Dear Blog,
It’s been a while, but don’t think I haven’t been thinking
of you. I wanted to pick you back up almost as soon as stopped you, but for a variety
of reasons I’ve resisted. Among those reasons: fuck, this is a depressing
topic. Also, I have too many blogs, and I neglect all of them. Updating one
just seems… unfair. And I wasn’t getting any traction, probably cause I didn’t
do any outreach or publicity or promotion. But what was I expecting? A
shout-out by Robert Reich, maybe. Or something like that.
So how do I update two years?
In short, blog, I quit you because I got a job, but the job
turned out to be horrible. As an indication, the average employee life span was nine months, something I hit perfectly. (My replacement, reportedly,
lasted two weeks. The guy hired to replace the person who left before me last
five months, and the other woman hired right before I left lasted three. Two
other people left shortly after I did, one on zero notice. My supervisor was in
cahoots with the director to double-bill our client, meaning she was working
another job within the organization instead of supervising us. I asked her point
blank how many hours a week she was working as our supervisor, and she rolled
her eyes and hem-hawed, “I dunno, 25 to 30?”. We all worked in social services
with mentally unstable people, we all knew when someone was bullshitting, and
all agreed she was being very, very generous. And completely
unaware/indifferent to the unethical practice in which she was engaging, or how
her absence was effecting us, and our ability to do our jobs. And she was also
flirty, and unprofessionally so, which was important in regards to this last
fact: the job was incredibly depressing and difficult. I sat in a room with
professional –social workers, parole office, mental health experts- and we were
all dumbfounded on how to help this week. One told me “that will probably be
the most difficult case you ever have”, and I hope it was. Another example: sitting in a
meeting of thirty of us listening to how a teenage client’s nine-month old sister
was raped and murdered, followed with “the client doesn’t know about the rape
part, so when she comes in don’t mention it”. All thirty of us –hardened social
workers- were crying. That when I told myself that $17.40 an hour wasn’t worth
it.
Days after that meeting I relaunched the whole interview
machine.
Frankenstein's monster breathed once again.
Pretty soon I had a
promising second interview –I committed an all-fronts assertion on that one,
contacting friends of friends who knew the Executive Director- but didn’t get
it. However, it just reinforced how bad my job was and how badly I had to
leave. Shit, not only did it pay $18 an hour, but it had nothing to do with
raped and murdered babies. That alone is worth at least $2 an hour more in
equivalent benefits.
Each successive interview compounded my intolerance of my
job. I had another second interview, which invited me back to a third, with a
couple other interviews thrown in as well. I was desperate to leave and I was
so close to something, I knew I was. Furthermore, my girlfriend was embarking
on a dream: a solo trip to Africa –including Kinshasa and ‘the most remote
region on the continent’. Stakes were rising. A week before she left, I
canceled a work meeting to go to an
interview. My boss found out and didn’t like it. She called me in with her supe
and gave me an ultimatum. I was so close and hated the job so much, I quit. The
next day the third interview gave me a thanks butt. I didn’t want to worry my
girlfriend before she departed for this incredible adventure of hers, so I
played a game for a few days.
I don’t regret quitting that job, but the next month was
hell, perhaps the worst in this long ordeal. I was absolutely fucking
determined that in a month, my girlfriend would return and I had a happy
situation to share with her. “I have new job! Yay!” I did everything possible,
including personally emailing all my contacts my resume, seeing a couple job
coaches, sending out fifty applications and a dozen interviews. The second
lowest point, after the raped and murdered baby (by the way, I never told my
girlfriend or anyone else about that, so feel honored, blog!), was the day I
worked at Goodwill, entry-level sorting clothes for $10 an hour. The lowest two
minutes was when a guy I knew from grad school came in and was shopping as I
was being told how to sort long sleeve shirts by color. It was a lesson of
shame and humiliation straight out of “Nickeled and Dimed”: guy with a
master’s degree and fifteen years professional experience so deperate for work,
he omits that all from an application, only to be moritified by the position
when he actually gets it, he works only one day.
Classist of me? Perhaps.
Embarrassing for my grad school? Definitely.
Eventually, my girlfriend returned. The most shameful thing
was not being able to tell her I had succeeded and had a job. I forgot what I
told her.
Where are we in this timeline? Late August, 2014 I think. I
poured on the application process, with seveal more almost but thanks butts.
Then out of the blue in mid-October I got a call: one of my thanks butts
(actually, she never told me thanks butt, I called and emailed her to give me
an answer for nearly a month, but no
response) forwarded my name to this guy. He was desperate: part-time, temp city
job with kids and conservation, right up my alley. We talked on Wednesday. Job
started Saturday. I already had a commitment that Saturday, but after that I
was free.
So I got a life-line, sorta. Part-time, temporary interim
(ie: no benefits) city job paying $16.40 an hour, but it doesn’t involved raped
and murdered babies so it feels like $18.40. The max is twenty hours a week and
policy says no more than a thousand hours a year, so if I take a two week
unpaid vacation, I’m good. And I’ve figured out that if the rough calculation
from hourly to annual is H2000, the calculation from p/t hourly to annual is
H1000. Go math!
This new routine gave me some breathing room and stability
in 2015, but the ‘waves aren’t completely drowning me’ sorta stability, not a
total head-above-water stability. I was pickier in applying to jobs, resulting
in the lowest numbers of this process. And few interviews too. But I could take
vacation when I wanted, and my girlfriend negotiated a good raise so if we were
married, our combined income was stellar. But if we were married, my debts
would bring her down. So we’re not married.
In August I had a job offer in Montana. It hurt. It was a
dream job, minus any benefits and paying $14 an hour. It actually sucked. Not
taking that job may turn out to be the biggest regret of my life.
That kinda brings me up to now, President’s Day, February 15th,
2016.
I really don’t want to continue. Writing all this out has
predictably aggravated the knots in my stomach, the huge, festering, bowling
ball knots in my stomach. Some backfire you got there, diary! Pouring my heart
out is supposed to make me feel better! Now look where you’ve brought me.
ANYway, August saw a job offer that was perfect in some ways
and torturous in others, namely that it wasn’t completely perfect, nor even
good enough to accept. Or so I thought. I knew whatever decision I’d make, the
result would be the same: I’d regret it. Id regret taking the job if I did, I’d
regret not taking it if I didn’t. But onwards. The Fall saw me with a slightly
fewer interviewing schedule than the previous four Falls, but I reffed a lot
and worked enough and that kept me busy.
I also expected a lot of interviews in January, per past
experience (January 2014 I had ten). Instead I had only two, one of which was a
fairly placed punch to the gut (ironically, helping immigrants get jobs. Again
I aced the interview. This time they gave me a reason, ‘hiring a long time
volunteer’. I did get a job offer in the boring Capital City of my home state.
Years ago I sent a minimum requirement of $40 thousand to move out of state.
This job paid $39 thousand. My girlfriend didn’t want me to go. Nuff said.
Then came February.
A job I had been looking for since September opened up. A friend of a
friend left a ‘dream job’ at a local college, perfectly up my alley. I‘d met with him two years before and called him up as soon as
I heard he was leaving and saw him again in his second to last day. Oddly the job
wasn’t posted until four months later, but once it did I jumped all over it,
rallying my contacts and pulling out all the stops. So I was a bit stoked to
actually get the interview (previous openings for this job at a separate but
similar nearby college yielded 250 applications) and even dished out $150 to an
interview coach to help prep. But I bombed the interview: the energy was vapid,
the questions oddly worded and my answers awkward and rambling. At one point I
could clearly hear the drone of the ventilation system drown out the snoozes from
the interview panel. I sucked and I knew it.
Funnily, before that interview I got a call for another one the
following morning, identical position in Arizona. Even though I goofed on
the interview time (AZ follows mountain time! Who knew!?), even though they
woke me out of bed at 8:30am, even though I had stayed out the night before
playing soccer and drinking beer, even though I had little sleep and felt
horrible, I aced the interview.
For those of you keeping track: interview #194, community college:
bombed.
#195. ASU: The Bomb.
Then I got another call for yet another dream job interview on
Thursday. Again, I pulled out all the stops. I thought it was my best interview
ever. And just to top it off, I got scheduled for yet another interview, the next day. That one went so-so.
#196: The Bomb Bomb.
#197: meh.
But before the week was over, Dream Job, IV #196, emailed me
a thanks butt. An hour later #195 did the same.
So Valentine’s Day weekend got off on the wrong foot.
