(no subject)
Day 2 of unemployment.
Day 1 was a mass flurry of activity while we went through and began the process of sorting out 15+ years of our lives. It halted abruptly today. I'm sore, and realistically, we needed to focus on the what and how.
I slept in, blessedly late. Got up and took the kid to Irwindale Speedway for her weekend 'job' that pays for colorguard, then went to visit Gary's mom and to take her our Tivo, since it's no longer needed at the store. We had a chat with her while getting it set up.
We then left there, drove back to Glendora, dropped off some cool ties with Sue that'd been ordered by a customer (yay I get $60 when the gal comes in to pick 'em up). Went over and spent $7 that we shouldn't have at the local cheapass Mexican place to buy a couple carne asada burritos, and sat and talked over burritos to try to figure out what we really need to do. The obvious, of course, is get jobs and get the hell out of here. But we came to the realization that really, that's about all we need to change in our lives right now, and that's enough.
Got a call from Gary's mom, realized we'd left something at her house, went back down to get it, then drove over to Bonelli Park to look at potential locations to park a motor home. It's a nice place, surprisingly. We may end up living there. Cheaper than getting an apartment in this area, that's for damned sure.
Left there, drove over to Arcadia, visited with the sister-in-law. Chatted with her for a couple hours, then went to pick up the kid from Irwindale Speedway. Got to see her behind the counter of the concession stand this time, which was a plus - wish I'd had my camera on me right then, because I would've gotten a kick out of taking a pic of all the COHSers crammed into that tiny space. It's half-band, half-colorguard, all chaos.
Came home, I took a shower, and then the shitstorm started.
Mom abruptly popped up and started trying to make Gary do paperwork with her. Apparently, she wants to give us the Suburban and take it off of her insurance RIGHT THIS INSTANT, and claims that this is trying to help us. The fact of the matter is that that would give us one more immediate bill to pay, because you can't be an uninsured driver in California, and we don't have the money to pay that bill right now. And besides that, it's her car. She can have it. She doesn't -want- it, of course, but she can have it. Or we can take it and sell it off to Pick-A-Part and take the couple hundred bucks that'd net us. We may do the latter, but we told her to wait right now, because we aren't even ready to figure that out yet.
And she started demanding to know where we were moving to, what our plans were, etc. We pointed out that all of this was kinda unexpected, brought on by her, and that realistically, we haven't gotten as far as figuring out all of our plans, because we're trying to figure out if a) we can get unemployment or if they'll deny us because we haven't actually received a paycheck for 15+ years since it was a family business, b) trying to figure out how to get food stamps, because we'll need them, and c) trying to scrounge together money and rid ourselves of excess baggage.
She seems to be convinced that we -planned- all of this, and keeps going on and on about how her walking into the store and demanding that we get rid of vital equipment to keep the business alive wasn't a major decision, and how she doesn't understand why we quit.
So we told her, yet again, that we quit because it -wasn't- a minor thing, we told her if she persisted in getting rid of vital equipment we would quit, and that she refused to listen to the input of her staff. She promptly shoved it off all on us by going 'you quit on me' and trying to make us feel bad. She's in her alternating mode of guilt and then play martyr. Fine. Good for her, she can just keep doing it, because we're not going to feel guilty, and she can play the martyr just fine without us here.
If she's going to accuse us of never talking to her, then ignore what we say when we do talk to her, or tell us that we never talked to her about it at all despite the reality that we did, then there is no need for us to continue to persist in her little internal web of lies. If the owner does not listen to what the manager says, expecting them to run it all, and then comes wandering in and goes 'oh here, you're doing something earthshatteringly different' and expect the manager, who -knows- the score, to be happy... then yeah, that owner will lose managers mighty fast.
She then started insisting that -we were wrong-, trying to guilt us, telling us how we are so lucky to have what we've been getting, etcetera. We pointed out quietly that she pays Sue $180 for three days a week of work, and that she pays two people - us - nothing on the books whatsoever, and that we've averaged between using $50 and $125 a week for TWO people to eat on, buy cigarettes, and put gas in the car. (Keep in mind, gas is $5 a gallon. Some weeks, we literally camped in the store rather than buy gas, just so that we didn't use much money.)
Her immediate response was that oh NO, she PAID US, because we had a place to LIVE, yadda yadda. I countered by asking how much Mark paid for rent per month. She claims $400. This is a lie. He pays the cable TV bill in lieu of rent, which is less than $200. He does, however, have Mom's cell phone on his family plan, and occasionally pays the house phone bill.
So if she wants to count it up, value to value, she pays Sue $180 for working 10-7 Thursday, 10-4 Friday, 10-4 Saturday, which comes to 21 hours a week. If we are assuming $100 for rent per week (going with -her- high number, rather than the actuality), and $125 for food/gas/cigarettes (going with the higher number on our total) per week, she's paying TWO people a total of $225 per week for 41 hours of work per week per person, a total of 82 hours.
Sue gets paid, in that scenario, $8.57 an hour -and- is not getting 'rent' paid. (Rent being 'a place to sleep accompanied by lots of bitching and guilt-trips so bad that I don't want to be there', mind you.)
We get 'paid', in that scenario, $2.74 an hour each. If you hack off the 'rent', she's paying us $1.52 an hour, and that's -if- it's one of the weeks where we spend $125, which have been rare of late. More commonly, we're using about $50, which comes to about $0.61 an hour 'pay'. I can panhandle more than 61 cents an hour.
And she claims that she's been ever so good to us. She's been wonderful to us. We've been spoiled rotten living here.
Yeah. SURE. I'll grant that we didn't have to pay for car insurance, that much I'll give her. She was good about that. The rest? Uh, no.
So anyhow, we tried to explain all of this to her. I would've given her these hard numbers if she'd stopped going off about how we were WRONG, how we're being SO UNGRATEFUL, etcetera.
But you know, she stormed off in a fit of pique, declaring that we won't even listen to her when she's RIGHT.
More power to her. She can believe as she wishes. I have no complaints in that. But minimum wage in California is a lot more than $0.61 per hour, or even $1.52 an hour. And on top of that, we put our own meager money into the business to the point where we are going to have to declare bankruptcy to clear up our issues, because we're in debt to our eyeballs for trying to carry our share of the load. Her $1.52 an hour for the last three years doesn't even come close to paying for the tens of thousands of dollars we've put into the store. Really, we've paid HER for the pleasure of working there, and paid her more than she ever would've paid us.
I can do better somewhere else. It'll be hard, sure. We'll have a lot more bills to cover on our own, sure. But we also won't have someone telling us how we are worthless, how we never do anything, how we're filthy, how we NEVER TALK TO HER OH NOES, how we steal from her, and so on and so forth. We won't have to deal with her going and talking behind our backs to our daughter, who then dutifully waits until her grandmother is done ranting and railing about us and then gives us a call and goes 'hey, she went off her rocker again', and we express condolences, and life goes on.
We'd have talked to her about the business if, at any point in the last three years, she'd actually expressed enough interest in the business to come down the one hour a day, three days a week that we'd asked her to come down so that we could talk business. She wanted to do it when we came home after working a nine-hour day, instead. Nope, sorry, when I go home from work, I -go home from work-. And we've told her that time and again. But for years, she hasn't had any interest.
And now she does. Bully for her. She can handle all of it. We're so done. Sadly, the store will likely also be done, and for that, I will cry. But not for her.
But if anyone ever says that I 'never do anything' again, once I'm out of this joint, they may end up decapitated with their body sunk in a canal and their head sent to my mother and their heart sacrificed to...
... er. Um. Sorry. Channeling FiranMUX. Please ignore that line. (Memory of Kelarik screamed at me in my head. Oops. Damned character. Shut up, you, you're dead.)
Anyhow. So that's the shitstorm.
And now, I prepare to head to bed so that I can go out and sell what existing cool ties I have tomorrow during the heat of the day with the kid and Gary in tow. And then I'll see about making s'more. I have supplies for at least 100 cool ties. I sell 'em for $5 each. That's $500 there, if I can sell 'em all.
But that is the update of the moment. More concrete information will come sooner or later.
Day 1 was a mass flurry of activity while we went through and began the process of sorting out 15+ years of our lives. It halted abruptly today. I'm sore, and realistically, we needed to focus on the what and how.
I slept in, blessedly late. Got up and took the kid to Irwindale Speedway for her weekend 'job' that pays for colorguard, then went to visit Gary's mom and to take her our Tivo, since it's no longer needed at the store. We had a chat with her while getting it set up.
We then left there, drove back to Glendora, dropped off some cool ties with Sue that'd been ordered by a customer (yay I get $60 when the gal comes in to pick 'em up). Went over and spent $7 that we shouldn't have at the local cheapass Mexican place to buy a couple carne asada burritos, and sat and talked over burritos to try to figure out what we really need to do. The obvious, of course, is get jobs and get the hell out of here. But we came to the realization that really, that's about all we need to change in our lives right now, and that's enough.
Got a call from Gary's mom, realized we'd left something at her house, went back down to get it, then drove over to Bonelli Park to look at potential locations to park a motor home. It's a nice place, surprisingly. We may end up living there. Cheaper than getting an apartment in this area, that's for damned sure.
Left there, drove over to Arcadia, visited with the sister-in-law. Chatted with her for a couple hours, then went to pick up the kid from Irwindale Speedway. Got to see her behind the counter of the concession stand this time, which was a plus - wish I'd had my camera on me right then, because I would've gotten a kick out of taking a pic of all the COHSers crammed into that tiny space. It's half-band, half-colorguard, all chaos.
Came home, I took a shower, and then the shitstorm started.
Mom abruptly popped up and started trying to make Gary do paperwork with her. Apparently, she wants to give us the Suburban and take it off of her insurance RIGHT THIS INSTANT, and claims that this is trying to help us. The fact of the matter is that that would give us one more immediate bill to pay, because you can't be an uninsured driver in California, and we don't have the money to pay that bill right now. And besides that, it's her car. She can have it. She doesn't -want- it, of course, but she can have it. Or we can take it and sell it off to Pick-A-Part and take the couple hundred bucks that'd net us. We may do the latter, but we told her to wait right now, because we aren't even ready to figure that out yet.
And she started demanding to know where we were moving to, what our plans were, etc. We pointed out that all of this was kinda unexpected, brought on by her, and that realistically, we haven't gotten as far as figuring out all of our plans, because we're trying to figure out if a) we can get unemployment or if they'll deny us because we haven't actually received a paycheck for 15+ years since it was a family business, b) trying to figure out how to get food stamps, because we'll need them, and c) trying to scrounge together money and rid ourselves of excess baggage.
She seems to be convinced that we -planned- all of this, and keeps going on and on about how her walking into the store and demanding that we get rid of vital equipment to keep the business alive wasn't a major decision, and how she doesn't understand why we quit.
So we told her, yet again, that we quit because it -wasn't- a minor thing, we told her if she persisted in getting rid of vital equipment we would quit, and that she refused to listen to the input of her staff. She promptly shoved it off all on us by going 'you quit on me' and trying to make us feel bad. She's in her alternating mode of guilt and then play martyr. Fine. Good for her, she can just keep doing it, because we're not going to feel guilty, and she can play the martyr just fine without us here.
If she's going to accuse us of never talking to her, then ignore what we say when we do talk to her, or tell us that we never talked to her about it at all despite the reality that we did, then there is no need for us to continue to persist in her little internal web of lies. If the owner does not listen to what the manager says, expecting them to run it all, and then comes wandering in and goes 'oh here, you're doing something earthshatteringly different' and expect the manager, who -knows- the score, to be happy... then yeah, that owner will lose managers mighty fast.
She then started insisting that -we were wrong-, trying to guilt us, telling us how we are so lucky to have what we've been getting, etcetera. We pointed out quietly that she pays Sue $180 for three days a week of work, and that she pays two people - us - nothing on the books whatsoever, and that we've averaged between using $50 and $125 a week for TWO people to eat on, buy cigarettes, and put gas in the car. (Keep in mind, gas is $5 a gallon. Some weeks, we literally camped in the store rather than buy gas, just so that we didn't use much money.)
Her immediate response was that oh NO, she PAID US, because we had a place to LIVE, yadda yadda. I countered by asking how much Mark paid for rent per month. She claims $400. This is a lie. He pays the cable TV bill in lieu of rent, which is less than $200. He does, however, have Mom's cell phone on his family plan, and occasionally pays the house phone bill.
So if she wants to count it up, value to value, she pays Sue $180 for working 10-7 Thursday, 10-4 Friday, 10-4 Saturday, which comes to 21 hours a week. If we are assuming $100 for rent per week (going with -her- high number, rather than the actuality), and $125 for food/gas/cigarettes (going with the higher number on our total) per week, she's paying TWO people a total of $225 per week for 41 hours of work per week per person, a total of 82 hours.
Sue gets paid, in that scenario, $8.57 an hour -and- is not getting 'rent' paid. (Rent being 'a place to sleep accompanied by lots of bitching and guilt-trips so bad that I don't want to be there', mind you.)
We get 'paid', in that scenario, $2.74 an hour each. If you hack off the 'rent', she's paying us $1.52 an hour, and that's -if- it's one of the weeks where we spend $125, which have been rare of late. More commonly, we're using about $50, which comes to about $0.61 an hour 'pay'. I can panhandle more than 61 cents an hour.
And she claims that she's been ever so good to us. She's been wonderful to us. We've been spoiled rotten living here.
Yeah. SURE. I'll grant that we didn't have to pay for car insurance, that much I'll give her. She was good about that. The rest? Uh, no.
So anyhow, we tried to explain all of this to her. I would've given her these hard numbers if she'd stopped going off about how we were WRONG, how we're being SO UNGRATEFUL, etcetera.
But you know, she stormed off in a fit of pique, declaring that we won't even listen to her when she's RIGHT.
More power to her. She can believe as she wishes. I have no complaints in that. But minimum wage in California is a lot more than $0.61 per hour, or even $1.52 an hour. And on top of that, we put our own meager money into the business to the point where we are going to have to declare bankruptcy to clear up our issues, because we're in debt to our eyeballs for trying to carry our share of the load. Her $1.52 an hour for the last three years doesn't even come close to paying for the tens of thousands of dollars we've put into the store. Really, we've paid HER for the pleasure of working there, and paid her more than she ever would've paid us.
I can do better somewhere else. It'll be hard, sure. We'll have a lot more bills to cover on our own, sure. But we also won't have someone telling us how we are worthless, how we never do anything, how we're filthy, how we NEVER TALK TO HER OH NOES, how we steal from her, and so on and so forth. We won't have to deal with her going and talking behind our backs to our daughter, who then dutifully waits until her grandmother is done ranting and railing about us and then gives us a call and goes 'hey, she went off her rocker again', and we express condolences, and life goes on.
We'd have talked to her about the business if, at any point in the last three years, she'd actually expressed enough interest in the business to come down the one hour a day, three days a week that we'd asked her to come down so that we could talk business. She wanted to do it when we came home after working a nine-hour day, instead. Nope, sorry, when I go home from work, I -go home from work-. And we've told her that time and again. But for years, she hasn't had any interest.
And now she does. Bully for her. She can handle all of it. We're so done. Sadly, the store will likely also be done, and for that, I will cry. But not for her.
But if anyone ever says that I 'never do anything' again, once I'm out of this joint, they may end up decapitated with their body sunk in a canal and their head sent to my mother and their heart sacrificed to...
... er. Um. Sorry. Channeling FiranMUX. Please ignore that line. (Memory of Kelarik screamed at me in my head. Oops. Damned character. Shut up, you, you're dead.)
Anyhow. So that's the shitstorm.
And now, I prepare to head to bed so that I can go out and sell what existing cool ties I have tomorrow during the heat of the day with the kid and Gary in tow. And then I'll see about making s'more. I have supplies for at least 100 cool ties. I sell 'em for $5 each. That's $500 there, if I can sell 'em all.
But that is the update of the moment. More concrete information will come sooner or later.