Life with and without employment.....

So I used to be semi-kidding when I said this, but now I really think it is completely true. I've realized that perhaps the point of my existence, at least when it comes to work, is to be the person who makes everyone else feel better about the jobs and careers they have. "Well this sucks, but at least it beats the crap out of what the Shababbler has going on!" Ho hum. I'm serious. It's gotten to the point where I even feel stupid telling people about things I am applying for because we all know NOTHING WILL EVER HAPPEN!!!!

Some of my friends have even told me over the years that they really thought things would have eventually fallen into place for me and that they were surprised so long had gone by with nothing coming up. I've recently had a couple people tell me that perhaps it is time to essentially give up on what I have been trying to pursue for so long. Maybe so =-(. But then it makes me wonder why in the hell I wasted all that time and money to rack up a couple of degrees that I owe out the wazoo for now. What was the point? They really do brain wash you in high school and make it seem like life is going to be so much better if you go to college. They show you those charts with how much more you can expect to make over the course of your life compared to people without degrees. But they never emphasize the point that this is just what happens for some people and it may never happen for you. And they don't have a side bar stating "Psssssst....Shababbler.....pssssssst....not only will you not ever get a "real" job, but you are also going to owe more money than you ever imagined possible for going to school and you will have to base all of your work decisions for the rest of your life on whether or not each job will allow you to pay off your student loans =-). Have a great day!"

So let me tell ya'll about my latest interview experience. I got called in and met with 2 people, followed by three more people for the 1st interview. It seemed to go pretty well, so I was excited to get a 2nd interview, scheduled with just one person....the Head Honcho. I got the vibe that Mr. Head Honcho wasn't really seeing me as the best option, but he was nice enough. Earlier today - one week after the interview with Mr. Head Honcho - I get a call from the human resources office asking me to call back. I was surprised, but excited because even though I didn't think I had landed the job, maybe I did, or maybe they were calling to schedule me for an interview for another position I had applied for. The message asked me to call back. I ran and grabbed my calendar so I could know what my availability was for any given day.

Any guesses as to what Ms. HR had to say? "Hello Shababbler =-). You interviewed for a position with us last week and that position was offered to another candidate who accepted it, but I just wanted to let you know that if you choose to apply for anything else we keep your application on file for 12 months, so all you need to do is call us up or e-mail =-)." She was super pleasant. Don't you just love it when they have a smile in their voice as they call you to say "As you know - you suck and we didn't want you, but if you choose to submit your pathetic hiney for a position with us in the future you can just save a tree." Lordy did that do wonders for my self-esteem.

However, I am not completely jobless. I have recently secured my "secondary" job. I was at a party on Friday and talking to some people I had just met, and at some point it came up I had just started something, I said it was my secondary job.

Random Person: "Oh, so what's your primary job?"

ME: "I don't have one yet."

Random Person (with confused look on face): "So you have a secondary job but not a
primary one?"

ME: "Ya."

Random Person: "Oh. Okay."

Aaaaaaah yes.....nothing like strangers realizing you are a loser to make you feel like you are having a stellar day =-).

So I figure I'll talk some about this secondary job since I don't think any of those people will ever get to know me well enough to ever be given a link or even my e-mail. I had wanted to do waitressing type stuff in the past as a secondary thing (never as a primary), just because my former job was so nomadic and lonely. However, I'm low on the experience in this field, so I went to a place that's open tons of hours and isn't exactly a high-faluting place ;-p. I already know I will have to quit in about 4 months because they make everyone work on certain days that I already know I won't be available for. Quitting is probably going to be very easy to do. Very easy. I'm not a waitress yet because I have to train, for now I am a hostess. It's really interesting seeing what a crappy job some of the other employees do and how they expect you to do things that are what they should be doing. If I was a mystery diner some of those kids would be screwed, but instead I am simply a lowly employee.

So I find myself frequently wondering what in the heck I'm doing (at the new secondary job too, but I meant life in general ;-p). I don't know if a "real" job is in my cards or if I somehow offended my job gods back in the day =-(. And I don't know if I made the right choice moving up here, even though I don't think it would have been the right choice to stay where I was either. And I think it sucks that the going joke about people with majors within the liberal arts having one question they usually have to ask in their jobs after college...."Would you like fry's with that?" And I'll probably be asking that soon =-(.

DON'T USE TRAVELOCITY!!!!!!

In this day and age, most of us book our airline tickets via the web. I've done so on pretty much every occasion that I've flown in the last few years. If you're looking to do something more elaborate maybe you talk to a travel agent, but usually if it's just a flight you book either with the carrier directly or through one of the travel websites.

As you can probably guess from the title of this, my last flight was booked through travelocity. After I booked my ticket (my first through them), it wouldn't register under the "my flights" information. I had to call to have a confirmation e-mail sent. This was purchased a couple months ago and the flight was completed last month - so this is a while back. However, in the course of my move one of my bank statements was either misplaced or it never joined me for the trip, so I hadn't gone back to balance my checkbook yet. As I did that online today I noticed that in addition to the $184.40 charged for my flight there was a separate charge by Travelocity of $5. I know most of you would think $5 was no big deal, but to me it is....especially when I didn't realize the charge was coming.

So I call up today and the guy informs me that it is a booking charge. I talk to him for a bit to clarify that it didn't come from having to speak with someone on the phone, and he told me that all tickets are subject to such a charge. When I argued with him that it didn't show me that charge on my final transaction with Travelocity he told me that it states on the web there is a charge for the booking fee. "So you charge us a booking fee even though we do all the work to book the ticket?" "Yes." He seemed content with his answer and was ready to let me go and I told him that if I didn't settle this with him on the phone right then and there I would be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. He immediately told me he would credit the charge back and had me give him my credit card information. Supposedly it is supposed to credit back within one week, and believe me....I'll be checking =-(!

SO I went back to Travelocity after talking to him to find where the small print was. Mind you, I know I pay more attention to the small print compared to some people I know - so I was wondering where this was. I found it at the link that says "Total for e-ticket includes taxes and fees." That wording alone implies that all fees are included. If you click on the taxes and fees link, it goes over the standard stuff....if you scroll waaaaaaaaaaaaay down, it talks about the other stuff they can charge. I guaranty you that most people never see that because the wording on the link makes you think it is just a breakdown. Additionally, when you buy your ticket and print out your confirmation you are given no indication that there will be any further fees.

Watch out Travelocity!! You messed with the wrong Shababbler!!! I want my five dollars (picture me saying this as I ride a bike chasing after Travelocity over the course of a movie (inflation for those who get the reference))! Why would I use them when some of the other sites like that don't have this charge, or when I can go directly through the airline. Rat bastards =-(.

And then there were Darts....

On Wednesday it was the birthday of a friend, so I grabbed another pal and we ventured off to the bar to meet up for mellow, but cool birthday grooviness =-). Lucky for all the ladies that his birthday fell on a Wednesday because it happened to be "Ladie's Night" which meant $1.50 well drinks!!! YAY!!!!

This is a pretty cool bar with some of the standard entertainment features.....pool......foosball.....darts. I wanted to play darts so me and the non-birthday-boy friend checked out the darts from the bar and wandered up to the dart board. It's a fairly large dart board that is mounted on a wicker rug type thing. I get in position and I throw my first dart. I WAS concentrating, but you'd never be able to convince the girl at the next table that. My dart did fly happily and eagerly toward the board - ready to make an indelible mark that illustrated my skill and finesse. However, somewhere along the way my dart became a little disoriented and managed to hit the board dart-butt first =-(. Okay - it happens, and when it does it usually flops down to the ground (I should know!). INSTEAD, my wayward dart decided to leap about 4-5 feet to the right and spear itself into the wall above the nearby table, about 8 inches from a very unhappy girl's face =-0. She REALLY didn't look happy about the whole thing. As a matter of fact she looked quite pissed.

I apologized and she just continued to look pissed. Come on now!!!!! It's not like I was TRYING to hit her!!!! It's not like I DID hit her!!!!! As a matter of fact I missed by about a full 8 inches!!!!!!!! She was just glaring and stewing and my apologies were falling on deaf ears. Sure she had a right to be shocked or surprised or worried....but I just don't see where she got off being pissed!!!! Maybe I should have aimed for her because then I might have actually hit the board!

So we realized darts weren't a good idea while anyone was sitting at that table, and instead decided to play foosball. Little did I know I was playing against someone who had actually entered foosball competitions in the past (geez!), so my butt got whipped pretty quickly.

Eventually grumpy girl and pals left the table that was too close to the dart board and I finally got to play =-). One of the things I learned is that if you throw all three at once, sometimes you can actually get into the red of the bullseye - WOOHOO!!!! Thankfully, the night ended without anyone being speared =-).

What a shocker - the Post Office Still Sucks!

Today I ventured into the "unhappy place" to send a package to my grandparents. Keep in mind, I'm quite used to sending packages and do it more often than most Ordinary Joe-Schmoe's. After I enter the line, just as lots of people start to join it, of course one of the two cashiers decides this is when she has to leave. Typical.

The women in front of me hands the man a bunch of envelopes from a former addressee that she doesn't know. He informs her that she needs to write "no longer lives here" on each envelope in the future. Then he proceeds to do it there before he processes the rest of her transaction. You'd think they had a stamp.

This post office is also the only post office I've ever been to who won't take your letters at the counter - even if you're conducting other transactions there. I once saw one of the employees make a fragile older gentlemen with a cane take his envelope back to the lobby drop box. I can't believe they don't take envelopes at the counter!

So I get up front and hand him my package and ask if it is eligible for "Delivery Confirmation" - which is something you pay extra for just to confirm that they will actually be doing the job you are paying them to do to begin with. He eyeballs it and tells me no because it's not 3/4 inch. Grrrr. I ask him if he's just going to make that decision solely by looking at it and he pretty much says yes. I have a feeling it might have been close.

So I was mostly mailing envelopes and pictures within my package, and one thing was a ziplock baggy, folded in half with a couple things in it. This provided a bit of a bump to the manila envelope (the "zipper" of the ziplock), but nothing to write home about. So he feels my package and told me that first he is going to strongly recommend that I consider repackaging it in something firmer so that that hard point doesn't snag and all of my contents don't get lost. I tell him I'm just going to trust that the post office will actually do their job this time and will deliver my package safely. He tells me that it is my job to package the material properly. If you refer back to what he told the lady before me it would seem that he is big on telling others what their job is. Keep in mind I have seen people mail much more questionably wrapped items than this - the probability of any other post office from my past giving me grief about this package would, I imagine, be less than 2%!!!

So - he tells me my rate is going to be $1.50 (I'm almost positive that was the amount). But then he placed one stamp on it and left three more stamps on top of it for me to place. Every time I ever mail something like this at the post office they ALWAYS meter it. He told me I could put the stamps on myself (which came to $1.52 and not the $1.50 I would have paid for metering) and then drop it in the slot. I said I was paying for the postage here, why couldn't he just mail it at the counter because that's what always happens whenever I go to any other post office. He said that he is not going to put HIS meter on a package that I refuse to rewrap. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?!?!?!? Meanwhile my mind is filling with profane words that I am not saying, and I am truly baffled that he is allowed to make such a decision. The "difficulty" of my package would probably be akin to placing a pickle in a sandwich. Before the pickle the sandwich was smoother, but after the pickle it doesn't really mess it up at all.

So I ask him if there is a phone number I can call to complain about my service today and he gives me the card for the 1-800 #. I call it quite soon after from a payphone (because I do think they tamper with people's mail and I don't want to call from the home phone), and of course, they are already out for the evening - even though this is the national hotline. I'm very unpleased at the moment. I can't believe he could pull something like that, like it was his own little dictatorship!

"City of Destiny"

Yes, it's true. I live in "The City of Destiny" now. I didn't know this until I moved here and I was blessed with the knowledge by an unassuming postcard sitting on the rack. My roommate didn't even know and she's working towards her 3rd year here. But I found it encouraging that I had moved to "The City of Destiny" since it sounds so positive and since it was a bit of a leap of faith for me to come here to begin with. The Shababbler and "The City of Destiny" - it had to be a match made in heaven.

Well, as the weeks have been ticking away and I've notched up a couple of months, the job search is really starting to get me down. I'm going to admit right now that I am being picky, and that probably needs to stop....optimism isn't always a good thing, sometimes you need to admit defeat =-(. But I took my dejected self to The Dollar Tree (which isn't the one right near our house), and I strolled about in search of a few things. As I began to stroll I decided to look up "Destiny" in the dictionary that was staring back at me from the shelf. I knew what it meant, but figured I should clarify. And wouldn't you know it.....there were all sorts of encouraging words to greet me on the open pages as I skimmed about for my word of choice.....desolate, destroy, despair, devour (yes, even that word gets you down when you were in the mood I was in)....and finally - DESTINY. So I confirmed the thoughts that had started to enter my mind in the last few days....Destiny isn't necessarily a good thing. As a matter of fact, Destiny can totally suck, but we have a tendency to romantacize the word in our minds. Truth be told, Destiny can blow =-(. Here's how dictionary.com defines it:

des·ti·ny ( P ) (dst-n)n. pl. des·ti·nies

1. The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined; one's lot.

2. A predetermined course of events considered as something beyond human power or control: “Marriage and hanging go by destiny” (Robert Burton).

3. The power or agency thought to predetermine events: Destiny brought them together.


So you see? The word Destiny really isn't as dreamy and promising as most of us make it out to be. My Destiny could be to be homeless or employed as a poo-picker upper FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! My Destiny could be that I never pay off all of the student loans I built up because teachers in high school brainwashed me into thinking going to college was such a stellar idea. My Destiny could be to find the job of my dreams once I turned 98. You get the idea. So now the whole "City of Destiny" thing isn't nearly as inspiring =-(.