The GirlAlive Blog

My worst job.

Okay, so this blog started when I was working in Duluth, so people who only read my blog have no idea about the crappy jobs I had before that one.

After college, I moved to Seattle because there was (theoretically) a better job market and I just wanted to live there.  For the first 2 months there, I was unemployed, and for part of that time, I was hospitalized with gallstones.  But then I got a job.

I was hired as an executive assistant/webmaster/slave wench at a movie camera rental house in Seattle.  It paid $8 an hour, with no paid vacation, no health insurance for the first 3 months, and no sick leave.  The guy who had the job before me was acting like a prisoner about to be paroled as he trained me.  I knew it was going to be a crappy job, but I needed money.

My boss was a psychotic cinematographer named Marty.  The company was losing money because Seattle was no longer the cool place to film stuff, and everyone was shooting in Vancouver instead.  My co-workers were all immigrants.  And the ones that seemed American were most likely Canadian.  He hired mostly immigrants because he’d get them to work for him under a work visa, so they’d be deported if they quit.  Only me and the receptionist were American.  And he went through 6 receptionists in the 8 months I worked there.

My least favorite habit that Marty had was his habit of never telling me that he had work for me to do until the day it was due.  I designed magazine ads for him, and he would give me a list of the products to be listed in the ad on the day it needed to be in to the magazine, then he would sit behind me and watch me work on it.  He nitpicked and whined about every detail until it was finally done to his satisfaction, and by then it would be 9:00 at night, and I’d have to walk half a mile to the bus stop at night through one of the worst parts of town.

One Monday he came in with his laptop and said, "I couldn’t get into my email from home with this.  It’s broken."  So I checked it out and told him, "When you’re in the office, you have to use password A, but when you’re at home, you have to use password B.  You used the wrong password."  He insisted that something was broken.  When I said, "The server says you used the wrong password.  One of you is lying," he threw a tantrum and stormed out of the room.

I worked on it all day to see if I could find anything wrong.  I couldn’t.  So he called the "experts".  $200 an hour geeks for hire.  The first guy spent 2 days working on it and said he couldn’t find a problem.  The second one spent a day working on it, and finally presented him with the verdict (and a massive bill).  The verdict: Marty used the wrong password.  Just like I told him 3 days and  about $4000 before.  No wonder his business was going under.

One morning I sat at my desk and thought, "If I stay here one minute longer, I’ll either kill myself, or I’ll kill him."  So I said goodbye to all the people there that I liked, and I walked out.  The web site hasn’t been updated since I left.  I think he never did replace me.

Several years later I was working in health insurance (also in Seattle).  I had never seen a claim for anyone I knew until the last day I worked there.  It was a claim for Marty.  I can’t tell you what his real diagnosis was, but when I left that job, the computer showed that Marty was diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder, micropenis, and anal syphillis.

Alana 

Bored…

*sigh*

I’m extremely bored.  I’ve been here for almost 6 months now, and I’m officially tired of crappy daytime tv.  It’s been 2 weeks since I got hired for my new job, but I just got my background check report in the mail today.  I emailed the HR department to find out if they had a start date for the job yet.  Nope.  They’re still waiting for background checks from everyone, and I think they have 3 or 4 new people starting and they’ll want to train them all at the same time.  So I wait.

My parents are coming to visit, and they’ll be here in a couple days.  One thing that sucks is that hotels and B&B’s here are so expensive.  It is okay if you’re travelling alone, but they always charge per person.  So even the cheap ones that advertise as (the equivalent of) $40 per night will really cost $80 for both of my parents.  So they’ll be staying with us. 

My mom and dad will be staying in the bed that was making my butt go numb for the first few weeks that I lived here.  Since I couldn’t do that to my parents’ asses, the husband and I went to Ikea last night and picked up 2 small foam mattresses to go on top of the old crappy mattress.  They are childrens’ mattresses, so the two of them together are the width of the double mattress, but they are about 15 inches too short.  We’re trying to fill the gap with old comforters and pillows and stuff.  

I guess I should go figure out what dinner is going to be.  I’m in the mood for yorkshire pudding, but I don’t have any eggs and I don’t feel like going to the store.

Alana 

Exile

I’ve been having a slow week.  I’m still waiting to get the paperwork for my job, but my husband keeps telling me to be patient because the health service moves slow.  And since they have to do a background check and check references from another country, I guess I can understand the holdup.

I intended to stay home and mope all day.  I’ve been doing that a lot because I’m bored and I just want to start my new job already.  But then at 2:30 in the afternoon my moping plans were foiled.  There was a knock at the door.  It was a delivery guy with a big box of stuff I ordered from CafePress.  I ordered a bunch of copies of my cookbook to sell or give to my friends and family here.  I was not expecting it so soon, since as far as cafepress told me, my order had just shipped 2 days ago.  But that wasn’t the real problem.  The real problem was that the delivery guy said that I owed 13 pounds in customs fees.  Poopie!  I only had 11 pounds in my wallet, and it was all in change.  He said he could come back tomorrow.

So I had to go out.  I took a bus to the Penicuik town center and then got some cash from one of the cash machines there.  Then I checked out the charity shops to see if they had any books that looked good (I found 4 at the cancer research shop, where the books are only 75p).  Then I went to farmfoods and got some frozen food things.  Then I went to the pet shop and bought bedding and food for the guinea pigs.  Then I came home.

I cooked some of the frozen things for dinner and then the husband and I fed the guinea pigs.  And now I am exiled to the bedroom upstairs.  My husband exiled me because I have slight gas.  In his words, "It smells like something died in there!"  So I’m messing around on the internet and then I’m going to read one of my books.  There’s nothing good on tv tonight anyway.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Obsessions That Keep Me From Posting

Okay, so I keep meaning to email people and post to my blog and all kinds of stuff, and I keep not doing it because of the evil internet and its wiley ways. 

The first obsession that keeps me from working is The Kingdom of Loathing.   I’m level 9 and I’m just trying to get enough goat cheese to go to the top of Mt. McLargeHuge.

The other new obsession that keeps me from doing anything constructive is Babble.  It’s like online Boggle against everyone else in the whole world.  Or at least against the ones signed up at Babble. I have spent the last half hour staring at that grid, certain that there are words I’m missing.

Another one that keeps me occupied some of the time is Sploofus. I usually only do the trivia question of the day because if I get started on the other trivia quizzes, there’s my whole week gone answering obscure trivia.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Hooray!

I got offered the job from the interview yesterday!  I’m going to be a clinical coder working in a hospital.  I’m so excited that I think I may need to lay down and possibly have some tea.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Another Interview

I had another job interview today.  This one was for "the job".  It’s the only job I’ve seen advertised here that totally sounds like what I’m qualified for.  It’s a job doing diagnostic coding for a hospital. 

I don’t know how I did at the interview.  They seemed to like me, but they didn’t ask very many questions.  They also seemed to mean it when they said, "This is a casual chat, not an interrogation."  I tried to just be myself and answer the questions.  

After that last interview with the university, I don’t know how I did anymore.  Maybe they didn’t ask many questions because they already ruled me out.  Maybe they didn’t ask much because they already could see that I was qualified from my application.  I don’t know.

I guess I’ll find out by the end of the week.  They said that I should hear hopefully by Friday.  It would be really nice if I could get this job and not have to worry so much about how much money my web site is making.  I’d like to have an actual salary to add to our little family instead of just the odd $50 here and there from my shirt shop.

Alana

www.girlalive.com