So it’s Thanksgiving Eve, and they let everyone go home early!

Except of course, me. Not because I’m essential, mind you, but simply because I’ve caused trouble with the higher ups before, so this is either their way of getting back at me, or it’s because they presume because I’m youngish and single I obviously don’t have a life or a place to get to, so why would I need to leave early?

Really dudes? Place is a ghost town, there’s no work to be done, but hey, let’s keep me here till the dead of night! Awesome.

Like I needed more frigging reminders that this time of year always without fail turns me into a virginal orphan, real life Robert Neville, and gee don’t even say Happy Thanksgiving when y’all leave either. Suckfaces.

Crap I just get sick and tired of these boinky boink brains and their junior high school “let’s all be petty because lil’ old Linc here dared to defy us, and God only knows we need to salvage whatever’s left of our shriveled up nuts” mentality.

Yeah, I admit it, they got under my skin. God I hate being alone.

Tags: alone, depression, employer, home, loneliness, omega man, Thanksgiving, work
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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Yep, it was one of “those” days.

I came into work, and I see a note at my desk telling me I need to report for duty outside. Eh?

So I go outside and I see my old CO, who tells me, “Linc, thanks for volunteering to help us out today.”

“Hmm, that’s funny, because I don’t remember volunteering for anything.”

“Oh, then your supervisor must have volunteered you.”

… … … …

“Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s just for today. Here, help me bring this stuff on the bus.”

I helped him carry a few folding tables and then saw the bus.

“Dude, that’s a prison bus.”

“So?”

“I’m not getting on a prison bus.”

“Why not?”

“It’s got bars on the window! Are you gonna like, chain me down too?”

“Stop whining, look if you do this you’ll get to go home an hour early.”

… … … …

“Let’s go.”

Our trip would take me down to the local Medicaid office, where I had to help out in screening applicants. Yes, seriously. Interesting job I have, after all not many people can say they rode a prison bus to a Medicaid office so they could run background checks on applicants named Pablo.

It wasn’t a bad day though, but had I known I’d be there for HOURS, I would have taken my laptop with me and jacked it in so I could check up on all them wonderful people who follow me on Facebook, Twitter and whatnot. Ah well, maybe next time.

As the applicants rolled in, I took them in one by one and went over their forms. A middle aged lady who looked like she just got off the bus from Guatemala handed me hers and I took a quick look. I noticed she hadn’t put in her height.

“Ma’am, you forgot to add your height here.”

“¿Que?”

“Umm, your height? You need to fill out what your height is right here.”

“¿Que?”

Sigh.

Fortunately I didn’t get too many like that, but this is definitely not a job I’d want to do on a regular basis.

So what did you do today?

Tags: job, laptop, Medicaid, medicaid office, screening applicants, supervisor, volunteering, work
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I think my new supervisor is starting to get frustrated with my coworkers.

I’m holing up at my desk here with my head down low and Toto’s Africa blasting through my speakers, when I hear the supe making the classic mistake of asking a coworker who goes by the nickname of The Mouth a question.

About 30 seconds pass and he’s already raising his voice trying to get through all the babbling so he could get a straight answer:

“I’m trying to understand why they didn’t call us back on this-”

“Babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble….”

“But that doesn’t answer my question, I just want to know why they-” “Babble babble babble babble babble babble babble-” “No, I understand-” “Babble babble babble babble babble-” “No no, why didn’t they-” “Babble babble babble babble babble babble-” “You’re not hearing me, I just need to find out why-” “Babble babble babble babble babble babble babble babble-”

The last time I saw him he was in his cubicle corner, his head down low and a Van Halen tune cranked up high.

Spend a little time here and you’ll start to understand why the saner among us don’t use desk speakers powered by less than 400 watts.

Tags: babble, babbling, coworker, coworkers, desk, supervisor, work
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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With all the news about the economy being in the toilet and people left and right losing their jobs (and unable to find new ones), I’m reminded of the personal recession I once experienced shortly after I graduated college, waaaaaay back in ‘98.

I had just wrapped up my undergraduate “career” and finished with a degree in computer science, all during a time when the IT industry was BOOM-ING, BABY, OW! You couldn’t so much as turn without smacking right into an IT/computer related job. I had made the right choice for a degree, patted my back for a job well done, and at 21 years of age I was ready to take on the world and start on my way to becoming a buff, studly FBI hacker who would single-handedly capture Russian bad dudes with nary a few taps on the keyboard. The world was my oyster, baby!

Well…

One job interview went by. Then another. Then another, and yet no one got back to me. Soon I started getting rejection letters, and it wasn’t long before my post-college bravado gave way to concern, and then outright fear. I was going to job fairs, handing out resumes like candy, responding to newspaper ads, emailing companies, literally knocking door to door, and all I was beginning to show for it was a growing stack of rejection letters (which I still have by the way.)

What was I doing wrong? The industry was booming, I had picked the right field, the demand was high, and yet no one wanted to hire me?

One month became two, then six, then before I knew it a whole year had gone by and I was still gainfully unemployed. My relationship with my parents was really taking a turn for the worse too. At some point things got so bad between us that they eventually became convinced that I wasn’t serious about finding work, that the only thing I was really doing all day was playing games on the internet. So as punishment they took my speedy 28.8 dialup modem away.

There’s probably nothing more demoralizing to a 22 year old college graduate than to have not only his modem taken away, but access to a car as well (since my parents both worked during the day.) So there I was, with no access to the internet and no access to a car, and yet I was still expected to somehow find a job.

Their suspicion that I would only spend the day playing Battlezone 2 or surfing Usenet groups to argue with stupid Christians was totally unfounded too. Ok… MOSTLY unfounded. It said nothing of the fact that I was desperate, DESPERATE to get the holy FRICK away from my parents and get my own place so I could live my own life. You think they’d understand that ALONE was more than enough incentive for me. I wasn’t gaming all day long on the internet. I was trying to network, research and brainstorm ways I could find a job. Then when I needed a break, I’d play a round or two of Wolfenstein. What else could I do, really?

But still they locked up my 28.8 dialup modem in their bedroom before leaving for work every day, and my only means of transportation then was a 20 year old woman’s bicycle (with a flowery basket in front) that we kept on the porch. Thank God YouTubers weren’t around then to capture the comical display of me riding around in a suit on a girlie bike with a stack of resumes crammed in my basket. I never would have lived it down.

Most of the time when I wasn’t out riding into town and feeling really stupid about myself, I was left to twiddle my thumbs while I stared blankly at the wall, wondering why God hated me so much.

I think the first low point then was when I managed to get a part time job delivering flowers, only to get fired a week later when I asked to come in later than usual so I could go to a job interview. When they realized I had graduated college and was spending time going to interviews they figured I wouldn’t be around long term and fired me. My parents blamed me for it because I shouldn’t have said anything about a job interview, but I wasn’t street smart enough to know about these things. Their harsh criticism and the embarrassment of being fired from a florist delivery job made me hate myself more than anything. I thought I was the most worthless idiot on the planet. Everyone else was landing jobs left and right and here I couldn’t even hold on to flowers.

Eventually after some more time passed, I had an idea. My modem was still being locked away safe and sound in their bedroom, but one evening I had to go to the supermarket to get some groceries for my parents and borrowed the car. When I went to get the keys, I realized one of them was the key to the bedroom.

Hmmmmm….

I had a bunch of extra quarters saved up in a can somewhere, so I grabbed those up, got in the car and stopped by the hardware store.

“Yeah I’d like to get an extra copy of this key?”

“Sure, be a few minutes.”

I watched him as he forged a magical key that would unlock the mysteries of the kingdom. I dropped a bunch of quarters on the counter while he threw a quizzical look at me, as if to say “Are you so cheap you can’t even pay in bills?” but thankfully took them anyway and gave me change.

YES!

The next morning I cheerfully waved my parents off as they went to work, then waited a few minutes to make sure neither of them came back in case they had forgotten something, and raced to their bedroom door.

*click*

You could hear the angels singing as I unlocked the door and the light from outside shone into the room. I started looking around and quickly found my beloved dialup modem. I was in the game again!

The thrill of sneaking around like that breathed some new life into me, and I would spend the next few weeks making the rounds of unlocking the bedroom door, grabbing my modem and then going through my daily routine of job hunting, networking and whatnot before I ended with a fast game of Battlezone, then quickly returning the modem back into the bedroom and locking the door again when the timer I set for myself buzzed, signaling the time I needed to get off so I wouldn’t get caught redhanded.

Once my internet time was up, I would break out the Ragu pizza sauce I kept hidden in my room and use the bread machine we had to make pizza. We had the same equipment restaurants used to make brick oven pizza, and with it all I was turning pizza-making into an art form, even learning how to toss it up to spread the dough. It was truly my source of comfort and joy. I would take a few hot slices, head over into the living room and watch General Hospital so I could catch a glimpse of my dream girl at the time, Rebecca Herbst. The fantasies of getting snuggly wubsy woos from her and the exquisite tastes of my homemade pizza helped get me through some very dark times then.

You could have had my pizza anytime, baby....

I’m not sure if my parents ever figured out I had been able to get into their bedroom, but they must have been suspicious. One day when I was going through the usual morning routine of unlocking their bedroom, I stepped in and suddenly saw an empty seltzer bottle rolling around on the floor.

Hmmmmmmm… where did that come from?

When I picked it up and tried to get a read on where it had been before, I realized it must have been right behind the door. There was no way to avoid knocking it down when you opened the door either, and that’s when it occurred to me that it was placed that way on purpose. My parents had set up a primitive boobytrap to see if I was indeed invading their bedroom while they were away at work. If it hadn’t rolled around in my view the way it did, I might have never noticed it, and it would have made for a very awkward conversation that day.

Ah well.

I took the bottle and placed it upright again behind the door before leaving and locking the room.

And so it went, week after week, unlocking their bedroom, knocking the bottle down, and then putting the modem back and setting the bottle upright just before I locked the room up again. I felt like James Bond. Fitting that they would use an empty bottle for this too. They always did see the glass half empty. *sound of corny 007 music playing*

I think after a while my parents finally started to mellow out and realize I was indeed going through a hard time here. After about 18 months of job searching, I hit my lowest point when I was even turned down for a job as a cashier, but not before enduring three humiliating interviews where they put me through a psych test, a counting test, and a few other tests to determine my knowledge of all things cashier related. I got the rejection letter 2 weeks later.

That last rejection had me throwing up my hands in defeat and ready to jump off a bridge somewhere, but shortly afterwards a recruiter found one of my resumes in a databank, at long last leading me to my first full time job, 19 months after I graduated college. Finally, my recession had come to an end.

Of course I would soon be laid off 5 months later, but that’s another story.

Tags: car, career, college, computer, economy, graduate, internet, job, jobs, life, networking, parents, part time, pizza, recession, rejection, work
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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You know, I seriously hate my job.

But before going any further, let’s run through the gamut of why I should be so grateful to have a job first, just to give the dweeb monkeys out there the satisfaction before they start berating me over why I should kiss the sky for still being gainfully employed in this craptastic economy, and if my job is something less than ideal then too bad, I should just shut the flip up and be grateful anyway.

Are we done?  Good.

You know, I seriously hate my job.

How did I end up in a career where the most critical assignment I’ve been tasked with is to shuffle papers and stare at the wall all day?  My job didn’t even require a college degree, which is why you’ll usually see me on the floor convulsing in spastic fits every I make my usual monthly payment towards my school loan.

Sigh, I remember what it was like when I was still in school and had a dream.  I was going to work for the FBI and specialize in solving computer crimes, or something.  I tailored my education toward that end too, and started networking with people already in the field to learn as much as I  could about this growing industry.  It was an industry that was in strong demand, and I knew I was in good shape to land on my feet once school ended.

And then I graduated.

There are times I wish could go back to that 19 year old boy I once was and beat the living snot out of him for coming up with the most ass backwards, uninformed career ambitions ever. I mean, really.

And now here I am, in a recession-proof job with plenty of good perks, great dental plan, decent pay….. and I’m completely miserable. It is bar none one of the most unfulfilling jobs I could have ever ended up in, with no promotional path at all and no room to maneuver. I just marked my 9th anniversary yesterday, and my title is exactly the same as it was my first day on the job.

9 years…. gees, where did it all go??

And now of course, I’m completely lost. I don’t know what I want to do anymore, except maybe win the lottery. I’d love to make a living blogging maybe, but it will never happen. Everything I tried to bring more traffic to this site failed miserably. And while I enjoy writing, but I’m not as prolific a writer as I’d like to be, especially when my muse abandons me like a cheap ho and I’m left to stare at the empty screen on my monitor because I have no idea what the flippo dinks I want to write about.

Maybe thing swill get better once I finally pay off my school loan. With that much more breathing room I’ll have more freedom to enjoy life, travel and do…. something. Anything. Put myself out there and see if I can’t finally find what I’ve been looking for.

Maybe that’s all I need.

Tags: ambitions, anniversary, blogging, career, college, dream, economy, education, fulfillment, job, life, living, work, working
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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I have finally arrived at the magic number of 500 posts!  

It’s hard to believe that I managed to stick it out even when there were so many times I was tempted to hang it up and stop blogging for good.  But writing is in my blood evidently, and blogging has always been a good outlet for me to express myself in a linguistic sense.  With 2009 also on the horizon and a new plan possibly in the works to really get some traffic going, who knows, I might finally be able to realize my dream of actually making some serious money off this blog.

Yet what if that were to really happen though?  What if… I were able to honestly blog for a living?  Should I give up my job for good and blog full time, and do what I’ve always been pining to do, which was to travel across America and write about my experiences?

Doing so would mean giving up a dull job that otherwise offers a lot of benefits, from being able to work only 33 hours, 4 days a week, to enjoying excellent medical and dental plans, including additional perks like longevity pay, education stipends, ample vacation/sick time, being vested in a retirement and additional medical plan, not to mention the fact that it is laid back enough that I can surf the Internet for most of the day while still getting my work done.  Heck, I don’t even have a supervisor either (at least not for a long while, since I scared them all away.)      And since it’s a government job, it offers the kind of job security that could easily survive the recession as well (as long as crime doesn’t go out of business.)

There’s also the fact that if I succeed in monetizing my blog, I would effectively have two incomes as long as I keep my current job.  In a few years I could buy a condo or even a home in another state without even taking out a mortgage.  Such a possibility had never even occurred to me until I considered what I’d be able to do if I pretended my second income didn’t exist at all, and just let it pile up in my savings account for a few years.  I could afford a home for my parents.  A real home.  I could fund their accounts so they’d no longer have to work full time and can enjoy some kind of semi-retirement lifestyle.  I could really help people, good people who are just going through a hard time and could use a little financial charity.  I’d be able to provide for a family too if I had one.

And the only sacrifice I had to make was to simply put up with my ultra-boring, soul sucking job, and God help me, the stupidest bloody coworkers that could have ever graced creation.  And of course, continue living in the worst, most disgusting leftist-riddled state in the entire union. 

You know, as much security as  my job would offer me now, there’s something to be said for being completely self-sufficient and self-employed, with an online income that doesn’t require you to be tied down to any one location.  It offers the kind of freedom most people can only dream of, and for it to even be a distinct possibility for me is a miracle unto itself.  Maybe I can somehow find a way to live the best of both worlds though.    Ultimately, it all hangs on what happens in the next year or so.

In the meantime, here’s to another 500 posts, and promises of a better future that sees this blog not only enrichening my life, but the lives of many others as well. 

Tags: blog, blogging, coworker, dream, family, financial, freedom, income, job, job security, life, living, monetizing, money, online, parents, travel, work
Categories: Blog Fog, In The Coal Mine
 
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