Well in the past I have had temp jobs that have sometimes involved using the phone which I absolutely hated. I would get nervous. I remember one job I had I loved because there was no phone work involved and it was purely entering data. But on one occasion they were short staffed and I was asked to fill in a role asking questions over the phone. I bluffed my way through by simply pretending to phone up and getting no answer. It worked and I have used similar methods, i.e taking the phone cable out of the socket so I wouldn't get any phone calls and luckily I go away with it.
I have had so many jobs and most have been temporary because I couldn't stand having to deal with people or using the phone. I remember this one job I had which was a permanent job. I was too afraid to ask for help, too afraid to even say goodbye and could not use the phone. I would make mistakes because I was too afraid to ask strangers for help.
People who don't understand being shy or having social phobia can comprehend what the big deal is with just asking for help or just using the phone, but it can be an ordeal. 3 times my boss called into his office to talk about my work and the fact I was contributing to the everyday discussions and not asking for help. The last time he had one of his colleagues sit in with him. I felt so nervous, he really didn't handle it very well and I could barely say a word for fear of crying! It ws an awful experience but that was over 5 years ago and I actually left the job! Its so funny because I would have stayed until I was fired but it didn't happen that way. I woke late one Friday morning and was too afraid to phone in so I decided instead of risking being told off that it would be my last day. So I spent the day on my own with myself just walking around window shopping. When I got back home my mum was there saying my boss had rang to see where I was, and I knew he must have been angry so I wasn't going to talk to him. Instead I wrote him a letter explaining in the most articulate way I could my reasons for leaving. I had been ther about 4 months, doing really sh@tty jobs because I wasn't trusted in doing more responsible ones, i.e collecting my boss's cat food for him. So after I went onto doing temping to make ends meet and again there were many temp jobs where it was obvious I was not the centre of attention.
But it all came to a head with one situation I was in with my female friends in a pub. One of my friends had knocked this guy's jacket over and it created a total misunderstanding with the guy becoming very confrontational. I was so scared I merely had my head down and said nothing. Around this time I had a job where answering the phone was a big part of the job. I would purposely act slow in answering the phone and the woman I worked with made some comment about it but I merely smiled and shrugged it off. Well all this bothered me so much I went and seeked out a Therapist. I had read a lot of self help books which helped but I needed more professional guidance and have been in therapy for 5 years now and I have realy come a long way. I no longer stay quite when I'm short changed or if my food order is mixed up. I can say goodbye to people, I can use people's names more and make small talk a lot easier than I used to! It really makes me angry when i see people like me get a hard time from ignorant idiots. I remember working in a temp job with this woman clearly older than me and a lot more shy than me. She walked with a hunched back and hardly ever made eye contact. She would speak fast and very nervously too. Well I remember she was away for a few days and to replace her for those few days the agency sent some guy in his early 20s who had worked with her before. He hardly did any work and would just joke around. We had a conversation about her where he made some offensive remark, " do you think Sue is a Lesbian?" Although it made me angry I didn't start an argument, I merely stated in calm non confrontational voice " I don't think she is, have you seen her with any other women"? so his attempt at trying to be funny at the expense of someone else crumbled.
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