Beaten up, Beaten Down

I'm being positive, well, mostly.  

Most days the job is fine, the people are fine, the co-workers are fine. The job is a diificult one to learn,as an Optician. For me, it's been like climbing Mt Fuji every day. It made me wonder if I have a learning disability. Seriously, I wondered if I was dislexic, or had early Alzheimers or just wasn't smart enough to understand the concepts.
Wrong on all three.
It's simply a difficult job, a large amount of information, processes, computer sims........thrown at my brain for the last 8 months.
Add to that, I am way older than my co-workers, chronologically, that is. They assume that I don't know about trends, mind-sets of people in a different generation from me. They seem to want to put people of different ages into the neat little stereotypes that applied 10 - 20 years ago, which quite often, don't apply now. They seem to believe that I will automatically know about things that went on during the 60s, 70s, 80s.

Stereotyping, ageist or age discrimination. So wrong!

Well........I was much too busy with my own life or isolated from the information around me to have paid attention to world events or trends during those eras. I know who Ariana Grande is, I listen to her. John legend, Justin Bieber, Great Big World, Nicki Minaj, Robin Thicke. I study the latest dance moves, practice them so that I'll keep it fresh if I hit a club.

I also know who Mozart was, yes, who he really was, as a man, as a person. As well as Vivaldi, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Chopin. Yes. I studied their lives, studied their music.

I work out every day, take vitamins, try new & different heath practices all the time. I feel as if I am 20 although I won't dress as if I'm a teen ager. I'm vastly different, way more current from my peers. People tell me that all the time, they guess my age to be 20-30 years younger.
So,the ageist attitudes really piss me off. One person, in particular refers to anyone over the age of 30 as "old" or too old or waaay old school. She also refers to anyone under 25 as "not knowing anything". She's been doing it since we started training last September. I call her out every time she does it. It doesn't make a difference. She's 32, should know it is bad manners to judge & stereotype people based on their age, especially in a professional environment.

Ageist attitudes are accepted everywhere!
Better not mention race, religion or sexual orientation, though! You'll get bombarded with protests for that.
Call someone too old, too young to know very much or old school and you'll get away with it, for now. I Hope to see the level of ageist attitudal ignorance become just as unacceptable, someday.
We need a Rosa Parks to stand up & tell people to stop discriminating even if it's only with words based on a persons chronological age. Words can hurt just as much as other forms of abuse. 

Back to the job.

It's difficult, okay, ya got that. What is more difficult is that the manager, the one teaching myself & 3 other girls our job, she has been a Certified Optician and doing the job for 15 years. I have been only learning it for 8 months. When I have a question, I'm afraid to ask her. She won't answer my questions. She will only berate me for not knowing the answer. Then, she will tell me to go find the answer.
Well, dammit! If I KNEW where to find the answer, I would have gone and found it!

Today was especially difficult. I was alone in the store with people coming at me for spectacle orders, spectacle repairs, looking for conversation. From 9 am - 1 pm. I handled it, in addition to answering 3 phone lines, receiving faxes and DAMMIT! I needed to tinkle......badly! 
I'm on my lunch hour, I'm going back to work soon. The manager took over the patient I was working with when she came in at 1 pm. I wish she would have let me learn by helping me through the difficult process instead of taking over. Am sure she looked at me as incompetent. The manager was a bit P.O.ed that I didn't answer her call within 3 rings when she called at 12 noon, the height of the fray. UGH

So, I went from feeling like, "WOW! I can do this!" to "Aw, crap!"

When I get back to work and she has the "little discussion" she wants to have with me when I get back........back to feeling like I'm inadequate for the job.

UGH

*sigh*

Three hours later, work was over with. Took 4 sleep meds on the way home. Waiting to become sleepy enough to crash, let the day be over.

Good night.

*smile*