(no subject)
This has not been my weekend.
Surprise Call
I was at work Friday night and got a collect call from a friend (who shall remain nameless)...from the Blount County jail! At first, I thought that he was incarcerated in the great town of Juanita, but that was not the case. It turns out that he was in Blount County Tennessee! I owe him some money, the sum of which is exactly 10% of his bail...we got cut off as he was attempting to make a collect call to my cell phone and the Blount County Correctional Facility has decided that they shouldn't pay for inmates' calls. From what we did get communicated, it didn't sound like he wanted his family to know.
I called all of the bail bond companies in the town of incarceration and they all said that the wouldn't bail him out. So here I am stuck in the middle. Court on the seventh; even though I don't know exactly what went down, if I could, I'd go up for court and support him. What would you do in my situation?
No Light
My headlight went out on me when I got to work Saturday. Every time that's happened, I've taken the car to the dealership. When I was a Domino's, the guys there couldn't figure it out. I didn't know what to look for nor did I have tools. When I called Auto Zone, they said that they had the part but that they couldn't install it. When I got there, the hick that was assisting me didn't know what he was looking for either. He pulled a big cap off of the back of the light but that was the wrong bulb. What he was fooling with was for the high beam.
I called work to tell her that I was coming back to check out since I wasn't going to be able to resolve the issue. At that point, the other sales associate grabbed a flashlight and changed the bulb for me. Turns out there's a cap for each bulb. The dumbass hick had tried to convince me that I was going to have to take the entire headlight off in order to swap the bulb. I was of course in my Steak Out uniform and so the obligatory comments about eating good tonight were exchanged. I made sure that he ate good that night because he not only saved me and helped me make money that night, he also saved my manager.
All work and no Product Makes Jack a Worthless Boy
In order to help the expedition of recovering borrowed funds for miniMax0r, I have found a buyer for the Wintel laptop. I meant to get it cleaned up this weekend as well as my apartment, but neither happened despite the time change. Another day, another dollar. Speaking of, it's been over seven months that I've held down two consecutive jobs and put in an average 60 hours a week with the exception of the week of Sidewalk, yet I have little to show for it. One day I will have a real job.
Tinsel Town does not Glitter
There have been very few great movies come out this year. The irony is that most of the good movies this year have been smaller, independent movies or have been movies backed by major studios that didn't stay in my local theater for more then two weeks. I now need to add American Gangster to my list of movies to review.
Getting a Raise
How does one correctly go about asking for a raise? I'd like to explore this issue more in a later post, but I thought I'd share this story:
Late last week, my boss pulled all of us into one our offices and said that some of the prospects that had 50 - 100 schools in their districts had been calling not the administrators but rather the people who actually currently use our software to get references. My manger said that everyone had responded with high praise for the software (which is currently very buggy) but had especially glowing review for our tech support department--so much so, in fact, that there were no negative reviews at all. We were given an 'atta boy. When my manger's speech was over, I said "That's great! Just do me a favor and remind the powers that be that if we help get them their Christmas bonus, make sure they help us get ours."
Now I'm one for doing a good job, going unnoticed and then suddenly and unexpectedly get praised, raised and promoted, but that's never happened for me in a corporate setting. It seems like no matter how hard I work, no matter how many hours I put it, it's never enough. That's fine, I can deal. But when we're talking millions of dollars here, the least that could be done is to see a small, one-time bonus on our checks, and so much the better if that does happen in time for Christmas. It's not like I was being selfish or anything; we're all a part of the same team and my comment recommended that everyone on the team get a little something out of the deal. We shall see.
I plan to stick around for a year. At that point, I will have held down two jobs for a year putting in an average of 60 hours a week. After that year I expect a little something for my troubles.
Your thoughts on this matter are greatly appreciated.