The Unemployment Follies

So, as I mentioned, I got laid off about two weeks ago.  It wasn't that I didn't see it coming, it was more like I didn't see it coming that day.

Now that things have semi-stabilized, I figured I need to get back to the premise of this blog; that is, your gain from my pain.  Along those lines, I'm going to start noting Random Shit<tm> from life while I'm unemployed. When I get re-employed, I'll switch back to a different set of Random Shit<tm>.

DAY ONE

Not being completely without sense, I filed for Unemployment Compensation immediately.  The last time I filed, about thirteen years ago, it was primarily phone-based.  These days, it can all be done online.  This is a great thing for me, as you know of my great love for my fellow man (especially those fellows that work in city or state jobs).

I have to hand it to Pennsylvania - they did a great job of making the entire process quick and painless. Some would say that they haven't yet funged up the entire quick and painless process of signing up for unemployment. They told me I'd receive paperwork within ten to twelve business days.  Several days later, my paperwork arrived (not that paperwork).  Most impressive, PA.

My nephew assured my wife that total compensation came to 60-80% of normal income.  Fortunately I was approved immediately.  My nephew turned out to only be off by ten percent, in that it is much closer to fifty percent of my regular income.  My wife figured this out quickly (she's the brains and the beauty of this outfit, begging the question of what I'm doing here in the first place) and got a worried look on her face, as we weren't exactly doing too well when I was employed.

As I've mentioned,  I have interesting timing.  This time, however, life had interesting timing.  The wife's uncle was in hospice, dying from cancer.  The combination of a terminal uncle and an unemployed spousal unit kind of set the pot boiling over its own lid.  By this I mean that she went on a little internal vacation, as in checking out for a bit.

My wife's first exclamation after discovering my new and improved employment status was that it was about time I left and that it would be good to have me home for a while.  Oddly enough, yesterday was the first full day we spent together

So yeah, I'm officially on the unemployment rolls of PA.  They apparently try to discourage potential recipients of unemployment by sending them several envelopes with various colored papers, in various languages.  I think they're weeding some portion of us out.  There were so many papers that it became overwhelming.  Perhaps they were thinking survival of the fittest, as in the ones able to navigate the morass of paperwork and procedure were going to receive any compensation.

DAY TWO

This was resume day.  It was time to fine-tune the resume and start shooting it out to the right places. Or at very least, the online job boards.

A resume is where you write fine prose about your past employment, duties and accomplishments, making sure to embellish in every category possible.  Downright lying is apparently encouraged in some circles.  If you performed some task in some department, tell them you were the manager of that department... it was close.  If you did something once, make it an important full time job skill.  Invent all sorts of higher education that can't be verified.  Throw in an actual certification or two.  Vastly inflate your salary. Have your friends cover for you.  Make a lot of connections and annoy a lot of connections on LinkedIn and various other forms of evil that is social media.

Now let's talk facts: I have been out of the job-searching market for thirteen years or so. It wasn't so much updating the resume as writing one.  So no resume, no job-hunting skills and no real idea how to proceed was the order of the day.  I got right to work, made the resume look semi-impressive and sent it off to large job boards like Monster and Dice.

Recently, at my recent job, I had a recent neighbor. It was interesting to watch him take phone calls, get frustrated and slam down the phone.  Recruiters were calling him all the time about jobs. He told me it was predictable and inevitable... there were a bunch of Indian recruiters who would call, mispronounce his name and offer him jobs in different states, areas of the country or the other side of the same state (a nine hour drive one-way).  It happened several times per week.  I took to mispronouncing his name too, just to annoy him (that's the kind of guy I am).

Within two days of posting the resume, I had many emails from Indian recruiters for jobs in Chicago, Pittsburgh (a nine hour drive), San Francisco and many other job functions that weren't on my resume and that I wasn't willing to perform.  Boy, my ex-coworker wasn't kidding....

DAYS LATER

I'm not going to make stuff up; I am much more well-rested.  I get up early enough to scour job listings and respond to emails, phone calls and invent creative ways to look for jobs.  The custom-made job for me is around the corner but it hasn't exactly made itself known as yet (not for lack of trying).  All things in time.

My wife sure was happy to have me around.  So happy, in fact, that I got to go food shopping with her. This trip ranks just slightly above dentistry for me on the Things I Love to Do list.  One does not food shop with my wife; one follows silently, answering questions only when spoken to and never, NEVER wandering off or getting out of sight.  If one commits any of these transgressions, one will pay the price for throwing off her groove.  As silly (or painful) as it sounds, I have seen it a few times before. My wife normally does the shopping and does a great job of it.  The moment I come with her, she forgets where she's going and doesn't pick up items that were on her list in the first place.  Imagine having that kind of power.... I got to thinking that this is yet another reason people hate unemployment.  We like to go to work so we don't have to be home.

The wife shops at Costco (where all good things come from), which I don't get to see too often (fortunately).  They have weird hours and the parking lot is full at any time of the day or night.  Like many places in which I've shopped, they hire people to follow us around and see what we buy more than once.  When they figure it out, they immediately stop carrying them. I love these chocolate chip bars.  Because of this, they stopped carrying them. Now they have lemon bars.  Wife explained to me that lemon is the replacement for chocolate.  IN WHAT KIND OF UNIVERSE IS LEMON AN ACCEPTABLE SUBSTITUTE FOR CHOCOLATE?  I've seen people eat their own pocket lint before eating lemon bars.

Costco has extra wide aisles, so old people have to work much harder to put their cart in the exact center and block most of the pathway while they stand there, confused.  Mind you, old people succeed nonetheless.  The store also features people sampling random stuff at every other aisle.  When buying vitamins, neither of us were interested in cherry-flavored laxative samples, thank you very much.  One old sampling person asked if we'd like to try lemonade, just like Grandma used to make.  I was smarter than that - my grandmother never made lemonade.

Seven hundred dollars later, we were out of there.  Of course I kid... but I'd have no trouble getting the bill over seven hundred dollars, especially if I liked televisions large enough to take up an entire wall of my house.  I swear... that place has everything. Everything but suits.

Fcuk... SUITS!

SUITS?

Another thing I haven't done in thirteen years is wear a suit (I'm still post-traumatic about it).  The last suit got me the last job, damn near paying for itself.  Since it still fit, I figured I could wear it for interviews.  Well, even I am occasionally intelligent enough to question whether an ancient suit would look silly and ancient on me (as opposed to just plain stupid).  The general consensus was that it was New Suit Time. Have I mentioned how much I hate suits?  I'd rather mow the lawn and you know how much I hate mowing the lawn.

Costco had shirts, though.  The only problem there was that I had to know what my size was.  And again, in thirteen years, I had never thought about my shirt size or retained any of the numbers.  There were certainly a lot of numbers on the hideously colored dress shirts there but they weren't making any sense.  We figured we'd just get a shirt with a suit and be done with it.  And, heaven forbid, a tie.

Have I told you how much I hate ties?  In all this time, I haven't worn ties or dress shirts.  If there is a sad event like a funeral or wedding, I either don't show up or show up in my normal uniform (a clean t-shirt and jeans).  Because I spend so much time not showing up, when I do show up, everyone's so happy to see me that no one notices I'm wearing sneakers.  It's an interesting life.

Out of nine million things my wife has purchased over the years, she remembered one: the tiny little sewing kit that contained a tape measure.  She located the sewing kit, which was a minor miracle in itself, and proceeded to try to measure me.  This was made impossible by the fact that she had no idea how to measure.  While she called her mother for advice, I had looked it up on the internet, where all good things come from.

Since that was so much fun, I looked up how to measure someone for a suit.  Since neither of us had much higher education, it took quite a while, a straight edge, two rulers and some KY Jelly to finally ascertain my suit size.  Then it was time for the pants.  Do you know there is a seat measurement? They should have put it in plain language: ass size.  I kept asking my wife if she was Mr. Humphries taking an inside leg [Are You Being Served?].

Apparently I have the neck of a football player, the shoulders of a weight lifter and the lower torso of someone who was just over the required height for a dwarf.

The only thing worse than buying a suit is wearing a suit.  I wanted this circus done.  But the other thing worse than buying a suit is having it altered.  Some people, meaning me, don't really care if the suit fits and the pants are eight inches too long.  Apparently I'm not the only one: stores only sell suits in my size that come with pants better suited to a guy who consumes a case of beer in one sitting, several times a week.

Another ex-coworker was talking about going to some outlets and seeing really cheap suits... you know... like three hundred dollars.  At this point, my eyeballs bounced off the back of my skull and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have to buy a suit.  As it turned out, my lucky stars were more like meteors, plummeting to earth.  Or recent cruise ships, plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.

Three hundred dollars is rather a lot for an unemployed guy.  It's too much for an employed guy too. That's a lot of t-shirts, folks.  At this point we remembered that all good things come from the internet, so we set about searching for them.  The suits were a mix of cheap and Oh My God.  The only uniformity was that they were ugly.  Some were uglier than others.  Some looked like they'd be better suited (get it?) for waiters.  Some for gangsters.  Some for golfers. The sharkskin purple ones, well, I have no idea who they were for.  When we finally found an acceptable price on an ugly black straightjacket.. uh... suit, we discovered that it would take up to ten business days to arrive.  I told her this was a sign that I was not supposed to purchase a suit.  She refused to take that for an answer, so we'll be shopping locally soon.

So you can't wear sneakers and jeans to an interview?  I figure it shows individuality and creativity.  You mean nobody wants individuality and creativity?  Oh.

YOU TELL THEM

On the way out the door, my wife greets the neighbor across the street.  I'm not exactly busting out with social grace but I generally manage a hi, hello or at least a grunt.  Immediately after hello, the wife starts telling the neighbor about my being laid off.

I stood there, partially humiliated, wondering what to do.  Never being short for words, I waited for my wife to finish, then blurted out, "And my genitals are too small also."

I realize the benefits of telling people... maybe someone knows someone who's looking for someone. But telling the mailman and the cashier at Wawa probably isn't going to do much for me, other than affording me another opportunity to tell people about my genitals.  As it turns out, many people now know about my genitals.


I'll continue this as things continue to happen.  Try not to become unemployed.

What the Hell Just Happened?

It's a recent Saturday, on which I've scheduled my exam for the Security+ certificate. For those of you who don't know, Security+ is a certification that one knows Important Stuff<tm> in the IT security realm. It mostly certifies that you test well.  Employers like certifications but I have something better; years of IT experience, which counts for something.  In addition to certifications, I don't have a college degree (because I couldn't pass the drinking exams to get into college).

If you've never tried to get a certification before, it's a very interesting (read: tedious) process. First you have to figure out who gives the test. Then at what location. Then if you have the proper identification (drivers license, something else with your signature and the proper arrangement of blood vessels in your retina).  All of this pales in comparison with Paying for It.  Yes, folks, this cert was going to cost me three hundred dollars, pass or fail.  And this is the cheap cert.

In addition to the rigamarole surrounding signing up, you have an actual Code of Conduct, which largely states that you'll show up, not blow raspberries at other test-takers or make fart noises with your underarm.  Oh yeah, you have to show up at least fifteen minutes early for the test.

For locations, I had the choice of a Korean church and an airport.  Hmmm.... this was going to be tough.  Let's see, a church (I don't go into churches because I always set off the Anti-Christ Detector) or an airport (the classic scenario of the guy with A.D.D. trying to take a test at an airport with planes taking off and landing).  Perhaps because I like a challenge, I chose the airport.  Have I mentioned that I haven't taken a test since.... well... let's call it the eighties.

Stay with me here.... it was my wife's birthday so I told her I'd be getting the certification as a small present.  Off we went, way too early, to the airport.  It was a small airport, which I suppose was a good thing and we watched a few planes land and take off.  It was kind of a nice morning, watching planes. One landed with the insignia of another country on it.  Turns out it belonged to a doctor, who had two.

So it was getting kind of late and the doors were locked.  Another poor slob showed up and we waited together for our test.  Our fifteen minute window came and went.  Then our test time came and went.  We stared quizzically at each other.

Unfortunately,  the test-giver apparently did not have to show up fifteen minutes early.  Or at all.  We didn't entirely know what to do so we did what came naturally; we sat there.  It quickly became an emergency, as my wife was out of coffee (do not pass Dunkin Donuts coffee, do not collect $200).

All of the sudden, we heard a thundering sound.  Looking toward the airfield, we saw nothing.  Then we turned to the parking lot and a humongous vehicle approached, with all the thunder of a 747, and squealed mightily into a parking spot.  If this was Test Guy, he sure knew how to make an entrance. He very slowly got out of the leviathan and it became obvious he had a small problem with one of his legs. I loved that on the back of the truck was a bumper sticker that said, "Don't you feel silly about your Obama sticker now?"

And he was Test Guy.

He let us in, apologized, then started explaining why he was late, what kind of trouble he was having with his leg, which vertebrae were out in his back, how long he has suffered, how he got that way and that one nostril was physically larger than the other.  Not to mention how much of a dick his boss was.

I know this was going to be an interesting test experience.

We all gave up our first-born and blood vessels and marched quietly into the test area.  The test area was replete with some magnificent wood paneling, reminiscent of the 1970's.  In fact, the entire shack looked like my parents' house in 1970.  But it had cable.

There were about six test stations.  The first thing I noticed, superior Security Dood that I am, was that the computers were all running Windows XP.  I decided the better of explaining why this was not a good idea and Test Guy finished logging in.  The other guy taking a test was taking a financial test, which prompted a question from Test Guy about what we should do when the economic system falls in on itself.  The answer, of course, was guns and precious metals (I knew that, securing myself a friend for life).  Unfortunately, finance test-taker just stood there, dumbfounded.

So the test started and informed me I had some ridiculously large amount of time to complete it.  I allowed myself a virtual sneer, as I blew through all of my practice tests in minutes.  In fact, I took practice tests until my eyeballs fell out and threatened to phone the Eyeball Abuse Agency.  There was no way I was not going to pass that test.

Off I went to the first question.  Oddly enough, it was a strange question, both in subject matter and in the fact that I had to 'wire' and complete a wireless system for maximum security.  Also oddly was the fact that neither of these appeared in my study materials.  It was all multiple-choice.

The second question surprised me by also being something that didn't appear in my studies.  It was about this time that I started getting nervous.  Perhaps, I thought, it was just these two questions and I could blast through the other ones quickly.

Nope.

Nervous was the order of the day.  As it turned out, very few, if any of the questions were in my study materials.  It appeared as if they had given me the wrong test (but I was hesitant to argue with Test Guy) and I figured I would see the test through and deal with the results later.

My many years in IT served me well, as there were things on the test of which I've never heard, as well as things I could answer.

I finished nervously but firm.  The test asked me if I wanted to review any of my answers.  Hell no - if I didn't have any idea the first time, what would be the point of proving that I didn't know it a second time?

I have to admit how difficult it was not to make fart noises with my underarms on the way out of the test area.  I may be an experienced IT guy but we're all still children when it comes to farts.

Test guy was very difficult to find.  I looked everywhere, including behind the paneling, yet he was not there.  Spotting an open door, I launched myself through it.  I wound up in a plane hangar and there was Test Guy.   In an accurate metaphor for the entire experience, he was smoking a cigarette under the NO SMOKING sign whilst examining a fire extinguisher for compliance.  I desperately wanted to take a picture but didn't think it was a good time.

I told him that the stuff on the test was not the stuff I studied.  He laughed and told me that nine out of ten test-takers said the same thing to him.

Alrighty then.

Test Guy performed whatever magic necessary to print out forms, make some copies, then complain about the government.  I watched the ancient printer eat up some paper and my heart sank.  Finally he gave me my results.  I wished him the best of health and left.

Wife was sitting there, watching planes and smoking like a chimney.  I was amazed that the airport didn't ask her to stop smoking, as she was violating local pollution ordinances. I walked out with lowered head and slow gait.  She looked concerned.  She asked.  I didn't meet her gaze but handed her the results.

Passing was 750 out of 900.  I got an 810.  I can now refer to myself as leftystrat, Sec+. I couldn't believe it and was numb.  IT Dood still has it after all these years!  Wife screamed and admitted she thought I blew it when she saw me.

I am such a total bastard.


Speaking of people who aren't bastards, Test Guy went outside for a ciggie and started talking to my wife about pain.  Wife gave him her Complete Course on pain control and some valuable tips.  I felt great that she reached out to him and hopefully he took some of it home with him.  It was a good day all around.

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Since it was the wife's birthday, I had a short (and cheap) ride planned.  She knew not where; I just gave her directions.

Halfway there, I got a call from a coworker.  There was a serious problem with one of the systems and it needed to be shut down.  Many calls and emails later, I was no longer needed (thankfully).  I was not relishing having to work on my wife's birthday, although I would have.  We work 24/7/365 on our team. Gotta keep the railways moving.

As we got closer, I had to find ways to block signs advertising our destination.  This consisted of physicallly putting myself between her (she drove) and the signs, as well as distracting her with conversation.  Somehow I succeded.

As we pulled off at the exit and came around the corner, there was much screaming.  There on the left was a Waffle House.

Before you laugh hysterically at me and call me names (other than the normal ones), I beg your indulgence.  We tend to hit a hamfest (electronics flea market for radio) in Maryland a few times per year.  On the way down are three Waffle Houses.  In Philthydelphia, there are no Waffle Houses.  We discovered Waffle House on a trip to Arizona, so it has sentimental value.  It takes about three hours to make it to Waffle House in Maryland.

I went online and discovered a Waffle House about ninety minutes away, which is where I took her.  She was incredibly impressed at my efforts at personalizing her gift. The internal children were screaming WAFFLE HOUSE, WAFFLE HOUSE and everyone was excited.  They love to watch the hustle and bustle of Waffle House operations.

Waffle House has some famous hash browns that you can order with several toppings.  I order ham, onions and cheese but Waffle House has a different designation for this, along the lines of slashed, hashed and mashed (which, coincidentally, is how I like my women).

As things go in large chains, the food was absolutely predictable, whether or not you like it.

Our waitress was a really nice older lady.  The folks sitting next to us, however, were from New Yawk and just a little weird, in that old, retired person way.  Mrs. New Yawk had some meds to take, which started the couple and the waitress talking about people in their families who had died recently from heart attacks.

You're probably wondering how it is that I come upon this Neat Shit every time I leave the house. I can't even begin to explain it to you, largely as I don't understand it myself.  Let it just be my pain and your joy.

Mrs. Yawk was going on about how her relative died at fawty, bless him.  Waitress talked about her uncle, who died at sixty-six; way too young, bless him.  Husband complained that wife spent all of the money, as one would expect.

At this point I can't decide whether to show them my pre-digested breakfast or just laugh.  I decided on the latter, with special consideration as to how I was going to describe it on the blog.  These are the things I do for you, loyal readers.

Eventually the waitress got the Yawkers out of their seats and lavished us with her attention.  As it turned out, there wasn't a single word spoken about death, heart attacks or industrial food.  She was polite, gracious and one of the best waitresses we've ever had.  We tipped generously, as anyone should for this level of service.

People are different outside of Philthydelphia.  On the way out, after our gourmet meal, we noticed a lady starting at us.  Getting into the car, she ran after us and asked if the wife lost a ring.  She figured it was the wife, as the ring was Indian and the wife has rather a large collection of it on her person at all times (she's a lot of fun at airport checkpoints).  I was dumbfounded.

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So it was a beautiful Saturday.  And my timing has to be applauded: when I went to work on Monday, I got laid off.