Disgruntled Employee

Jesus Christ on a cross! It has been nearly a year since I have updated this thing??
Could it be that I am too busy being a disgruntled employee (for two employers no less) and a disgruntled student of one public university that has cause this 350+ day blog neglect?

Not unsurprisingly, I am no longer washing dish in a Japanese tea house, nor am I waging war with Boston area human resources “executives.” While my kitchen days are long gone, my job searching days shall never end. One does not adopt the title of Disgruntled Unemployee if one actually planes on starting a career in the next 10, or so, years, and I certainly do not. My crusade against the world’s HR department is still on going, but it is just on hold. You may have won the battle recruiters, but you will not win the war….

Since it has been damn near a year since the last update perhaps a recap of the last 12 months is best:

March 2006: Still working in dish services, and making lunch for one or two people every 3 weeks or so, and hiring dish services protégées. Life is more or less the same as it ever was.

April 2006: More of the same with exception of sunshine, warmer weather, and a job interview at one of Boston’s, nay, the world’s, greatest specialty hospitals. My dreams and prayers and sacrificial offerings and ritualized dances have all been answered, for the only qualification for getting this job is breathing air. I don’t even have to know how to turn on a computer, speak proper English, or be able to deal with people even though my job will require all of those things.

May 2006: Because I can breathe air, turn on a computer, speak proper English, and deal with people I amazingly (and with extensive assistance from a friend) manage to get myself a job.

The celebrations and other fetes last nary a moment once I find out this job I got is not the job I applied for. The job I applied for involved work the too-good-to-be-true hours of 12-8. The job I was offered involved working the too-shitty-to-be-accepted hours of 4-12…as in 12 midnight.

In addition to this, all of my co-workers are to be 30-50 years my senior and I quickly learn that I have to refer to my girlfriend as my roommate for fear that someone will tell me they will pray for me and thus send me into a blind rage which will no doubt resolve in arbitration with human resources.

On a positive note, once released from my tutelage, my dish services student quickly became the master, and then quickly ran for the hills.

June 2006: After a training program of nearly one whole month I am ready to start working my official 4-12 shift. I bid adieu to my social life as I know it and say hello to my life as a member of the small segment of the population I have always feared: the night worker.

Now I am not saying the night worker is all bad. Like me, some night workers are victims of circumstance, forced to work at night because their baby daddy left them or their husband is morbidly obese or they are afraid the sex offender registry will find them if they work during the day or they were so desperate for a job that was not washing dishes that they were willing to try anything. I can empathize. There are some night workers though who are so reprehensible because of their laziness or propensity for bitching or their New York accents, that I just cannot bring myself to relate to them. Naturally, my primary co-worker is of the latter sort. With in my first shift with her she tells me that she doesn’t trust me, does like me, and will not be answering any questions that I might have.

I begin to think that this job really has potential!

July 2006: There comes a point in time where adults have to accept the summer no longer means summer vacation. For me July 2006 was that point in time. Sure it is great sitting in the sun all day, reading books and drinking lemonade, but it is far more exciting doing that with other people. This is not to say that there are not people available with which to entertain myself during the day. Homeless people for example are usually pretty easy to find during the day. The mentally ill are also more or less free to roam the streets between the hours of 10-6. Who is not available during the day are people that I actually want to see. My friends for example are indisposed during the day. My girlfriend makes a habit of working when then sun is up. Even my own mother finds herself cultivating so many bank stories during “normal business hours”, whatever those are. It is a different world being free during the day. TV is not that good; drinking is discouraged, and people just kind of look at you funny.

August 2006: This is the time that I begin to get ready for a major lifestyle change. By this time next month I will be working my beloved night shift, working a not so bad part time job, and attending a not so good university.

Had I not attended this university in the past I might be filled with all of the hopes, dreams and ambition of someone too naïve to realize they are wasting their time. Unfortunately for me I had attended this university, with unpleasant results, some two years previously. Being marginalized and disaffected and maybe a touch cheap, I really have not other choice to be receive my education from a bunch of bumbling state employees. It’s kind of like trying to earn a degree by going to the Registry of Motor Vehicles or maybe the Welfare Office…every single day.

It is an unfortunate situation to have to be educated by state workers, but I suppose that I really cannot blame them for carrying on the way they do. I get the sense that most of the do this to pay the bills because what ever esoteric bullshit they devoted their lives and education to doesn’t pay. I suppose that the freedom of pursuing your dreams comes with the price; in this case attempting to educate those who are resistant, or are just plan unable to be educated.


September 2006: School begins and work becomes even more painful. My first class begins at 8:30 AM and leave work at 12 AM. Minus 2.5 hours for commuting and 1 hour for getting ready in the morning I am left with 5 hours for sleeping, just as long as I am changing into my pajamas and am actively falling asleep as I walk though the door.

October-December 2006: School and work and nothing else; that is my life. I am so concerned about getting things done and not getting sick that I begin to drink Airborne like it is straight up water. I have no reason to believe that it is not, more or less, the same at straight up water except that it is filled with vitamins and goodness. Turns out vitamins and goodness lead you down the road to becoming a 26 year old heart attack victim, especially when those vitamins and goodness are full of deadly levels of heart palpitation causing, pulse raising, oxygen level dropping amounts of vitamin A. Do be warned that while getting a cold sucks getting a heart transplant sucks more.

As if things were not bad enough, it was during this time that I realized that maybe taking two ancient languages simultaneously was maybe not the best idea for someone in my situation….and by my situation I mean bitter perfectionist. It also does not help thing that my primary instructor is not that much older than me, not that much shorter than me, and not that my gayer than me. It is kind of like I am being taught by a disorganized yet well educated (yet kind of surly and really distorted) reflection of myself. Now it is one thing to be ill prepared to teach a class. That I can excuse. I can not however over look, giving short, surely, lesbian, classicists a bad name by being ill prepared to teach nearly every single class, nearly every single day. That is just unacceptable.

January 2007: January was largely uneventful with the exception of my having contracted an awful sinus infection. This is no doubt the result of being face to germ infested face with patients suffering for similar ailments. It was wholly unpleasant and only recently cleared up.

January was also the month that I decided that I shall not carry on the way I has been carrying on as far as my bitter over achieving ways were concerned. This means no more extra school work for myself (which never actually stuck), no more working extra hours, and no more work at my job longer than I have to. The inevitable results of this (when realized this spring) will bring Disgruntled Unemployee back to it roots: redundant rantings about my poor job prospects.

February 2007: I fully return to school and my old way of life, except that last semester was a picnic followed by a trip to the spa compared to this semester. Part of this is due to the aforementioned microbes living in my head, and part due to the growing discontent with both work and the quality of public education.

March 2007: Now. To think of what I was doing last year at this time in comparison to now it is kind of amazing. Last year I was washing dish in order to pay a fraction of my rent and none of my bills. This year I am getting letters from the bank asking me to invest in a money market accounts, and going to Spain. With all the unsavory aspects of my life at the moment, I suppose things can, and used to be, worse.

Hopefully I will be updating more often now that I am looking for new and exciting ways to procrastinate. I suppose that I should not worry much about getting things done since I have written more here just now than I will have to for the longest paper I am going to be called upon to write all semester, and I did it all on time while getting less than 5 hours of sleep per night and with (nearly) proper grammar and syntax.