What Sarah Did this Summer Part Five: Goodbye Stuff Empowered, Hello Stuff Recovered.

 

               

                It’s been a minute since I quit a job.  The last two jobs I had, I was fired from.  (But don’t tell anyone who’s recently read my resume.  My parting from Stuff, Installed has been downgraded to “an amicable parting based on a mutual disagreement.”  Yeah, I thought I was employed, and NBM disagreed. And it was amicable in that he was happy I was gone and I did a little gleeful dance out the door.)  Anyway, my point is, the last job I actually QUIT was back when I worked for Horrible Bossman (remember him?) back in 2011.  So it’s been more than a decade since I actually, you know, gave notice and went through that whole deal.

                Matty from Stuff, Recovered (the new job) assumed that Stuff, Empowered wouldn’t make me work out a two week notice.  This assumption was backed up by Peaches, Skippy, Hubby, and even Gretal, Skippy’s g-friend.  No one thought I was going to have to actually work those last two weeks at Stuff, Empowered.

                Well, except for Stuff, Empowered.

                I took the coward’s way out.  I typically do, but remember, I really, really do like the people I worked with at Stuff, Empowered.  I hate the whole disappointed thing. I can deal with every human emotion directed at me except disappointment.  (Maybe that’s why I skip out on choir practice so often.  I’m a disappointing singer.)  So, being the coward I am, I sent an email with a resignation letter that took me several hours to put together. I’m a writer, I like all the words to hang together in a poetic manner.

                Plus, I sent it on a Sunday night so everyone would have the news before I got there on Monday.

                What I didn’t count on was Stuff Empowered’s really hard-core spam filter.

                When I got there on Monday, I realized that no one, not one person, had gotten my email because it was deemed spam by the system.  Which meant I had to fish the thing out of my spam box and resend it. Which delayed the reaction from the managerial team by a couple hours.

                The reactions ranged from HR sending me half a dozen emails informing me that my benefits were going to end to Red, who walked up to my cubicle and gave me a big hug. I honestly thought they’d be angry at me.  Anyway, the others on the team sent me an email wishing me well.

                Not one person said I could leave early. No one sent the security guy “Ryan” to my desk. I had this great vision of Ryan coming to my desk and handing me a banker’s box and then watching me while I packed up before escorting me to the door. None of that happened.

                It was mostly business as usual, except that once news got around, everyone stopped at Tucker’s cubicle and gave him grief for driving yet another person away.

                Oh, and N.E.W. (New Elsie W) was all broken up because she was CONVINCED we were going to be BFFs.  Meanwhile, Red wasn’t entirely sure NEW was going to last longer than I did.

                Fun fact, a couple of days after I gave notice, Molly also gave notice. Not a surprise to me, mostly because she’d confided that working in a cubicle wasn’t also not her bliss, but once again, Poor Tucker took a beating from the other people in the department for driving yet another person away.  (Also, Poor, Tucker…alone in a pod with N.E.W.)

                So, I worked the first week, business as usual.  Then I got a call from Matty who asked if I could start a little early.  I was a tiny bit annoyed.  I knew this gaggle of geniuses was going to need an office mom to handle things, but the whole interview process lasted a week longer than it needed too.  See, Matty thought maybe I should meet the Wizard before I got hired. The Wizard really didn’t want to be bothered. Had Matty pulled the trigger the day I interviewed; I would have started the exact day he wanted me to. However, since they collectively dragged their feet, I had committed to a full two weeks’ notice.  Matty couldn’t believe they were holding me to it.

                No one could. Bigger surprise, I was actually putting quite a lot of effort into my last days.

                I asked HR if I could leave two days early. The response was: “We can’t make you stay.”

                Cool beans.

                Now, the last three days of my employment at Stuff, Empowered, were kind of interesting. It seems that this giant company believes in FUN.  Like, lots of FUN.  (Well, except during working hours on days ending in Y.) They deemed that week the Customer Experience Appreciation Week.

                No one was quite sure what that meant. Are we appreciating our customers?  Are we appreciating the Customer Experience department?  Are we just appreciating the entirety of the customer experience?  (Which, since I was in Order Tracking and Order Payment, was NOT a great experience for customers or me.)

                The way this giant company appreciated whatever it was they were appreciating was to have what can only be described as a high school spirit week. I’m not making that up.  Monday was crazy hat day. Tuesday was sports jersey day.  Wednesday was generations day (They should have called it “misinterpretation of 80’s day” and been done with it.)  Thursday was “Stuff Empowered spirit wear…I mean, logo clothing. Friday was, and I’m not making this up: Flannel shirt day, so we can show everyone how cozy we are at work.

                That one made me laugh.  Flannel shirts were definitely not within the dress code guidelines. Also, “cozy” wasn’t the first thing one thought of spending time in that building. Not even my hot flashes could stave off the cold.  I had a small blanket (which I used the first couple days and then realized I looked like an old woman in a nursing home, so I took that home and brough a sweater.) And who, exactly, was going witness this coziness?  Customers rarely came to the building and never to the third floor.

                On my last Friday at Stuff, Empowered, the pod was abuzz with what kind of hat to wear.  Well, okay, Molly and I were.  Tucker, honestly, was going to do whatever we told him to, and N.E.W. insisted she didn’t have a hat.  Not one hat.

                “But you live in Wisconsin. You don’t have any kind of hat?”

                “I don’t like hats.”

                I don’t like hats either, but come on, in my house, there are at least a couple pieces of headgear that are “mine.” And Hubby and Skippy have dozens of hats.  I find it difficult that believe that anyone, really, ANYONE, doesn’t have access to a hat.  (Okay, maybe the kids hubby and I sponsor through Christian kids charity whatever don’t.  I mean, they don’t have food or houses, we’re told, so they probably don’t have hats.)  but N.E.W. swore up and down she didn’t have a hat. And then she looked at me with pitiful hobbit eyes.

                And I did not take the bait.  Ten years ago, working with Elsie W., I would have brought a hat for her to wear and she’d return it months later, covered in food and bent in four different ways.  Nope, this time I didn’t offer to lend N.E.W. a hat.  I call that growth.

                Or something.

                So hat day came and this is what I looked like:

 

 

 

 

 

                Hats didn’t last long for our pod.  The headsets were bulky.

                The next day was sports teams’ day. I figured everyone would wear Packers and Brewers, so I went with my other favorite team: Detroit Redwings.  So that was fun.

               

 

(I have no idea what's going on with that foot.)

 

 

                Day three of spirit week…I mean Customer Experience Appreciation, we could send appreciation notes to each other.  Seriously.  Remember when you could send secret messages to people during spirit week?  The girls from the pep club set up a card table and sold carnations of different colors and you could attach a message to the carnation and someone from the pep club would deliver it to your beloved/BFF/secret admiree.  It was like that, except no carnations, and no pep club.  I sent a couple notes, to Red and Molly.  And I got a couple, from Red and Molly.  So there’s that.

 

                Anyway, Day three of spirit week was Generations Day. Like I said, it should have been named, “1980’s misconception day.”  I managed to cobble together a legit 80’s outfit from my wardrobe. Apparently, my taste in clothes hasn’t changed much since 1986.  I even had proper high tops. I was missing the leg warmers, but I had tall, heavy socks which served the purpose of making my lower legs look bulky.  (Why was that a thing?)

                Things were kind of drab in my cubicle.  I’d taken home everything already, so I had nothing to distract me from the job.  Except for my chunky looking calves (like they need help) and my sweaty feet. At 4:30 my department manager came by and took my badge.  At 5:00 I waved to everyone and left the third floor one last time.

                Bye, Bye, Stuff, Empowered.

                Hello Stuff, Recovered.

                Now, Stuff, Recovered is a tiny little business that recovers data from dead hard drives, phones, video camera, lap tops, and the like.  I know even less about what this company does that what I did with Stuff, Installed or Stuff, Empowered.  I can’t even fake any kind of knowledge.

                What I can do, however, is be a great gatekeeper and coffeemaker.  Plus, I can clean an office quickly. These are all things this places needs big time.  I’ve now been here almost two weeks.  I’ve learned the following:

                Matty, a former tool and die shop manager, should not talk to people in a customer service capacity, like, ever.

                Computer geniuses don’t know how to dust, vacuum, or clean a mirror.

                The Wizard of Oz doesn’t like it when I go to his office if he’s in it.  If I must take a package upstairs, he’d prefer it if I did it when he’s not there.  In fact, if I could just teleport packages up there with my brain, that would be the best.

                Both the Wizard and the Tech have the same first name.  So, one’s Jackson. The other one’s “him.”  Take a guess which one is “him.”

                Training for this job was not at all intense or detailed.  Matty isn’t completely sure what he’s doing or how he’s doing it.  So…now that I’m on my own, I’m reteaching myself how to manage the duties they’ve given me.  All of which take about 18 minutes in any given work day.  The rest of the time…

                Well, the rest of the time I get to write, blog, and be in my own head.  And, once my brain has healed from the tumult of this summer, maybe I’ll learn something about the basic tasks of the business.  Who knows?  Maybe I’m a computer wizard, and I just don’t know it!

 

               

What Sarah Did This Summer: Part 4 A divinely placed apple and the second coming of Elsie W.

 

Part four:  A divinely placed apple and the second coming of Elsie W.

 

                Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time know that Hubby takes a two week break from it all and goes to Colorado to stay in the mountains with his sister and her husband.  And, if you’ve been paying attention, you also know that over the years, weird stuff tends to happen when hubby goes away.

                Some of the highlights:

                Peaches moved to her first apartment and I had to rent a UHAUL and then a bunch of kids to help move. I can barely drive in reverse in my own car, so my friend Sparkle had to back the UHAUL into my driveway.

                Skippy’s car’s axle snapped in half a block from house in the middle of a torrential downpour. 

                After enjoying a couple adult beverages and a movie, Peaches shaved her head…and I had to help clean of up the patches she couldn’t reach.

                I gave Skippy the task of clearing out the weeks in a large patch of the back yard. Obviously the only smart decision was to burn the weeds down.  Fortunately for us, we didn’t have any lighter fluid, and had to try burning green weeds with lamp oil. Spoiler alert…it doesn’t work.

 

                Anyway, so my point is that weird stuff, comical stuff, or tragic stuff tends to happen when Hubby’s calming presence isn’t close by.  The kids and I would probably spin off the globe if it weren’t for Hubby.  Which is why, every time he goes to Colorado, he gives the kids the “don’t do anything that will make your mother crazy” speech.

                This year was no different, except that this year I was working OUTSIDE the house, which meant that the opportunity for crazy was far higher.  And, true for form, something weird did happen:  I fell down.

I was taking my normal morning walk. It was one of those lovely early fall mornings when it was cool, but not cold and not dark, but the sun was just rising.  I had climbed two hills and was just about at the last turn for home when I stepped on an apple, one that had fallen from a small tree in a front yard, and fell down.  I get points for not swearing. All I said as I fell to the concrete was “ no, no, no…” 

                But yes, yes, yes, I fell.  My left knee and left elbow hit the concrete hard. However, like all adults my age who would rather die than have someone see them lying helpless anyplace, I leapt to my feet and kept walking.  It was too early for even the middle school kids to be out walking, so I doubt anyone saw me. My dignity, what little I have, was intact!

                My elbow was not. I managed to tear the skin open on both my arm and my leg, although there was no damage to my brand new jeans (thank goodness!  It’s very hard to find a 14W in jeans, and honestly, the 16Ws are too big.  Another shout out to Noom.)  I was, however, having a really hard time bending an unbending my elbow.  A normal person would have stayed home and called a doctor.

                I think we all know what I did.

                Sitting at my desk there at Stuff, Empowered, I had trouble doing things.  Like, basic things. Like resting my elbow on the desk, or like bending my elbow. But hey, who needs to use their left elbow? Not me!

                I plowed through work on Monday and Tuesday, but by the end of the day on Tuesday I was sort of done with it all. I was done with the pain. I was done with the exhaustion too. By then I’d been at the job a month and I. Was. Tired.  So, I did what a good employee would do: I burned a paid day off and slept in on Wednesday.

                My plan was to lie on the couch all day and watch movies and heal. I wasn’t going to the doctor, I think you all know me well enough by now to know that wasn’t going to happen.  But, when I emerged from bed after sleeping 12 solid hours, I felt like I had to DO something. So, I fired my resume off to three more places, this time to jobs that were part time. Ten minutes later I had a phone call from…let’s call him Matty from a small tech company in town. They needed a part time office person like…yesterday. Could I come in that day for an interview.

                I hadn’t planned on getting out of my jammies, but sure, why not.  I tarted up, put on my “first interview” outfit and headed over.  I talked to Matty for an hour.  Wow, did they need a person. Not so much an office person as an office mom. Two computer wizards and Matty, who was running the office, but really just wanted to quick working forever. I’ll go into more detail about the weirdness of that interview and the job in another blog.  But here’s the highlight: Part time, 20-24 hours a week, $18 an hour, and once I was done with my work for the day I could read, right, watch movies, whatever. They just needed someone to answer the phone and talk to anyone who walked through the door.

                Perfect.

                Especially since, upon returning to work the next day, I had a new pod mate. 

How does one describe her?

                Well, she brought in two large Walmart bags full of candy.  She was carrying a Starbucks coffee taller than she was, and half of it was whipped cream.  When she got into her cubicle, she proceeded to unpack all of her candy and snacks and whatnot, and then she proceeded to start eating.

                And eating.

                And eating.

                OH MY DEAR LORD… IT’S ELSIE W!

                (for those of you who don’t know Elsie W, you’re going to have to go back to the early posts of this blog, or buy one of the two books I wrote about her.)

                But yes, friends, my new pod neighbor was the second coming of dear old Elsie.

                She showed up late.  She didn’t pay attention to anything anyone said to her. She always had a better solution to whatever someone told her to do.

                Oh, and remember the F12 button?  Well, they didn’t use F12 at Stuff, Empowered, they used a VA03, which like the most common code used to access information there. When I last checked, she’d been there a month and still couldn’t remember VA03.

                But in all my days, I’ve never, ever seen anyone put away more sugar than New Elsie W.  For training, while she was supposed to be taking notes at other people’s desks, she took big bags of candy…the chewy kind like starburst. You know, the exact kind of candy you should NOT eat when you’re training for a busy phone job.

                Oh, but it gets better. (For those of you thinking this is bordering on gossip, I don’t gossip. What I do is observe and report.  And that’s what I’m doing now.)

                Red had to train New Elsie. W.  Poor Red.  Not learning VA03 and the candy thing wasn’t even the half of the problem with N.E.W.  Nope, the biggest problem was the…sleeping.

                See, once thing I learned in teacher school is that what goes up must come down.  What eats candy from dawn to noon must, MUST crash immediately before lunch.

                Picture this if you will:  Stuff, Empowered keeps the office cold.  Now, most people wear sweaters. Some will keep a blanket at their desk for those long afternoons of typing when you can just wrap up in a blanket at your desk and stay warm.

                And there are those few…those very fun few, who wrap up in the blanket and wear it everywhere they go.  Guess which group N.E.W. belongs to?

                The best part, it was a Baby Yoda blanket. 

                Did I mention N.E.W. was very, very short. Not like little person short, because that would be wrong to poke at her height then. No, she was just short. The top of her head was just barely visible over the standard cubicle divider. Basically, she was a Hobbit, wrapped in a Baby Yoda blanket, eating candy all day and sleeping half the time.

                First weeks I was at Stuff Empowered, I was terrified to have anything on my desk, including my phone, because, you know, rules. But not N.E.W. Nope, she had zero terror. She brought her phone along with the big bag of candy and then scrolled through her social media while Tucker, Jasper, Molly, and a host of other team members were trying to train her.  Sleeping and scrolling and snacking while wrapped in a blanket.

                Hm. You know, Elsie had a couple daughters.  I should have asked NEW what her mom’s name was.  They say the Starburst fruit chew doesn’t fall far from the tree.

                So I’m sitting at my desk, across the way from the blanketed NEW who has all four food groups at her desk: Sugar, chocolate, coffee, and energy drinks.  (How was she not having a heart attack every day?) and I ‘m watching her scroll to her heart’s content, except when she’s firing off giggle inducing messages to her BFF, Trixie, one of Jasper’s pod mates. Trixie was also a non-stop eater, but her food of choice was salty snacks.

                Remember how Stuff Empowered didn’t give anyone garbage cands under their desks because they wanted us to talk to the centrally located cans, thereby forcing us to get up and get blood flow back into our feet?  Yeah, well NEW was having none of that. Upon hearing she wasn’t going to be given a can, she took to dumping her trash in a Walmart bag handing on the coat hook in her cube (so attractive) and periodically, as it filled during the day, she hobbited herself over to Trixie’s cube to dump it in the can Trixie brought from home.

                The centrally located can was 11 steps from NEW and my desks.  Trixie’s desk was three steps from the centrally located cans. That means NEW couldn’t be bothered to walk an extra three steps.

                The minute NEW landed in the cube across from mine, my mind was made up. I didn’t care about the giant pay cut (because fewer hours) or the lack of benefits or the fact that I was literally going to be working for the Wizard of Oz.  I needed to get out of there before NEW’s sugar addiction crossed over to my cubicle and I gained back the 35 pounds I spent the last year losing.  Thanks to a divinely snt apple and the new girl, I’d finally realized cubicle life wasn’t for me.

 

NEXT UP:  Goodbye Stuff Empowered, Hello Stuff Recovered.

               

What Sarah did this summer Part 3: Zombie life on the restroom highway

 

Part three, where we get into the nitty and the gritty of my job at Stuff Empowered.  Before I begin, let me state this: I LOVED THE PEOPLE I WORKED WITH.  Those of you new to this blog may not know but 99% the time I make fun of myself and 1% of the time I make fun of others. (Okay, if I'm waiting in line at the pharmacy, it's more like 99% of the I'm making fun of the people in front of me, but whatever.)  I especially want those new to this blog to know...any jokes I make are not at your expense.  So don't take offence.

And, as always, Todd...consider this your warning.  LOL

Part Three

    So, I took the job at Stuff, Empowered.  It was, by far, the biggest company I've ever worked for, and that includes the year I spent teaching at a parochial school where I was basically working for GOD.  (Yep, that's how big this company is.)

    The first day on the job at Stuff Empowered isn't actually a day at work. It's ORIENTATION.  ORIENTATION is held at the CORPORATE location which is on the other side of town from where my work location was. It's worth noting that while it was no big deal for ME to go to orientation, because of the size of this company, several of the people in my class actually lived in other cities, set to work as far away as an hour.  

    I live a charmed life, I do, I do.

    I got there on time, which for me, is 20 minutes early.  As I sat and waited, a gaggle of about 30 people came in and waited in the lobby. I struck up a conversation with three women and a younger guy, even though I knew immediately I was never going to see the younger guy again.  he was an engineer who was going to be stationed in another city.  The women, however, were going to be working at the same building I was.  FRIENDS FOR ME!

    I won't bore you with orientation.  They spent the better part of 5 hours walking us around a building 90% of us weren't going to be working at.  And the other 2 hours were spent talking about the insurance benefits. I was doing great, hanging with my little circle of new friends, until they started they handed out our job locations and assignments. 

    None of my new friends were going to be in my department.  I was the only one going to my department. This was a surprise for me because I thought we were all going to be doing the same thing.

    Clearly, I hadn't paid all that close of attention in my interview.

    Then they did their insurance talk.

    This is the first time in a long time that I was going to be paying for my insurance. Hubby takes care of that.  Also, remember, I was taking a GIANT pay cut in this job.  So when I started looking at the weekly numbers and what my income was going to be against what my deductions would be...

    I realized I was going to owe Stuff Empower money after working full time.

    So I wasn't going to be with my new friends and I was going to be more broke at the end of a work week than I already am.

    Which is why I walked through the door at my house, sobbing uncontrollably.

    One would think I wouldn't show up the next day to start work. One would think I would continue my search for a remote job.

    One would be wrong.

    I showed up at the correct building the next morning. I still had no idea which department I was in, what my job title was, or where I was supposed to go in the massive office building.  Good thing the receptionist was a bit more filled in.  She looked at my name badge (which they made at ORIENTATION) and told me where to go.

    Once I got to the third floor I saw a group of people standing near an empty cubicle. I was happy it was a group because that would seem less weird or something if I walked up and said, "hi I'm new."  Or something clever like that.  I'm quite the wordsmith.

    That's when I met...let's call them RED.  

    (Red is non-binary and therefore I will use they/them pronouns out of respect for them.)

    Red is kind of hard to miss. They have bright red hair, like bright red.  Somehow I knew, like I know my own name, that Red was 1) going to be my trainer and 2) going to be a friend, a real friend, by the end of the day. Red reminded me way too much of Skippy and that's before we started talking!

    "Hi I'm Red. I'll be your trainer."

    "Hi, I'm Sarah. What are your pronouns?"

    (And that, my friends, is how you make friends and open the minds of someone who might seem very different from you. You show respect to them.  Also, Peaches and Skippy have spent some time kind of explaining non-binary and how to address non-binary people. I don't fully understand it, I'll be honest, and I am not 100% perfect at getting it right. But my job, as I've always seen it, is to show kindness and respect to all people. otherwise, what, I'm going to be that cranky old woman who's yelling at kids to get out of her yard?  I live on a block with a woman like that. I don't want to be her!)

    Anyway, Red walked me around and introduced me to everyone...I of course didn't remember a single name, but it was a nice try on their part. Then Red parked me in my cubicle.  The empty one they'd all been standing by when I came in.

    The empty cubicle right next to the bathrooms.

    If you've read this blog for a while, you know I have issues with public restrooms.  So parking me next to the only restrooms on the third floor seemed like God was really trying to tell me something.  Like, hey, dummy, coming home sobbing yesterday didn't stop you from showing up today, so today I put you next to the communal crapper.  I'm trying to tell you something, would you listen?

    Clearly, I wasn't listening.

    I was in a pod of four cubicles. One was empty because that person next showed up for work.  The other two were occupied by "Molly" a fresh-faced little blonde who reminded me of the Swiss Miss Coco girl.  I found out later this newly minted 21-year-old was a badass motorcycle rider, and a really, really smart gal. Oh, and a friend, too.

    The other cubicle was "Tucker" another 20 something who had the bad luck of being the only constant employee in this pod. Every time someone in the pod quit, Tucker was blamed for it. Poor Tucker. He's a good guy...he really didn't deserve it.

    Training at Stuff, Empowered is pretty intense and overwhelming. Especially since I still had NO IDEA what department I was in, what my job title was, or what I was going to be doing. I really should have paid more attention in that interview.

    Red, whose whole job was to train people in the post sales department (aha!  I learned something) spent the next two weeks encouraging, teaching, leading, and prodding me through the process.  That first day, though, was funny.  I got home from work and Hubby, who now works at home all day and is not completely unlike a golden retriever who's ready to GO OUT once the humans come home from work, wanted to go for a walk. I'd been caged in that cubicle all day, so I was up for a nice long walk. At one point, while chatting about my day, there was a squeal of tires and who should pull up next to us, but RED!  Turns out they live close by (another sign that Red was going to be a friend.)  So Red met Hubby and I felt like, okay, now I HAVE to go back for day 3.

*** 

    One of the rules at Stuff Empowered that seem kind of harsh was the following: NO CELL PHONES SHALL BE VISIBLE AT YOUR DESK.

    Now, when a company says that, what they mean is you're not supposed to be chatting, facebooking, instagramming, instapotting, or shopping online during work hours. Save that stuff for your breaks and lunch. Right? I interpreted that correctly, right?

    Apparently, the way most of the women on my floor, especially the people on the other side of the floor in Customer Experience (We in Post Sales feel very superior to Customer Experience, although I'm not sure why), interpreted this was, "Take your phones into the bathroom and watch videos or talk on the phone or take out a home loan while you're there."

    Oh yeah, you know I'm going to talk about this.

    I already hated the idea of using the same restroom as roughly 100 other women. Oh, and the toilet paper?  Let's talk about that for a minute:  It was see-through.  Not thin. My mother uses thin toilet paper and we give her all kinds of grief. Enough so, that she now has toilet paper for COMPANY.  (I've heard of company hand towels...)  No, this wasn't thin. It was SEE-THROUGH.  And it broke apart and dissolved on contact.

    So, I'm sitting in the stall, listening to this one woman who I swear lived in the handicapped stall, talk to her friend AT FULL VOLUME ON BOTH ENDS (why did I need to hear that conversation?  Or any of them?) and I'm faced with using toilet paper that basically turns into shards in my hand and will (BELIEVE ME) will induce a yeast infection.

    Also: No ventilation or fan in the bathroom.  Which means every sound, every word, every SMELL wrapped itself around you in the room...and immediately outside...

    WHERE I WAS SITTING.

    After two weeks I figured out what my job was:  sit, chained to a computer by a phone headset, and make endless calls every day telling small stores that they owed a lot of money to Stuff, Empowered, and they'd better pay up or the company would cancel their order. You know, the order they placed a year ago for an empowering unit that, thanks to covid and supply chain issues, and labor shortage, and I don't know some windstorm in Fiji, had been delayed several months.

    8 hours of that.  Broken up by a one-hour unpaid lunch.

    I was basically, thanks to drive time and this lunch, giving this company 50 hours of my life, for the price of 40. I was already working 8 hours more a week just to try and make up for the wage difference, and then tack on another 10 hours of unpaid nonsense time...I was beyond exhausted every day after work.

    So... chained to a desk next to the restrooms. I couldn't even get up and walk a proper amount of time to get to the restrooms. It was like four steps.  I found myself envying people whose desks were on the other side of the wall from us. Not only were they by windows, they had at least a fifteen step walk to the bathrooms.  

    The breakup of my days came when people would stop on their way to the bathrooms to chat with me.  That seems weird. "Hey, I have to pee, but first let's talk to this random person sitting by the bathrooms."

    I got to know several people on the floor that way.  Nice people. But all of our conversations ended with, "Wow, I really have to pee."

    Meanwhile, I was a dog in a cage on a leash.

    It wasn't all terrible.  Molly and Tucker and I had some laughs, mostly about how awful the job was.  the pod next to us, made up of "Jasper," "Nate," "Trixie," and "Nellie," were fun too.  We worked together well, I thought, and shared a number of fun little jokes and GIFS in our group online chat.  So that passed the time a little bit.

    Fun fact: Stuff, Empowered does not provide a garbage can under the desks.  I didn't really think about it, I mean, I had a tiny little toy sand bucket I used for the three Kleenexes and one K-Cup I had every day.  At some point I'd stiffly stagger the nine steps to the centrally located garbage pod and dump my stuff and then stiffly stagger the nine steps back.  I did proper walks on my two breaks, and I ate lunch in my car and then went for a longer walk.  Got my steps in, but really, sitting at the desk the rest of the day did a number on my joints. Red insisted I could get up and walk about, but HOW when the job expectations were high?

So, most of the time if I did break away from the leash, the first several steps I kind of looked like a Zombie walking out of my cage and on to the restroom highway.

MONDAY: Part 4-An apple brings me a bruised elbow and a new opportunity.

What Sarah Did This Summer Part 2: Why I chose Stuff, Empowered

 

Yesterday we went over what happened right after I got laid off from my dream job.  Continuing our story, here's why I picked a job that was 100% the opposite of what I was looking for:

    By the end of July, having been out of work for more than 2 months and

really not doing well bills-wise on Unemployment, it was time to start panicking

about a job.

    Start panicking? Please. Other than feeling a certain amount of rage after

getting let go in May, my primary emotion had been panic. Hubby was super

supportive, like always, but that really didn’t help and here’s why: hubby’s job

changed significantly at the same time. Instead of having a company car and

getting to drive around on company gas, his job went 100% remote and the

company took the car. Which meant we had to dip into savings to buy a car.

Geez, just when we actually HAD a savings account.

Now, I don’t have to tell anyone that finding a used car in 2022 is a

challenge. And finding one when you’re on a strict budget…well…

But we found one. It’s nothing glamorous, but it suits him and everything

works on it mostly. But the result is we still have to pay for gas and insurance on

this thing. Which is a big change for the negative.

The other thing that changed is Hubby started working longer hours. Like,

ridiculously longer hours. Up before 5AM to get a start on emails and still working

well past 5 or 6 in the evening. He’s hourly, so the overtime is a big boost, but I

felt a significant amount of guilt not working. (One would think I’d over

compensate by keeping a super clean house and being completely organized in all

things home related. One would be wrong.)

So, by the end of July, after going through dozens of interviews, I got a job

offer. It was a for a company I’m going to call Stuff, Empowered for two reasons:

1) Remember Stuff, Installed, from my Elsie W books? Once again, for my

protection, I’m not going to, you know, spill the name of the company.

2) This company is one that empowers stuff. Hence…stuff empowered.

The offer wasn’t anything like what I was looking for. It wasn’t remote. It

wasn’t in my pay range, and it wasn’t part time. Panic will make you do

funny things and the mere fact that they offered me a job, I felt was some

kind of miracle. When you’re 54 and you have really bad knees, you start

to feel sort of like you have to take anything offered to you.

Oh, I didn’t mention the really annoying interview I went on right

before I interviewed at Stuff, Empowered. It was for a company that

packages gift jars and boxes of nuts. They wanted “Someone” to do “stuff”

in the office and “maybe other departments in the company.”

They didn’t know how many hours it would be. They didn’t know

what the duties would be. They didn’t know what days the job would take.

They didn’t even know which building the work would be in.

For that one, I got all tarted up and met with two girls.

Seriously…younger than my daughter. They were clearly recent retirees

from the Texas beauty pageant circuit, and not happy about it, which

meant they seemed extra judgy about my appearance.

Could have been in my head, who knows?

Anyway, I thought, given what we didn’t know about the job, the

interview went well. I even thought I would at least get a call for a second

interview. I honestly believed I won those pretty little gals over with my

winning charm and my flexibility to fit into a job that had no parameters at

all.

I wasn’t even out of my “first interview” outfit when I got the “thanks

but we’re going with someone who better fits our needs” emails.

Better fits our needs? What does that even mean? They didn’t know

what they needed! They told me that!

So I called the woman who’d conducted the phone interview with

me. (Remember, these aren’t really interviews, they’re more like cattle

calls, making sure the person applying is actually an adult human and not

some 8 year old or a bot that just applies over and over to jobs.) Anyway, I

got her on the phone and said, since I had nothing to lose, “What’s the deal

with this?”

“Oh, well, um..” insert long, uncomfortable pause here. “They

decided they’re going to put the job on hold right now.”

An interview that went so bad, they gave up trying to hire for it five

minutes after I left.

Thus, when I got the call from Stuff Empowered, I was…well, I was

relieved I had an option for employment. But I wasn’t super excited about

the job at all. I mean, 40 hours in a cubicle, with an hour unpaid lunch?

Huge company? Complete call center job, including the low starting wage?

It was everything I wasn’t looking for.

But, beggars can’t be choosers, right? Plus, well, I’d get to decorate

my own cubicle, and that was…something.

My start date was three weeks out, and I was still looking. I had a

number of phone interviews with small companies looking for an office

person for 30 hours a week, and they were possibly willing to go remote.

Spoiler alert: None of them were actually willing to go remote.

There was one other job offer I got, one that shocked me. It was a

customer service position for a company that made automatic doors. The

job was one I could definitely do. The guy who interviewed me was quirky

and the wage was spot on what I was looking for. They weren’t going to go

full remote, but they could offer a hybrid position, which was nice.

I didn’t think I’d get that offer because, well, let’s just say I ended the

interview with a really awkward joke that I didn’t think landed.

See, they make automatic doors, right? And as we were leaving the

conference room, he pushed a button and the door swung open. But it

squeaked a little.

He said, “The swinger doors tend to squeak and I hate that. I’m going

to have to nail it down a bit better.”

And I said, “Wow, I hate it when the swingers get nailed.”

Think about it.

Nope, not nearly as funny as it was in my head.

Apparently he was okay with it.

Unfortunately for that gig, the drive was more than 3x that to Stuff

Empowered, and over roads that, in a Wisconsin winter, might not be a

clear as one would hope. Having not driven to work in 7 years, this was a

real concern for me. So I went with the shorter drive time and the lower

wage.

Did I make the right decision? I haven’t a clue. And I certainly didn’t

know back then, at the end of July. All I knew was that I was NOT going on

another job interview. Like ever.

Up next time: Zombie cubicle life on the restroom highway.

What Sarah did this Summer-Part 1: Job Searches in the New Age

 

Good morning!  We have a TON to unpack, so let's get going!

So, for those of you who don’t know. I lost my job last May. Well, I mean, lost is a

weird word. I know exactly where my job is. When the company got sold in October

of last year, the first thing the new owner did was fire the salesperson. And

not hire anyone to be the salesperson. Which means, by May, my job, and the

jobs of 1/3 of the company, were cut, dumped, dropped, blown away because Ding

Ding couldn’t connect the dots between sales and the viability of the company.

Officially, I wasn't fired, I was “laid off.” 

I grew up in the automotive world of SE Michigan. “Laid Off” was the term that indicated that,

 eventually, the person would be called back. Such was the understanding I had with Ding Ding. Well,

except the first thing Ding Ding did after laying me off was to make sure I

shipped the computer, printer, and all the supplies I had in my home office back

to him. (One wonders what he’s going with all the equipment he collected from

those of us he laid off.) But I’m not one to dwell. Well, sure I am, but we have

to move on in the story, otherwise this blog is going to be a thousand pages

long. 

Getting laid off in May didn’t seem like a problem. Everyone told me,

“everyone’s hiring, you’ll find the perfect job in NO TIME!” Hey, you know

what’s not true? That statement. Because, apparently, there is NO perfect job

open for a 54-year-old woman who needs 32 hours a week, working from home,

making $24 an hour. Oh wait, yeah, there was. And then Ding Ding fired the sales

person… 

So I spent the summer going through what I call the beauty pageant phase

of the job world. I applied for literally hundreds of jobs and went on more than

2 dozen interviews. Let’s talk about the interview process that is in place now

in 2022. It’s not about walking into a company, filing out an application, and

then meeting with the manager. Not anymore. It’s about uploading your resume to

the job boards and applying to companies with the click of a button. Sounds

super easy, right? 

Oh sure, that part is. 

But then comes the part where your resume is then spun through third and fourth party 

staffing company metrics and

spit out either into a heap in an HR person’s in box or dumped into a vast

wasteland of resumes that didn’t measure up. Unless you upload your resume to

Career Builder. DO NOT UPLOAD YOUR RESUME TO CAREER BUILDER. I cannot stress

that enough. All that will happen there is you’ll get 10,000 phone calls and

texts from people who clearly do not live anywhere near your neighborhood, and

by neighborhood I mean continent, who will promise you all kinds of perfect work

from home jobs…as long as you cash a massive check for them first. (don’t get me

started.) And don’t upload your resume to Ziprecruiter either. You’ll get

assigned a “person” (mine is Phil) who will email you ten times a day with the

PERFECT job…one that has NOTHING to do with ANY of the parameters you put into

Zip Recruiter. And you can’t just cut Ziprecruiter off by calling it spam. Nope.

I’m going to be getting notices from Phil until the day I die, and 90% of those

“perfect jobs” will be warehouse work for Amazon. That leaves Indeed. Indeed’s

process is the most user friendly. If you’re on Unemployment, it’s helpful to

apply through indeed, because indeed keeps track of your weekly applications.

Indeed doesn’t email or text you. The legitimate interviews I got were through

Indeed. 

Which brings us to the different types of interviews. 

The first type of interview is the

one way video interview. This. Is. Horrible. Exactly as the name implies, the

one-way video interview is you…logged into some website, answering prerecorded

questions while on camera. Ever try to be charming, witty, and collected while

talking to a computer screen? Yeah. That. To no one’s surprise, I did NOT get

either of the two jobs that required that kind of interview.

 The next method of

interviewing is the ever so popular ZOOM meeting. This is slightly better than

the one-way video…but only slightly. I had one such interview, and it was for a

job that the phone screener assured me was PERFECT FOR ME. So the interview was

a mere formality, right?

 That interview consisted of me facing a split screen with two

women, one of whom asked me questions that ranged from the normal, “Tell me what

you liked about your last job.” To the ridiculous, “Was there ever a time you

had trouble working with a manager and if so, what did you do?” (Um, DUH.

Everyone has had a hard time working with a manager from one time to another.

And we DEAL WITH IT.) Anyway, there was one woman who asked the questions and

another who said zero, nada, nothing. For half an hour I’m talking to both women

and one is just staring at me with dead eyes. She didn’t say hello or goodbye.

Just stared at me. I finished with that “formality” and guess what? NEVER HEARD

FROM THEM AGAIN. 

Which brings me to phone screeners. You think is a phone

interview. They call it a phone interview. But what it really is an appointment

during which you set an appointment for another interview. The phone screener

ACTS like an HR manager. Some even call themselves that. But, and this is

important, these people have ZERO power to hire you. In most cases, they aren’t

even in the same building as the people who do have that power. So, lest you

think you’re getting somewhere because Kimmy from HR at Company XYZ says you’re

a perfect fit for the job, you’re not. I just had to get that in there. I was

burned way too many times. 

Finally, the third kind of interview, the good, old

fashioned meat market that is the in person interview. While this is the most

tried and true method of meeting potential bosses, this is also the most

annoying. At least with the first two methods you didn’t have to put on pants or

get in the car. The in person interview involves getting tarted up, and it’s the

full deal. Hair, clothes, make up. I’ve been working at home for the past seven

years. I’ve also lost 35 pounds in the last year. Any office worthy clothes I

may have had are 1) too big, 2) too wrinkled from being crushed on the floor in

my closet or 3) way too out of style. Like not even close. While one doesn’t

need to have up to the minute fashion, one would like to look like one’s been to

a store in the last decade. So, realizing I was going to need some formal

adjacent clothing, I went to the one place a broke, out of work office gal can:

St. Vincent de Paul. And there, thank goodness for those 99 cent tag deals, I

was able to cobble together two appropriate head to two looks. I call them

“first interview” and “second interview.” I won’t bore you with the details of

all of my interviews. There are too many to put in any number of blog chapters.

But I will give you the highlights. 

Tomorrows chapter: The in person interviews and why I chose Stuff, Empowered.