It's all so upsetting...

Pettiness

My boss kicked me out of the office 20 minutes early last Friday. He seemed kind of upset that I was just sort of sitting around. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Waiting until five," I said. He scowled at me and stomped off. Three minutes later he was back. "What, you don't want to go home?"I assured him that yes, I did indeed want to go home, but I get paid hourly. He stomped off. Three minutes later he was back. "Do you want a broom to lean on or something?"

At that point I gave up and went home.

There was simply nothing to do. All my work was done. There ain't no more. It's all finished. The printing presses are off. The design work is done. The floor is swept and the paint on the walls is less than a year old. But I couldn't afford to go home, either, even though I had a TON of stuff to do at home...

Today was payday. Of course, I found that I was exactly 20 minutes short of my 40 hours. For some reason this makes me irrationally angry. It only adds up to about five bucks... Five little dollars. But I really wanted those five little dollars.

In my mind, I work the first 39 hours of the week to pay bills (we're in debt way farther than I'm comfortable with). The last hour is my "beer money." That's the money I get to play with. So it upsets me mightily to lose that last 20 minutes of work...

Oddly enough, the bosses have, in the past, punished me for not getting 40 hours a week on my time card. ("Since you don't actually work 40 hours a week, and between 1997 and 1998 you only averaged 33 hours a week, we feel that we should only pay you for 33 hours a week while you're on vacation...") So now they won't LET me get 40 hours. I feel conflicted.

For the last 12 or 13 years they've blocked my four efforts to join the union ("sorry, we must have lost your application or something"), so I have no retirement fund or 401k. They "forgot" to give me two weeks of vacation between 2004 and 2006. They decided to only pay me 75% of my vacation pay (though they've rescinded that decision since). They simply don't give raises, period.

But what really bugs me is losing that lousy five dollars...

All around, this is a good place to work, but it's frustrating at times!

*whew*

It all started last Thursday...

"Gaaack!" I hollered. "Drat!"

"Meow?" came from the other side of the door, followed by the muffled sound of a pair of kitty paws trying to pull the door open. I'm not sure what my little buddy, Fruitloop, would have done to help, he not having opposible thumbs and all. Not that I was in a life-threatening situation, mind you, I was just irritated.

Me in the shower, my glasses in the sink, I'd grabbed the conditioner instead of the shampoo. "Gaaaaah!" I hissed through clenched teeth.

It was Thursday. I could tell without even looking. Thursday mornings are difficult for me. You see, the weekly jam at the Chesterfield is Wednesday night. That means I'm often facing Thursday mornings through a mere five hours of sleep and a slight headache. A person gets to an age eventually where five hours of sleep and a slight headache really sucks.

I rinsed the errant conditioner out of my hair, quietly mumbling near-obscenities though my teeth, and eventually finished my morning carcass-scrubbing routine and managed to dress myself with a minimum of fuss. "The time is now 8:57," said the nice man on the radio. "Drat," I said to Fruitloop, scratching him on the chin. "I'm already an hour late..." Thankfully my bosses are tolerant - they know I'm out late Wednesdays playing bass and taking photos and sipping on the occasional beer - but I still like to get to work by eight if I can. I threw my boots on, grabbed my coat and WHOOM out the door goes the hippie.

Keys in hand I open the car door. Cold! I started the car, groped around in the back seat for the ice scraper, and then back out into the cold to scrape, scrape, scrape the windows. I glance at my phone - 8:58. I might yet make it to work by nine (it's a small town). I turn back to the car and grab the handle to open the door and WHAT THE HECK?

I found myself staring bemusedly at the car door handle in my hand. Yes, it broke off. Hmmm...

"Okay," I thought to myself, "you'll just have to crawl over the back seat or something." No problem. Except that all three other doors were locked. With the keys in the ignition. Engine running.

Well, poop. "Okay," I thought to myself, "you'll just have to call your wife and have her come and unlock the passenger door." No sooner said than done. "Beep beep boop beep," went the phone, my frozen fingers dancing across the numbers. "Ring, ring, ring." No answer. Drat. She must be in a meeting. Now what?

I called work. "Hi," I said. "This is Chris. I've broken the handle off my car door. All the other doors are locked. I'll probably be a bit later than anticipated this morning."

"You're only a few blocks away," the lady at work said. "Why don't you just walk to work and figure this out later?"

"Well," I replied, shivering a bit, "because the car's running. I can't very well leave my car idling in the middle of the street all day..."

"Oh," she said. "You're probably right."

As I pushed the "hang up" button on my cell phone I realized I still had my ice scraper in my other hand. I looked at the car door. You know, it's not ALL the way shut... Not quite knowing what else to do, I started beating my car with a stick, poking at the door, pounding on the roof... Sure enough, the door popped open! Wheee! The joys of driving a rustbucket! (The car's got just under 200,000 miles on this engine - no one quite knows how many miles the poor body's been through.)

I jumped in the now-warm car and off to work I went!

By 9:11 a.m. I was in the office, turning on various computers, printers, scanners, and platemakers, wondering why the other guy hadn't turned 'em all on yet. "Car problems again?" asked my boss as I waited for all the equipment to come on-line. Before I could answer he continued, "The other guy's sick. He's not coming in today. The network is down. The lady in New Jersey FTP'd that post card to us - we need to get it off the server and plated right away."

"How do I get it off the server if our network is down?" I asked.

"I don't care," the boss replied. "Just get it done."

"I'm gonna have to call the IT guy in," I said. "I don't know how to fix the network..." The boss promptly told me that there was no way in blazes he was gonna call in some IT guy and pay him two-hundred bucks just to push a button.

So, there I stood, in the back room, staring at a mound of cables and cords, wondering just where the network actually lived... I grabbed an anonymous-looking box at random and unplugged it. I stood there, wondering how long I should wait before plugging it back in, when the thought struck me, "Why not just unplug EVERYTHING for a few minutes? That should re-boot whatever it is that needs re-booted."

Well, that didn't work, but it sure got everyone's attention.

I tossed the problem back to the boss. He unplugged the router. He unplugged the modem. He turned off that beige box no one can identify. No luck. He swore. He even told someone else to try it. Nothing. We stood there, wiggling cords.

Three hours later the IT guy showed up... He pushed a button and everything sprang back to life, e-mail mailed, browsers browsed, life was good again.

But... this left me a mere three and a half hours to get my eight hours of work done as well as my absent cohort's eight hours of work (he called in sick, remember). But somehow I managed, headache and all. By five-thirty I was home. By six-thirty I was in bed.

That was last Thursday. Today is Wednesday. I have to admit, I'm dreading tomorrow.


The Politics of Hate

You know, I really don't want to hate anyone. It's not my style. I'm not much good at it. But I want to be patriotic; I love America, so they tell me I have to hate people.

If I don't hate Muslims I'm unpatriotic.

If I don't hate the Mexicans I'm anti-American.

If I don't hate homosexuals I must not care about family values.

I would like to stand up at this point and say, loudly, "BULLPUCKY!" I don't have to hate Muslims to support the fight against terrorism. I don't have to hate Mexicans to understand immigration problems. Homosexuals do not threaten me, my family, or my way of life. I don't have to hate them, either. I am NOT going to start hating my neighbors for being different. I'm just not going to do it.

Hate slithers under our door in unexpected guises, and is hard to recognize at times. Before you hit "Forward" on that joke someone e-mailed you, take another look at it. Is there an undercurrent of hate there? I'd be willing to bet there is, especially if the joke is at all political.

Let me posit this... Jesus taught tolerance and forgiveness. Our nation was founded on the belief that ALL of us are equal. By claiming moral superiority over another human being, don't we go against Christianity AND America? Don't we lose a little bit of our soul every time we denigrate another person, race, heritage?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not soft in the head. I know there are terrorists out there who want to kill us. But I also know there are a LOT of people out there who don't, and don't deserve our hatred.

I've heard a lot of self-righteous chest-thumping about how John Wayne wouldn't stand for being told to "press 1 for English," and there's some validity there -- but racism and hatred isn't the answer. (Where did YOUR grandparents come from? Chances are they came to America in a wave of immigrants, and chances are they were hated and feared by those who had arrived here fifty years earlier. Did you know that the national language is English due to one single vote? Our founding fathers nearly decided to go with German...) Should immigrants learn English? Yes. Should we be compassionate while they learn? Yes. America is growing and changing -- that's a fact that makes a lot of us, myself included, a little uncomfortable. But we need to pull immigrants into our society, not push them away with hate and spite.

I'm not saying we should all gather in a circle and sing "Kum Ba Yah" at each other, but I am saying that I'm not going to hate people simply because it's politically expedient, or to go along with the crowd. It's my way of being American. Please don't hate me for it.

Thank you for your attention.

'Tis the Season

Frantic Frantic Frantic

Ever get the feeling we're too busy to actually think these days?

I had a customer e-mail me this morning. "I need 2,500 brochures made up, please. I need to have them designed, printed, folded, addressed and mailed by the 30th. Please e-mail me a proof sometime next week before going to press. Thank you. Oh, by the way, I'm leaving in just a few minutes - I'll be back in the office January 3rd." So how exactly am I supposed to e-mail the guy a proof? He just said he's on vacation until AFTER his deadline... But he'll be plenty peeved if his job doesn't get done on time, I'm sure.

I e-mailed a different customer this morning. The subject of the e-mail was "The first four pages of your newsletter." In the e-mail I explained that I was sending the proof of her newsletter to her in two chunks this time because her server rejects anything over 10mb, and that she could expect the second half of her newsletter momentarily. I immediately received a reply. "Hey, I only got half of my newsletter! Where's the other half? What went wrong? Why did you only send me the first four pages?" I held my breath and started to count to ten. By the time I got to "eight," my e-mail beeped at me again. Same customer. "Oh," she said. "I see..."

The receptionist here at the shop called me on the intercom yesterday. "I'm ready to put that Jewish Christmas card on the color copier now," she said. Jewish Christmas card?

It's so busy here I actually saw the boss working. Spooky. Why is it that there's never enough time for us to print a job right, but there's always enough time for us to print it over again? How does that work?

I've been hearing from a lot of our customers (and Dagmar, too) that many people are off work from the 23rd through the 3rd. Is that normal? We only get Monday off...


A New Distraction

In an odd twist of events, I'm now the semi-official photographer of Chesterfield's Wednesday night jam sessions. They're giving me free beer and a couple bucks every week to go to my favorite bar, listen to good music, take pictures of my friends and maintain a website of photos. Color me happy! You can see the results thus far HERE. (Feel free to e-mail me any photos you've taken at the jam - I'll get 'em uploaded to the site!)

I was surprised how many musicians showed up at the last jam -- it's been a while since I've been there. It seems to have grown a bit!

My only problem with this whole thing is that I have a day job. Thursday mornings are gonna be pretty rough on me! I'm not used to being out until 1:30 in the morning on a weeknight any more.

Between that and the American Legion Riders (who created an officer position for me - I'm the PR guy now) I'm gonna be a busy, happy hippie! It's nice to be able to do the "music thing" once a week, and the ALR really gave me a sense of purpose. The last few months have been good to me!


Pops

I'm happy to report that Pops is out of the hospital and is back home. He's got some nerve damage from the blood clot, but they say it may heal, given time. But he's up and walking, and should be back at work in a couple months!


Finally, a Break for the Oil Industry!

Anyone remember the Exxon Valdez? You know, the supertanker that dumped about a zillion gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska? I just read that an appeals court lowered the fine Exxon has to pay from $5 billion to $2.5 billion. And boy, and I happy! Imagine, those 32,000 Alaska natives, fishermen and property owners are pretty chastened for wanting Exxon to pay damages -- just because Exxon spilled a pesky little 11 million gallons of crude oil. "Waaaaah, all the fish are dying and I can't make a living now..." I mean, everyone knows that the oil companies haven't been able to pull a profit at all the last few years. A $2.5 billion fine is bad enough, I don't know how they would have paid the whole court-imposed $5 billion...

Actually, Exxon actually had a $7 billion profit last year alone. Their greed knows no bounds. They're rolling in money, refusing to pay their fine, which would have gone to help the fisherfolk recoup some of the losses they incurred in the years following the oil spill as well as helping the property owners and native Alaskans whose lives were impacted by the spill. I'm sad that they kept this in the courts this long, and I'm sad that they found a sympathetic court that cut their fine in half.

We can't get true alternative energy vehicles on the market because the rich (and conservative) oilmen don't have enough of OUR money yet, and our health care system is completely unaffordable to most people because the rich (and conservative) pharmaceutical companies don't have enough of our money either. They will continue to take our money until we decide to take it back from them.

We need to quit letting ourselves be pushed around by these people.


Merry Christmas.