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It feels weird that it is Sunday night and I am not mentally planning my workweek. I have things on my personal agenda for the week, to be sure, but it’s weird that I won’t have to get up in the morning and I won’t have to worry about the things that I normally worry about on a weekday.

The problem I have with being off work (aside from the lack of a paycheck) is that I need to have a great deal of self-discipline to use my time well and to get things accomplished. So many shiny distractions.  But, I have worked as a contract employee enough that I am sortve used to having to have an office mindset even while at home.

Still, I feel a certain lack of purpose when I am not working and I am more than a little worried about a number of small things and worried that I am going to have a big fight over unemployment (because even though they TOLD me I was being laid off, this would certainly not be the first time that someone I worked for was less than truthful). And I am hoping that I will get a good reference from them, but if there is a kerfuffle about unemployment, that will definitely make things weird.

Well, I have a few things to get done before bed, so I’d best get to doing them. Goodnight!

About five minutes to 5PM this afternoon, the bossman called me into his office and I was pink slipped.  Budget stuff… Lack of work…  A familiar tune to me (sadly).  

People will tell you that they like working with numbers because numbers don’t lie.  Well, I don’t know what numbers they are working with but I assure you that numbers DO lie….or at least they are not clear, straightforward representations of the truth.  There are RULES to numbers and you have to work within the rules and even then, sometimes, the numbers are not what they seem to be. They are not a straightforward representation of the real picture. And for someone who is not a native number wrangler (and I am NOT a native number wrangler, I eye numbers very warily) the world of finance remains somewhat a mystery to me.  Oh sure, for a year and a half I have been making things work but I seldom understand how or why what I do works.  Often, I know what the desired outcome is… all I need to do is get the numbers available to represent the answer I know is expected.  It’s not ALWAYS that easy, but there are times that it is and I just have to figure out what goes where in the occasion to produce the desired outcome.  I am getting a little better at being able to look at a spreadsheet and figure out what I need to fix in order to produce the desired outcome.  Sometimes I don’t get it at all.  Those are the worst because then I have to go ask the boss questions and she IS a native number wrangler (no, I don’t understand why someone who is good with numbers hired me to work with the numbers when there are SO many other things about the business that would suit my talents better. *sigh

That said, I stay with the job because I am still learning things and don’t get yelled at too much.  I do wish sometimes that I could record interactions so that when I am told to do something a particular way and then 2 months later when I’m asked why I am doing something a certain way and, by the way, that way is all wrong, I could pull out the recording of being told to do it that way.  Oh well, every job has it’s flaws, right?

Nothing overly interesting happening on the work front lately, which is why I’ve not posted. I have, however, started taking mass transit to work. For me, this is a train ride and a bus ride. I’ve been fortunate enough to get a ride to the train station in the mornings and home from the station at night, which has made the whole thing infinitely more tolerable.

The train part of the journey has actually been fine. I don’t know if the train is still a novelty to me which is why I don’t mind it or if it is because it usually moves along pretty quickly so I don’t have time to be annoyed. The bus part of the trip is arduous on the best days. Monday it was pretty awful because a bus was late and all of the people who would normally take the earlier bus PLUS all the people who would normally take the bus that I ride, ALL packed into the bus. The bus I usually ride usually has no empty seats. With two busloads of people packed in, there were people standing in the aisle from the very front of the bus to the very back of the bus. Fortunately, everyone had a pretty “we’re all in the same boat, so let’s make the best of it” attitude about it, which made things nicer/easier. It always helps when people aren’t surly about situations. We all (eventually) got where we were going but it is not an experience I hope to have to endure again (but I am sure that I will… because buses are late all the time, it’s just the way mass transit works).

Since I had something I needed to do after work tonight, I took the car today. I stopped for coffee this morning….because I could. It was lovely. No one coughing on me, no people talking loudly on their cell phones, just me and the morning radio show guys. I got to work a little early, even. I was surprised that there was no one parked in what had been “my” spot, back when I was driving every day.

I’m off work tomorrow, which means I have a long weekend. It will be glorious to not have to answer to the beck and call of an alarm in the morning. I have a mile-long to do list and we will see what I actually end up getting done. If you celebrate Easter, I hope that you have a lovely Easter.

Just when you think you have things figured out, something weird happens. A friend of mine interviewed for a job about a month ago and didn’t hear from the company and assumed that the opportunity was no longer available (a reasonable assumption)… So imagine friend’s surprise when the phone rings today and the company wants to do a second interview! Follow-up on this will be done (friend is traveling for business right now but company expressed interest in following up when availability is more readily known).

Have you ever registered for a seminar that turned out to not be what you thought it would be? That was my experience today. It wasn’t a BAD seminar, it was just not what was expected and it’s a little annoying when the seminar leader gets surly when you have information to share with the class after they’ve asked for questions. I also find the process of being a VIP member and being asked for identification a little maddening. Most of the time being a VIP means you don’t have to be bothered with proving that you are not the riff raff. Oh well.

I need to figure out something to do about my footwear. The shoes I wear on a daily basis are just not really suitable, but dress shoes are not appropriate, either. Need to find some sort of happy medium.

The rest of the week will be busy. I need to go grocery shopping after work tomorrow night as I have an obligation on Thursday night. I suppose that I could wait until Friday but just getting it over with tomorrow would be better.

Tired and sore tonight. Should try to get to bed early. Won’t happen, but I should try.

As is usual when you have a week that is a day short of a full work week, this past week seemed very long. And the next three weeks are going to be absolute insanity as I have classes and other things going on so I have three 3-day weeks in a row coming up and there is no reduction in workload so I will be incredibly busy (and likely incredibly stressed out).

I had every intent of finishing up the 1099’s this week (you have to put a 1096 “cover sheet” on them and mail them to the Infernal Revenue Service (spelling intentional)). However, there are still people who have not responded to my urgent requests for W-9 forms (that I have been bugging them about for 2 months now) and without the information I can’t finish up what I need to finish up. I am, as you might imagine, somewhat less than pleased.

I hope to get back here at some point or points during the next three weeks, but if I don’t it is only because I am insanely busy and I will then have to come back and write a long post catching you up!

This is not actually about something I directly experienced, but rather, is something a friend just experienced. However, I have experienced similar in the past and was not impressed.

Dear Potential Employer,

I came for an interview at your company. I was qualified for the position. I was dressed nicely. I had showered. I had a copy of my resume and a copy of my references. I didn’t stumble on any of the questions you had in the interview and thought the interview went well. I left your facility really wanting to work for your company. I sent a thank-you letter (as applicants are supposed to do). The one hitch was that because of my current job, I needed an answer fairly immediately. I let you know that and you indicated that you would have an answer for me by that time.

The time for the answer came and went. I called you, I got voicemail. I left a very polite message. You finally called me back and gave me a non-answer. You told me you’d decided to interview through the end of the week. But you didn’t tell me no.

I held out hope, then, that once you had concluded the interview process that you would perhaps give me a call with a definite answer. 5:00PM Friday came and went with nary a call or an email. Apparently, my time has no value to you. Good to know.

I am left to wonder what went wrong. Was 15+ years of experience not adequate? Obviously you thought at one point that I was worth hiring but then could not even extend the courtesy of a short email to tell me you’d decided to hire someone else? A little hint… you can store a “form letter” type thing to send as an email. It’d probably take a skilled Admin. 3 minutes to write.

I’m disappointed, potential employer. I expected better of you.

Sincerely,

Potential Employee in Limbo

Because I have always worked office jobs, which tend to be 40 hours a week (unless doing freelance work) I have pretty much always had a fairly predictable paycheck. So, I tend to take that sort of thing for granted.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who works as a truck driver. He drives all over the US and is what is referred to as a “company driver” meaning that the company he works for owns the truck he drives. To put it in a context that might be more familiar, it’s like an apartment situation in a way. You don’t own your apartment but you live there and if maintenance needs to be done you call the office and they take care of it. Some truck drivers own or lease the truck that they drive which is more like living in condominium. You “own” your condo and if something goes wrong, you are responsible for paying for whatever needs to be done.

However, there are a number of expenses company drivers pay and then submit for reimbursement. Which is fine if the company decides that whatever was paid is ok with them. And while there are guidelines, sometimes a driver pays for something he believes he will be reimbursed for and that never happens because the company decides that it doesn’t meet their criteria. You are also not paid for any “down” time. So, the time you are being loaded or unloaded is all unpaid. You are also at the whim of where the dispatcher sends you. Meaning that one pay period you may have a couple hundred miles and another you may have a couple thousand miles. This means that one week you may get a check for $10.00 and another week a check for $200.00. Meanwhile, the bills that you have keep coming and the people sending those bills don’t care that your income was only $10.00 this week.

The presentation when you first start driving is that you will “average” 3000 miles per week. At the mileage rate paid, that’s about $700 a week. Not bad, right? Except that you have to factor in that you are only allowed by Federal Law to drive a certain number of hours in any given day and then there is another rule about how many hours you can work in a particular week and if you run over that and are stopped for a random inspection, this can lead to huge fines and/or the suspension/revocation of your license.

I am guessing that for someone who is single, has no children, no debt and maybe has a friend they can stay with so they don’t have to maintain an apartment, truck driving might not be a bad deal. But if you are looking for a steady paycheck, this isn’t your gig. And there is no trucking company in the world who will offer a weekly base salary + mileage because they’d argue that their expenses if they did that would be way too high. And maybe they would. It’s not a business model I’ve explored extensively.

I can say that the conversation was an eye opener and made me grateful for my predictable paycheck.

I have to get the 1099s out the door by the 31st of January. I started this project way later than I should have. And discovered today that the project will take 3 days longer than I have. No, we can’t call a temp to help. I will have to put in some extra long hours and suck it up because I thought I had a file and it turns out that the file is corrupted and is 2 days worth of heavy duty work to recreate. I am less than happy.

So, tomorrow I will get done what I can get done. Friday I have a class all day (Ironically, the class is on Project Management, which I apparently needed to take a couple of Fridays ago to manage the project that is now the monkey on my back!).

I do not like “year end” stuff. And I should have known better about the 1099 project. I should have known to start it weeks ago. But I had other things that were a priority then.

Best get to bed so I can tackle the project tomorrow with a (relatively) clear head.

I am not a religious person. I am vaguely spiritual. This pretty much never comes up in the workplace but when I work from home I tend to do so in the glow of a candle. Oh, I have electricity, but I tend to light the candle when I work from home and burn a stick of incense and they are both “Money Drawing” candles which I stop and think about/meditate on now and then as I work both because there are a number of people on my mental list that I pray for and the candle is a really visual reminder for me to do that and the other is to stop and analyze if what I am doing is something that has the potential to bring in some money.

This process doesn’t replace the need to have a “day job” where I work for someone else, but all of the work I do at home that is actually “work” (as opposed to time spent on the internet for leisure, housework, etc.) is something I hope I can eventually do to replace the necessity of working for someone else.

I am going to try to get to bed early tonight. I have had a series of late nights lately and have another planned for tomorrow and don’t want to be too tired to enjoy it.

Also, when I was going out tonight, a young man (preteen) asked if he could carry my trash out for a dollar. I didn’t have a dollar but I had a $5 bill and I have been doing some cleaning so gave him a couple of heavy bags to carry. And he did the job, got his money and seemed happy. Sortve nice to see a young person with some ambition. And I realize that saying that makes me sound about 100 years old.

So, I guess I do have a bit of faith, burning money candles and all. If nothing else, they assist me in remembering all of the people that I say a little prayer for.