Hmmm...

From my blog post "End Of The CEDA Era," at the end of 2005: "...I am not going to ever forget my time at CEDA. What a perfect impetus to push me through school and urge me to keep going and make education a priority. Cause if I don't, I face a future of jobs in which my diligence and perfectionist nature cause me to be fired perpetually because I didn't produce enough mistake-filled, hurried work to satisfy the assholes in charge."

From my blog post "32 Years Of Anonymity," a few weeks ago: "My supervisor Lucy...has been on my ass virtually every day for the past two months because my items per hour was below 90. But when she thrust the November numbers in my face showing me how many other people in my workgroup have better IPH rates than me, I noticed something in the total items column: Only one person in my workgroup nailed more than 10,000 items total last month, and that was yours truly. Then I remembered that I was on vacation for a week in November because I spent several days in Memphis after Thanksgiving! You'd think Lucy would be thrilled to see that bit of information when I pointed it out to her. Her response: 'It doesn't matter how much work you do.' I never thought there existed a job where someone could be told that it didn't matter that they produced more work than anyone else."

Yeah, guess I haven't figured it out yet. Quality work, bad. Fast, crappy work, good. Note to self--make that my new mantra...

CEDA Redux?

I just finished my first week with J.P. Morgan Chase, and color me unimpressed. Actually, calling it CEDA Part Deux is a little harsh, because I can't say for sure whether Chase's lack of organization is because there's so much to do that little things fall through the cracks or because they don't give a shit, like at CEDA. But make no mistake, at least in the lockbox department, there are some administrative problems that make me wonder if I really want to be employed at this place.

First, the paycheck situation...it's bad enough that in order to sign up for Direct Deposit with the bank that I work for and have had an account with for eleven years, I couldn't turn in the paperwork at work; instead I had to go to a branch somewhere and sign up through them, which doesn't make sense to me. Actually, most things are done online with Chase. When I become eligible for benefits in about 14 years, I have to go online to choose those options also. (Because I'm only a part-time hire at 35 hours per week, I'm not eligible for benefits until 90 days after my hire date.) But then the actual paychecks came, and we were not a happy group of new hires. We were told that because we all started on the same day, February 13, and checks were going to be issued on the 15th and last day of every month, we would all have checks on February 15th, and that they would represent two days of work according to our schedules, not representing the actual hours that we were there Monday and Tuesday. Those hours, if there were any discrepancies, would be worked out on our next check. So how come some people got paid for eight hours, some for 14 hours, some for 6 hours, etc? For instance, I got seven hours, even though not only was I there on the 13th and 14th for about 13 hours collectively, but I was scheduled to be there for 14 hours, which they told us was the criteria to determine how many hours our first checks would pay. So either 13 or 14 hours on my check would have been understandable, but seven?? Where did they pull that number from? At least it was correctly direct deposited, as I did go to a branch on the 14th after work and get that taken care of. But already, my colleagues and I have to closely monitor payroll and make sure that they credit us for the time that we are there. Not a good start.

On the first day, Monday, we had to go to a different building than where we will be working in order to take a one-day orientation session with a woman who was nice enough, but had an accent and didn't seem to have mastered English quite yet. Naturally, she was the person to go to throughout the week. When we did start working at our actual workplace, since we can't take book bags on the transaction floor because there are live checks everywhere and they don't want one to "accidentally" fall into someone's belongings, the woman was the person with a key to a walk-in closet where we eight or nine (because one showed up for the first time on Wednesday) trainees had to hang our coats and put any bags that we brought with us. So when I wanted to get something from my bag, it was her that had to open the closet for me, and it seemed that a sentence as simple as "Can you open the closet for me?" at times was too much grammar for her to handle. She also handled our administrative questions, meaning that we are still unclear as to when and where we get the two ID cards that we have to have on us at all times. Many questions were answered by her with a look skyward and a blank stare, followed by something like "I don't know, go ask your supervisor," which sucked for me because my supervisor was off Tuesday and yesterday, and I really did want to ask her several things. But the topper was when we trainees flipped through the 39-question skills assessment test that we had to take at the end of the week and noticed grammar problems in the test such as, "List in order of priority how the four (5) header cards should be used." Confused? There were seven header cards to choose from. Even more confused? Me too. Guess who wrote the test? Yep, the lady who doesn't know English very well. How do I know? Because when I showed her the question and asked her what exactly does the question want me to do, she responded, "Oh, I should rewrite question, I not write it very clear." Sigh.

The second person we worked with all week was a big black guy who really did look like Ruben Studdard. I mean, "Karen" and others used to call me Ruben when he first became famous, but I really don't look like him, I'm just a fat nigga, so they thought it cute to call me Ruben. But this guy really does look like him. There were four, then five people (one of them started Wednesday instead of Monday) who were hired as keyers because they did better on their numeric typing test than I did apparently, and every morning those people would go train with the woman who didn't know English, and the four of us left would go to train with Ruben because he was the coach for what is called workup, or the process of taking the sorted mail and opening the envelope and "working up" the contents into piles of checks, material, and empty envelopes, and binding them together with rubber bands or paper clips. That's what we leftovers were assigned to do, workup. We all interviewed for keying, but we didn't test well enough I guess, so we were thrown into workup with the other rejects. I suppose I should go take the keying test again, since keyers are paid more and since, well, that's what I interviewed for. Anyway, Ruben was nice himself, kinda quiet like me, a couple of years younger than me, always cracking jokes in between long yawns and stretches because he works an evening job after he leaves Chase. But some of the discrepancies between what our training manuals and folders told us to do and what he was telling us to do were a little disconcerting to me. For instance, he constantly told us to bind the header cards behind the checks even though all of our books were telling us that the cards should be binded in front of the checks. In general, he didn't seem to take it as a big deal that he was teaching us things that may be done in a different manner once we get on the floor. But on the other hand, he has worked on the floor for six years, so if anyone knows how it's done on the floor, it would be him. I just felt that the training manuals should match the advice given by the coach. Call me crazy. Yesterday was the last day of our training week, so Ruben gave each of us four workup trainees one-on-one personal evaluations at the end of the day. He could recommend us, or recommend us with reservations, or not recommend us. He recommended me with reservations. Was he concerned about my work speed or quality? Nope, he didn't like my attitude because I made it clear that I wasn't thrilled with how Chase did things, or as I bluntly put it, "This place sucks." He told me that he didn't know how I could possibly achieve anything at Chase if I already don't like it there. He said that it gets worse once you get on the floor, because it's so busy that you can go an awful long time before you find someone to clear up any questions you may have. And I always have a lot of questions because I want to make sure I'm doing something right before I do it. He said that if I don't like it now, imagine getting on the floor and being suspended because you were suspected of stealing checks even though you didn't do it. He didn't say if that had happened to him, but after I left, I thought about it and I realized that he contradicted himself. He had basically suggested that I should look for somewhere else to work if I disliked Chase so much, but if he really did know someone who was falsely accused of stealing or, worse, if he was falsely accused of stealing, then how could he possibly continue to work for them? He does it for the same reason that I will stay there--because it's a motherfucking job and it ain't easy to get one out here. I understood what he was trying to tell me, but I have ten years of experience at CBOE tiptoeing around idiots who don't care what's going on and staying above the fray. I can hold my own. And I will rip shit up once I get on the floor. My simmering hatred for Chase will not stop me from exceeding expectations at my job. And you can take that to the bank. (Just not Chase Bank, they might mishandle your money.)

Another problem I have is the quality of people that I'm going to work with. This is what the floor looked like the couple of times we walked through: Lots of black women with headphones on (you are allowed to listen to a headset while you work) doing what's assigned to them and not interacting very much. And who out of this group am I supposed to go to when I come across a problem? Ruben warned me to watch out because they simply don't hire many guys to do this job. And sure enough, most of the men that I saw on the floor were in the mailroom. And don't get me started on the women that I was hired with. There were three black women along with me training to do workup this week. One was nice enough, actually a former management type getting back into the workforce so she was trying to coach me not to be so abrasive and act more professional if I wanted to move up in the company past workup. And the other two were stereotypical finger-snapping, gum-chewing sistas, but at least one seemed to want to learn the position. The other one--wow. She admitted that she was hired because a friend at Chase hooked her up. She complained about feeling sick nonstop every day, but didn't hesitate to crack a joke and act silly when we weren't working. She even told us that this was her second attempt at training, since she dropped out when she was hired at the end of January because she was "feeling sick" then too. Our training consisted of working up actual material that wasn't due to be processed until the next day, so I would never jump on her for doing things too slowly, but it's fucking up and doing it wrong that makes me mad because it then falls on the rest of us to do her job right since it's obvious that she could care less about doing it right. Every check has to have material with it, even if it's just the envelope that it came in. We don't get checks with no envelope. So why did she finish working up a batch and have five checks sitting in front of her with no material? This was at the end of the day Wednesday, so she would have to stay after our departure time of 3:30P and remedy her error, and she was extremely pissed about that because I guess she felt that she should be free to leave and let someone else figure out how she fucked up. How is someone else going to figure out your fuck-up? You worked the batch, you figure out where you went wrong. And it's not like you can leave the work sitting in your fictional in-box for an unlimited amount of time. All this work has deadline times when the client wants his shit done, even if it's the next day. The former management woman actually stayed late and helped her figure out her error, and to that I say, God bless her for being a big person and going beyond the call of duty, but I can't imagine having to get my shit straight and then go fix someone else's fuck-ups. I actually wondered if Ruben was going to hold it against me and the other woman who left at 3:30 that we didn't hang around and help the chick who didn't care about her work. He never mentioned it, but I'm sure it didn't look good. But that's something that pissed me off at CBOE--people with the same position as me, sometimes getting paid more than me, and doing a worse job. A white girl named Jessica (it's not a black woman problem, it's an I-don't-give-a-fuck-about-my-work-quality attitude problem) at CBOE was hired as a quote reporter in the same class as me, getting the same starting pay as me, but she wasn't nearly as good as me, so she was assigned to a very easy crowd while I was sent to a busier crowd and struggled a bit at the beginning. So six months later, guess who got a bigger raise because her review was more positive since she didn't have as many errors because she was in a dead crowd?? And was she trying to improve and prepare to be moved to a busier crowd? Why should she? And why do I have a sinking feeling that I'm about to see that happen all over again? Fucking bullshit politics.

Those salty profanities that I toss around like nothing at least made me memorable among my fellow trainees. "I ain't ever gonna forget you Dre," one of them told me yesterday as we prepared to go home for the day. It was a wild week. It seemed like I was determined to not be an anonymous guy playing the background like I was at CBOE. It was a new beginning and I guess I wanted to make an impact. It's not like I set out to be the guy pointing out discrepancies and calling out mistakes and seeming like I think I know it all. It just happened. I asked the three women what they thought my age was, and they all thought that I was late 30s-early 40s because I carried myself as someone who's been there, done that. (I'm trying to take it as a compliment...I sure the fuck don't think I look that old.) Ruben told me to cool it with the potty mouth when I get on the floor, but I'm not retarded. I know better than to use curse words around actual personnel. I was waiting to have a day where I can't keep my eyes open and start falling asleep during training, because I had to go to school Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night, meaning I was getting home between 9:30 and 10:00 on those nights, going to bed after midnight, and waking up around 5:15A the next day in order to get downtown at 7A. (And yes, I was late most of the days, a half-hour late on Wednesday because I turned off my alarm three minutes before it was going to go off and then nodded off for an hour. It should be better next week because I don't have to start until 8A.) But I stayed alert and smart-alecky every day. I slept for almost ten hours last night, but I expected to do that since I didn't have to go anywhere this morning. But it was very interesting, I think that I felt anonymous at CBOE even though I was there for ten years, and subconsciously, I think that I set out to be a unique, confident, self-assured person from day one at Chase, not afraid to ask questions, not afraid to speak my mind, or "keep it real," as the trainee with all the fuck-ups said about me. I surprised myself with some of the things that I said. When I got on the floor to plug our electric staplers into the power strip, I said to the very proper and professional former management woman, "I'm going down under the table near you now, and I don't want any sexual harassment accusations. Heh heh." She looked horrified at the thought. I regretted saying that as soon as I said it, but hell, I didn't mean anything by it. But when I left CBOE, I felt like no one remembered me or cared that I was gone. I suppose that I want the people at Chase to remember me, positively or otherwise. I even spoke up more during my classes this week, and I hardly ever speak during my classes. Maybe I really am breaking out of my shell.

And finally, you may remember how I openly flaunted CEDA's no-jeans rule by wearing a different color pair of jeans every single day, waiting for someone to call me on it, but on one ever did because, duh, whether someone is wearing jeans, khakis, or a camisole is not an important concern for any normal human being. Well, it's right there in our Chase manuals--no jeans OF ANY COLOR except on weekends. My response? There was no school Monday because of President's Day, so I went to Casual Male and bought three pair of classy-looking polyester/rayon blends. The difference? CEDA treated all of us like we were disposable, useless sheep, existing only to do this assignment quickly so that we can be shown the door. I reacted accordingly. Chase may have some administrative issues, but they have treated us well thus far, making us feel important, like we are wanted. So many complete strangers came up to us and welcomed us to the "Chase family" this week. My supervisor was extremely nice to me, acknowledging me by name when we met by chance in the lunchroom even though I had never met her or introduced myself before that moment. The guy who gave me my second interview saw me and called me by my name and said hi when I walked the floor for the first time Wednesday. Chase treated all of us new hires to a free box lunch yesterday. I am being treated like a valued member of the staff, and I am dressing and trying to act accordingly. So to CEDA I would say: I'm not always an immature asshole...only when I feel that it's deserved.

End Of The CEDA Era

So much for my temp job going through January, which is what my agency, Smart Resources, told me when I was hired. The big boss, Casey Jones, had been making a big deal lately about people who consistently posted 75 files or less for a day's work on their retarded little tally sheets (yes, they started making everyone keep track of how many files they did in a day), going so far as to call a meeting almost every day last week only for those under the magic number the day before. You got it--20 to 30 minutes of no work for those not producing enough work so that Casey can tell us that we need to start producing more work. Is that not the most idiotic thing you've ever heard? Not only that, but I honestly don't think that these people had the collective intelligence to realize that some people were fudging their numbers and writing insane tallies on their sheets, and I would still be there if only I were dishonest. I will say this once and then I will stop whining--I am a perfectionist, I am a hardheaded son of a bitch, and I basically ignored all warning that Casey gave us in those retarded meetings that the low-tally people would be the first to be cut because to race through the files would mean that I would risk missing a detail and making a mistake, and I was not making any mistakes based on this moron's opinion that my work wasn't fast enough. This same guy bitched and moaned in previous rants about how important accuracy was, because if we make a mistake then that will prevent a file from being processed, then that family has to wait to get that mistake ironed out, and meanwhile they have no heat, so our jobs are very important, etc, etc...but in the last couple of weeks, all we heard about was the "rabbits" nailing 150 or more files a day, and why couldn't we be more like them? I bit my tongue so hard it nearly tore off. I held my professionalism and defeated the urge to tell him: "Because it's their fucking mistakes that I'm cleaning up the next day, and it takes time to remedy major-league fuck-ups like they make on a daily basis, you imbecile!" My counts were not way below his quota of 75. Gina, the main supervisor of the data entry department, always rolled her eyes when she tapped me on the shoulder to come to the meetings because my counts were always in the 65 to 70 range, and considering that I didn't run away from files with eight or nine people in it and put them back in the box like a lot of people did, and that I denied files with Social Security cards that were obvoiusly fake and wrote up denial sheets for every one of them and didn't ignore problems with a file and process it anyway like a lot of people did, you would think a rational person would excuse my count being low by a couple of files. Of course, I was dealing with Casey Jones, and nothing about him says "rational person," which is why I never mentioned any of this to him. Someone else tried to tell him that her count was low because her particular computer wasn't working right, and his response was, "No excuses." WTF?!? So yeah, it was a no-win situation. All that said, I will quit whining about it now because I realize that the bottom line is this: Not everyone was falsifying their numbers, not everyone looked at difficult files and put them back for someone else to do, and I knew what the daily quota was and I routinely failed to make it. Period.

It was a weird day yesterday. We didn't have overtime over the weekend because we had done our jobs so well that we didn't have extra files, so we all kinda knew the end was near. Then in the afternoon, the guy from Smart Resources who always brings the weekly checks for the Smart workers who are not part of direct deposit, as I am, gave a check to a woman, then pulled her aside and told her, and only her, that she was done at the end of the day. He then spoke to Gina privately for about 20 minutes and left. Meanwhile, the woman was in tears because the way he did it, it sure seemed like he was singling her out. But when Gina spoke to me later, she said that she heard that there was a list of people being let go by Casey, and that I was on the list, but I figured if I was going to be thrown out, either Casey or the guy from Smart would have told me something at the same time as the woman earlier was told. I told Gina that I'd be back the next day because no one had told me anything, but she hugged me goodbye just in case, so I think she knew. The funny part is that Smart had indeed called my cell phone while I was at work to tell me that my "assignment has ended," but I didn't know that I had a call until after I left work because sometimes my cell phone's vibrator doesn't work. I would have had to awkwardly endure the pain and embarrassment of working my last two hours knowing that I had been fired, just like that woman did. I have no idea why the guy from Smart told her separately that she was gone, except that she and I had become friends and I don't remember her ever taking out a cell phone, so perhaps she doesn't have a cell phone and face-to-face was the only way to tell her. In any event, I walked to school and checked my voice mail and found out the bad news, and I've been home all day just resting and trying to stay warm.

The immediate future is a complete question mark. I've already talked to Smart about a new "assignment," but the only gig they have right now is 3rd-shift and pays less. "Shelley" thinks that I should take it, but every outing we have is paid for by me, so of course she wants her meal ticket to find employment again ASAP. I really, really can't see myself doing retail, so the obvious solution, some cashier job in this holiday season, is out. Unemployment benefits are not an option because I would have had to be employed for six months to be eligible again. Cassandra assures me that she will have some money for me next week. But this may be the final event to push me towards moving out of this shitty apartment, like, now. My savings account is now under $1,000 for the first time in quite a while, so I only have a couple of months of living here with zero income, whether the people who owe me money come through or not. And I've been bitching about the rent and the $50 cable and the $50 DSL so long that I was speaking to "Ronnie" when I started bitching about it, and you know it had to be a long time ago if I was speaking to Ronnie. Plus, I'm dating now, and this place ain't no place to be hosting dates. So I'm leaning towards getting out of here by February, employment or no employment. Whatever happens, I am not going to ever forget my time at CEDA. What a perfect impetus to push me through school and urge me to keep going and make education a priority. Cause if I don't, I face a future of jobs in which my diligence and perfectionist nature cause me to be fired perpetually because I didn't produce enough mistake-filled, hurried work to satisfy the assholes in charge.

The One-Month Countdown

It's a little scary that in a month and a day, I will be 30 years old. At the same time, it's not so bad. "Torrie" told me that she freaked a little when she passed the milestone, then looked back and wondered, "What the fuck was I freaking about??" In other words, life goes on. I didn't know if I was going to be blessed with turning 30 when I was a kid because so much had already happened to me. At the same time, I can see the other side, that not much at all has happened yet. I haven't achieved a college education and all that hopefully comes with that. I haven't gotten married or had kids. Hell, I may not yet have met the person I am meant for.

Or maybe I have.

"Shelley" hates my down-in-the-dumps attitude about things and my sedentary, solitary lifestyle because she says it reminds her of herself before she met someone who introduced her to heavy drinking as a way to loosen up. So when she's in my face every 30 seconds asking me, "Are you all right? Are you having fun? Do you want to be here??," she's just trying to get me to be a little more livelier. I do enjoy myself with her--she's very quick-witted, she's intelligent, and she's sassy, a "Sex And The City" kind of sassy, not the down-home, "Hee Haw" kind of sassy that I got from "Sarah." Shelley knew all there was to know about the bags in the Coach store on the ground floor of my temp job, and she entertained herself immensely while waiting for me to come meet her for lunch a couple of weeks ago. Then last Tuesday, after we actually argued pretty badly the previous weekend, guess who was working at the file desk when I walked in that morning? That was a surprise. I knew that she had interviewed with Smart Resources--she actually was trying to set that up before we ever met, but by mentioning me and CEDA, she was able to steer herself towards that particular place of employment--but I had not considered that she would catch on there because it would have been something out of a sitcom. "Dating her turns out to be more than Balki bargained for when she shows up at his office--on the next Perfect Strangers!" Sadly, that came to an end today. The agency called her and told her that they were cutting back on file clerks, and you know the rule in those situations--last one hired, first one fired. I'm not sure what she's going to do. She's here in Chicago from Kansas City going to design school, but she can't afford her luxury dorm room without a job. So her immediate future is looming on the horizon. I'm between classes, so I'll have to talk more about her later, but I like her. She's got a sharp tongue, and she's not afraid to put her foot in my ass, and I need that. I'm afraid that I'm not what she wants, though. She wants me to be more aggressive and more confident, you know, a real man. I'm not sure if I'm ready yet. Time will tell. But I will definitely get around to filling in the details this weekend after Thanksgiving. I've been so busy seeing her and working that I haven't had time to talk about anything. In any event, happy Thanksgiving to all, and I'll be back in a few days.

Happy Kill-The-Injuns-Rape-Their-Women-And-Steal-Their-Land Day

CEDA is a government organization, and Columbus Day is a government holiday, so the offices are not open today, so I'm just sitting here at home watching sports highlights and wondering if those fumes from the construction next door are always that strong or if it's just my lucky day. I can't make up the missing work hours with overtime anymore, because CEDA has hired even more temp workers for an evening shift and for Saturdays and Sundays, so they made the announcement that overtime hours are no longer an option for anybody since theoretically they now have enough personnel that OT shouldn't be necessary, even if we want to do it. But OT means time and a half, so I'm not surprised that they outlawed it. Those of us in the main computer area that work the 8:30A-5P shift actually have to get up at 3:30P, when the 3:30-10 shift arrives, and move to a different area adjacent from the main area so that the new shift can all sit together. Whatever. I'm just pissed that I could have taken advantage of OT last Saturday and Sunday and chose not to because I was tired and I figured I could just do it next weekend. Now there is no more OT. Those six or seven hours at $15 per made for a nice little bonus in the regular weekly check. Oh well.

"Laurie" and I have communicated better lately, although it looks like nothing is going to happen between us for the forseeable future. She says she needs to straighten out her life first, and that she doesn't "feel it" with me right now, which I can't blame her for not feeling it after I almost hooked up on a booty call with a stranger a few weeks ago. Not much else to talk about here. She's dealing with her situations where she is, and I don't fit in her life right now. There's so much tension and nervousness in our phone conversations that I don't know if we would even make good friends right now. That could be because I can only talk to her when she's at work, since her cell phone is still not on. But since we're not getting together anytime soon, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about when she turns her phone back on. She e-mailed me telling me that she's going to be asking for my address so she can send me the money she owes me instead of having me come up there to Detroit and see her. Ouch. Nothing I can do about it, though. If she doesn't want to see me, she doesn't want to see me. She also told me that she's not stopping me from continuing with my life, meaning that I could go try to get with someone else, I suppose. But my heart's not in it. When I stopped seeing "Torrie" a couple of months ago, it was because I thought I was going to step up and build something with Laurie. Now that that's out, I don't want to go somewhere else. The thought of another relationship right now makes me sick (or is that the fumes??). The big 3-0 is looming in a couple of months. Right now, I feel like starting over and going from scratch in pretty much all aspects of my life, considering how badly I fucked up my 20s. That would mean no more internet hos, no more cross-country attempts at love, no more begging women to love me. I can easily see myself going six years without a date again, like I did from 1996 to 2002. It's not worth the aggravation, especially (most importantly, those who know me would say) if it's a situation where I don't feel good about myself and I don't feel that anyone with any respect for herself would want to date me, so I find myself dating someone that I don't like or respect. That's part of what made me go mad when "Karen" screwed me over--I felt like I was going out with a drunk, ugly, boring woman who was horrible in bed, plus she was dating me so she had no taste, but I stuck with it because she said she loved me and I wanted love so bad, but she was a lying skank all along.

I'll end this with a few words about the White Sox and their push for the pennant. I am so proud of them. I've been wearing this Sox ring that I bought after I first started working for CBOE in 1995, even though it's bent and no longer fits my ring finger because I keep getting fatter and fatter, so I'm wearing it as a pinky ring like I'm auditioning for the Sopranos or something. I've had to wash my Sox cap twice since they clinched a playoff spot a week and a half ago because I've been wearing it everywhere. I have a Sox jersey too, and it's personalized with my name and the number 00 (because I'm a big nothing), but my apartment is so messy, I can't find the damn thing. And yet I'm not bragging or talking about the Sox every second like I would be any other year. The reason? Simple: I don't feel I have the right to be yelling and screaming about them because I completely buried this team before the season began. I said they wouldn't be shit. I was very angry that they traded Carlos Lee, a powerful OF about to hit his prime, to the Brewers for a light-hitting 30-year-old guy who could run and a no-name RP for no other reason than Lee's free agent year was this year and they wanted to get rid of him before it became obvious that they were not going to pay him. I was very angry that they pretended that they couldn't re-sign Magglio Ordonez, another powerful OF who was actually their most consistent player the last five years, because the knee injury he suffered to end last season was just too questionable. A bunch of other teams were lined up with contract offers (Ordonez accepted the Detroit Tigers' offer because, with incentives, he could make more money there than with any other team), but not the Sox. Oh no, they couldn't risk signing a guy who might not recover from his injury. So who did they sign to replace him? Jermaine Dye, one of the most injury-prone players out there. But Dye's market value was very low, or, as I put it when the Sox signed him, "Do you really think Dye would sign with the Sox if there was a good team out there that actually wanted him??" And to top it off, they signed a 30-year-old Japanese guy named Tadahito Iguchi to play 2B for them. The guy had never played major league ball in his life. There's usually a big bidding war for good Japanese players that want to come to the majors, and you know if there was a bidding war, the Sox weren't going to be involved. But no one wanted the guy, so he signed with the Sox. So all of their moves this past offseason, in my opinion, were made because the price was right and they didn't want to spend the money, and that followed hiring Ozzie Guillen as their manager the year before because he had no managing experience and therefore would be cheaper than getting someone that, you know, actually managed in the majors before. I angrily responded by cursing them and vowing to not buy any tickets to any Sox games this year, which I haven't. I didn't count on their moves all actually working out. The skinny guy they traded Carlos Lee for, Scott Podsednik, led the majors in SB most of the season before his legs gave out, and he was a big-time catalyst at the top of the lineup. That offset the fact that Carlos did have the breakout season he was expected to have, making the All-Star team for the first time. This Iguchi guy seems to have a habit of hitting clutch opposite-field HRs when you least expect it, and he's a decent fielder, too. Dye shocked the world by staying healthy all year, and he had some huge hits as well. Ordonez couldn't come back from his knee injury until about a couple of months ago, making the Sox look like geniuses. And Guillen is absolutely fucking nuts, which is a good thing, because opposing managers have a hard time managing against him because they don't know what the fuck he's gonna do next. Clearly, having no experience works well for Guillen, because he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and he doesn't have to have an answer for why he does it, just that he "had a feeling." This team really is just like the Boston Red Sox team that won the World Series last year. The Red Sox earned the nickname "The Idiots" because they didn't know why they did half the shit they did, they just knew that it worked. So who did the White Sox sweep in the first round of the playoffs this year? The Red Sox. The Idiots were swept aside by The Morons. And The Morons are too stupid to know better. They're not done yet. And while I might not be yelling about them at the top of my lungs, I am watching from afar with a great amount of Sox pride.

B.O.

No big political or social vent, just plain old-fashioned stank. Had to sit next to a woman for EIGHT HOURS today who smelled worse than street bums. And she liked to exhale long and hard and often cause she thought she was working so hard, and every time she stood up or exhaled I thought I was going to pass out. I mean we sang every funk song we could think of, "Git The Funk Out Ma Face" by Brothers Johnson, "Bustin Out" by Rick James ("We're busting out on some serious FUNK..."), "Make It Funky" by the Godfather...and she didn't get it at all, just kept blabbing away about her seven cats or some shit. Just nasty. And just to fuck with me, I bet they put her there again tomorrow right next to me. The lesson of the story, kids: You shouldn't have to hand out clothespins for people to put on their noses just to sit next to you. AAARRRGGH!!

A Fellow Temp's Sympathy

My workplace has a reputation. Last week I described to my literature teacher the circumstances of my job--shitty people, ignorant higher-ups who don't know what the fuck's going on, one person telling you one thing and someone else telling you the exact opposite--and apparently I was overheard. Ten minutes ago, when I left said lit class, a classmate who I've never met before stopped me in the hallway and asked if I still was dealing with the crappy temp job. I said yes, and it's getting worse. He told me that he's had success and better jobs with his temp agency, Lakeshore. I told him that we have some Lakeshore people working with us. Then he startled me by saying, "You're not at CEDA, are you?" I sheepishly smiled and showed him my CEDA badge, which he couldn't have previously seen because I put that thing deep in my pocket when I come to school because I'm embarrassed by it. He informed me that he used to work for CEDA in a prior temp position (probably the exact same one I'm doing, now that I think about it) and that was why the job sounded so familiar when I described it. But I never said where it was or who by name I was with. This random guy out of the blue simply heard a description of a really fucked-up gig and figured that it must be CEDA. How pathetic is that? Well, I told him what I told my temp agency, Smart Resources, when I went there to drop off my timesheet last Friday--if they can find me another job, let me know ASAP. I'm ready to get out of there already. And to think, this is only the beginning of the week. God, please, just kill me now.

Perspective

Short post today, I'm tired. Not only am I still adjusting to working every day, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I came to work at 7A, meaning I woke up just after 5A all of those days. Showering when it's dark outside is not fun. Hell, it actually reminded me of Saturdays showering before I left the house at 5P a couple of winters ago to take a Metra train to Kenosha, WI, to date this girl named "Karen" that I was crazy about. Bad flashbacks. Not all bad, actually; we had some fun back when I thought she was an honest person, and she was the first woman I dated since becoming an adult, so that was significant. I'm rambling. Anyway, CEDA kept bouncing schedules and telling us one thing and then another, and that's why we wound up working at 7A. They told us all to come in Wednesday from 7A to 3:30P, the same eight hours that we agreed to when we were hired but at a different time. But when we showed up Wednesday, they tried to say that now they wanted us to stay until 5P, which would be a ten-hour workday. Most people stayed just to get the extra money, but I had classes Wednesday, and I was already beat, so I lied and told them that I had an appointment at school scheduled and I had to leave at 3:30 like we were told we could. Again, just the principle of the thing. I'm not agreeing to shit like staying longer hours when there's nothing in it for me. A bonus and/or a possible promotion, sure. The same bullshit payrate we're getting anyway? Fuck no. When I came back Thursday, my co-workers told me that at the end of the day Wednesday, everyone was given a choice of working 7A to 3:30P or 8:30A to 5P. Having more time after work to set up my fantasy football teams was more important than sleep, so I decided to come in at 7A yesterday. But I'm leaning towards taking the original 8:30A-5P shift next week. Waking up that early is just ungodly.

So I was sitting on the can earlier starting to feel sorry for myself again. I wasn't supposed to be home this weekend; "Laurie" targeted this weekend a while back as the weekend she would come meet me for the first time, and I was going to rent a room downtown because I'd rather not host her at my small, dingy apartment. But she told me Monday that she wouldn't be able to come because she's still having trouble finding a place to live, and her money is short again, so short that her phone has been cut off, and her father in Florida is sick and she might have to go there. She also said that I could come see her in Detroit, but if she's still staying at her niece's house in a couple of weeks, I might want to wait until then because her niece will be out of town and we could stay there on her niece's boat. She told me on IM Monday night that she would talk to her sister and niece that evening and figure out exactly what's going to happen this weekend and she would let me know. That's the last time I've heard from her, but she has been posting messages at the MSN site where we met all week, so she has computer access at her job, she just hasn't seen fit to e-mail me and let me know what the fuck is going on. So I'm feeling down, thinking that I could be there with her this weekend but I'm not, and I could be hanging out with a Mexican hottie at work that is a sports fan and loves the White Sox and wants to make football picks with me (um, can you say my dream woman???) and is single and lives not far from me, but it's up to her if she wants to hang with me because I gave her my phone number but she hasn't called, and I could be hanging out with friends but I don't have any, and I could be getting ready to go to the club tonight and find some companionship there, except I have zero confidence that I would have any success...so it's going to be another weekend all alone watching sports and getting fatter. Woe is me, cry, whimper, cry...and then a thought bubble came over my head that said, "Hey, you can catch a flight to New Orleans and see what tough living is REALLY all about." So there's a little perspective. Whatever I'm doing this weekend, it's lonely, it's pathetic...but as an alternative to being with a loved one, it's what I want to do. At least I have a choice of doing leisurely things. I don't have to pick up the pieces from a storm that ruined my life. I don't have to look for housing. I don't have to worry about not getting a paycheck due to my worksite being destroyed. I don't have to worry about my loved ones getting robbed or raped by hoodlums with no fear of police since they know the cops are busy with other tasks. I don't have to worry about the health risks of dead bodies floating in the water, contaminating everything with E.coli and other bacteria. How sad to think about what's going on down there. I've never been to New Orleans, but I worked with a couple of guys who have attended Mardi Gras, and the stories and pictures they had made me vow to experience that town just once. It sounded like New Orleans was just one big party. A sports columnist who was there when a Super Bowl took place at the Superdome with his favorite team wrote an article wondering if New Orleans would ever be the same. If it won't, boy am I sorry I missed it. Here's hoping it will, not just for the future partying tourists like me but, most importantly, for the locals whose lives were uprooted.

Livin' For The Weekend

I am very tired as I sit here typing this entry. I had forgotten how hard it is to wake up early in the morning and, instead of lounging around in the bed until the urge to use the bathroom becomes immediate, have to get up and start my day. As a result, I was technically "late" my first two days on my new job. I showed up three to five minutes after the 8:30A starting time. Of course, it has not been a big deal yet because this place is so disorganized, we did absolutely, positively NO work our first two days, then lost the second half of yesterday to a crashed computer system. All I can say is, I now understand why there was practically no interview process when I went to the agency that hired me for this job Monday. They just want warm bodies. You, the reader, could send a 4-year-old up there to bang around on the computer, and he or she would be asked if an actual paycheck would be fine or whether direct deposit would be preferred. (And the agency failed to tell me that they were charging a $1 processing fee for direct deposit--I read it on the brochure way after the fact--or else I may not have chosen that option.)

As I said, I was a few minutes late arriving for my first day Wednesday, but I caught the group of temp workers as they headed up one flight of stairs from the 19th floor, where we were told by our temp agency to come, to the 20th floor. Once there, we were led into a snazzy-looking conference room, where we sat in stone silence for about a half-hour. Someone named Janet informed us that the training materials were still being worked on and that we would start training shortly. But we would not be trained for the data entry position that we all thought we were there for.

My attempt at a brief description of what this place does: It's called CEDA, and I don't remember what it stands for, nor do I give a fuck. It's located on the 19th and 20th floors of the Federal Reserve Bank building, 208 S. LaSalle, a block and a half from CBOE, my place of employment for ten years. It's a place that gives out assistance to low-income and disabled people in Chicago. They have two programs. One is called a cooling program for people who don't want to go through a Chicago summer without power. The counter to that, the heating program, just started this past Thursday, September 1, and will last through the end of December. In both cases, people who want assistance provide proof of income, proof of Social Security numbers for everyone in the household, proof of disability if they're disabled, and a current energy bill, and those that fit whatever the requirements are receive credit directly to their People's Energy and/or Commonwealth Edison accounts. I only put the monthly income into the little boxes on the computer, I have no idea what the cutoff is as far as how much income is too much.

At least that's what my job is supposed to be. This place is tremendously understaffed, which was punctuated by the several long periods my temp group had sitting in the conference room or the lunchroom waiting for someone to come speak to us about the importance of the program, which is all they could do because, since the computers were not ready, we couldn't do any actual work. But when Janet finally finished preparing our training packets, she explained that we were being trained to do intake, which means we were being shown how to take the applications of those wanting assistance, which is not what we were hired to do. She explained that some people may be asked to do intake instead of data entry, and of the twenty or so temp workers in the conference room on Wednesday, she was even taking two of us with her to the emergency intake area, which is where people who have not paid their energy bills for so long that they have been cut off go to bitch and moan about such lovely things as why they can't get assistance because their proof of income is not acceptable. (One woman was chosen to go to emergency because she spoke some Spanish; I don't know who else was chosen, but I was doing data entry yesterday with everyone else, so thankfully it wasn't me.) Janet also explained that we had to pay attention to the intake process because we needed to know what to look for to verify the applications before we put them into the computer to be processed. That's what made up the bulk of the training packet--different examples of paychecks, Social Security proof, official income documentation...it all seemed like a lot for temp data entry workers to have to learn, and it was. We learned from other temp workers that worked there before that this was the first year that they were asking data entry clerks to verify before they entered the applications; verifiers in the past were separate workers, and the data entry clerks would receive the apps only after they had been verified. So they combined those two jobs this year to save a buck, presumably. Hey, they can't get too upset with me screwing a file up while I try to verify it; they only gave me a two-hour training session on what to look for, and not only that, but many scenarios came up yesterday when I actually received some apps to put into the computer that were not covered in the training, and it was hard to find anyone in charge to ask what to do because they were all busy running around performing other tasks. And even then, some advice from those "in charge" was different than what other people "in charge" advised.

Then there's the flak over hours. Janet, who's not really in charge of anything but was our trainer so she tried to tell us what she thought was going to be the deal, said that 8:30A to 5P sounded correct, which is what we were told by the temp agency, Smart Resources. Everyone else that spoke to us, even the vice-president, a Botox-looking blonde, said not so fast, it all depends on what kind of production was happening and what was desired. Vice-president means only one person in the whole organization is over you, right? So you should know small things, like, I don't know, what hours and days we're working. But when I asked her as late as 10A yesterday morning if we were working Monday, Labor Day, she told me that she didn't know and that there should be an answer to that question hopefully by midday. About an hour later, a woman who spoke to us Wednesday and was recognized as someone employed full-time by CEDA but who isn't really in charge of anything announced to us while we attempted to do our best to enter these boxes and boxes of apps that, according to the vice-president, we were being told to work longer hours today (Friday), until 10P(!), and that we were to come to work the next day, Saturday, from 10A to 4P, and that all of this was "mandatory." I laughed. CEDA does not employ me. Smart Resources does, and they told me 8:30A to 5P Mondays through Fridays when I was hired. I knew that I was leaving at 5P and that I wasn't showing up Saturdays, no matter what CEDA thought, and I knew that if they had a problem with it, they would have to speak to Smart Resources about it. A fellow temp worker actually called Smart Resources and confirmed over the phone that 8:30A to 5P was as long as we had to stay there. CEDA passed around two sheets of notebook paper, one for how long people were going to be able to stay Friday on such short notice, and one for how many hours people would commit to the "mandatory" Saturday workday. I put down 8:30A to 5P for myself on the Friday paper. I didn't put my name on the Saturday paper at all.

My thing was this: CEDA seemed to be so hungry for bodies that they would walk all over and ignore someone's special requests if that someone tried to be cooperative and give them extra hours. And I don't have Mondays and Wednesdays to give them because my college classes are at 5:30P on those days. So I'm not going to cooperate at all. It's the principle of the thing. They don't need to know that I had extra hours to give them yesterday and today. They appear to be the type to take advantage of the knowledge that I have no life and I have extra hours to give them. And if I allow them to take advantage of me on such short notice once or twice, then I run the risk of them assuming that I can do that for them at any time. I don't want to tell them about my school hours because then they can assume that I'll be available to them for all other hours, and that's my time to chill. I am not giving these people 60 or 70 hours a week. They don't seem to be the type to appreciate it. And because they don't employ me, I don't have to. There's countless single mothers in there as temp workers that have to run home and take care of their kids. They don't have those hours to give. But it's okay because they were irresponsible and fooled around and got knocked up, so let them go, they have to take care of the little ones. But because I'm responsible and I'm not having kids until I get married, I should suffer and take the extra hours? FUCK THAT. Pretend I'm a slut that got knocked up and I have to go home when I was told I could go home, at 5P like I agreed to when I took the damn job. Pretend that I don't have extra hours to give because my choice of a baby daddy is an asshole who was hot when I met him at the club, but he doesn't give a fuck about the kids, so I gotta run and get them at the time that I said I would because he won't. Do not punish me because I chose not to have those responsibilities until I was ready. And anyone who takes offense to that can go to hell along with their baby daddy.

The Botox blonde vice-president was not there to annouce these new hours, but the woman announcing them said that these orders came from the vice-president, which made them mandatory. She did say that Monday was a national holiday and that the place would be closed, but I just know that if the place were open it would be "mandatory" that we would be there for that as well. Whatever this woman was in charge of, she was also the person to go to in the morning and evening to sign in and out. But it was a long day for her yesterday, so long that when those of us who intended to leave at 5P lined up to sign out, she eventually yelled, "Everyone just go! I'll sign all of you out! Just go!" What would worry me about that is, if I'm staying after 5P, how can I be sure that she didn't sign me out as leaving at 5P, robbing me of my extra hours of salary? Is everyone that didn't sign out at whatever time they left going to be assumed as leaving at 5P? And if that's the case, what would have stopped me from leaving at 10A if I'm being signed out at 5P? That's the kind of place this is--poorly run, disheveled, desperately in need of people who care about such things as organization and order. As for the mandatory Saturday, literally seconds before we 5P'ers left, the skinny white woman in charge of the data entry area announced that the computer problems that resulted in no processed applications by me the last three hours I was there were going to be worked on all weekend by the programmers in downstate Springfield, and as a result, working Saturday was not only not mandatory but not an option anymore. Enjoy the three-day weekend after all. By the way, I can't label the girl in charge of the sign-in books as the tall, tattooed black girl because there are many tall, tattooed black girls working for CEDA, some of them in "supervisor" roles. Take that for what it's worth.

Some other points of interest about my new workplace:

• Someone in charge of giving all of us temp workers our own user I.D.s and passwords for when we log on to the computers took all of our names down for that purpose Thursday afternoon, but we still didn't have our own I.D.s yesterday, so we were all signing in using the I.D.s and passwords of people that were employed by CEDA but happened to be absent yesterday. I was Adam Grenier along with about four others. They better get our own I.D.s ready soon; how else will they keep up with the 100 apps that each of us is expected to process per day according to Janet?

• This goofy fat black guy who's dressed every day in shorts even though the dress code is supposed to be business casual came into the conference room late Thursday asking all of the men to volunteer to show up at 7A Friday to help move boxes. He heard Janet talk about me, Andre, being one of the men in the room, and noticing that I was big, he waddles over to me and puts his hand on my shoulder and bellows, "Well Andrew here can show up I'm sure." I looked him right in the eye and said, "I can. But I won't." That made the room chuckle. That was an easy decision for me to make. I could make a lot of money as a mover, more than the shitty $10/hr I'm getting now. But I'm not a mover. That same goofy guy was in charge of taking everyone's pic for their I.D.s a few hours earlier. Some hot girl had her pic taken right before me, and he was so busy staring her ass down as she left that he didn't even notice me line up for my pic. When he finally did look at me and my expressionless face, he lined up the shot and muttered, "There's always one." I have no idea if that was referring to the hot girl or my ugly mug, but if he was talking about me, he had absolutely no room to talk. He walked into the lunchroom where everyone had been funneled after the pics were taken and informed a white fellow temp guy that his name was illegible, and when the guy rewrote his name, the goofball checked it out and, satisfied, raised a fist and told the white guy, "Peace out" and left. I stuck up a fist and sarcastically yelled out, "Word to your mother," eliciting another laugh from the room. Yes, I'm getting a kick out of being the class clown. No, I don't like the goofball black dude.

• The men's room...what can I say. It's a motherfucking 10K run to get to it. You have to go out the door, make a left, go down a hallway that's only about 30 feet long, no biggie, then make another left and go down a hall that seems to be a city block long, and I'm not exaggerating. You also need a key from the front desk to get in, and all day yesterday, that key was missing. The women's bathroom is right outside the door. I made the walk twice yesterday without a key. What did I think was going to happen when I got there? I don't know, maybe I thought I could magically make a key appear with my mind? Maybe I hoped the door would be unlocked? Maybe since I couldn't go to the women's bathroom, I just went to the men's room with no plan whatsoever and hoped for the best? Anyway, it worked out both times. Someone with his own private key who worked for one of the other businesses on the floor happened to be standing there the first time, and he opened it for me. The second time, someone was already in there and I caught the door as he left and snuck in. The toilets are not made of gold. The building is very accessible, to be sure, but it's the 20th floor. It's not like bums are going to pass the word to go to this place on the 20th floor that has great bathrooms. Why the fuck does there have to be a lock?

At least I got some good news financially this week. My financial aid could be processed by the end of the month, meaning I could get reimbursed for my classes. That's assuming that they accept my declaration for my income this year, which did not include the severance I got from CBOE. I actually intended to show them that severance check stub and hope for the best, but that stub got caught between my notebooks when I took them out of my bag before Thursday, and I didn't discover that it was missing before I went to the school, so I just decided to lie and tell them that I had declared all of this year's income instead of having to come back up to the financial aid office at a later date. I don't know if they have a way of finding out that I was lying, but I do know that the woman processing me almost gave me a heart attack by bringing up the $2,000 I have in my savings account, which she knew because it came up on her screen when she tried to send my application through. Guess I'll find out what they know soon enough. Cassandra met me Thursday morning and gave me $200 of the $1,500 she owes me. I called her Wednesday and arranged to meet her outside my new workplace at lunch, but she managed to miss me even though I weigh about 6,192 pounds, and I wound up burning my entire half-hour lunch standing outside. But on my lunch break Thursday I called a dude who owes me $500 from a football bet and still works at CBOE, and when he met me he had $300 in cash waiting for me. My man. I didn't even ask him for money on such short notice, all I asked him was to come down and meet me outside CBOE so we could talk. And he hit me with a roll of bills as soon as he saw me. And the coup-de-grace: The fare box was broken on the bus home yesterday! I saved $1.75! (It's the little things in life.)

This weekend makes two straight cancellations by women who wanted to meet me for the first time. Last weekend, a Latina from Boston came to Chicago to go to court for child support, and she wanted to have someone who knew the city to hang out with. But we never exchanged phone numbers, and she didn't e-mail me once she got here. Then this weekend, a redhead from Seattle who briefly lived in Aurora was going to visit a friend on the south side, and she wanted to meet me, so I was going to stay at my uncle's last night and hang out with her today. But the last time I spoke to her was Thursday, and at the time she expressed doubt that she was going to make the drive due to the astronomically high gas prices. Next weekend is supposed to be the big meeting between me and "Laurie." But I haven't heard from her in a couple of days. That has me very nervous, but even if I do hear from her and confirm that she is still coming, I no longer have the free time that I thought I was going to have. I actually have a job. So my planning of things like hotel accommodations and activities will have to be very crisp, no wasted motion. Can't I get online at work and plan these things, you ask? This balding, weasly white guy was asked by Janet during intake training whether he agreed with previous assessments of the validity of a paycheck, and he said he did. When she asked why, he actually said the following words: "I'm taking a gamble that the people before me guessed right." Janet is a nice girl, but she didn't take kindly to that. This same guy sat there surfing the net (I clearly saw the Yahoo home page on his screen from where I was sitting) once the system crashed yesterday, prompting the tattooed black girl in charge of the sign-in books to come running up and announce to everyone that surfing the net is not allowed and that the IT guys downstairs can tell when someone's on the net and that you'll get a warning about it once if you're caught, but the second time would probably be your last day. So that's why I won't be getting on the internet at any time during my tenure at this job. But now that I think about it, if they still don't have our own user I.D.s for us by Tuesday, how would they know who's surfing the net? If they can tell by user I.D., well, I was Adam Grenier yesterday, but so were a bunch of other people. If they can tell by computer IP number, if you can't tell exactly who's on what computer, unless I'm caught red-handed by someone, how can you say that it was me on that specific computer surfing the net? It could have been anyone. It's just one more example of how completely screwed up this place is. The next four months are going to be absolute torture. Call it a hunch.

Finally...

Planetdre...HAS COME BACK TO EMPLOYMENT!!

IF YA SMELL...ok, enough of my brutally bad impersonation of the Rock...

And besides, it's only a temp job. And I didn't think I had it after the three hours of Microsoft Excel and Word testing I endured. I have virtually no experience with Excel, and some of the things they wanted me to do with Word I had never done before. But the main test was my typing test, and that came out 51 WPM with one mistake, which was good enough for the lady handling my case. So starting Wednesday, from 8:30A to 5:00P, I'm doing a data entry gig at a place eerily close to my old job. This job agency that I went to for the job, as I said yesterday, is located about three blocks from the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The actual gig is only two blocks away from CBOE. Scary, I'll be able to visit all of my old favorite lunch places. And I'll be able to have lunch with Cassandra if she's able to. I can spend an hour a day in person listening to the excuses why she can't give me the money she owes me. Yippee. The gig ends around January according to the lady at the job agency, but I'll find out all the details for myself Wednesday.

With all that taking place today, I didn't have time to find out the status of my financial aid at Harold Washington College, so I will now saunter into the first day of the fall semester having not paid for my classes. Hey, if it wasn't for drama, I wouldn't have any fun in my life. What will happen with school? How will the new job work out? And how much money will I have to spend on new dress shirts because my belly has outgrown most of my old ones??? Stay tuned...

Manic Monday

Well, tomorrow is going to wind up being a much busier day than I figured a few days ago. First, I made the deadline decision to sign up for a couple of classes at Harold Washington College for the fall semester, which starts tomorrow. I did not go to the school and sign up, because I didn't feel like going there unless Whitney Young High School had sent my transcript to them, and I found out over the phone that they haven't yet received my transcript. My application for financial aid will not be processed until Harold Washington receives my transcript. So how did I sign up for classes? Online. Anyone who had a Harold Washington I.D. last semester can use it to log on to their computer system and register for classes in that manner, and you can even pay for them online if you have a few grand on your credit card and you trust the security of the server. I had to do it by Saturday at 6P though. If I didn't sign up by then, I would have to wait until Monday for late registration, and there's an extra fee for late registration. It gets more interesting: There's a 48-hour grace period for paying for the classes, so I decided not to pay for the classes with my credit card yet in case they receive my transcript tomorrow and they can process my financial aid. But if they don't receive my transcript, I'm going to have to pay for the classes now and have them reimburse me later after they determine how much financial aid I will receive. Boy, I just can't do things like normal people, can I? It's funny how much this past week standing in line at the school and running around trying to get proper documentation reminds me of last year at this exact same time. Still stinging from being dumped over the phone by "Sarah," and desperate for some kind of purpose for my pathetic life, I decided to sign up for classes on the last day of open registration, hobbling along the way due to a gout attack I was having at the same time. A year and 22 credits later (and hell fucking yeah I'm proud of those 22 credits, even though it takes about 120 to receive a bachelor's degree), here I am again, rushing and trying to beat the deadline and not completely sure that I know what I'm doing. I think I get off on doing things spontaneously like that. If I planned things out in advance, I'd have all that extra time to be afraid and convince myself that I'm a loser and I'm not going to do well and I'm never going to amount to anything. This way, I don't have time to think about it. Just do it, like Nike.

So tomorrow would be hectic anyway, what with me intending to go up to the school early before my literature class starts at 5:30P in order to find out the status of my financial aid. (My second class follows immediately afterwards, social science 102 at 7:05P, and both classes are Mondays and Wednesdays.) But I received a phone call today that made tomorrow downright apocalyptic. It's a job interview! It's just a temp job, but I'm still excited because I haven't been able to get anyone to even acknowledge receiving my resume when I apply to all these jobs I see online. And finally, someone called me back. I applied in an e-mail around 5:00P, and they called me a couple of hours later. It's a data entry deal on Madison and LaSalle, four blocks from where I used to work for ten years, as well as five blocks from school. I don't know much about it except it's a temp job that will end around the holidays and it's $10 per hour. The person who called initially told me that the hours were M-F 8:30A to 5:30P, but when I explained that my classes start at 5:30P, he assured me that I would be able to get out of there around 5P and get to class on time. So they seem friendly and not hardcore, but of course I won't know until I meet the gang. A potential problem is that he told me to dress professional for the interview, and my best clothes aren't what one would call professional. I don't own a suit, so it's going to be the same slacks and tie and painful suede bucks that I wore to that sports marketing interview way back on January 24. In addition, I had already charged my electric shaver for eight hours in order to shave my head today, before I even knew I had a job interview. So I start the preliminary trimming process, and the battery sounds like it's ready to die immediately, so obviously I need a new battery. So I'll have a nice furry head for this interview, but I'm used to having a clean-shaved head to go with the clean-shaved face, so I'm going to be self-conscious and hope that the hair isn't a bad impression even though there's nothing weird-looking about my hair, it's very normal looking black man hair, still very short, now complete with slightly receding hairline as a reminder that I turn 30 in December. The 839 pimples on my face are something that I can't take care of before tomorrow, so I'm not going to think about them.

It's been a weird week as far as my dealings with women. I've suddenly become popular in the MSN online group that I met "Torrie" on, and I do mean suddenly, out of nowhere. A 40-year-old New Jersey blonde e-mailed me out of the clear blue. At first she was commenting on a message I had posted, but at the end of the e-mail she informed me that if I ever found myself in Jersey, I would be "a mountain she would love to climb." Um, okay. One of the managers of the group, a 30-year-old Texan BBW, all of a sudden started flirting me on the message boards, one of the messages being simply "Will you marry me?" I'm as honest and straightforward on those message boards as I am in my blog, so I must have said something that made her take an interest in me. I think I mentioned a dominatrix whip called cat-o-nine tails in a post as an aside, and she perked up to that because she fancies herself a fictional mistress. I've played along with her because it's harmless fun, and because I'm flattered by the attention, although I don't find her attractive. "Laurie" is in the same group, however, and I don't think she likes it that much, but with the amount of flirting she does there, I don't think she has a leg to stand on. She's going to Florida in October, and she has told a member who lives down there that she would want to see him. She claims that she doesn't do hook-ups, and I tend to believe her because she's been celibate for two years, so she could have already hooked up if she wanted. But she made me promise that I would tell her if I hooked up with a Boston Latina who posted the message to me that she would be coming to Chicago this weekend and wanted to meet me (not for a hook up, and I haven't heard from her so we didn't meet anyway). I promised, then I made her promise the same thing. A different woman privately e-mailed me and told me that she would be in Chicago next weekend and wanted to meet me. She's 35, Seattle BBW and a redhead, and I've never had a red, so I admit that when I told her okay it was with the intent of hooking up. I've since decided that it wouldn't be worth lying to Laurie, or worse, telling her to her face that I couldn't wait two lousy weeks for her to come to Chicago and fuck me. The redhead woman and I talked for forty minutes Saturday morning, and she seems cool, so if nothing else, I'll make a new friend. To top things off, Torrie stunned me by sending me a text message Friday morning saying she missed me. I told her that I missed her too, and for no other reason than I didn't know what else to say to her, I told her if she needed anything let me know. Her response: "What I want from you I can't have, you're too far away." I told her that I wished I could help her. What I didn't tell her is that I could help her by flying up there and fucking her brains out right this second, but I won't do that because I'm holding out for a shot at a hotter, non-smoking, not-a-bisexual-slut woman, and losing myself in the great sex and good times we always had could ruin that shot at the hotter, non-smoking, not-a-bisexual-slut woman. It's incredible, that may have been the most popular week I've ever had with women...and save Torrie, I've never met any of them. Wondrous invention, that internet.

Anyway, gotta run, I have to spend an hour or so screwing around with fantasy baseball stuff before I get some sleep and get ready for my big day tomorrow. To think, I signed up for classes so that I wouldn't have too much spare time on my hands. Tomorrow might be the beginning of a crazy couple of months where I have no spare time on my hands. Wish me luck.