge gamer so don't worry, I didn't buy these cards just to mine and actually was only introduced to this crypto world recently.
I also have a small YouTube channel where I do video game reviews, mostly PC ones:
https://www.youtube.com/pvthudson
I wish I had more time and energy to create constant content. Hopefully, I get the help I need soon and will be back to my normal self. Then I should have the energy to work more on the channel.