Updates from the Working Jane world

So, it has occurred to me that I haven’t really regaled you with any tales from life at the greenhouse.

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What can I say.  It’s a joe job, and remarkably devoid of any interesting happenings.  The most fascinating thing I can say, and believe me, there is a significant amount of tongue-in-cheek when I say fascinating, is that we sell a variety of marigolds named “Janie.”

The weather is still somewhat dodgy up here, so there has been several days I’ve stood around picking dead blooms off flowers in pouring rain, 30 mile an hour winds and 50 degree temps.  I suppose it might seem odd, but people still shop a mostly out door greenhouse in thunderstorms.  Besides from that, I really can’t complain about the customers, as they just want to talk about plants.  Well, mostly they want to talk about plants.  There was that one guy the other night who if he wasn’t old enough to be my grandfather I’d have sworn he was hitting on me.  Then again, he still might have been.  But I digress.

The job isn’t bad, and my coworkers are all remarkably fun to chat with in the down time.  We have all remarked how refreshing it is to not have those personality conflicts that so generally happen in workplaces.  And the manager knows a lot about plants.  Can you sense the but coming?

But, when I call her manager, it’s in title only.  She is a very nice person, who I like, but she has absolutely no skills for managing people unless you consider avoidance a management technique.

It’s just a minimum wage job, and I do need the dough, so I’ve tried to pretend like this little problem doesn’t matter.  I’ve been able to ignore not being trained on anything except how to water plants.  I can ignore being left alone to work the last 3 hours and close by myself.  I can even ignore seeing her miscount a stack of one dollar bills and her ignoring me when I mention that the singles have been counted wrong and the drawer won’t balance then heroically biting my tongue when she tries to blame the problem on some one buying pennies and not paying for them, despite the fact that a roll of pennies is only fifty cents and we’re off a dollar.  However, I started getting a bit put out when she was calling me in early for shifts and asking me to work my days off because she hired people knowing they were waiting to hear back on other job leads, and after just the first week they quit.  Not one person, but two did this.  But, I finally threw down when she began adding me to cover other people’s shifts without so much as a “Oh, Janie, I needed someone else tomorrow because Sue quit.  You can cover it can’t you?”

The first time she added me without saying anything I happened to notice several days before.  I mentioned to her that I noticed I was added to the schedule and said that I could work but I would appreciate her asking first.

The second time happened Monday.  I noticed when I sat down to steal a break at around 5pm that the schedule had me written on for Wednesday.  She hadn’t bothered to communicate this to me so if I hadn’t just happened to glance at the schedule while on break I would never have known she expected me to show up on my day off.  Apparently someone else quit so she just added me on earlier that day.  Well, I was pretty pissed that she’d done it to me again after I specifically told her to tell me if she was changing my schedule.  If I agreed to work the shift then I would end up working 9 days in a row with out a day off, and on top of fighting of the last bit of this cold, I needed that day off.  So I called her up and we had a throw down.  I tried to be polite, but she just wasn’t getting why I would be mad.  She said, “Well, you never told me you couldn’t work that day.  You should have written on the schedule “No Janie” so I’d know I couldn’t add you on.”

So, you never would bother to consider a person might have made plans on a day they weren’t scheduled on?  So you’d never bother to think a person might not want to work 9 days in a row?

??

So apparently in her world staff need to go through and write down all the days they can’t work or she’ll assume she’s free to make use of you even at the last minute and without telling us she put us on.

Well, that just doesn’t fly with me.  Nor apparently with other employees, so we all demanded a fixed schedule.

Then yesterday I noticed she had done it to me again without asking.

Once, twice, three strikes, you’re out

And so, that’s hopefully the end of that.

It’s getting harder to find the silver lining in a head cold

So last week I spent all my time off from work nursing a horrible head cold.  I tried to make the best of it by enjoying some reading.  And, by Sunday I was feeling almost as good as new.

Last night however, I woke up in the small hours with another bad sore throat and a head full of congestion.  Just in time for my day off.

I’m beginning to think I’m never going to get a chance to enjoy myself this summer.  I remind myself that it’s not even June yet, but with all that’s been going on this month, good and bad, May just feels like a very, very long month.

So, hopefully I’ll be feeling better again soon, and stay better and then I can begin to have a life again.  For now, please excuse me, I have to blow and alien out of my nose.

And that takes a lot of nerve

True story.

A little over a year ago I purchased a subscription to Disney’s Family Fun Magazine for, well family fun enjoyment.  It was cheap, only $10 for a year (10 or 12 issues) so I figured, what the heck.  There were a lot of crafts and recipes and suggestions for activities I simply just don’t have time or emotional or financial resources for.  So, the magazine became a source of paper dolls for the spud.  Which was still okay, it got enjoyed in some form.  However, when the year ran out, I decided, as the spud gets three other magazines and myself two, we didn’t need another magazine destined to be cut up into paper dolls and let the subscription lapse.

Now, periodically they send me a bill for renewing my subscription.  Generally I just throw it away.  However, yesterday another notice came in the mail and I got to thinking that it seemed as though that subscription should have ended several months ago and yet here I was still getting re-subscription invoices.  Why on Earth were they still pestering me?   Something made me open the one I got yesterday, and, well, let me tell you, even if I was interested in making hot dog race cars and sock puppets and pipe cleaner- whoops! I mean chenille stem- crafts until the second Tuesday of next week when the cows come home, this letter would definitely make me change my mind about renewing a lapsed subscription:

YOUR FINAL OPPORTUNITY TO SETTLE THIS MATTER BY SENDING PAYMENT!

FINAL NOTICE

YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN PLACED IN THE FAMILY FUN MAGAZINE’S BAD DEBT FILE.  WE HAVE SENT YOU 6 OTHER INVOICES WHICH YOU NEVER PAID.

IF OUR LETTERS CROSSED IN THE MAIL, PLEASE FORGIVE US.  UPON PROCESSING YOUR INFORMATION YOUR SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED.

WE ARE RELUCTANT TO CONSIDER MORE SERIOUS COLLECTION MEASURES, BUT WE NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU NOW.  WE AGAIN ASK THAT YOU PAY THE ABOVE INVOICE WITHIN 10 DAYS.  YOU MAY ALSO CONTACT US AT:  PO BOX 37033, BOONE, IA 50037-0033.

100% absolutely just like shown.  Yeah, all in caps, too.  Infuriating.  Yeah, you betcha.  Calculated to be insulting.  I pretty much think so.

Perhaps if I wasn’t so busy I’d have made a connection before, but in the fury of indignation at such a letter, I realized it seemed like I’d seen the a relatively new issue in the spud’s room recently.  So I went on a hunt, and discovered despite never asking to renew my subscription they still appear to be sending issues, at least as of the March issue which arrived several weeks ago.  Generally when you have a magazine subscription they print the expiration date on the label, none going as far back as September 2011 had one.  What was going on here?  Which begs the question: what would possess a company to send at least 7 months of magazines to someone who’d neither asked for them nor was badgered into paying for something they didn’t order after 6 invoices?

But the audacity doesn’t end there, oh, no.  I’m totally astounded that they’d have the gall to put me in a “bad debt file” when I never asked to renew my subscription.  I imagine the reason why they are “reluctant to consider more serious collection measures” is because there is nothing to collect on seeing as I never asked to renew my subscription.  But of course, they seem to have overlooked the key reason that why after 6 invoices I haven’t paid is because I never asked to renew my subscription.  But seeing as they are still sending me issues I didn’t ask for (again I say WTF?!?) they probably think they have a right to ask me to “pay the above invoice within 10 days” hoping I’ll be a sucker and just agree to take on another year of a magazine I don’t want or be too stupid to realize I never asked to renew my subscription and think it’s all my mistake.

So, they “need to hear from [me] now,” eh?  Don’t worry Family Fun Magazine.  Oh, you’ll hear from me.  And, when I’m done contacting you, you’ll have heard more than enough from me.  In fact, every one I know will hear just how much you need to hear from me now.

As our letters never crossed in the mail, and will never cross in the mail in the future, there’s no danger that I’ll ever forgive you.  You can just take your lame little magazine and shove it up your mouse hole.

Some people just have a lot of nerve.

Some days I really wish I was born a computer nerd

Living in the Great White North has its disadvantages.

I mean besides the ones that involve three feet of snow and minus 40 temps.

Seriously, they exist.

The disadvantage du jour is my crappy frickin internet provider options.  Both companies servicing my area have rates which make trading my first born sound like a bargain.  And, after being taken to the financial cleaners month after month, I get the pleasure of having no service reliability.  Seriously.  None.

Well, at least every thing was working pretty well until around the start of the year.  Now despite multiple calls to the bastards masquerading as an ISP, buying new modems and cords and whatever they suggest, I still have no consistent internet.  Hence, I had to pack up my crap and hoof in to school early today to do my studying.  You can see how much I’m getting accomplished.

In all the free time I have to call and complain and request service calls they weasel out of providing I now have to worry about all my online classwork being delayed or obliterated when my connection just decides to go on an early spring break.

It makes those computer nerds with the insanely complex looking computer tech labs in their basements look like excellent marriage material.  I’d love to have my own server and the ability to surf the internet at light speed.  I would almost sell my virtue, if I had some left, for an in house Moss or Roy of my very own.

Instead, here I am sitting in a stairway at Stickittoyou U wondering why at in excess of $400 a credit hour they can’t provide sufficient quiet study areas and outlets for laptop adaptors.

Well,  don’t that beat all.  I rush to campus to dutifully do my homework and can neither find a quiet place to study nor a place to plug in my failing battery operated laptop.  I suppose I should have made my way to the nearest Carribou Coffee instead.  At least they understand the needs of wireless laptop users.  Funny how I never thought a $4 coffee would be so reasonable.

A question that begs needs an answer

I woke up happy on Saturday, and then something happened that ruined my good mood.  The effect of which led me into much introspection aided and abetted by a question which was probably innocently and jokingly asked.  I have been on the fence ever since about whether or not I should write about it, but this morning something else happened that helped me make up my mind.

So with that cryptic prologue I’m going to write a therapy post.

Saturday I was all excited to have some fun time with my peeps.  First, however, I had to do an assignment for my astronomy class.  Because it’s online, most of my “work” and “class time” is in the form of using this educational software.  Perhaps by week 15 I’ll fully understand the ins and outs of the software, but so far, it’s been completely unpredictable.  A “section” may be worth one point, but consist of a 45-60 minute interactive presentation, with 20 or more questions spread through out.  Or, it could be worth 3 points and contain 2 questions.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason and no warning what you’re in for when you start the assignment.  Saturday’s assignment consisted of 13 sections and took me over 4 hours to complete.  Not realizing that’s what I was going to be up against, I slept in, had a nice brunch with the fam, then at about 12:30 started working with the idea that I probably would be done by 2 ish.  Hahahaha!

Not only was the assignment time consuming in the extreme, but I was having a devil of a time figuring out how to get some of the interactive stuff to work properly and having some technical problems no doubt a result of user ignorance.  I nearly cried at several points.  What was most frustrating was a lot of the time I knew the correct answers, but I couldn’t figure out how to use the program so my results were not showing as accurate.  Then there was the stuff I flat out didn’t understand.

So, Janie had a couple or ten temper tantrums, mini nervous breakdowns and was utterly miserable.  Leif brought in chai and took the spud to the basement to watch tv all afternoon.  The work got done, and miraculously with a respectable grade but…

There’s always a but, isn’t there?

I couldn’t help but hear Tilly Bud in the back of my head the whole time saying, “Cough, cough…I have to ask…is a degree really what you want to be doing? “

And I just wanted to bawl and sob, “Nooooooooo!  It’s NOT what I want to be doing!  I’d rather be doing almost anything else, but that’s not really true, what I really want I can’t have, and important people are relying on me!  So, I have to do the right thing even if it sucks, because in the long run it’s the best chance for happiness tomorrow.”

If I were my own armchair shrink, I’d say, “So Janie, what do you want?”

All I’ve ever wanted was a modest middle class home, with cool, shady trees in the yard, a neat little garden with flowers and some berries and vegetables.  I want to be June Cleaver or Carol Brady, and keep an immaculately spotless house so if Better Homes and Gardens drops by unannounced they could take pictures I’d be proud to have in an international magazine.  I actually enjoy clipping coupons, hunting down the best price on peanut butter, folding laundry so underwear is neatly stacked in perfectly square rows, towels fit in perfect stacks in the closet and sheets and pillowcases are in bundles neater than new store packaging offers them.  I like to plan meals and monitor the levels of my house hold goods, I like the feel of pride and satisfaction in removing spots from the carpet, having the whitest whites and fabric napkins at every meal.  I love changing season decorations, having plump toss pillows with slipcovers to coordinate with the seasons, and craftily arranged centerpieces on the buffet.  Heck, I don’t even mind paying bills and staying on a budget as long as it doesn’t feel like I have to make two pennies a dime.

Perhaps I ask for too much.  But, for a brief period in time, I thought I had achieved my dream.  I had found a man who had three pieces of paper declaring him well educated and he bought me a house and promised to provide and take care of me and our child.  And, then a combination of fate, my own naivete  and the irresponsibility and carelessness of others took it from me.  I will never have it back, because I can’t rely on others to support me, and I am not independently wealthy.  Therefore, I must go out in the world and make myself suitable for the kind of employment that will pay in a manner to keep me living in a modest middle class way and pay off the remaining debt I am responsible for in the nuclear-esque fallout which ended my marriage.

I have never ever wanted to be a career or academic woman.  I don’t have the drive, the ambition or the curiosity for learning.  Nothing much matters to me outside my home.  Gone though are the days when a woman can rely on a man to support her.  And even if it weren’t so, I don’t think I could ever really trust a man to support me ever again.  I’ve been too deeply hurt by giving my faith only to have my dreams torn from me nearly as literally as having my heart ripped still beating from my chest.  But I also have too much pride to live off the government dole.  In fact, the fact that I have been since getting laid off of work over a year ago really chaffs my hide.  I absolutely hate myself for it.  I also hate having to justify every action I take short of breathing to get the pittance they offer to help pay for school and travel expenses.  And, I hate the idea of what will become of me when they cut me off, because then I’ll be even more screwed. I feel stuck.  I don’t want to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans and beg the government for financial assistance.  So, what’s a Janie to do?  I don’t really care if I’m a grocery store bagger, but with those kinds of jobs I’ll barely make enough to cover rent, utilities and insurance.  Forget eating.  Forget having clothes that aren’t threadbare where they aren’t patched.  Accept the dreary prospect of working for a thankless employer until I die, because there will be no retirement for me, I won’t likely be ever at a financial state where I can save enough to retire on, missing out on my kid’s life because I’m always at work, working weird schedules and or overtime and never actually having the time to enjoy the one thing in life that, in my opinion, makes life worth living: a home of my own that I clean, I decorate, I can garden in, I relax in, I feel safe, secure and content in.  It won’t exist in this life.

I am precisely where I swore I’d never be.  A single working mother trying to eke out a living, relying on the help of my friend to get through life.  Without Leif’s love and financial assistance I would be up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle.  So once again I’m relying on a man.  What happens if he gets tired of pulling my cranky ass along through school?  What happens if I’m left alone?  I can’t support myself and my daughter with the skills I have now.

So again, we ask, what’s a Janie to do?  Seems logically the best answer is get a real education.  What do I have to look forward to out of this education?  A shit pot of school loan debt, several years of frustration and misery dealing with professors, and shoddy tenured work ethics, having to swallow educational drivel, irritating assignments, partners in group projects young enough to be my children who could care less about being there and how much their education is costing their parents; I’ll stop myself there.  You all get the point.  I don’t like the institutional system they call school.  But I need that freakin’ piece of paper that says I suffered through it because, maybe if I have one I can change the bleak prospects and unpleasant outcome I would otherwise have to anticipate of my working future.  Maybe if I stick it out through school, maybe I might get a good enough job to not have to worry about money quite so much.  Just maybe I might some day get out of debt.  Maybe I could buy a house of my own.  Maybe even start saving for something resembling retirement.  I might never have the June Cleaver or the Carol Brady life, but at least I won’t have to rely on someone else or the government to support me.  I’ll have some respect back.  I’ll have accomplished something I can at least be proud of and hold my head up high with dignity feeling like I wasn’t a total waste of oxygen.

I love Leif, he’s a tremendous source of help and comfort and I’m glad he’s here to help me, and hope he always will.  But I don’t want to have to rely on him.  I want to be able to stand tall on my own two feet.  Logic and past precedent tells me in order to do that in today’s world I need at least a bachelor’s degree.  Do I really want to do this?  No.  Do I really need to do this?  Yes, if I want to have some chance of  financial security in this crazy world of general insecurity I’m pretty sure I do.  I’m not confused or conflicted about that.  But there’s no mistake, this is not being done for a love of learning or education.  Still, if possible I’d like to try to find some enjoyment in it so it’s not totally loathsome.  That’s why I’m taking steps toward switching majors. Hopefully also, in the end I’ll be proud of myself and what I’ve accomplished.

There are a few traits I like to flatter myself that I’m not lacking: determination, responsibility, pride, duty, honor, strength.  If I’m going to do this, I damn well want to do it right.  Of course, I’m going to make mistakes, but I’m going to do it right by committing myself fully and doing the very best work I feel I can.  I may have messed up my life, I may be sitting on the government dole right now, but I’m going to make things better if it kills me.

So, Saturday kinda sucked, and I’m still feeling pretty depressed and disgusted.  And, sometimes the weight of all that pain and misery is to much to bear alone, and too much to share just with Leif.  I sometimes feel so alone and so misunderstood.  I sure could use my own personal squad of Dallas Cheerleaders, only I’d prefer they all were men who looked like Chris Hemsworth in the movie Thor, or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.  I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about it, my feelings, not the cheer leading squad, but the blog wisdom and blog therapy seems to always know best, and in not being likely to acquire the dream cheer leading team I’m relying on the blogosphere.  I hope Tilly won’t mind being my catalyst to deep thoughts.  As for the events of this morning, in a bizarre sort of way I have another blog friend to thank for giving me the kick in the pants to sit down to my blog and actually type these feelings right off my chest.  I feel like my life has been preempted by an education I don’t really want.  I feel angry and frustrated and I want to cry.  I want to give up.  I want to simply bag groceries at the food store for the rest of my life.  I swear something has to give.  I sometimes think this can’t possibly be worth it, then I remember all the good things I have and how much better my life is today than it was 4 years ago, 3 years ago, and when you weigh the good and bad I’d rather be where I am today than where I was then.  Because even though life is hard, and school sucks, at least now I do know moments of happiness every day and there is more than hope that my dreams, albeit revised ones, may still come true by the power of my choices.   My astronomy professor may be a hideous lecturer and the assignments may be infuriating, but I will stick with it so I can say I survived, and I understand a little more about life, the universe and myself.

I can’t pretend to understand what exactly what The ‘Stones mean, but you gotta love the chorus:

“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you might find
You get what you need”

So perhaps I’ll stick with it a while longer and see how things play out, I just might find not what I thought I wanted, but what I really needed.  Oh, and Universe, if it does any good to place that order, you can deliver my cheer leading squad any time on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays.

SOPA/PIPA Compliance

I am going to beat this dead horse until it’s cat food quality pate.

I imagine it’s a dead horse, because the day I posted “SOPA sucks”  My stats took a huge dive.  Only three of you were brave enough to check me out.  I don’t blame you, my temper tantrums are ugly and saying I disagree with THE MAN probably gets me the wrong kind of attention from You-Know-Who.  But despite the chripy quality of Wednesday’s blog I’m tenaciously going to post about SOPA and PIPA again.

I needed to clean out my media files anyway, so in a moment of pique, I started tossing any photo I didn’t take myself, recklessly regardless of broken links in past posts and accidentally getting carried away and deleting a few things I didn’t have to.  Then, however, I got to my CowaBunger award and I went weak.  I can’t delete my beautiful corn cow.  But, I decided I could only partially plagiarize by reproducing the award using my impressive Photoshop* skills.  Hey, I paid in excess of $1500 to be taught how to use it, I might as well get some return on my investment.

So:  voila!

Without further ado I present the all new and improved Janie Jones and her partially SOPA compliant blog.

Or for those of you who already noticed my new header, the More Boring than Ever Janie’s Place in the Great White North where I will spend the next month being a general poopy butt about this whole SOPA thing.

*This should not be perceived as any kind of endorsement for Photoshop.  And, in case you were born in a vacuum, I was speaking tongue in cheek about my skills….