Unemployment Diary Day 4 and 5: Another Day In Paradise.

Day 4

-SABOTAGE-

I was contacted at 11:25 by the former coworker who I was looking to get a job from. He told me that someone had shutdown my former employer’s phone server.  Add they had blamed him.Because the last person to logon used his password.

I didn’t actually wake up until 12:30 and got the message. But I let him know that revenge, while sounding through sabotage sounded amusing, it’s not something I was willing to risk, Due to all the money they owed me at the moment. And if I were to commit sabotage, I would do more than simply turn something off. 

-CONSERVATION--

It’s earth day today, And I’ve been doing what I can as of late. Not simply save the planet. But to save cash anyway i can. Persistently  Turning off lights and electronics. Yelling at family members who forget to do the same. Shutting off the AC and leaving it off whenever possible.  And washing laundry at a relatives house and hanging it up on the line.

Saving money first and the earth second.

Day 5

-I DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU-

I got a message from my former co-worker. He said He didn’t forget about me, but he has two other partners. Not sure what he meant by that whether he had to check with him, or whether I had to go through some interview process.  He also said that his offices were in Brickell. And wondered whether I’d be able to make it. But he also said I should be used to it, driving to TAG everyday.  Actually I’m not sure If that’s what he meant. Maybe he was trying to steer me away from the idea of working for him. Brickell really isn’t that far from me at all. Not sure if the interview is in Brickell, or if the job is in Brickell.  Doesn’t really matter, I’d drive to the moon if it meant that my life would go back to normal.

Fuck and to be honest, I don’t even know what the job is. Don’t really care as long as there’s a steady paycheck involved.   He said He would call me today, and I had the feintest glimmer of hope from his message.

-LIFESTYLES OF THE BROKE AND UNEMPLOYED-

Eric’s was itching to get out of the house and wanting to come over to mine. I really didn’t think I’d make good company. I’ve been avoiding hanging out. But after the message I received earlier, I was in good Spirits and decided to get out of the house. He wanted to get some coffee, and I wanted some freedom. So we went down to the broadwalk at Hollywood Beach. Which was pretty quiet on a Friday afternoon.

We ate at Oceanside Seafood restaurant which made a pretty ostentatious claim to having THE BEST PHILLY CHEESESTEAK IN HOLLYWOOD.

I’m not a gourmet, by any stretch of the imagination, but if you’re gonna boast something like this, be prepared to back it up. This shit was gross. And prepare in a microwave over as you don’t even have a grill on the premises. Seriously. Never eat here.  

I do like the ay they bring out their condiments though.

I played around, watching myself  on the the webcam  from the restaurant next door.  I know it’s easily accessible technology. Any idiot can put up a webcam.  But there’s just something thrilling about watching yourself on TV.

After a short walk we ran into this poor unfortunate creature.  There is no other way to describe her.

She walks up to me and asks:

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing Just hanging out. What are YOU doing?”

”Just got out of jail. And I don’t know what to do. Do you have any idea?.”

“I’m sure there are some shelters. But I’m not from here. So I don’t know where. Or how safe they are.

“Oh. Can I have some money?”

“No I don’t have any. I just lost my job actually. Why were you in Jail?”

“I tried to Kill myself. Is that the New Apple iPad?”

I shit you not. This is the exact turn this conversation took. Even homeless suicidal drug addicts, know what’s really important. .

The rest of the interaction was me prodding her for more info on her attempted suicide and her trying to borrow Eric’s phone.

You know that Phil Collins Video “Another Day in Paradise” where the dude ignores the homeless lady? 

Yeah Eric. is THAT bastard. The situation made him extremely uncomfortable, and that tickled me to no end. Where I kept egging him on.

"Can I borrow Your Phone” she says.

“I’m sorry. I’m waiting for an important call” he says.

“Doesn’t it have call waiting? All phone have call waiting”

“Yeah dude. All phones have call waiting!.”  I said.  “And anyways if it’s important I’m sure they’ll call back”

Heartless, I tell you. I can’t say i blame him. Cellphones are a pretty personal thing.  You cant wash the stench of homelessness with soap and water. And this lady had sores all over her face,   I wouldn’t have loaned her my shit either. Eric just needed a better lie.

“Is that a phone? Can I borrow it?”

“No sorry. I lost my job and had the service turned off. I’m just using it as an iPod now.

“Nice case.”

”Oh hey. Thanks.”  Again I am not exaggerating. THis is how the conversation went. It is a pretty nice case though.

All and All I had a nice day at the beach.  But I never did get a call back.

Unemployment Diary Day 3 : Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job

Day 3

-So, You Need My Help?-

I woke up this morning at noon. Finally sleeping the sleep of the unemployed. I noticed a missed call on my cellphone and a voicemail from My Old Boss.

“Hey I could use a little information on something if you could give me a call on my cellphone, thanks”

So you could use my help now? Doesn’t really sound like you were going to pay me for this “information”.   To be honest, if my phone hadn’t been in an off position I probably would have woken up immediately and helped him. I mean these guys still owe me money. I need that money. But alas, my cellphone was off.  I returned his call immediately and left a message. Then i called him an hour later and he didn’t answer again. When I worked for him, he always answered, or got back to me within 5 minutes. So if i’m getting this kind of treatment when I’m calling to help HIM out with something. I only imagine the response I’ll get when I start calling to ask him where my money is.

-BEING DIRECT-

I contacted my former co-worker and just put it out there.

“Any word On the possibility of hiring me?”

He fed me  a line about how he’s still checking, But he just hired a bunch of people and he’ll see if he cut one of them loose and hire me. I told him whatever he could so, and no hard feelings. Then he changed the subject.  *ouch* 

No hard feelings. Because if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t hire me either. See he’s worked with me at two different companies. And he knows my work ethic and I can never compare to his. Maybe that was okay when it was someone else’s money at stake. But now that it’s his he has to be more careful and I get that. It’s not like I would take advantage of our friendship like that either.

-BURNING BRIDGES-

I’ve also realized I should stop badmouthing Comcast. They seem to be the only game in town for employment. And their support staff is a swell bunch of guys. Offering me help through my blog comments and twitter. I expect them to show up on my Facebook and X-Box Live any day now. Send me your gamertag Doug!   

My current problems with Comcast have come to an end, now that my job with the Wi-Fi company is over. So I don’t need your help Mark and Doug. But if I do, I know how to get in touch with you guys quickly. 

Doug had another amusing shoutout for me on his Twitter feed.

comcastdoug

@kortanaskew WOW... appreciate the mention in your Blog :-) We do try and yep I'm for real... we have a full team..

-SO YOU NEED MY HELP Part 2-

So the ex-boss finally called me back. They’re having a problem with the NetGong network monitoring tool. It’s a tool designed to monitor our routers at all of our location.  It’s not a magical tool, I had to into it everyday several times a day and update it. But without it, it makes our job near-impossible. I know because we lost the license back in 2008 for it. The bosses were trying to come up with a payment because they only accepted paypal and credit cards. They wanted to pay with a company check, and not use their own credit cards. Because the company owed the bosses money already. But the kicker is the bosses owned the company. Seems like they were dipping their ink in the company well. So I offered to buy it with my paypal as long as I would be reimbursed. They agreed and we’ve been able to use netgong ever since.  This was December 2008. The last expense check I received was for June 2008. Long story short, they never paid me for the software license. And now here they were, calling me to repair something they screwed up, when they changed the password to lock me out of the server when they fired me. Even though they never reimbursed me for the program. I was livid. I gave them some bullshit about it having to do with the password change. 

But I wasn’t going to help them. Screw that.  He said perhaps we can maybe make this your first project. If they give me access to this software I will just uninstall it. End of story.

Then he said the new company might call me in a couple of weeks. So I realized something. The merger is still in transition stage. Their goal at the moment was to solidify their positions in the company. There were three of them taking a paycheck, while i kept the company running. i never got greedy, I never asked for more money. And i was always patient when they told me. But they always took their paycheck first. One of the three is my ex-bosses wife. A nice lady but a complete nincompoop, when it came to technical support, sales, and payment processing. She’s pretty much been responsible for 75% of the outages that are caused at our location. Because she has either forgotten to pay the bill, or mismanaged the budget, and the internet was always being cut off. 

When this realization sunk in. I became angry. My new goal now is to recover my pay, and everything owed to me by any means possible. I still won’t sink to sabotage, but I will start consulting labor lawyers. 

-GET A HAIRCUT AND GET A REAL JOB-

One of the perks of working from home is the lack of need towards grooming. My beard is in a constant state of shaggyness, I often find myself going to work in my sleep clothes and my hair has gotten very long.   Check it out:

 

So I was going to need a haircut. I called my brother up who I often used to trim the sides of my hair to save barber fees. He was extremely reluctant because any expertise he had was just buzz cuts.  But I couldn’t go out and spend money on a barber or a salon. Unemployed people don’t have fancy haircut money. So I convinced him to come over and give it a shot. And if he screwed it up we could always just shave it all off, right?

He was listening to a Top 100 songs of 1994 countdown and this song began to play as the trimming started.  Completely appropriate lyrics.

:

“Oh no, It go, It gone, Bye Bye”

First thing had to go was my ponytail. I hate it, but it was an unnecessary evil to keep my hair in check. i wont be sad to see it go.

“Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked.” 

My then started to experiment with different looks as he cut away,

Then he made a really bad cut where i ended up looking like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.

Then I discovered I had a part in my head I couldn’t get rid off.

Lord don’t let me end up with a Hitler haircut. I prayed.

He wanted to shave it off. But We were able to work it out when i wet my hair. Then he began to style it in all sorts of metrosexual ways.

This one was my favorite cause it reminded me of Daniel Day Lewis in “There Will Be Blood”

"I’ll drink your Milkshake”

“Lying on the floor, Lying on the floor! I've come undone”

I guess in the end it doesn’t look so bad for a free haircut.

I was upset about it at first., But once I showered and combed it and styled it, It looks way better than the above photos. Or so I hope.

-MOTIVATION-

Once my brother and his wife left. He sent me a text saying he left me 100 bucks inside my iPhone case.  I was floored. And shocked. I blow through a  hundred dollars like it’s nobody’s business. For them it’s a lot harder to come by. I was also angry that my former employers left me in such a situation that he thought he should have to leave me some money. This is my little baby brother. I should be the one looking out for him.

I texted him back that I wasn’t in such dire straits, that I needed his money yet. But I really appreciated the sentiment. 

I vowed to myself that I would get a job before I would have a need to use that money.

Unemployment Diary Day 2: Why Don’t You Get a Job?

Day 2: Why Don’t You get a Job?

I woke up this morning and realized it was the first non vacation weekday in a long time, where I didn’t have to snooze my alarm.  I checked the phone expecting it to read something far into the afternoon. But it was only 10 AM. I cant even do being unemployed “sleeping-in”, right.

This song was running through my head as I awoke.

I was completely satisfied, with just sitting around the house.Until my Last and Security deposits run out and start selling off my comic book and dvd collection, then move to some remote tropical island with my iPad and Windows Home server. But that sonuvabitch Dexter Holland and the Offspring wouldn’t let me be and invaded my subconscious.

Sometime after 10 my boss called. Sorry, my “former” boss called.

“Hey did you send me that resume?”

I hadn’t. I’m not sure if I could continue to work for someone In any capacity who would fuck me over like this.  I told him I had. And he said he would check it immediately.  Then he said I should contact a certain former coworker.  Who was now doing separate business dealings with the company. Or that he could contact him for me.  This former co-worker already had spoken to me about the possibility of hiring me. And said he would get back to me. I’m still waiting for that contact. 

I decided to go ahead and update my resume and send it to him. It really couldn’t hurt. Plus this was something I was going to have to do anyway. I was the supreme master at creative resume padding.

King of the World? Check! Master Hacker? Check! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Check!

When I was done, Obama would be hiring me to handle the budget crisis, or shine his shoes. Win Win!

I got on facebook and a few people had sent me job opportunities. Thanks Jose and Casey. But mostly there were jokes. Not so much at my expense. But it was alright, many of the jokemakers had also been in that similar situation.  But I had responsibilities and did not have “living with my Mom” as a fallback. I need a fucking job. Yesterday.

I went out to pick up Ally. Something I’ve only done on the first day of her school.  She was extremely surprised. I have not explained the situation to her yet, because two weeks ago I explained the concept of homelessness to her. There had been a crazy bum panhandling and annoying people at a local restaurant. And she asked me why he was doing this. I explained he had no home. No job and probably no family to stay with, This was the most horrible thing she ever heard. Her first dose of reality. She was immediately saddened by this and began to cry. “I don’t want to be homeless” she said. I explained to her that her parents would never let her be homeless. That this was the reason I work everyday. That we would make sure she finishes school and then is able to get a good job for herself and be able to buy a house and thus insuring she would never be homeless. This seemed to comfort her, because she smiled and hugged me. That smile is the reason I go to work everyday. But now I’m out of work.

I realized that i would have to start making changes. Already I was living paycheck to paycheck. But most of the jobs out there in the same field paid considerably less. I might be bringing home up to a 1000 dollars less every month.

I decided to humor myself and visit the Goodwill. I didn’t need or want anything. But this is what money conscious people do right? Found a pair of Bratz Skate shoes  in Ally’s size for 4 Bucks. Original retail price 29.99. Score! Yeah I was still buying unnecessary junk. But I was saving money now! And saving the environment. Reduce Reuse Recycle! ;)

I got home and I had a response from the former coworker with a possible job opportunity. It just wasn’t the one i was looking for.

“Can I use you as a reference?”

”Sure.”

Maybe I should have been more direct.

“Nigga, can I get a JOB?”

I swallowed my pride and put in an application for Comcast instead. I fucking HATE comcast. Anyone who knows me, knows of my long and storied battles with them. Which only got worse when I started working for a Wi-Fi company that needed to have direct dealings with them. Many, many times, Have I yelled into that phone, expecting better, different results. It never ever changed anything. If i had an enemies list, they would be number 2 on that list. 

But I’m already a hypocrite rite? I pay them every month to fuck me in the ass whenever possible. So why not go to work for them. This way They’d be paying me to rape people. Plus free internet service and cable tv. Woot. Plus they have one of the coolest jobs around.

This is an excerpt from my twitter.

kortanaskew : Go to hell #Comcast. Someone should put a Cap in you.  12:01 AM Jan 13th

It was an admittedly rash and juvenile tweet, over some bad misinformation i got from facebook. I was surprised to get a Response.

comcastdoug

@kortanaskew can we help? 9:11 AM Jan 13th

I got a same day response from Comcast via twitter? Not even my friends read this thing. I didn’t even direct it at him. Just threw it out into the ether.

He is part of the Customer Service Operations Digital Media Outreach team. Fuck that’s an awesome job. Yes, Comcast Doug, You can help me. How do I get YOUR job?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       So Now It’s been 3 months since I was contacted by him. But when looking up this info on my iPhone I accidentally sent comcastdoug a blank tweet. He responded quickly.

comcastdoug

@kortanaskew what can I do for you???? my friend.

He called me his friend? Comcast Doug Are you for real? Then he hit me back with this:

comcastdoug

@kortanaskew oh and no cap in me.. I am here to help!!!

Comcast Doug. You sir, are a class act.

Unemployment Diary Day One

Hi.

I’ve recently as of Monday found myself unemployed.  This is what has transpired so far.

Day One.

Woken up by a 9 am call from my boss. I hate these. Usually means i won’t be able to go back to sleep for the rest of the day.  He also has beaten my iPhone alarm. Which is also set to go off at 9 am. That mean’s he dialed exactly as his watch struck 9.

“Did I wake you?”

“Huh? Of Course not. Go ahead”

He begins to tell me of exciting new changes within the company. And he will no longer need the services of the other employee. I’m with him so far. Sales and Support will now be handled by the company they are merging with.  And here I am expecting him to say , like he’s told me numerous times before, that i will be handling the Network Infrastructure and providing Tier 2 support., to the new employees.  

Then he goes on to say. Our work with you will now be project based.  *RECORD SCRATCHES*

“Say What?” Project based? I can’t feed my family on projects. What they told me is after 5 years. And after keeping their company afloat for 3 of those years, on my back. That I’m fucked. 

“Send in a resume to the new company and we’ll be glad to submit it.”

This didn’t just happen overnight. You kept me on the hook with promises, and not paying me on-time for several months. Just to fuck me like this? Wonderful.

I can’t tell you how many people lied to me during this process. People I thought were my friends, and were looking out for my interests as well. People I did favors for because they requested them of me. That their company was having issues. And I needed to be patient in collection of my pay.

“You Just need to Chill for Today”

Why he said this like I would be coming in to work tomorrow I did not know. This is repugnant behavior.

“I don’t even have access to the server”

You never did. I made sure of that.  But I checked my access, Email. Website, Phone. Server, Billing system. All revoked. But I am the only one.  In fact password changes had begun on Thursday of last week. But they lied to me about why it was done.

This is when i realized I was terminated.  "You Just need to Chill For Today” indeed. How about chilling for the rest of my life?

After realizing what had occurred. What was done to two previous network admins. And what they had made me do to other co-workers. I decided against destroying their business. from the inside. I needed to collect my money, I have access to a lot of the routers and a lot oft he locations. I could call each one individually and do hardware resets on the routers. It would take them several days and several hundreds of dollars in manpower to deduce what had happened. But they still owe me money.  And this behavior is beneath me.  At least for now.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Yeah where the fuck is all the back pay you owe me? Plus Expenses and Bonuses.

I decided to file for unemployment. Fat lot of good it will do me though, I am several weeks behind in pay already. I spoke with Unemployment expert Josh and he said it would be several weeks before i would see any benefits. But that doesn’t matter since former coworkers had failed to recieve any such benefits from this company.

If I had known this situation had been coming. I would have found another job. Had my resume floating around sooner. Curbed my spending habits. I just bought an iPad and had an expensive get together at my house.  And Ive been spending my income tax refund to pay the bills I couldn’t afford because of my employers paying me late.

“We know you have a family and don’t want to leave you in the lurch”

But you did motherfucker. You just Did.