The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
So apparently the other teacher is back tomorrow. So I’m off the hook and back to my own job full-time.
And because I can never ever be happy or be satisfied with my life I was *disappointed* by this information. After weeks of GODDAMMIT I DON’T WANNA TEACH ANYMORE I was disappointed that I didn’t have to.
I can’t stand my own nonsense anymore, y’all.
I am pleased to announce that I made it through yesterday without bloodshed or threat of jail. The day wasn’t entirely without aggravation, as the muckety-mucks didn’t show up until about three hours after we were expecting them, leading to lots of sitting around and occasionally bellyaching about how Jesus, I just cannot clean anything else, enough of this nonsense. When they finally did arrive, though, it was with basically nothing but praise for how the store looked, and my regional manager actually pulled me aside and said that he knew good and damn well just how much of the look of the place was due to my efforts. It is entirely possible that this was just a little of him knowing I was pissed and blowing a bit of smoke up my ass, but dammit by that point I deserved some ass-smoke and I’m glad he took the time to do it. There was one genuinely entertaining moment (at least for me) when two people who were with the group but hadn’t shown up with them at first got to the store, and what with everything else going on I didn’t notice them right away, and by the time I did notice them the national sales director was on his way over to them and saying hello.
Greeting guests right away is kind of a big deal in this business, as you can imagine, so that caused a bit of a heart attack. I mean, yeah, I’ve got a foot out the door and all that, and this ultimately isn’t a big deal, but I still really don’t like looking like an asshole, and one of these guys deciding he needs to greet a guest for us is still kinda not good.
Anyway, long story short, I realized that they weren’t guests at the same time that they realized I thought they were guests, and at the very same time they realized what I must be thinking, and everybody had a big slightly embarrassed laugh about it. And eventually I went the hell home where I belonged.
You’re probably thinking right now that the headline on the post doesn’t make a ton of sense. True. The other thing that happened yesterday is that I got a notification from NewJob that I have finally been approved by everyone who needs to approve me– and some of these folks must have been on vacation for the last few weeks– and I am real and I have a salary and everything, and while the number next to the salary isn’t surprising, it is definitely very pleasant.
Actually, that’s not quite true– I’m surprised that it’s the right number, if we’re being honest. I was fully expecting to have to fight with somebody or at least send a pointed email to get someone to put my salary back to wherever it was when I left last time. And I didn’t! So contracts are signed and everything. I think, ridiculously, the school board still has to sign off on me, but that’s a formality. It’s “Hey, here’s this list, we cool?” and they don’t read the list and go “Yeah, we cool,” and it’s done.
So. This is happening.
Ten shifts left, guys. I’m gonna play Bloodborne and finish a short story today and tomorrow, I think. Let’s do this.
The two-year anniversary of my formal resignation from teaching passed without comment a couple of weeks ago. It took six months of looking before I found the job I have now, and I basically have not stopped looking for work since then, as I’ve never really felt like furniture sales are a viable long-term career for me. The hours are killing me, in particular; I can count the number of weekends I’ve had with my family in the last two years on one hand, and there are still multiple days a week where I don’t see my son at all in between dropping him off at school in the morning and putting him to bed immediately when I get home at night. Plus, while I am actually pretty good at my job– I was #61 in the company in overall sales for the year, and this is a company with over 250 stores– the economy is slowly starting to collapse and I really don’t like working for commission. We get paid on delivery, not on initial sale, and right now a huge percentage of the stuff I’ve sold in the last few months is still backordered to March.
To wit: I made less than minimum wage this week. I have two Master’s degrees, and I made less than minimum wage for the 42 hours that I was at work this week. My boss is barely 30 and my two assistant managers are both in their mid-twenties. I have already been offered chances to move up to management but the simple fact is I honestly don’t want it, because every time I wargame it out it becomes clear that it would actually lead to less money for more hours and more responsibility, and … nah. I can keep calling the kid who is young enough to be my son “boss” instead. It’s just not that big of a deal.
I’ve applied for several dozen different jobs in the 19 months or so since I started at my current job. I’ve had, I think, two interviews. I did not have a second interview for either position and heard through the grapevine that one of the jobs ended up going to a relative of one of the people who interviewed me, which was fun. I’m at the point where I’m so deadly tired of writing cover letters that I’m having to scan them carefully for sarcasm before sending them out, and I was so annoyed by a rejection later that I got today that said they’d “evaluated my skills” that I was halfway through a go fuck yourself, you assholes sort of response before I got control of myself.
You didn’t “evaluate my skills,” you fucks. You glanced at a cover letter and a resume and didn’t immediately see the boxes you wanted checked so you moved on. If your letter had said that, I wouldn’t be pissed off. But I wouldn’t have applied for your job if I didn’t have the skills to do it. I assure you that my skills are fine.
Most of y’all know that “Luther Siler” is a pen name. I had perfectly good reasons to take some steps to conceal my identity when I started the blog, but while I’m not considering abandoning the name (I’ve written six books as this dude, and have an actual network of real people who only know me by that name) it’s occurred to me that if I really want a different job, this blog and my Twitter following probably legitimately do represent my best networking opportunity for finding one, and I haven’t used it at all because I’ve always wanted to keep Luther’s and “my” lives separate. I may need to reevaluate this conceit, is what I’m saying here. Because this furniture selling thing is really getting old, and I don’t seem to be having any luck finding any alternate work as me.
Somewhat related anecdote: we have a Saturday morning meeting every week as a staff, since everyone works on Saturdays, and this week we did this little team building exercise involving our goals and fears. One of my co-workers noticed that I more or less dropped out of the exercise entirely when the “write about your fears” bit came up, and asked me about it later in the day.
I told him the truth: that damn near all of my legitimate fears right now involve being stuck selling furniture forever, and that I hadn’t really thought that sharing that little detail with the rest of my co-workers was the smartest way to start my day.
So I just had a job interview. For a job back at my old district. Not a teaching position, mind you, but teacher salary and mostly teacher schedule, and I’d have my goddamn weekends back. And I was in this weird place throughout the entire interview where part of me was like Look, literally ask any fucker I’ve ever worked with in this district and they’ll tell you I’m the best person for this job and the rest of me was both trying to rein that part in, because who talks like that, and simultaneously trying to prevent myself from literally begging for the job.
And here’s the thing: I am, if not literally the most qualified person for the job– although I might be– a really fucking solid candidate, and this shit’s perfectly 100% in my wheelhouse. And there’s nothing wrong with doing my damnedest to make that clear, but when combined with my fucking neediness that I’m trying to keep under control, because I need to not be selling furniture and working 17.5 hours every weekend anymore, it can get out of control quickly.
And then– get this– on the way out of the elevator, after ascertaining that one way or another there will be a second round of interviews and this isn’t happening in the next few days and I need to be patient, I ran into a friend of mine who was there to interview for the same job. Who, in fact, I had listed as a reference on my application.
Luckily, she was also interviewing for a couple of other positions under the same umbrella, which made me feel a bit better, because– and I say this with full knowledge that she reads the blog and occasionally comments here– a good part of my brain was going I will step over your body if I have to for this while we were talking in the hallway, and I kinda prefer it if that part of my brain stays locked away, right? That part of my brain is why I don’t drink, because it’s best for everyone if it never gets let out.
Fuck it, she’s known me for years, this is probably not a surprising reaction.
But yeah. I think that went well. But I’d prefer to know now, please, so if karma would take my toiling in the furniture mines into account and get this shit moving along, that’d be dandy, thanks.
My new book, Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3 is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Just $2.99 for the ebook edition!
I’ve said this before; in fact, I say it damn near every year: as someone who has been a union member and a union representative for damn near my entire adult life, I consider Labor Day my holiday in a way that is very unique to it. I try to never forget that motherfuckers literally died so that the concept of the “weekend” could exist, much less a day where damn near everyone is expected to stay home and eat various grilled meats and swill alcoholic beverages.
Labor Day for the last couple of years has had a bit of a sting to it, because I’ve had to work and I do not like working on Labor Day. I won’t complain about the money; the sales I made yesterday are going to earn me around $600 or so in commissions when they pay out, and making $600 in a single day of work is nothing to sneeze at. This entire weekend was insanely busy, and today was nuts as well, and tomorrow I have another full day, because our present for Labor Day this year was that everyone on the staff gets to work another six hours longer than usual, and remember this is a job that is already 45+ hours every single week.
There are those who have it much worse, of course. I’m aware of that. But this, I think, will be the last time that I allow this to happen to me. I’ve given enough hours of my life, enough weekends, to this job. And this is about to be the second night in a row where I’ve gotten home from work at can’t-see at night and been in bed within half an hour.
Enough. Time to find something else.
So this week is just gonna be thin, content-wise, and that’s really all there is to it. I could probably go to bed right now and be asleep in seconds. The new job isn’t exactly strenuous, but right now the training is focusing more on “learn policies and procedures” and not so much “interact with people,” and as a result oh my god am I bored. I’ll like the work, I’m convinced of that, but I’d like to start doing it, and I’m not even halfway through the training yet.
So. Yeah. Normally at this point is where I’d post a music video, but I feel like something different today, so instead have a Steve Harvey clip.
I need someone to come stare at my phone and check my email every six minutes so that I can have some lunch and relax a little bit. Anybody not have anything important to do right now?
Putting this in a separate post instead of as an addendum because more people will notice it that way: I don’t have an email address for anyone at the place I interviewed at this morning, because the guy I interviewed with contacted me by phone yesterday and there isn’t contact information for individuals (just an email form that isn’t geared to personal messages) on their website.
OK to call the receptionist and ask for that information so I can send the post-interview thank-you note? Or is the PITYN overrated anyway and not worth worrying about?
And, like, if I call and the boss answers the phone, because I get the feeling he does that from time to time, do I just, like, die of shame on the spot, or hang up the phone and run away and change my name and move to Nepal, or…?
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