Today is the last day of my first week on my new job.
I. Am. Exhausted.
My commute ranges anywhere from 50 to 100 minutes, each way, depending on the day, the traffic and the route I take. I’m not complaining, mind you, I’m tremendously grateful. It’s a good job, with a lot of opportunity for growth and advancement and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m just really tired.
I have less than one month’s expenses left in my savings account and I was moments away from making the dreaded call to my sister to find out if it was still an option for me to move to New York to live with her and her husband, four kids (a fifth on the way), their cat and miniature pony, when I got the call for this job. It’s the job I referred to in my recent post. The one I didn’t get. It seems their first candidate, for whatever reason, didn’t pan out.
Last week, I went shopping to buy appropriate work clothes. I plan to get promoted sooner rather than later so I’m implementing the “dress for the job you want, not the job you’ve got” philosophy. And since I didn’t have to wear dress clothes in my last job, it’s been well over a year since I’ve dressed for work (other than the white-dress-shirt-and-black-slacks penguin suit I wear when I’m bartending).
I haven’t gotten up this early on a consistent basis, in a very long time, and tomorrow I have to get up early again, though a little less early. I’ll probably get to “sleep in” until 7:00. I’m bartending (and lead/sign-in person) tomorrow morning at the Cal football game and I have to be there at 9:00 in the morning. Tomorrow night I have a date. That’s a whole different post for another time. And then Sunday I have an outing with Lil’B.
Once again, I’ve been sitting on a “post” that I wrote weeks ago and e-mailed to myself but never posted. And once again, I feel like I can’t move forward until it’s been posted. Some of what’s here is no longer relevant. That will be explained eventually. Meanwhile, I must get this posted so that I can move forward… somehow.
This was originally written on October 2, 2013.
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The noise and the supply of bullshit seem to be unending. It’s abundantly clear, now, that The Guy doesn’t care about me in the least. I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t even be hurt by it. But I am. He fed me this bullshit song and dance about talking to people about the disruption, but he remains just as guilty as the rest, and just as guilty as he’s always been. Seems like utter hypocrisy to me. He, the one person I’ve spoken to at length about this problem, doesn’t care to be cognizant of his contribution. So why would he believe anyone else would.
He just walked by my desk and said good morning. Why? What’s the point? He doesn’t talk to me at all, except to say hi and bye. Sure it’s polite, but we are past polite. I can’t stand the sound of his voice. The sound of his laugh. I hate seeing him. I wish I could get out of here and NEVER COME BACK. I can’t wait for that day.
Only it has to be under my own steam. There’s no way I can survive being unemployed again now. It’s just not possible. Yet, my boss is threatening to fire me, when you boil it down, because I’m depressed. She says I’m being unkind to people, but she can’t give me an example of it. All she says is that it’s “a tone”, it’s “intangible”, but “it has to stop.” I really do not know what she’s talking about, as I have made a concerted effort to be as neutral as I can manage with people. I’m not happy and I don’t have the power within me to pretend to be. Of course it’s not OK to be rude to people and it’s not my intent to be, but if I’m doing something wrong, I don’t know it, thus, the reason I need specific examples. (Meanwhile, I’ve actually received several complements from my customers recently, telling me what a great job I’m doing and how invaluable I am to the organization.)
A big part, maybe the biggest part, of why I’m unhappy, depressed now, is because of him. He is directly responsible for breaking me. I’m not saying I don’t have any responsibility for my circumstances, of course I do, but he was reckless and irresponsible and he toyed with me and my emotions. He created this situation and I’m the one left to deal with the aftermath. I’m trying to do just that, I’m trying to deal with my issues. I’m doing the best I can. But these things take time and my boss is not interested. And now she wants to extend my probation, like that helps anything. We’re never going to see eye to eye. We’re never going to agree on how things should work. We’re never going to agree on what “this industry” is like, or what “good customer service” looks like.
It’s just hopeless.
I NEED TO GET OUT!
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On Friday, October 18, 2013, five and one half months into my six months probation, I was informed that I was “a square peg trying to fit into a round hole”, (that’s an actual quote), and that I was being “released during probation”, which pretty much means they can terminate my employment without notice, without warning, and, apparently, without any documentation of a problem.
The meeting with my boss and the HR representative (someone I had spoken to multiple times about the issues I was having with my boss and my concerns for my well-being, and who never once offered any sort of supportive or encouraging advice) took place at 3:30 that Friday afternoon. Just half an hour before everyone was to meet up at a local brewery for happy hour to celebrate The Guy’s birthday. Two separate calendar invitations were sent out about the happy hour and two separate calendar invitations were declined by me. I’m sure he didn’t expect me to attend, but I can’t help but imagine that some people were surprised I wasn’t there and must’ve asked about me. Either way, I know that my boss sent out a terse e-mail the following Monday morning informing the entire staff that I was not longer working there and to come to her with any outstanding or new requests.
I’ve never seen or heard from The Guy since that day. I can’t say I’m surprised. I can’t imagine what his response was to the news. Probably relief, though he’d act like he was sad for anyone who’s paying attention. I can’t imagine he acknowledges any sort of responsibility on the subject, even though he does hold some. It’s just as well really. I don’t know what I would have said or done if he had contact me. I need to wash my hands of him, and this is the only way to do it, but it still makes me a bit angry.
(Ironically, as a direct result of conversations that took place around the difficulties at work, I’m taking an “anger management” class right now. That’s a whole post in itself and I’ll discuss it further later, but one of the concepts in this class is that “anger isn’t real”. They suggest that anger is just a mask for pain whether it’s physical or emotional. That said, I wonder why I would be hurt that someone I don’t want to have anything further to do with wouldn’t bother to check on me after finding out I had been let go?)
Regardless, I am out of that situation, away from him, never have to see or speak to him again. I can start to “wash that man right out of my hai–” oh. Well, you get the idea. (I wonder if anyone will understand that reference without clicking the link.) I no longer have to deal with the stress of a job that was never right for me in the first place. I don’t have to deal with a boss who is chaotic and disorganized and disrespectful, and sexist. I don’t have to deal with the film of grit and filth that was a permanent fixture on my beautiful new car, from the asphalt plant or sand factory, both of which were on the other side of the fence from the parking lot.
All of these are good things. Nevertheless, I am still unemployed, living in one of the most expensive parts of the country, with a brand new car (and payment, gas and insurance to go with it) and not nearly the resources I had the last time this happened. If I don’t figure something out pretty damn quickly, I’m going to have to make some drastic and very unpleasant changes, I’m just not sure I can face.
Anyway, my first priority these days is earning money and finding a new full time job, but I think about this space often. Maybe now that I’ve gotten the last of these written-elsewhere-and-emailed-for-later-posting posts posted, I can come back here more frequently, even if it’s just to post short updates on the current goings on in my life… like this:
Today is not such a lazy Saturday around the ole Riggledo homestead.
I slept late, because I stayed up late (where have we heard that story before), because I stayed at work late, because I got there late, because…. Well, you get the idea.
Actually, I stayed later than I would have, because I had a couple of things I wanted to do and I had a huge chunk of my productivity time stolen away when IT came to my office to try to install my new printer, only to have the driver not work and the printer and computer not talk to each other (except for the printer to spit out 20-30 pages of error messages – six separate times) and not get resolved. The IT guy has to try again on Monday, with the in-house Lexmark technician in tow. (Karin, you’ll be glad to know the IT guy kept putting the papers back in the tray so he didn’t waste as much paper as he could have.) 😛
Anyway, I’ve been behind on my blog reader, spending more time on the writing than on the reading recently, so I was trying last night and this morning (afternoon) to trim that number down. But I’ve also got four and half hours worth of TV shows on my DVR that need to be watched with another 90 minutes scheduled to be added tomorrow and those all need to be watched before bed tomorrow night, because on Monday, I finally have an appointment to have new TV service installed. I’ve absolutely had it with AT&T U-verse and it’s finally going away. If you’re one of the very few people who were around here long enough ago to remember my rant/diatribe about my previous attempt to replace U-verse with DirecTV and how I swore I’d never use DirecTV again… Well, let’s just pretend that never happened and be happy for me that I’ll be having DirecTV installed in my house and all will be right with the world. (Hypocrite.)
It’s only 3:15 in the afternoon, so that probably doesn’t really sound all that stressful, but it is. Here’s why:
Today is my friend and Michelle’s sister, Monique’s birthday (you might recall she’s the one that made this) and there’s a party in two hours and fifteen minutes. I have to buy cat food today and I have not yet bought her a birthday present or even a card. I really wanted to got to Target today to make a semi-significant (to me – and probably only me) purchase. Also, I have yet to take a shower or brush my teeth today.
Plus, tomorrow is my day to hang out with Lil’B. Much of the day is taken up with that, not that I mind in the least.
AND, I need to clean (organize, dust, sweep around) my entertainment center, and my dresser, where the second TV is, not to mention clear a path to the dresser…
Pretty cool right? I don’t know if I’ve ever accomplished that before. Possibly a millenia ago when I first started blogging on my old and long forgotten, top-secret blog. I think that’s pretty neet though.
I said I was going to make an effort to write more and clearly I did. Some of it was fluff, but hey, I can’t imagine you want to read deep and insightful every day any more than I want to write deep and insightful every day. And yes, I’m giving myself credit for being deep and insightful even if I’m not really. LET ME HAVE THIS!!! 🙂
It’s been a pretty fascinating experience too. I’ve actually seen my blog readership grow this month. Crap! I swore I wasn’t going to do this! I find it kind of annoying when people write about how many people read their blogs but in this case it seems kind of important. See, I used to want to be a big famous blogger. I wanted to have thousands upon thousands of readers and I wanted to make money off my blog and I wanted to be able to quit my job and live off the revenue. (Oh, who’m I kidding? I still want that, but it’s not going to happen.) I realized that I don’t have the right stuff for that. I don’t have an interesting enough life, nor the ability to be all cute and quippy about my life, nor an endless influx of blogging material to draw from. I also don’t have the business acumen or the social skills to promote myself enough to make it work. (That’s something that may become a problem for me, which I’ll be discussing further in the near future.) And don’t even get me started on my lack of technical skills when it comes to web development and making all the different features and applications and websites at my disposal play nicely together.
So I know I’m not going to be a big, rich and famous super-blogger and I’m okay with that. But here’s what I am. I am a writer. I write about my feelings. I write about my experiences (however uninteresting or few-and-far-between they may be.) And I write about my views. Nobody asked me. And nobody has to read my opinions, but that’s why this is my space and not someone elses. And that’s all well and good, except, I AM a writer and as a writer, I want people to read my words. So I like to watch my statistics and see the numbers growing.
Last month, I assume due in part to my increased activity, I went from four blog subscribers (2 by e-mail – and both the same person – and 2 on WordPress.com), to 29. (Don’t be fooled by the 372 listed at the top of this page. WordPress is being generous and including my twitter followers in that number. I guarantee you, most of them are not coming to my blog. Hell, half of them aren’t even people.) In addition to the subscribers, I seem to be getting a lot of people randomly coming across my blog through search terms, or because they’ve saved my URL as a favorite instead of using a reader or e-mail subscription. The truth is, the most hits I’ve gotten in a single day is about 45 and that’s rare, but my numbers have still climbed considerably from where they were a year ago (or even a month ago.)
Thanks to my participation in the Write on Edge community, I’ve gained some additional periodic commenters; it’s no longer limited to only Terri. It’s awesome to see more participation on this page. I’ve also been more actively participating on other people’s blogs leaving comments more regularly… That may have helped with bringing people here too… Maybe.
Anyway, it’s really been a lot of fun, this month of writing. It’s been surprisingly invigorating. I remember, now, that writing is something I need to do. It’s why I’m on this earth, I think. (It may not be the only reason, but it’s certainly a reason I can’t ignore.)
So I’m grateful to all of you who read this. I’m thrilled that you’ve stumbled across these pages and that so many have continued to come back. I hope you’ll tell your friends… No really. Tell your friends. That’ll be relevant later when I get around to that problematic, self-promotion thing.
Riggledo 