Here’s my conundrum, however.  On every application there’s always a question that asks, in some form or another, whether or not I’ve ever been terminated from a job.  It’s a fair question, but I’m having a crisis on whether to answer it honestly or not.  Yes, I have been terminated from a previous job, but I don’t believe that should disqualify me automatically from the one I’m applying for.  I believe that it may doing just that though.

I have been answering “yes”, of course, because I believe honesty is always the best policy, but I can’t help but wonder if this is what’s been keeping me from getting the jobs for which I’m applying.  Should I tell them “no” on the application, and hope that it never comes up again?  Or should I continue to be honest in the hopes that it really shouldn’t matter that much?  Are employers really judging me for this, or am I just being paranoid?  They are more than welcome to ask me about it in the interview process, and I’ll be completely honest, but so far I haven’t managed to get to that point.  I’m really getting frustrated.

I do think being honest is the right way to go.  I just don’t want it to bite me in the ass.

They say money doesn’t buy happiness.  They also say that money doesn’t solve problems.  I’d like to test these theories.  Give me a bunch of money, and I’ll spend it and let you know if I’m happy and no longer have as many problems.  I’ll be your experiment.

Maybe money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can sure buy things that make me happy.  At least for a while.  When I get tired of one happy thing, and it no longer amuses me, I’ll simply buy another and be happy all over again.  Give me enough money, and I’m sure I can buy a certain amount of happiness that will last me a good long time.  I have no problem being a guinea pig in the testing of these theories.  Give me big wads of cash and let me loose.  I’ll get back to you with the results (eventually).

For the second day in a row, I’ve been rained out of work.  It’s not supposed to rain here in the desert, but someone forgot to tell somebody, because it’s been raining for the better part of a week now.  Even my boss, who has lived here his entire life, says he’s never seen weather like this in Utah ever before.  It’s some kind of fluke weather system that won’t go away.  Because my job depends on it NOT raining, I’ve essentially been out of work now this entire week.  This is not a good thing.

I hope Utah is enjoying this nice rainy season.  It’s not that we couldn’t always use more water, it’s just that it has come at a most inconvenient time.  In the meantime, anyone know where I can get some money?

I am wishing it paid a little better though.  Definitely not gonna get rich doing this, but hopefully it can pay some of the bills.  I’m still not giving up on my writing or photography, and my hope is that I can make some money from those endeavors and top off the old checking account every month.  My little stint at being self employed was seriously derailed by two factors:  One, I apparently suck at marketing myself, and two, the United States economy sucks at everything.  I’m still in better shape than most people though, as I have absolutely no debt.  I’ve also still got a good amount in savings, although it was getting perilous there at the last.  Actually, I’m still not out of the woods yet, because my new job pays about half of what I used to make, so my belt must continue to be ever tight. 

Where did everything go so wrong?  Why are so many people out of work, and why is it so hard to find work these days?  I just don’t understand the brain-dead attitude that got us into this mess.  I sure wish someone would fix it.  This whole “recession/depression” thing is getting seriously old.

It’s really frustrating, and I can’t understand it.  I know the economy is bad, but it must be REALLY bad when places like Target aren’t even hiring.  To add even further curiosity to the mix, even UPS isn’t hiring.  UPS!  How can UPS not be hiring?  It makes no sense.

I’m still cautiously optimistic though.  I do have to admit, however, that there was no way I expected getting a job to be anywhere near this hard.  I have more than two decades of work experience, and fourteen years of that in management and supervisory positions!  When Radio Shack sends me an e-mail saying that I don’t meet their qualifications, I just have to laugh at the absurdity!  I could probably build a Radio Shack out of the spare parts in my closet, and then manage it with utmost efficiency and profitability.  Why do they bother to post job listings when they simply turn away qualified candidates?  Absurd.

Sorry if I seem like a schmuck.  I’m not trying to come across as some kind of braggart.  I’m not at all.  I lack a lot of formal education, because of poor choices in my youth, so I have to draw attention to the skills and experience that I have.  I am damn good at assessing situations and motivating people to do good work.  I’ve had way too much success to say otherwise, and I don’t think that’s bragging at all.  I have tons of computer and technical knowledge, and I’m good under pressure and in complex situations.  I’m not perfect, but then again no one is.  I can still bring a lot of experience and ability to any job, if they’d only give me a chance.

I’m pushing forward.  Just today I’ve applied for two jobs so far, and I have several job sites bookmarked, which I check frequently for updates.  It’s almost becoming an obsession.  You know you’re in trouble when every time you get in the car to drive somewhere, you constantly scan storefronts and shopping areas for “help wanted” signs.  I’m not destitute by any means, but I’m annoyed.  I want to get a job and be done with this worry. 

How did we ever come to this?  Isn’t this the land of opportunity?  What opportunity is there when someone with more than a decade of retail management experience can’t get hired at Radio Shack?  How did our country turn into such a mess?  I just don’t get this.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately in a financial sense) it didn’t work out that way.  As you all know by now, the Big Yellow Tag decided to terminate my employment back in January over the matter of roughly $4 worth of broken DVD casing.  To add a little salt to the wound, they also challenged my Unemployment Insurance claim so that the state could deny me any sort of income after the fact.  I’m not bitter though.  In fact, I still have no regrets about it to this day, although I won’t shop there anymore.

Ten years is forever in retail terms.  In my position, which was management, the average term of employment is probably something like four or five years.  Really good managers tend to get recruited away to better-paying places, or they grow to hate policies that hold them back and leave for greener pastures, and sub-par managers tend to get weeded out.  It’s the average ones that tend to linger, and they still probably only stick around for seven or eight years.  The fact that I made it almost ten years is quite exceptional, and those that go on past ten are almost unheard of.  Retail is a harsh career, and it will swallow your soul after too long.  I’m glad I got out, regardless of how it happened.

I’ll look back with a few fond memories, and a few bitter ones.  In the end, it was a good experience overall.  I made lots of friends and got to travel the country.  It’s too bad it had to end the way that it did.

I’m still plugging along though.  I’m not in dire straights or anything, but money is tighter than I’m used to.  This is likely the reason for my lapse in judgement and common sense in filing for unemployment insurance.

You know those little terriers that perform in fairs and sideshows?  Little circus dogs that jump through hoops like little yapping fools for the entertainment of others?  That’s exactly what filing for unemployment is like.  It’s a humiliating experience so chock-full of red tape and bureaucracy that it makes your head spin like Linda Blair at a baptism.  You’d think that in this day and age, filling out some government forms would be as simple as logging onto some dot-gov  web site and typing in some info.  Well, they make you think it’s that simple, but not long after typing the equivalent text of War and Peace into Utah’s wonderful web site, professing secrets and useless information about myself to government employees, the response of the state is to send you more forms in the mail.  These forms contain the exact same questions that were answered online, only in convenient annoying manual form, destined to be lost somewhere in the back of a mail truck on their way to not being read by anybody.

Then there’s the tease.  According to some random formula, possibly involving horses stomping out numbers, Utah came up with the amount of $430 per week that I would receive, should I qualify of course, of unemployment insurance.  That’s a little exciting.  After all, that’s roughly ten dollars per hour.  I could sit around and collect unemployment whilst continuing my vegetative state.  Putting a damper on that idea though is the fact that you are required to send them proof of at least two job prospects every week, complete with contact names, dates, and outcome of the request.  So much for sitting around.

That’s not such a bad deal though.  The whole point is to get a job, and forcing you to look is a good thing.  I had no problem with it.

Then they sent me a debit card in the mail.  A shiny little card with a MasterCard logo on the front, promising untold riches at the expense of my former employer.  This card is the method of which the state pays the insurance, forcing you to use it whenever you want to pay for something.  I chuckled a little at the little pamphlet that came with the card, detailing the fact that a service charge would be incurred each time I used the card at an ATM.  Government programs are so wonderful!

This whole situation culminated in a phone call from a "helpful" asshole government employee who called to ask why the hell I don’t have a job.  His intent was to ascertain my eligibility for unemployment insurance, asking me the same type of stupid questions that I could swear I already answered in electronic as well as written form at least twice.  Government is nothing if not thorough.  Interestingly, he seemed to have copies of all of the statements from employees and the corporate office of my former employer at his disposal.  These are documents I had no access to myself.  I wasn’t allowed to see them or know their content, but the tool on the phone apparently did.  He even read bits of them to me in a mocking tone, asking me to explain my actions and defend my position on why I got fired.  I told him I’d never seen those documents, and I countered his argument with my own story, which should have been plainly obvious by that point.  He didn’t buy it though.  He told me they’d "have a decision" by the end of the day.  I wasn’t too hopeful.

Yes, Best Buy challenged my claim, and I was denied unemployment insurance by the state of Utah.  No surprise to me at all.  Seems my firing was "justified" by my actions, and Best Buy was "justified" in canning me because I broke a DVD case after ten years of faithful service.  Government protects the big companies, and I don’t get to peck at the little crumbs of help they throw in the dirt.  Seems logical.

Ah well.  Back to the job search.  This whole experience was an exercise in frustration anyway, so I’m glad it’s over.  I wish I’d have know ahead of time though.  Live and learn.

I hate DI. When I say DI, I mean Deseret Industries. It’s the Mormon version of Goodwill, except without the standards. In the rest of the world, when you have some ungodly piece of furniture or a lamp or some old golf clubs or something, you simply take them to the nearest Goodwill. However, sometimes Goodwill will reject the item based on its appearance or some other criteria. No one wants a couch with a nasty stain where the cat vomited in 1978 still clearly visible. No one wants the very first ever VCR with the top-load cassette mechanism and three buttons missing. Goodwill will say “nope” and make you take it away. Not so with DI. No way. You can drag any old piece of shit in there and they will gladly accept it without a word. Without a word in English, I should say, because no one that works in the drop off area speaks it. Walking into a DI is like taking a trip back to 1960. Tweed sports jackets with patches on the elbows, ancient televisions with knobs broken off, three-legged chairs, a couch with that gawd-awful floral print that looks like some kind of disease, old crusty books with pages missing, a radio from 1953, chipped and dusty picture frames (with pictures of Jesus still in them), bicycle helmets with the blood stain still apparent (not kidding), and lamps from the Lincoln administration. The only thing for sale in the place that looks relatively new and unused is the exercise equipment. Everything else is pure, absolute, junk. Just junk. DI sells nothing but junk.

I found a job on Craigslist that I’m eminently qualified for. It’s a job doing Photoshop retouching… something I can do exquisitely. I don’t mean to brag, but Photoshop is my bitch. I use it on a daily basis in my personal life, and getting a job doing that would be heavenly. Here’s the problem though: My resume sucks. All of my work experience involves mostly retail. No mention of Graphic Design or artistic endeavors at all. I can put that under “Interests” or “skills”, but I have no proof of experience or education in this area. I need to get my portfolio going again, but right now it’s not up to par. What to do? Do I send my resume as is, hoping for the benefit of the doubt, or pass up on this one and hope for another opportunity in the near future? I don’t want to embarrass myself with my stupid resume. All I need is a chance to show them what I can do. Sit me down in front of a computer and let me Photoshop something. I hate that my resume doesn’t reflect anything about what I’m good at or what I want to be. I hate my resume. It’s a pitiful document full of ordinary achievements. A complete travesty.

Oh… looks like the rain stopped. Very good.