I think I'm sick and I want to go... to hell
I bought a pack of cigarettes today.
I’m not too sure why I still write in here. It seems pointless to me to keep track of thoughts on this machine. Perhaps this is my means to vent.
I have had a lot on my mind lately. There has been much going on and I have been pretty vague with people about what has really happened over the past few months. I plan to update the events in these past months in full.
I moved out of my dad’s house in late June. I moved in with my friend Sean, a friend that I knew in school. He had an extra room available and offered me to stay here if I agreed to pay rent and help out around the house a bit. In my current situation, I was searching for anything, so this appeared to be a good idea. Not much is to be said of my lack of contact between February and June other than the fact that it happened because my dad shut off my internet connection. This was one of the many attempts to get me out of his house faster. I will not bring up what else he did because that is unnecessary at this time, but apparently he thought that I wanted to stay. Perhaps he felt I was “biding my time”. All those who knew me were aware that this was not the case. I understand that my dad wanted to move on with his life. He’s moved on now and now he wants to contact me and be my father again. I couldn’t have predicted it any more accurately. I haven’t spoken to him since I left the house. I’m not sure when I will again. I tend to hold onto grudges for far too long. Maybe I’ll take this one to his grave, but I hope that this isn’t the case. I know he still cares about me. When I wasn’t speaking to him he tried to contact me on several occasions, calling me, calling my work and even writing brief notes to say my family was worried about me. Perhaps it is ignorant of me to not respond to him, but as for now, I will accept this ignorance. Whether or not I will regret that later doesn’t concern me now.
I spoke to Lori for the first time in a while the other day. She was quite surprised and rather happy to see me. She informed me that just the day before, the divorce between her and my dad was final. It took two years for it to happen. What my dad was waiting for, I don’t know, but Lori is happy that the ordeal is finally over. I can tell she is still hurt by what happened, but I can’t say that I don’t blame her. She informed me that the little one is doing well. I was happy to hear that. I miss that little youngster from time to time, but I doubt I pass through her thoughts often. Lori and I spoke a little of how my dad tried to contact me. I guess my family thought I was dead or something bad had happened to me because Target refused to disclose if I still worked there or not. Lori wanted my number from my dad because she thought that I would have answered the phone if she would have called, and she was right. She was concerned too, but not as much because she knew I was upset. I miss Lori being around. She was the closest I had to a mother here in Michigan. I miss her. She directed me to a place in the mall where I could find a job listing and then we parted ways again. She has my number now, so I expect to hear from her from time to time.
As I mentioned before, I lost my job at Target. How it happened is a rather long and complicated story, but I’ll try to tell it the best of my ability. Those who know me even a little know that I have a short fuse from time to time. I get angry and sometimes I act out my aggression, whether it would be against an inanimate object or yelling at someone. There was one boss at my work that knew how to handle me when I got agitated. She would pull me aside and ask to talk or she would crack a joke to make me think of something else. She was the most down to earth person I have ever met. Michele was her name and she was my sanity at that place. My outbursts were very rare when she was working just because her general attitude and how she carried herself eased my mind. She made working there as enjoyable as it could have been amidst all the drama that occurred there. A few months ago, a worker walked out on the job. She had issues with what happened to her that night. We were poorly staffed and a new person was the only person assigned to work with her. There were two trucks which made matters worse. During the middle of the unloading of the trucks, she snapped. She cursed at the boss and then asked to leave. The boss (Danny) told her that she would talk about what was bothering her, but she refused. Not too soon after her departure, things started to happen. This person started to mess with people’s personal lives. What she did is not worth mentioning other than the fact that is was cruel and ignorant. She and a friend that still worked at Target at the time began a website where they tried to get the union into the corporation. On this site they would repeatedly slander many people. Nothing could be done because there was no solid proof that it was in fact them that were causing all of this mess. On a finally stab at the company, these people went after Michele, my boss… and my sanity. They told the store manager that Michele had been seeing a worker at the store and that it was a woman. This was in fact true, but no one knew about it and it could have stayed that way. Michele was our hardest working boss as well as our morale booster. She was asked to either transfer to a different store or quit Target.
After Michele left Target things started to go downhill fast. Michele was the only boss who had the nerve to tell the store manager when something was not right. The other managers were rather spineless and bended easy no matter what was asked of them. This was the cause for many problems. Hours and shifts were cut resulting in short staffed nights. People began to quit and nobody came in to replace them. When managers were confronted on replacements, they simply used the excuse of the union issue as the reason they couldn’t hire. Work wasn’t getting done and the teamwork environment plummeted. Stress levels rose through the roof and tempers began to flare… including my own.
The company transferred a new manager to the store to replace Michele. His name was Ron. A friend of mine was one of the people who quit when things were getting rough around the store. He worked at the store where Ron transferred from. He told me of Ron and the way he worked. He stated that he was one to find something he didn’t like in someone and fire them. He also stated that Ron was one who didn’t like to do work and quite often disappeared for the whole night until it was time to leave. I am not one who bases my perception of a person by other people’s experience; I like to find out how a person is personally. In time I found that John was right about Ron. I was not comfortable working around him, as were many other workers.
The first incident that caused friction in my employment occurred while I was working in the back room on a Saturday night. I was pulling paper towels down from a high location using a machine called the wave. It’s a little cart that has a lift platform that assists in reaching high locations easy. While I was on the machine, a fellow worker was pestering me constantly, following me around, asking me how much longer I would be. I work quickly enough, and it irritates me when people try to rush me. Regardless of her pestering, I joked around with this woman, this middle aged woman from Canada who had to out weigh me by about a hundred pounds. I lowered the lift informing her I was down and proceeded to back up. Upon reversing, I struck a pallet jack and the load I was carrying toppled over on top of me. I shoved the load off of me in a forward motion. The woman was standing not too feet from the machine and was struck by the loose paper towel. Apparently this woman who was standing too close to the machine to begin with had an incredibly soft head because she acted like she got hit with a load of bricks. She went to the manager and I was asked to leave and “cool down”.
The second incident occurred while I was unloading the truck. The trucks that are unloaded at Target are unloaded by hand by means of a retractable roller conveyer. Boxes are put on the line and sent down to be put onto pallets that get taken to different parts of the store. Two people on average unload one truck while two other people scan the merchandise that comes off. Ron was scanning the night of the second incident. He was holding up the boxes so I gave them a little push up the line. He shoved them back and some of the cartons fell off striking me and the other person that I was unloading with. This would not have been a problem had the boxes not been rather heavy and when there are nineteen hundred boxes on a truck; one doesn’t want to lift more than they have to. I picked up a box and slammed it against the wall of the truck. Ron then yelled at me commenting that if the scanning labels on the boxes were all facing up, there would not be a problem. When I unload, every box that I put on the line is facing up; it’s just the way I do things. I’m not one that takes getting attacked at the way I wok very well especially when I know what I was doing was right regardless of what the other person unloading was doing. So I yelled back at Ron saying that my labels are always up, of course using a little colorful language in that statement, so he sent me home. On my way out, I apologized and it seemed like things were fine between us. Apparently this was not the case. When I came in the next day, Danny pulled me aside and told me that I was on my “final warning”. He stated that if one more incident happened, I would be let go. He stated that he wanted to keep me working there, but that my temper was “out of control”.
The last straw happened four days before I got fired. I was unloading the truck again and the progress was very slow. I looked down the line and saw one of my fellow workers talking and not paying attention to what was going on in front of her. She was holding up the progress of the unloading of the truck. It was very hot in the trailer that day, so I was getting agitated. This person, since she was hired in has gained a reputation of talking too much and not getting work done in the process. I yelled at her, telling her to “mover her ass”. She was a little taken back that I yelled at her, but then proceeded to start working. It was effective, but obviously not professional. Ron was standing nearby this girl when I yelled at her and told me to “calm down”. I called into work the next two days because I was sick and worked a whole day before coming in my final day. That day I came into work and after the receiving part of the job was done, Danny and Ron called me into their office. It was then they decided to let me go. I didn’t say much, but I did bring to their attention the poor work ethics and lack of supervision on the workers at the store. Danny then told me that I have to accept the bad work ethics of people. And I thought I had a good sense of humor.
So began the job search. I went home after being fired and smoked a couple of cigarettes to calm myself down. I then went to bed and set my alarm to get up early. I put in applications at three different places. At the third place, I was scheduled for an interview. I went into Office Max expecting to come out with a job. They were going to only pay $8.50 per hour, but it was enough to get by. The interview went well and they asked me to submit for a criminal background check. I did and never received a phone call back. I called the store and the stated that they filled the position already. I then began submitting more applications. I cannot even remember how many different places I went to, but I logged them all in a notebook, so I could follow-up on them. Place after place delivered rejection after rejection. I finally got another interview at Art Van. Apparently the man in charge of hiring for the warehouse on Van Dyke knew my dad for about fourteen years. I thought that this would give me good stature and secure me a position, but I thought wrong. I told the man why I got fired (big mistake) and he said that he would call the next day if I had the job (the biggest cop-out, I-don’t-want-to-be-the-bad-guy response a boss can make). I waited. He didn’t call. I called. He found someone else. So began part two of the frantic search for a job.
Today I woke up with the intention of going to the pawn shop to sell some things and getting applications for jobs. I started my car and my oil light popped on. Since I was due for an oil change and I had a little bit of cash on me, I took my car in to get it done. I walked in there with the full intention of only spending thirty dollars… I was in for a surprise. Shortly after the mechanics pulled my car into the bay, they came out of the garage and retrieved me to show me something they found wrong with my car. This would be the first of many things. There was bad corrosion around the wires connecting to my battery. It looked like someone sprayed some kind of crystallized foam around my connectors. “Six dollars”, the mechanic said would be the price to fix it. I agreed. Upon raising my car up, they found that the front right tire had steel poking through it. I had to buy two front tires and get my front end re-aligned. This was because of the old man who didn’t know how to drive his R.V. I ended up spending $200 that I can barely cough up. Now I can’t pay my car insurance… now I need a job more than ever…
And I still can’t find the fucking unemployment office!!!!!
So on that note… flick goes the Bic…
I’m not too sure why I still write in here. It seems pointless to me to keep track of thoughts on this machine. Perhaps this is my means to vent.
I have had a lot on my mind lately. There has been much going on and I have been pretty vague with people about what has really happened over the past few months. I plan to update the events in these past months in full.
I moved out of my dad’s house in late June. I moved in with my friend Sean, a friend that I knew in school. He had an extra room available and offered me to stay here if I agreed to pay rent and help out around the house a bit. In my current situation, I was searching for anything, so this appeared to be a good idea. Not much is to be said of my lack of contact between February and June other than the fact that it happened because my dad shut off my internet connection. This was one of the many attempts to get me out of his house faster. I will not bring up what else he did because that is unnecessary at this time, but apparently he thought that I wanted to stay. Perhaps he felt I was “biding my time”. All those who knew me were aware that this was not the case. I understand that my dad wanted to move on with his life. He’s moved on now and now he wants to contact me and be my father again. I couldn’t have predicted it any more accurately. I haven’t spoken to him since I left the house. I’m not sure when I will again. I tend to hold onto grudges for far too long. Maybe I’ll take this one to his grave, but I hope that this isn’t the case. I know he still cares about me. When I wasn’t speaking to him he tried to contact me on several occasions, calling me, calling my work and even writing brief notes to say my family was worried about me. Perhaps it is ignorant of me to not respond to him, but as for now, I will accept this ignorance. Whether or not I will regret that later doesn’t concern me now.
I spoke to Lori for the first time in a while the other day. She was quite surprised and rather happy to see me. She informed me that just the day before, the divorce between her and my dad was final. It took two years for it to happen. What my dad was waiting for, I don’t know, but Lori is happy that the ordeal is finally over. I can tell she is still hurt by what happened, but I can’t say that I don’t blame her. She informed me that the little one is doing well. I was happy to hear that. I miss that little youngster from time to time, but I doubt I pass through her thoughts often. Lori and I spoke a little of how my dad tried to contact me. I guess my family thought I was dead or something bad had happened to me because Target refused to disclose if I still worked there or not. Lori wanted my number from my dad because she thought that I would have answered the phone if she would have called, and she was right. She was concerned too, but not as much because she knew I was upset. I miss Lori being around. She was the closest I had to a mother here in Michigan. I miss her. She directed me to a place in the mall where I could find a job listing and then we parted ways again. She has my number now, so I expect to hear from her from time to time.
As I mentioned before, I lost my job at Target. How it happened is a rather long and complicated story, but I’ll try to tell it the best of my ability. Those who know me even a little know that I have a short fuse from time to time. I get angry and sometimes I act out my aggression, whether it would be against an inanimate object or yelling at someone. There was one boss at my work that knew how to handle me when I got agitated. She would pull me aside and ask to talk or she would crack a joke to make me think of something else. She was the most down to earth person I have ever met. Michele was her name and she was my sanity at that place. My outbursts were very rare when she was working just because her general attitude and how she carried herself eased my mind. She made working there as enjoyable as it could have been amidst all the drama that occurred there. A few months ago, a worker walked out on the job. She had issues with what happened to her that night. We were poorly staffed and a new person was the only person assigned to work with her. There were two trucks which made matters worse. During the middle of the unloading of the trucks, she snapped. She cursed at the boss and then asked to leave. The boss (Danny) told her that she would talk about what was bothering her, but she refused. Not too soon after her departure, things started to happen. This person started to mess with people’s personal lives. What she did is not worth mentioning other than the fact that is was cruel and ignorant. She and a friend that still worked at Target at the time began a website where they tried to get the union into the corporation. On this site they would repeatedly slander many people. Nothing could be done because there was no solid proof that it was in fact them that were causing all of this mess. On a finally stab at the company, these people went after Michele, my boss… and my sanity. They told the store manager that Michele had been seeing a worker at the store and that it was a woman. This was in fact true, but no one knew about it and it could have stayed that way. Michele was our hardest working boss as well as our morale booster. She was asked to either transfer to a different store or quit Target.
After Michele left Target things started to go downhill fast. Michele was the only boss who had the nerve to tell the store manager when something was not right. The other managers were rather spineless and bended easy no matter what was asked of them. This was the cause for many problems. Hours and shifts were cut resulting in short staffed nights. People began to quit and nobody came in to replace them. When managers were confronted on replacements, they simply used the excuse of the union issue as the reason they couldn’t hire. Work wasn’t getting done and the teamwork environment plummeted. Stress levels rose through the roof and tempers began to flare… including my own.
The company transferred a new manager to the store to replace Michele. His name was Ron. A friend of mine was one of the people who quit when things were getting rough around the store. He worked at the store where Ron transferred from. He told me of Ron and the way he worked. He stated that he was one to find something he didn’t like in someone and fire them. He also stated that Ron was one who didn’t like to do work and quite often disappeared for the whole night until it was time to leave. I am not one who bases my perception of a person by other people’s experience; I like to find out how a person is personally. In time I found that John was right about Ron. I was not comfortable working around him, as were many other workers.
The first incident that caused friction in my employment occurred while I was working in the back room on a Saturday night. I was pulling paper towels down from a high location using a machine called the wave. It’s a little cart that has a lift platform that assists in reaching high locations easy. While I was on the machine, a fellow worker was pestering me constantly, following me around, asking me how much longer I would be. I work quickly enough, and it irritates me when people try to rush me. Regardless of her pestering, I joked around with this woman, this middle aged woman from Canada who had to out weigh me by about a hundred pounds. I lowered the lift informing her I was down and proceeded to back up. Upon reversing, I struck a pallet jack and the load I was carrying toppled over on top of me. I shoved the load off of me in a forward motion. The woman was standing not too feet from the machine and was struck by the loose paper towel. Apparently this woman who was standing too close to the machine to begin with had an incredibly soft head because she acted like she got hit with a load of bricks. She went to the manager and I was asked to leave and “cool down”.
The second incident occurred while I was unloading the truck. The trucks that are unloaded at Target are unloaded by hand by means of a retractable roller conveyer. Boxes are put on the line and sent down to be put onto pallets that get taken to different parts of the store. Two people on average unload one truck while two other people scan the merchandise that comes off. Ron was scanning the night of the second incident. He was holding up the boxes so I gave them a little push up the line. He shoved them back and some of the cartons fell off striking me and the other person that I was unloading with. This would not have been a problem had the boxes not been rather heavy and when there are nineteen hundred boxes on a truck; one doesn’t want to lift more than they have to. I picked up a box and slammed it against the wall of the truck. Ron then yelled at me commenting that if the scanning labels on the boxes were all facing up, there would not be a problem. When I unload, every box that I put on the line is facing up; it’s just the way I do things. I’m not one that takes getting attacked at the way I wok very well especially when I know what I was doing was right regardless of what the other person unloading was doing. So I yelled back at Ron saying that my labels are always up, of course using a little colorful language in that statement, so he sent me home. On my way out, I apologized and it seemed like things were fine between us. Apparently this was not the case. When I came in the next day, Danny pulled me aside and told me that I was on my “final warning”. He stated that if one more incident happened, I would be let go. He stated that he wanted to keep me working there, but that my temper was “out of control”.
The last straw happened four days before I got fired. I was unloading the truck again and the progress was very slow. I looked down the line and saw one of my fellow workers talking and not paying attention to what was going on in front of her. She was holding up the progress of the unloading of the truck. It was very hot in the trailer that day, so I was getting agitated. This person, since she was hired in has gained a reputation of talking too much and not getting work done in the process. I yelled at her, telling her to “mover her ass”. She was a little taken back that I yelled at her, but then proceeded to start working. It was effective, but obviously not professional. Ron was standing nearby this girl when I yelled at her and told me to “calm down”. I called into work the next two days because I was sick and worked a whole day before coming in my final day. That day I came into work and after the receiving part of the job was done, Danny and Ron called me into their office. It was then they decided to let me go. I didn’t say much, but I did bring to their attention the poor work ethics and lack of supervision on the workers at the store. Danny then told me that I have to accept the bad work ethics of people. And I thought I had a good sense of humor.
So began the job search. I went home after being fired and smoked a couple of cigarettes to calm myself down. I then went to bed and set my alarm to get up early. I put in applications at three different places. At the third place, I was scheduled for an interview. I went into Office Max expecting to come out with a job. They were going to only pay $8.50 per hour, but it was enough to get by. The interview went well and they asked me to submit for a criminal background check. I did and never received a phone call back. I called the store and the stated that they filled the position already. I then began submitting more applications. I cannot even remember how many different places I went to, but I logged them all in a notebook, so I could follow-up on them. Place after place delivered rejection after rejection. I finally got another interview at Art Van. Apparently the man in charge of hiring for the warehouse on Van Dyke knew my dad for about fourteen years. I thought that this would give me good stature and secure me a position, but I thought wrong. I told the man why I got fired (big mistake) and he said that he would call the next day if I had the job (the biggest cop-out, I-don’t-want-to-be-the-bad-guy response a boss can make). I waited. He didn’t call. I called. He found someone else. So began part two of the frantic search for a job.
Today I woke up with the intention of going to the pawn shop to sell some things and getting applications for jobs. I started my car and my oil light popped on. Since I was due for an oil change and I had a little bit of cash on me, I took my car in to get it done. I walked in there with the full intention of only spending thirty dollars… I was in for a surprise. Shortly after the mechanics pulled my car into the bay, they came out of the garage and retrieved me to show me something they found wrong with my car. This would be the first of many things. There was bad corrosion around the wires connecting to my battery. It looked like someone sprayed some kind of crystallized foam around my connectors. “Six dollars”, the mechanic said would be the price to fix it. I agreed. Upon raising my car up, they found that the front right tire had steel poking through it. I had to buy two front tires and get my front end re-aligned. This was because of the old man who didn’t know how to drive his R.V. I ended up spending $200 that I can barely cough up. Now I can’t pay my car insurance… now I need a job more than ever…
And I still can’t find the fucking unemployment office!!!!!
So on that note… flick goes the Bic…