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.

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.

The world is a curious place, my friends, full of mayhem, malarkey and coincidence.

I definitely should not be blogging. For all the usual reasons these days, homework, homework and more homework. Oh, and I almost got killed three times this morning. Surely that’s a sign that I should skip homework, right?

Anyway, I had a new visitor to my blog today, (Yeay! Hi Tinkerbelle!) who apparently appreciates my stupid Halloween jokes. This factoid becomes important a bit later….

So I’m cruising along this morning to Spanish class. BTW, I finally figured out how to make accents and tildes in the proper places in text! Hurray me. So, now I can properly type, ¡Hola! Buenos días, ¿qué pasa? with all my upside-down punctuation and accents. After all we wouldn’t want to get my tu-s mixed up with my tú-s, crepe confused for crepé, or sábana with sabana. I mean, you wouldn’t eat tissue paper or see a lion in your bedsheets, now would you?

Hmn, where was I?

Ah, cruising along this morning on my way to Spanish class. I had to swerve quickly to avoid not one, not two, but three potentially nasty accidents where persons of dubious driving acumen pulled out in front of me. I happened to be moving along at 75mph in a red car on a four lane divided highway, and these imbeciles somehow overlooked me and pulled out, from a stop, directly into my lane and did not accelerate as if their life depended on it. Good gravy people, I have a wonky eye and I saw you coming from a mile away! I have a red car. It may be a P.O.S. but it’s still red! The first incident I watched thinking, “Surely this ‘tard is going to accelerate, surely. Jimminey Christmas, Captain Kidd, he’s not accelerating!” *Honk horn!* *Honk horn again* “Good gravy!” *SWERVE* *Tires squeal* “Breathe! Janie, breathe!”

By the time the 3rd incident transpired I was a hardened woman. Honk! HONK! HOOOOONNNNKKK! Swerve! “Get your ass outta my way dipsh*t! Where’d you people get your licenses? Cracker Jack boxes!” Obscene gesture.

Apparently, I missed getting the memo that today was almost-get-killed-on-your-way-to-Spanish-class day. I know because when I got home I checked my in box… Nope, no memo.

But as I drove home I was thinking of how I could use this for some blog fodder even though it’s kinda scary and perhaps not really funny at all and I really shouldn’t blog I should get started straight away on doing homework. But we all love stupid driver stories, right? As long as we don’t actually get into the accidents anyway. So, imagine my surprise when I decide to check out Tinkerbelle and see what’s going on in her blogdom first and find she posted about assessing one’s driving skills. Hmn. Curious and curiousier.

Coincidence? Yeah probably.

So, now I must banish myself again to the ol’ homework grind.

The College Grind (of back, hip and neck bones)

I have a truck load of homework to do. Yesterday I left the house at 8 am and didn’t return from school until 7:30 pm. I am crazy for doing all this. But even crazy people need to put food on the table, and as I am told college degree tends to weigh the job lottery a bit more in your favor, I shall persevere. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being homeless and hungry and crazy. Hence, I have a truck load of homework to do.

I have a 30 pound briefcase on a trolley that I tote to school with my laptop, books, folders, office supplies, and lunch. Purse and winter accessories are extra. Sometimes not every thing fits, so I have to strap on extra bags.
Then, for a certain fee, I have the right to park in a University lot with a walk of not more than a mile to the nearest campus building. Which, at 9:30 on a fine September morning sounds acceptable, even pleasant. However, don’t forget to factor in the 30 pounds+ of crap to be hauled along on one’s morning stroll from parking lot to building over potholes, curbs, speed bumps and dodging cars driven by maniacal teens and 20 somethings all late for class and desperate to find a parking space closer than really possible to their class.

Arriving to class exhausted and sweaty with a crick in my arthritic neck, my hips and knees afire, and my sciatica sending painful shocks shooting down my left buttock into my thigh to sit check to jowl with persons young enough to be your children does not make me feel youthful, alive or in touch with the world. It makes me cranky and depressed. Is this what the next generation really has to offer?

Oh, and let me just say, I’m not going to college to have a Kumbayah-discover-who-you-are moment. I’m in college to get a piece of paper that tells prospective employers that I can put up with a lot of liberal crap and not kill anyone so I’m a safe bet to work in their company. I’m paying an obscene amount of money for the privilege of proving my ability to overlook poor planning, gross stupidity and arrogance of the highest order, so please try and pull your heads out of your PhD asses for just a moment and not treat me like I’m 5. Okay?

I seriously have a professor, with a PhD even, who handed out a syllabus with an entire page single spaced about the importance of professionalism and proofing your work even to the point of using a ruler to measure that your margins are precisely what they are supposed to be, who then proceeded to post a power point presentation with not one, not two but no less than a half dozen typos where the wrong word was used. Um, spell check only works if you have actually miss spelled a word. You still have to read for content.

Not that we aren’t all human and capable of making mistakes. I just tend to take umbrage when I’m forced to call a woman my age Doctor, listen to her wax philosophical about how important it is to present yourself and your work in a professional manner, tell me to buy a ruler to measure my margins on my paper layouts, then tells me her 10 page power point presentation with 6 errors in it is required educational reading.

Otherwise, I think it will be a good semester, if I can survive the mountains of homework associated with 21 credit hours.

Now I must go take a Spanish test. Wish me luck.

To do list: 1. get ripped off by Stickittoyou University 2. go buy new 21 foot ladder so you can climb up to the bell tower and do something inappropriate in retribution

I probably shouldn’t tempt fate with a title like that on my blog. No, I’m not really going to do anything inappropriate in retribution, but I did buy a new ladder. It’s for hanging holiday icicle lights, really it is.

So today Leif and I drove into the Big City and did some errands.

Among our many trips I had to go by Stickittoyou University campus and beg for more money to pay my outrageous tuition bill. Apparently, even after state and federal grants I still needs muster in excess of $12,000 USD for the upcoming fall and spring semesters. This will not include books, miscellaneous fees, parking, or traveling to and from said university.

After this thrilling part of our day, I had to go upstairs to the bookstore. There was one more book I needed for classes which was not in stock yet when I went two weeks ago. Of course there were no used copies, and the full price of said book, being all of, I kid you not, half an inch thick with a flimsy laminated cover that wouldn’t hold up to a sneeze, was $75. Standing in the stacks grumbling Leif comes over.

Leif: Are you done?

Janie: I suppose. Can you believe this sad little pamphlet is going to put me back $75?

Leif: That! You’ve got to be kidding me.

Gentleman of maybe a few years older than ourselves standing near by: Which book is that?

Janie: *Holding up the offending title* Can you imagine? At least if I’m buying a book such as this *pick up a 10 pound hard cover tome of physics* I feel a little less taken advantage of, I mean, seriously at least you could kill someone with this book if you had to.

Gentleman omafyotosnb: There’s no used copies?

Janie: No, I think they switched to a new edition this year.

Gentleman omafyotosnb: *sighs* And there’s no need for that. I’m sure the information hasn’t changed. What really changes that much? *points to a mechanical engineering book* I’ve been having my classes use this same edition for about the last 10 or 12 years and I won’t stop until they stop printing it altogether. The science doesn’t change, so why gouge the students.

To bad I’m not taking mechanics. I’d really appreciate that professor. I hear though, I can rent the book for half price, and at the end of the semester they will keep my $35 bucks and they’ll graciously take my book back and rent it to someone else for $35 bucks. Heaven forbid, however, that it get wet or damaged in any way, because then I’d be responsible for paying the full $75 for the new book on top of the rental fee. Now, seriously, that’s just raping your students. Why not just charge the difference of the new book price and the rental fee? The bookstore isn’t loosing anything because it’s still getting the full price either way. Oh, whatever *thrusts palm forward* talk to the hand. I know. I know. Educational bureaucracy, publishing rights, profit margins yada, yada, yada.

Hrumph. You can bet I’ll be scouring the internet for a cheap copy of this book in hopes to avoid the obscenity of textbook fees.

When we felt quite thoroughly violated enough at the university we went on down the road a piece to the Menards. We like Menards. We save big money. Well, we would if we’d stop buying things like Sprecher cream soda, giant travel mugs shaped to fit into your vehicle cup holders, and 100′ hanks of utility rope every time we pop in for say, a 21′ multi-position ladder that we’ve been coveting ever since last winter when we borrowed the neighbor’s ladder which looked like it was a Civil War era antique to hang up my holiday icicle lights.

But it had a $20 rebate! Whoo-hoo. And if this one collapses on Leif, we have the right to sue because it’s rated to 300lbs. A very important detail, as my small ladder which was only rated to 200lbs collapsed on him last June. Not kidding, and yes, it was not a good thing at all. If that seems a bit of an understatement, well, it is.

So the moral of this story is, Janie would much rather spend her money on the fun things, or even the useful things of life, and not so much on a retarded textbook. Can you blame me?

This education better land me one kick ass job when I finally graduate.

You’ve got to be kidding me

It’s approximately 6:15 am.

Janie is slumbering away, no cares, no morning appointments to wake up early for.

The cell phone chimes.

Loudly.

A thousand different scenes of disaster requiring emergent attention flash through sleepy mind as Janie springs from bed and scrambles for phone.

It’s a text from the ex who’s got the spud.

“Spud at my place not day care. When will u pick her up?”

So, apparently this is urgent information that must be sent before 6:30 am. Seeing as there is no summer school for me right now, why in the world does this message need to be sent before 6:30 am?!? Now, normally I don’t even have my cell phone on, which makes this doubly dumb, as I might not even notice this message all day. No call to the home phone, which has a blinking light flash when I miss a call or have voice mail, no email which I check usually twice a day.

I can only assume that the ex was up for work, decided to call in sick instead, and wanted to just notify me then so he could drug himself and go to bed.

Sorry, am I sounding peevish? I should be sounding thoroughly vexed. Now my beauty sleep is disturbed and I am left to stew over the stupid reason for it.