Friday, August 28, 2009
Bama Rapture
One grand day, there will be a Bama Rapture, and everyone who is wearing any kind of an officially licensed Alabama Crimson Tide shirt (or outerwear) will mysteriously disappear, and be raised up bodily to heaven, to sit at the right hand of Bear Bryant.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Me and Jobs, Part 2
I am sometimes asked why I continue working for the State of Alabama, which has not been very friendly toward me as an employer. The fact is that in over seventeen years, they have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to fire me on a whim.
I have worked at a place where I was fired because somebody's girlfriend needed a job. I have worked at a place where I was fired in order to cover up the fact that I was at work and someone else, who was supposed to be in charge, wasn't. I worked at a place where I insisted I was not going to work on Easter, and that they could not make me do so. I had big plans for the annual reverent double-feature of Jesus Christ Superstar and Monty Python's Life of Brian, with bread and red wine. Anyway, I didn't work, but I found out later that they had called in a coworker who had come straight in from the hospital emergency room, where she had been treated for a severe headache and double vision, and still had one pupil larger than the other at the time she went to work. And they made her work. And she went to work. I quit.
I worked for the United States Postal Service for eighty-nine days. I was what they called "probationary," meaning that I was only hired for ninety days, after which time they either rehired me on a permanent basis, or not. I was put straight to work as a front window clerk, apparently due to my history of dealing with a hostile public at the food stamp office, which I had quit to work for USPS. I was told that I had one of the highest scores ever recorded for the window clerk's exam. I was also evaluated about once a week, and the evaluations I got were uniformly laudatory in the highest degree, although I was assigned a station with no postage meter and no money order machine, which slowed my performance considerably. I was also not required to work more than 6 hours in a two-week pay period, other than my training period, since the position was technically "part-time." I had been told that everyone in this position nevertheless worked forty-hour weeks, and, other than myself, everyone did. I worked six hours one time. I would have been in trouble if I hadn't withdrawn my retirement from the food stamp office, as I was living on it. My final evaluation stated that I did not like the job, had no interest in doing it, and was unable to do it. I was literally escorted out the back door when it was discovered that if I came to work one more day, I would be hired permanently. I eventually came to the conclusion that there was more than one political faction at work there, and that I had become caught between them. You could call me a disgruntled former postal worker. Unlike some of the breed, I subsumed my anger by refusing to pass within blocks of the post office at which I had worked for the next four or five years.
Following my exit from the USPS, unemployment benefits until they ran out, and a desperate search for work, I was contacted by a friend who offered me a job he said he knew I wouldn't like. It was telemarketing, cold-calling unsuspecting companies and trying to sell them advertising in a publication that did not yet exist. He was right; I did not want it, but desperation won out. The operation was bankrolled on such a shoestring that, every payday, all the employees were in a race to the bank that the paychecks were drawn on, knowing that the last few to get there were as likely as not to be holding a worthless check. I was laid off in a round of belt-tightening, and didn't much mind.
A stint with Kelly Temporary Services, for whose local office I have nothing but praise (at least in the late Eighties), led to my working for the State of Alabama again. This is not what you would call an employee-friendly workplace, but seventeen years of steady paychecks - and raises! - tell the story. There may be many private employers out there who would hire me in a minute, treat me like a valuable commodity, pay me well, and keep me working for them until we cried in each others' arms at parting. But the odds just don't look that good from here.
I have worked at a place where I was fired because somebody's girlfriend needed a job. I have worked at a place where I was fired in order to cover up the fact that I was at work and someone else, who was supposed to be in charge, wasn't. I worked at a place where I insisted I was not going to work on Easter, and that they could not make me do so. I had big plans for the annual reverent double-feature of Jesus Christ Superstar and Monty Python's Life of Brian, with bread and red wine. Anyway, I didn't work, but I found out later that they had called in a coworker who had come straight in from the hospital emergency room, where she had been treated for a severe headache and double vision, and still had one pupil larger than the other at the time she went to work. And they made her work. And she went to work. I quit.
I worked for the United States Postal Service for eighty-nine days. I was what they called "probationary," meaning that I was only hired for ninety days, after which time they either rehired me on a permanent basis, or not. I was put straight to work as a front window clerk, apparently due to my history of dealing with a hostile public at the food stamp office, which I had quit to work for USPS. I was told that I had one of the highest scores ever recorded for the window clerk's exam. I was also evaluated about once a week, and the evaluations I got were uniformly laudatory in the highest degree, although I was assigned a station with no postage meter and no money order machine, which slowed my performance considerably. I was also not required to work more than 6 hours in a two-week pay period, other than my training period, since the position was technically "part-time." I had been told that everyone in this position nevertheless worked forty-hour weeks, and, other than myself, everyone did. I worked six hours one time. I would have been in trouble if I hadn't withdrawn my retirement from the food stamp office, as I was living on it. My final evaluation stated that I did not like the job, had no interest in doing it, and was unable to do it. I was literally escorted out the back door when it was discovered that if I came to work one more day, I would be hired permanently. I eventually came to the conclusion that there was more than one political faction at work there, and that I had become caught between them. You could call me a disgruntled former postal worker. Unlike some of the breed, I subsumed my anger by refusing to pass within blocks of the post office at which I had worked for the next four or five years.
Following my exit from the USPS, unemployment benefits until they ran out, and a desperate search for work, I was contacted by a friend who offered me a job he said he knew I wouldn't like. It was telemarketing, cold-calling unsuspecting companies and trying to sell them advertising in a publication that did not yet exist. He was right; I did not want it, but desperation won out. The operation was bankrolled on such a shoestring that, every payday, all the employees were in a race to the bank that the paychecks were drawn on, knowing that the last few to get there were as likely as not to be holding a worthless check. I was laid off in a round of belt-tightening, and didn't much mind.
A stint with Kelly Temporary Services, for whose local office I have nothing but praise (at least in the late Eighties), led to my working for the State of Alabama again. This is not what you would call an employee-friendly workplace, but seventeen years of steady paychecks - and raises! - tell the story. There may be many private employers out there who would hire me in a minute, treat me like a valuable commodity, pay me well, and keep me working for them until we cried in each others' arms at parting. But the odds just don't look that good from here.
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