I got fired.
I am going to have to flag today as a new beginning. I got fired/terminated all over office politics mainly because the head of IT (Hector) had been reading my e-mail and looking at files when I was not around. Whereas he never had the guts to say I did anything wrong, he built a case out of his opinion that some things I did were “not authorized”. I basically told them I could not operate an effective database under such circumstances, sewering Hector in the process by pointing out that Rhonda, the boss’s wife, who worked next to me during the data entry had not been similarly treated.
So, I had a choice to shaft him then and there, or shaft him from a distance later. Of course, I learned at the phone company never to do anything directly, always go round-about. I took the morning off and got to thinking. If you look at the vast majority of the plans I have made for extra money over the past two years, it has been because I do not make enough money at my day job. This includes the toothpicks and goes back a long ways. The only time I did not have such plans was for a few all too short years at the phone company when I made $50,000 a year with plenty of time off.
[Author’s note 2018: I didn’t actually get fired, but it was arranged so that I could collect unemployment, which I did. Ernie, the head of accounting, had tipped me off a month earlier to start looking for work. The company is on the rocks. I was still operating at maybe 50% from my health condition at the time, and the only work I sought had to be easy, sit-down, and stressless. Rumo is the head office is intending to farm out thepayroll department overseas.]
Even then, at the phone place, I played in bands, taught dance lessons and invested in all kinds of things (the problem was the high rate of tax I had to pay discouraged real investments). Now that I pay far less tax, less than 1/3 the former amount, it has become possible to make money through ordinary investments and I have done that the entire time since I started here. I was not looking for a construction job, I was looking for a job period and this one came along. I have been put off many times to learn an electrician makes as much as I do. My ideal job would have other characteristics.
Now I have the choice to stay here or go to Texas. I think I will stay here, working as a temp to pay the bills, until I sell the cars and get the toothpicks set up. There is also the option to go, as in drive, back to Seattle and both buy a utility trailer and get my things out of storage. Oddly, rather than do nothing for this thinking session, I took an afternoon job stuffing envelopes. Yes, I know this has a reputation of being nothing but a biz-op scam, but seriously, I went to a place called SystemOne and stuffed brochures and flyers into envelopes. This could be just another indication of how the labor market is going in this whole country, that is back to cheap manual labor where we used to lead the world. SystemOne is a local manufacturer, yes there still are a few, of a machine that cleans grease off parts and brushes. The mailings are for an upcoming trade show and they want me back on Monday. It pays $9 per hour.
So, since my rent is actually paid up until January and this time I will be very picky about work, look for an extended period of me doing nothing much. JZs brother, Sam, is a doctor on the cruise lines and has mentioned before that they need people with my organizational abilities. So I pumped John for more information. The boats now have a complete medical facility aboard. There are five to six people of the 700 on each cruise who take seriously ill. Sam has been working on the boats, that is out on the water, for the entire 25 years since he graduated. I thought he had a clinic downtown. The available jobs are either good, or very poor paying with no in between. JZ thinks purser is a good position, but I know there is a lot more to it than adding up the customer tabs and making sure they do not get off the boat until it is paid in full. Next to the captain, the purser is who they will run to.
So that means I want a job on shore, in Fort Lauderdale, in an office full of young white women new in town, with a high turnover and deep discounts when I want to take a cruise. This is something I have to plan very carefully, with plenty of thinking. Where JZ says Sam could likely get me an excellent interview, I would not want to work on the same boat as him, and things like that. The office full of women is important to me, and I don’t mean maybe. Remember my definition of ideal sex: that which happens between a slim, athletic, decent, perfect-bodied teenage girl who has never been pregnant or shacked up and a very clean white man, preferably me.
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