yeah, it’s been interesting
Well, now that I have a laptop I have no excuse not to get back to my blogging. This of course means posts composed completely naked or at least in weird clothes and at weird times.
To bring you, my dear reader, up-to-speed I’ll start with my “termination” aka how I got laid off.
The day before Halloween, a Friday and the day that the preschoolers were going to come over to Trick-or-Treat the office should have been a joyful day. I didn’t feel like dressing for the holiday and I was already late getting candy for the kids. I went to Walgreens to pick some up but decided I should check my bank balance. When I found that I had not been paid, I thought that was rather odd. I went into work but started to get that sinking feeling you get when something is going to go down but you convince yourself nothing will happen but you really think you should have stayed in bed. This day I was right, I should have stayed in bed.
I got to work and mentioned to my co-worker, Nancy, that I had not gotten paid. She checked her account and low ‘n behold, she had not either. We also happen to have the same bank. She spent the morning asking around but to no avail, we were the only ones (save one other lady who wasn’t sure) that had not gotten paid. By the time our 10 am break rolled around, I had the silly idea that we must be terminated because why would we be the only ones not to get paid? We laughed and she said “really, you think they would do that?”.
We came into the office from break and called the bank who verified that no funds had been deposited. I talked to my friend, the office accountant and she indicated that our stubs had “paid in lieu” on them. This generally means that the employee is terminated and being paid in-lieu of the time they’re owed. It was then I knew for sure that after 5 long years, I was being laid-off. It wasn’t long before my friend talked to the owner to “straighten things out” and we were called into his office. The rest was pretty quick - basically we sat down, he told us that due to the economic conditions, our positions couldn’t be justified and that we were being let go. We were not paid at this time but we were given mocked up pay stubs. No one said anything as he indicated he was sorry to have to do it (my boss just happened to be out that day) and how he would make sure he wrote us all letters of recomentation (which I still have not rec’d to date). He indicated it had nothing to do with our performance but it was just the economy.
At the end, he asked if any of us had anything to say. I told him I wanted to speak to him alone. He granted my request but asked his CSR to stay in the room (I guess as his witness). I told him that was fine, I had no problem speaking in front of her. At this point, I asked him if he had kept me from getting the corporate job I had appllied for. (The background is that I applied for a job with the corporate office, went to UT and interviewed and was all but offered the job when I took time off for surgery. During the surgery off time, I waited for the corp office to confirm everything but the hiring manager advised they were waiting on the owner to confirm it was ok, saying they had emailed him and left him voicemails but he didn’t respond to them.) He danced around the topic, saying that the layoff had nothing to do with my performance, etc. I said that I knew it did not, that I know I’m an excellent employee but he kept dancing around, saying the same things. I had to ask three times and finally he said he didn’t even know I applied, saying I never told him and he didn’t receive any voicemails or emails. I wanted to ask him if he was calling the VP of the particular department a liar but I thought better of it. In the end, he managed to not admit to anything but in my mind I knew he had done something to prevent me from getting a better paying job with more responsibility because he could, God only knows why else - only to lay me off a few months later.
There just isn’t any justice in this world is there?
So there I was, freshly laid off. I cried, for a little bit but once I got in the door that day, I hit the “pavement” running. I was constantly job hunting, I went to several interviews and thankfully, the silver linning is that I was offered a really great job which I started almost two weeks ago. There is a Santa Clause, Virginia.
Now I work for a great company, family owned and very nice. They’ve been great to me so far. After starting this fantastic new job, I also reconnected with someone very interesting. But we won’t discuss that now.
Here I am, much happier now than I was at that Hell hole I called my last job. I’m happy, my social life has really picked up since the layoff, I feel better about myself and life is good. Hopefully this will translate into more writing/blogging. I also just bought a new laptop so I can write in bed so hopefully that will help too.
If anyone reads this God-forsaken self promotion fest, bless you. If not, then Hell - it’s nice to vent a little. I keep things fairly tame as this is totally open for anyone to read. Other than that, hopefully the adventure will only get better from here out. Thanks for reading!
- k
My actual birthday was yesterday and by comparison it was pretty normal. I dragged arse out of bed, made it to work and enjoyed Hello Kitty cupcakes, was taken to lunch by “C” and then “T” picked me up for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We came back to my place, watched “Tales from a Paralell Universe: I Worship His Shadow” (Lexx in other words) and then he fell asleep. I stayed up, tried to work on Tony’s graphic for his myspace and also ripped live videos of him performing. (Crap! I need to drop those videos off to them like uh, now btw.)
