Happy New Year!

Good riddance to 2009 and hello 2010. Didn't get out for that ride and still haven't done much in the way of reflecting. Perhaps that's still to come; perhaps not. Right now, I'm just hoping that come Monday a whole slew of HR people are going to come off of vacation and pelt me with responses to my resume. 

Happy Birthday To Me!

Today, a totally self-serving post (as if the others aren't also). Today is my 38th birthday. I suppose this would be the time some would be reflective of their lives and whatnot, but I'm not normally an introspective kind of guy. I just haven't given it a lot of thought; what with the holidays approaching, the job hunt etc... maybe later today I'll do a bit of soul-searching or whatever and post about it. I had planned to go for a bike ride (one mile for each year), but Beth's working and Jack's not in pre-k right now so, perhaps I'll push that back to the weekend. Stay tuned. (the one or two of you that have been reading this, anyway)


For now, off to the store for Christmas cookie ingredients and some last-minute gifts.

Unemployment haiku

This seems to have taken on a bit of a theme lately, but since this is my outlet and my employment situation has such a major impact on my life, it's to be expected. Here's a haiku:


Without employment
Certainty is uncertain
Remaining hopeful 


Actually reading this? Unemployed? Leave your own; it's strangely therapeutic.

A Census Taker Came to Test Me Once....

"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

I hope that doesn't happen to me. Tuesday morning, I take the test and fill out application for a census job. They have IT positions in addition to the canvasser and supervisor positions. At this point, I'm willing to accept any of the above; an IT position would be best because obviously, it's within my field, but the others pay enough to give us some breathing room. A canvasser position would be at the very bottom of the pay scale that I could accept, but it would allow us to get by without too much struggle. Hopefully they have some openings and I can start right away. I'm not too concerned about passing the test; I just took a look at the practice test on their site and it looks like the same test I took back in the day when I tried to get hired at the post office. Really, REALLY basic test of clerical skills, reading, math, logic and organization. I get 30 minutes to complete it and I'm pretty sure I'll have no problems with it. I also get a veteran's preference on the test due to my military service. After I take that, I can apply to take the supervisor test as well. Keeping my fingers crossed. Hoping I can get in pretty quickly so that I can start collecting a paycheck before my severance pay officially runs out.

Ahh... the crapfest continues.

When I separated from the firm a couple of weeks ago, I was told by the HR person that my accumulated vacation (3 weeks' worth) would be paid out to me on 12/15. Imagine Beth's shock when she checked our account and there was  only a deposit for what amounted to 2 days' pay. She freaked; as did I, but I was able to keep it together enough to secure a loan from mom to cover us until the end of the month. (Mom ROCKS!) After I dropped Jack off at pre-k, I called the HR call center to figure out WTF happened. The HR manger was wrong is what happened. Vacation is not paid out until the end of the month. I explained the situation to the HR rep I had on the phone and she is working to get an emergency payout of my vacation that, if approved, I should have in my hands on Monday. A crappy way to start the day, but I seem to have salvaged something of it.


I stopped in to where Beth works to let her know that I'm not getting screwed out of that money and that everything was taken care of, thinking that would set her mind at ease (as much as possible in this crappy situation anyway) and I was met with an icy stare. Not the reaction I was expecting and not the support I was hoping for. I know this is a crappy situation we're in and it's scary as f#*%, but I had nothing to do with this SNAFU. And, I managed to get it taken care of. I wasn't expecting a ticker tape parade or a hero's welcome, but JFC, something other than a look to kill would've been nice. Of course, had I managed to stay employed, it never would have happened to begin with. 


Oh well, off to Monster.com, etc... in my quest to fix this shit.

Another wonderful day of unemployment

Once again, here I sit searching for a job. Actually, here I sit posting about looking for a job; I did my job hunting earlier. I find encouragement in the fact that there do seem to be a goodly number of job listings for the IT field out there. Monster.com seems to have quite a few, and they're even in places where we'd be willing to live; which is handy. I'm coming to the conclusion that employers are using their online application process as a tool to weed out job seekers who aren't serious about wanting a job. You have to go through PAGES inputting information that's already contained in your resume and then at the end, they instruct you to not only copy and paste your resume into their form, they want you to upload a copy of it as well. It took me over 30 minutes today to apply for one position. Hopefully, it's time well spent. 

Unemployment sucks

I got fired 2 weeks ago. I believe my manager had been working toward this for quite some time, but I'm not sure why. Over a year ago, I started receiving less than stellar periodic performance reviews. I didn't necessarily agree with the content of those reviews, but after discussing some of the points he brought up, it seemed he was not interested in changing his mind; to avoid seeming like a whiner, I thought it would be more professional to simply agree with him and attempt to "improve" my work. Nothing I did however, appeared to help. The only feedback I ever received from him was negative and if I did something well, it went unnoticed. He was required to review 2 of my calls per month and for a while, those always seemed to be negative as well. I noticed that he was playing 5-7 of my calls before settling on the ones to review. When I called him on this and noted that it appeared as if he were LOOKING for calls he could review negatively, that seemed to stop, but if he reviewed a call where I did everything correct, he either commented on how I could have done something better, or there were simply no comments at all. It took him over a year, but apparently, he finally collected enough reason to justify letting me go. Right before Christmas. Asshole.

I've learned some important lessons: