Life goes on…

Forgive me, it’s been way too long since my last confession post. A few new things have happened in my life and I’ve been pretty busy/exhausted. My job is going alright.  I’ve apparently developed a reputation around the school as being the “go to” guy if you actually get something done. The teachers love me because I’m usually quick to respond to their pleas for help, am empathetic, and follow through till their issues are taken care of.

The most surprising thing about the job is how little time I have in the rest of the day. I get home around 4:30 every day, but I have to be up by 6am, so I’m usually in bed by 10-11, which makes me feel old. I’ve tried to create a schedule for myself when I get home, but I’m really bad about actually following it.

I was really hoping to move in to an apartment with my friend now that I got a job, and I honestly thought I could, but my math was wrong and I couldn’t swing it AND meet my goal of saving $1000 a month in order to leave by February. On the bright side though I can now save $1500/mo and reach my goal of saving up $10,000 faster.

Very few people I’ve talked to have been supportive of what I’m trying to do with moving, at least when I tell them why I’m moving.

My biggest news besides the new job is the new girlfriend. I’ve been dating this one girl for a about a month. Met her online, then for drinks at a bar and we hit it off. She’s pretty techie. She’s actually fixing my wifi on my laptop she put linux on as I write this.

My last blog post was about me realizing I needed to avoid politics. This has been extremely difficult, but I’ve been doing it. It’s like avoiding some food on a diet and then it’s everywhere. It’s especially bad since there are 45 days left till the next presidential election. Whenever I catch myself thinking about politics I’ve been trying to quickly think about traveling or something else. Honestly that’s been a major reason why I haven’t posted anything recently. When I’m trying to avoid news, it’s been a little hard to write about anything.

I have some things in mind, but I’ll get to that in a bit. In the meantime I gotta go for a walk with my girlfriend and her dog before a play.
tl;dr still alive.

I landed a job!

I’ve been interviewing around for ages and I finally got a job as a computer tech for a school system! I’m really excited about it. It’s full time and I’ll be making more money than any other point in my life, which will really help me save up for moving out of the US. It feels amazing to actually have a job again, and a full time “real job” at that! Previously every dollar I spent while unemployed was a step away from my dreams, now I’ll be able to start moving towards them again! My self imposed deadline has always been Christmas, but I’m not sure if I’m going to go then, or stay on for an entire year. It depends on how much I have saved up and how bad things are getting in the country. My goal is $7,000, but $10,000 might be better. I also need to set up a small emergency reserve that would cover the cost of a plane ticket back to the states should anything happen to my family.

I was actually planning on leaving tomorrow to go on a spur of the moment adventure to Alaska, but then they called and asked that I be in on Monday. Oh well. At least I’ll be making money for a bigger, life changing trip.

One of the hardest things I’ve been having to deal with is combating the urge to buy all of my travel gear. I’ve been making lists, researching every item, comparing, trying things out in backpacking stores, etc, but I don’t want to buy everything now, only for it to sit in my closet for several months to a year. Plus, the price will probably drop over that time and something better might come along. Still, it’s so tempting!

Right now I think I’ve decided on a backpack I’d like to get: The Osprey Atmos 50.

 

I’ve been looking at a lot of packs and it was a close run off between this and the Osprey Exos. The Exos is like the Atmos, but slightly lighter and less comfortable. I figure that if I’m going to have something on my back I’d like the straps to be a bit beefier. When looking at packs I’ve been trying to find something with a hip belt and pockets (so I can keep my valuables right up front), something with a LOT of breathability, and few to no zippers in the back to help keep it secure. I think the atmos fits all of these, but I must resist buying it right now in case the price drops or something better is made between now and when I’m about to leave.

I keep thinking about that day, trying to imagine it, trying to imagine the week leading up to my departure. I don’t know what it will feel like. I imagine as the plane lifts off I’ll simultaneously feel an amazing level of relief, like I’m being let out of prison, that my life is finally and truly starting. I imagine the week leading up to it will be extremely exciting as I lay out my gear, pack everything, go down the list to make sure all is in order. I’ll be setting out on a grand adventure like explorers of old. I can’t wait!

I got fired yesterday…

It’s just starting to sink in and I feel sick and depressed. Little back story:

I graduated from college in May of 2010 with a worthless degree in History. I went through a really rough time after graduating, losing my gf of 3 years, and moving to a state I hate. I got a job offer and I was desperate to get out of my parent’s house. The job was for $10/hr, 9-5 M-F. The first 120 days I was to be on probation, after that probation I would have an employee review and it was strongly hinted that a raise would follow after that review, depending on how I did.

In my desperation to get out of my parent’s house and to start my life after getting my first “real” job out of college, I signed a 12 month lease for an apartment I could barely afford. (Oh, I luckily don’t have any debts or car payments or anything like that, so I could swing it on $10/hr, but just barely) I was really banking on getting a raise at the end of my 120 day review. (My mistake, I know, but it was heavily hinted that I’d get a raise)

Well I worked my ass off. I completely transformed the company’s work process. It was a very small company, only 4 other people in the office, but we had 30+ subcontractors around the country. Anyways, my review came around and my boss gave me all top marks, said that I was doing amazing, that she was so happy to have me…..but no raise. She said we didn’t have enough accounts and she couldn’t give me one. (She drove a BMW, had maids, and took home a 6 figure salary. Later during a fight she would tell me that she paid my salary out of her take home pay.)

Anyways, on top of not getting a raise, I got 5 days paid vacation time off per year. That’s about half the national average for the US. If I got sick, it came out of my vacation time. If I wanted to take a vacation she probably would have given me shit for it and would not have let me. So no raise, no vacation time, oh, and no health care. I was still on my dad’s plan, so she didn’t have to give me health care. She was paying for everyone else to have health care, but since I was on my father’s she didn’t have to pay the extra $300/mo.

After that review, when I found out that I wasn’t going to get a raise, that I was to continue to get paid my probationary pay, my morale tanked. I felt like I was getting fucked over. I no longer felt the need to go above and beyond for my boss. (I would have done anything for her in the beginning. I even went out of my way to make chemically etched copper business cards for her birthday. I volunteered to come in on the weekends to help out. When she had a bad day I went next door and got her a brownie and ice cream. She told me that I was one of the kindest, most thoughtful people she ever met.)

Anyways, things started to spiral downward slowly. Several weeks ago there was a watershed incident. I was to run the deliveries for the day, but my boss’ son didn’t explain that I had to do some special route and deliver some suitcases to a doctor’s office that he forgot to give me a key for. Since her son was a subcontractor, he paid me and I was off my boss’ clock while doing the runs.

Anyways, I got lost, almost ran out of gas, was half an hour’s drive out of my way from home, an hour off the clock, etc. Needless to say I was pissed. I texted my boss that I was not happy. She called me and I was admittedly a bit short with her. I wasn’t rude, but she could tell I wasn’t happy. The very next day she hauled me upstairs and scolded me for half an hour, completely taking me off guard.

I don’t do well with confrontation and my brain shut down. I told her that I didn’t have any job satisfaction, that I was unhappy about not having a raise, that I was barely able to make ends meet, that I had done everything she asked of me and more, yet I felt like I was being taken advantage of, that I was looking for a part time job to work during the evenings after I got home in order to make ends meet. She flipped her shit and almost fired me there. Anyways, I put my tail between my legs and apologized and kept my job.

My morale was really shot then. I started to resent my boss. She kept going on and on about how no one gave raises like her, that nobody took care of their employees like her, but it was all talk. She would do stuff like get us soda and snacks and keep it in the fridge, but that’s it. I liken it to gladiator armor. It covers the arms and other things, but leaves the torso and vital organs completely exposed. She would try to do little things to show that she cared, but it was never anything that really mattered like giving me a raise so I could afford to put food on my table.

Anyways, after that blow-out it seemed that all the good will that I had built up over the past several months of hard work was destroyed. Things started to get progressively worse. She demanded that we keep meticulous track of out hours worked. If we were late, she’d scold us. Well I always came in a little early and left a little later than 5. I kept track of those minutes and they added up, often to at least an extra hour. I put that down on my time sheet and she scolded me. She said that it would add up to over time that she did not want to pay me. So basically she wanted to not pay me for the time before 9 that I was there, nor the time after 5, but heaven forbid I was late one morning, then she would fuck me over. The system was rigged that it only benefited her, never me.

Everything really snapped for me when I got in trouble for taking a lunch break to have lunch next door with some friends. I apparently was operating under the assumption that I had a lunch hour in the middle of the day that I could do whatever I wanted with. The other people in my office would often take half an hour or more to walk across town to get some lunch. Most of the time I just sat at my desk and ate while I worked. Well I took a break and she informed me that I didn’t have a lunch break, that I would have to adjust my hours in order to take a lunch break. I worked 8 hours and was only allowed a 15 minute break in the morning and a 15 minute break in the evening. Neither of which I ever really took.

She also scolded me one morning for being exceedingly tired. She automatically assumed that because I was 23, it was due to me being irresponsible and partying all weekend long. I don’t really ever drink. I have sleep apnea which makes me tired as shit every day. Ironically I see one of our clients to get treatment for my sleep apnea.

I got fed up. I started looking around for replacement jobs. I cleared out my desk secretly a week ago. I cleaned up my computer and wiped all my history. From time to time she’d have me dig through a subcontractor’s computer to see if I could find anything incriminating. I was her only IT guy and so I made damn sure she would never be able to find anything on me.

The thing that really got me was that she always kept moving the goal posts. She would ask me to do something, I would do it, and then I would get in trouble for doing what she asked. I could NEVER fucking win. I can’t emphasize this enough. I constantly felt like I was in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. What also really killed me was how unstable the whole situation was. She would act like we were all a family, like we were best friends one moment, and then next thing you know, I do something wrong and she’s about to fire me. Up and down, up and down, I couldn’t stand it.

Anyways, this afternoon, 15 minutes before close, she told me to come upstairs. “Oh great,” I thought, “time to get scolded by my boss again.” I went upstairs and she was sitting there ready for a fight. I knew it was coming. I sat down with a smile on my face and was very cordial and polite. She said that I was not the person she hired months ago, that my attitude was unacceptable, that she had a long list of things that were suddenly now back on her. I asked her what she meant by that because I was under the impression that I was handling everything she asked me to do. She couldn’t name anything. She tried to come up with some examples, but they were all things that she never assigned to me. It’s funny how things suddenly had a habit of becoming solely my project just in time for me to get in trouble for it not being completed.

Well I just sat there and smiled, she said she was very disappointed, I think I said that that made two of us, but the whole thing feels like a dream that I can’t really remember, even though it was just this afternoon. She asked what was going on, why I wasn’t happy. I didn’t feel like having a fight with her, so I told her that I didn’t appreciate being ambushed like this and that I had nothing to say. She said that if I didn’t tell her, that I would be leaving on bad terms. I said sorry to hear that, but that I have nothing to say to her. She told me to get my things and I walked downstairs without looking at my coworkers. She stood next to me the whole time watching me like a hawk. I turned in my key to the office and then was going to close out of some programs on my computer. She didn’t want me to, she wanted me to keep all my windows open so she could see what I was doing. I think I got everything closed, but I can’t remember. I might have left my personal gmail account open. I got my stuff while my coworkers sat their in stunned silence, pretending not to pay attention. I walked out of the office and shut the door behind me. I was shaking a little, but not overly showing. It wasn’t until later today that I felt like I was going to throw up. I was…am happy, but I don’t know what I’m going to do for a job, or how I’m going to pay for my apartment.

I know I can never tell any future employers what happened because they will always assume the fault is with the employee, never the employer, but I was really fucked over by this job. I just wanted to get this all off my chest.

Some thoughts on getting a job

So as my last year of college winds down, I’m starting to think about employment for after I graduate. To be honest, the coming change is kinda scary. I’ve never been paid anything above a wage before, and the idea of someone paying me thousands of dollars a year to do something blows my mind. I’m not sure if I’ll be good enough to do whatever it is I need to do.

As if the job market was not already tough, I have a few…..principles…I refuse to compromise on. My biggest fear is becoming a wage/corporate slave. I would rather starve than worship some evil overlords and thank them that in their mercy they allowed me to become their slave in return for barely enough money to live.

I refuse to prostrate myself before my employers, or potential employers. The relationship will be balanced, or there will be no relationship at all.

I refuse to have my cellphone turned into a leash my boss holds tightly in his hand.

I refuse to work in a barren cubicle that constantly reminds me how tenuous my employment is, that I could easily be replaced tomorrow.

I refuse to grovel for my vacation time. If I put in the hours, it’s mine.

I refuse to work unpaid hours to prove my loyalty to a company that has none for me.

I refuse to work in a top-down, one way communication, management environment.

I refuse to tolerate abusive and screaming bosses.

I refuse to spend the vast majority of my life working a job I hate in the hopes that when I am old I can retire and be happy for the 10 years before I die.

Live free or die.