Where The End Begins

I'd been working where I worked for a while. Seven years to be exact. In fact, the day I was fired was one week exactly after my seventh year working for my workplace.

It came as a shock and it didn't. I hadn't always gotten along with my supervisor, who was just another supervisor in a litany of supervisors stacked to the ceiling, who were underneath another pile of Vice-Presidents leading up to some guy who owned the place, but enough about that.

Things are tough all over. I realize this. More now than then, but I do and did get it. Things were tight, budgets were being slashed, and the company even sold one of their private planes and let the pilot (who'd been there even longer than I have) go.

The week before it happened, a buddy of mine who was also let go and myself were perceptive enough to notice a lot of closed-door meetings. A lot of hushed talk. People were acting strangely all around. We got a cryptic e-mail telling all of us to "be in the office" one Thursday afternoon for a meeting. Then our supervisor told us "the visitors weren't going to be coming" and the meeting was canceled.

We had speculated and gossiped all day about "why would our boss tell us to be at work during work hours?" And, "why can't he just talk to us now...he's in the next room..."

The weekend happened, and we were off for Memorial Day, and bright and early the Tuesday following it I went into work.

An hour and a half later, I was taking cardboard boxes full of seven years of work detritus back to my car wiping away tears of shock. I was floored. I didn't see it coming. Never expected it to happen. This guy in my department who was also a manager told me he'd tell me all about it. It's over two months later and I haven't heard a peep. Probably doesn't hurt that I banned and blocked everyone I'd directly worked with on any and all social networking I have in my path.

Moments after I had staggered to my desk after being told that I was part of some budget cuts and that it wasn't performance based, but "budgetary" my friend got called in and was told the same thing. He had a different reaction as he'd longed to have the freedom to travel and do things outside of what we'd done at our job. All I remember was my head boss, a V.P., being in the room and saying "This sucks."

The visitors, my head boss and the HR lady, had arrived on this day. Odd to realize we would've been let go five days earlier. At least I had a okay Memorial Day, due to one of the other folks being let go being on vacation the day they were originally going to do it. Hence, the "visitors not coming over" on that day.

He invited me to have a beer, but all I really wanted to do was be by myself. It felt at the time like I'd wasted nearly a decade of trying really hard, and doing good work, and being loyal in the face of good job offers when I could have taken them for nothing. Here I was, with my box of inside jokes from a job I didn't have anymore. My friend and I made plans to go to the Unemployment office the following day.

The strangest part was going to our main office to drop off my keys so that the gears would start turning for my getting any sort of seperation pay. They'd had a meeting that morning to tell everyone that still had a job that several of us had lost ours. When I entered the building to drop off my keys, no one, and I mean no one was at their desks. So my last visit to the place I'd worked the last seven years was a solitary silent affair.

Surreal, to say the least.

I saw the lady who handled our travel in the parking lot. She seemed shocked to see me and told me that she was "really sorry to hear what happened" and I just said "Okay."

The ride home was strange. Telling my wife was even stranger.

My next post will be the very weird tale of my friend and I going to the Unemployment office. It's a doozy.

Kids Say The Darnedest Things And Adults Say The Dumbest

I was doing my morning routine, checking out the news, and the e-mails and the Twitters and I stumbled across something that caught my eye on the Huffington Post and it made my stomach churn in disgust. Michelle Malkin, a conservative talking head, was on the usually entertaining and informative This Week with George Stephanopolous and was somehow picked to be a guest on the Round Table segment of the program. The talk made it’s way to Unemployment and she blurted out that she thinks they need to cancel unemployment because it gives people an incentive not to work.

But why should I tell you this? See it for yourself:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/02/michelle-malkin-cynthia-t_n_249520.html

Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I’m 30 and have been working pretty much nonstop since I was 15. That’s 15 years for those of you that aren’t down with the math. I lost my job at [PLACE I WORKED] back in [FART.] Sure, Unemployment Insurance sure helps to pay the bills, but to say that I wouldn’t take a full time good paying gig over a few hundred bucks a week would be crazy.

I fired off the following e-mail to Michelle at writemalkin@gmail.com:

“I’m 30. I’ve been working nonstop since I was 15. In May I lost my job as a [PERSON DOING THINGS AT A PLACE] due to “budgetary reasons.” It’s the first time in my fifteen year work history that I’ve been out of work and it is just straight up insulting that this rhetoric-spewing, hateful little moron can spread this poisonous horse shit. It’s not like I haven’t tried to get a job. It’s not like I haven’t called in every favor from every work acquaintance I’ve had the last 15 years of living on both coasts, making friends, etc. I’m either “overqualified” or they don’t have anything. Believe me. UIB *barely* pays the bills, and I am completely and totally thankful for it, but to even imply that I wouldn’t take a job in a split second over getting UIB is dense and irresponsible, even for an idiot like Michelle Malkin. “

Haven’t got a response yet, but I’m sure once she gets a whiff of middle class on my e-mail she’ll hit delete before she’s even done reading it. I’ll letcha know.

A Day In The Life

I’m sure there are some of you out there, locked up in a highly satisfying professional life that look out the window of your homogenized corporate tower wondering just what the little people with no jobs do with their whole day. Well, at first it’s a flurry of trying your best to immediately get work and get on with your life and try to get a new job! Gotta hustle! After the first months of getting your hopes and dreams crushed by no one responding to you at all you eventually kind of get in a weird routine that can only be described as “trapped by freedom.” Here’s a peek into the oh-so-exciting dream world that the Employed wish they could be a part of one day (except for that whole, “not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from” thing.)

11 a.m.: What’s up, world? I’m awake and stuff! Let’s shuffle into the living room and pick up the old iPhone. Oh good, I’ve got some spam e-mails from Monster.com, who have complex algorithms and computers that tell them to suggest jobs that match my graphic artist/video editing background. Ooh, today they’re telling me about being the cafe manager at a nearby truck stop and being an account executive at an insurance company. Yay! I love technology. I can only hope they create a robot that does the job of all headhunters. It would be irony (or some similar metallic outer exoskeleton) at it’s finest.

Next up, checkin’ Twitter. People actually message me on there, which is cool. I’m going to do a few reviews for this cool horror movie site I’ve been doing a few things for. I did a really cool interview with a very talented guy from a new horror movie that went up last week. But on the other, darker side of Twitter…Oh, man oh, man…who knew that some celebrities would tweet so much that it would adversely affect my opinion of them…I mean, seriously, Rue McClanahan. Shut the fuck up already.

12 NOON: It’s either going to be some combination of a deli-meat sandwich or one of a handful of various ramen/rice/egg noodle variations baptized in the adoring fire that is, uh, that Korean stuff with the Rooster on the side that is hotter than hell. I am probably on Diet Mountain Dew #2 at this point because I drink like a fish and I quit smoking so I have to have some addiction and supposedly Diet Mountain Dew is healthy? Sure! We’ll go with that. I probably still haven’t turned the tv on at this point.

1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: TV is on. I’m playing Fallout 3. It’s fun. I got into it a little late, but I find it’s better to get into videogames a while after they come out because then you can read all the secrets, tips and tricks and make it more fun and/or less challenging, which always equals “more fun” to me because I am lazy, at least with video games.

5 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Out running errands. Grocery store, Family Dollar Store (which have awesome molasses cookies and previously mentioned ramen noodles) and cheap drinks for the wife. Then over to Dollar General for my drinks, and various sundries. I grab some dinner from either Sonic, or The Local Mexican Joint, or Little Caesars. That’s about all we eat anymore. The other few places in town like Subway has burned us before. A old-school cafe closes too early.

7 p.m. – 2 a.m.: Dinner is eaten. Pets get fed. Wife and I hang out, talk, get online, watch TV, play with the animals, watch Big Brother After Dark on Showtime every night for three freakin’ hours, talk about that game show, etc. Sometime around this time I go look for jobs online and get bummed when there isn’t anything or get really excited and fire off CV’s and resumes that never get a response. Was my old job not big enough? Does my work not stand on it’s own? It is depressing to say the least. Sometime around here I’ll shuffle off to bed, usually by 3 or 4. Tomorrow is another day.

Or is it?