Personal

I’m afraid that I’m a day late in posting this (which can either be attributed to my making sure I could find my way out to Redmond for work yesterday, or to my being a bit of a goof and completely spacing it — either of which would be at least somewhat correct), but yesterday was my mom’s birthday.

Happy birthday! :D

That was fast! Speakeasy gets lots of gold stars for this one — a whopping one-week switchover time!

It’s not a long term deal at all, but I’ll at least have an assignment for the next couple days. Today’s called with a slight emergency today — a 2-day posting at Microsoft, working a swing shift from 2pm-10:30pm. I’ll have to bus out to Redmond and back, so I’ll be leaving a bit before 1pm and not getting back until a bit after midnight for the next two days, but hey, it’s employment and a little bit of money, even if it is short-term.

I was also informed that there had been some communication with Xerox regarding my dismissal, and the person from Xerox also said that they felt I got caught “between a rock and a hard place” — apparently almost echoing what I had told Today’s about the circumstances as I’d seen them. That was definitely nice to hear, and it does help insure that I stay in good with the team at Today’s.

That’s it for employment news at the moment. Aside from that, not a lot is going on. The weather was absolutely gorgeous all day today, so I spent a good portion of the morning wandering around downtown Seattle and enjoying the sun.

I did wish I’d had my camera along with me a few times. At one point I was walking up the Harbor Steps plaza from the waterfront to 1st, and walked into a small storm of rose petals — the wind was getting caught between the buildings and creating eddys and whirlpools, which were sweeping up all the rose petals from the trees in the plaza and swirling them through the air. Really, really pretty, but since I was cameraless, you’ll just have to settle for my less-than-lyrical description of it.

Guess ya just had to be there, huh? :)

Well, I got some good news today. Not a job yet, but at least a little extra funds coming my way. According to the kind folks at Todays, I’d just recently passed the 1,300 hours worked marked — which means I’m eligible for a full weeks worth of vacation pay. They told me that as soon as it gets approved in the system they’ll be able to cut me a check, so I’ll have another extra $400 to help me through this downtime.

I’ve also been talking with Melvin about helping out around the apartment building, as we’d discussed before I moved in. He’s in the midst of getting a fairly large amount of work ready to get started, and so it looks like I’ll be spending much of next weekend ripping up carpets, stripping old paint off of walls, and general odds and ends — to the tune of about another $300-$400, depending on how long things take. Not a bad deal…I’ve certainly got nothing against manual labor when necessary, and especially given my current situation.

Besides — I could use the excercise. Build up those muscles.

Get all buff.

Okay. How’s this for an ‘April Fools’ day post — I got fired.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a joke.

The best way to make this all as clear as possible is to back up a few months to set the scene.

(Just in case you’ve stumbled across this blog and have no idea who I am, in brief, for the past 8 months or so I’ve been working in a fairly convoluted setup. Follow this one, if you can — I’m employed by Today’s Office Staffing (a temp staffing agency), who contracts me out to Xerox. Xerox, in turn, contracts me out to Arthur Andersen‘s Seattle office to run the XBS [Xerox Business Services] print shop at Andersen. So, I work for the Today’s, who contract me to Xerox, who place me at Andersen. Got it? Good. Now back to our story….)

A few months ago, I’d been having some problems with getting supplies from Xerox for my machines. One day we ended up losing a machine due to this — it had a problem, and without the right part to replace it, we were dead in the water. Normally this would be just an inconvenience (albeit a fairly major one), however when this happened, we were in the middle of a large print run. Not a good thing. I was able to track down the part we needed, and one of the Andersen people I work with volunteered to run over to the Xerox building on their lunch hour to pick up the part. She did, the part went in the machine, and we got the print run done. All’s good in the world, right?

Not nearly, unfortunately. After having to deal with frustration from my supervisors at Andersen while the mess was going on, the next day it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that Xerox was unhappy with the way I handled things as well. Apparently, they try extremely hard to present a ‘happy’ face to their clients, and in dealing with the situation, I’d made it known that I’d had problems in the Xerox channels. My Andersen supervisor indicated her displeasure with this to the Xerox representative, who then informed me that under no circumstances was I to involve any Andersen personnel with any problems I might be having with the Xerox side of things.

Okay, fine. I’ll go with that.

Back to current events. I’m doing my best to run the print shop while walking a tightrope between what the two companies want from me (Andersen wants me to do my job to the best of my abilities — no big surprise there — and so does Xerox, I just can’t let the either company know anything about what’s going on at the other). Then, over this past week, I run into a new and improved problem with supplies.

Up until about a month ago, ordering my supplies had been going fairly well. I typed up my order, faxed it over to the Xerox supply person, she faxed back a confirmation within the hour, and goodies would start showing up the next day, day after at the most. Then, about a month ago, that person went to a new position within Xerox, and things went very quickly downhill. Of the three orders I’ve put in since the new person took over, two were ‘misplaced’ until I called and harassed people, and one was just late — not actually ordered until the day after I faxed the order over. So things have been a bit nuts over the past month, as I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not getting paper like I’m supposed to — while trying to keep four floors of accountants from ripping my throat out when they can’t use the copiers with less than a month before the April 15th tax deadline. Not a fun situation.

So, last Wednesday, I put in a paper order for 35 cases. Thursday goes by, nothing. Friday goes by…nothing. Great. By this point, there was virtually no paper in the office — a few reams scattered among the floors, and one case in the print shop, but that was it. I still hadn’t been able to get ahold of a status on my order, and was at a loss of what to do (meanwhile, of course, trying to stick with Xerox’s demand not to involve Andersen. By the end of the day, I knew that there was no way anything was going to be showing up, so when one of the Andersen people asked me about paper for over the weekend, I let them know that they’d probably have to round some up on the other floors if they ran out.

Apparently this didn’t go over well at all, and this morning I was told by my supervisor at Andersen that after getting an e-mail complaining about this, she’d requested that Xerox find someone else to cover the print shop. After I explained my take on things she seemed to understand my position a bit more, but it certainly wasn’t going to change her decision — which, to be honest, I can understand. What I didn’t realize at the time, though, was how fast all this was going to happen (funny, Xerox can’t get me paper with less than 5 days turnaround, but they can get me out of there in a matter of hours). When I got hired, the prior Xerox staffer hung around for a couple weeks to give me a basic training on how Andersen likes things to be done, and my Andersen boss didn’t give me any indication that this was going to be an immediate thing. So, when I got a call about an hour and a half later from my contacts at Today’s (after spending that hour and a half on the phone trying to convince anyone at Xerox to get me any amount of paper they could), it was a bit surprising for them to tell me that I was to leave Andersen and come down to their office immediately. So, at 11am I left Andersen, went down to the temp agency, and was told that Xerox had made it clear that I was not to return, and that my assignment was over.

Yay.

On the bright side, I’m not actually fired. Since my employer is Today’s, while I’m not actively employed, I wasn’t fired either — my assignment ended — so if I need to go on unemployment, that can be done with very little hassle. Hopefully things won’t come to that, though. It’s also good that this all happened on the first day of the month — had this happend mid-month or towards the end, I’d be much more stressed about dealing with rent. I’m stressed now, but I also have a full month to examine my options and see what I can come up with.

So, that’s how things stand at the moment. Wish me luck…I need all I can get right now.

This weekend kicked much butt. Rick came over both Saturday and Sunday to lend a hand, Candice let us use her truck, and between the two of us, we managed to get me completely moved this weekend. The entire process went much faster than I’d anticipated — the majority of the stuff came over on Saturday, with just a couple trips on Sunday to move the computer stuff over. As it stands now, all that’s left at the Shoebox is some cleaning stuff and my iMac, so I can keep the webserver online until the end of the month.

The new apartment (i’m going to have to come up with a name for this one — any suggestions?) isn’t completely finished, but the important stuff is unpacked and up and running (bed, A/V equipment, ‘puters, etc.). My after-work project for the next week or so is going to be going through all the boxes and getting completely situated in here.

So…that’s it for now. I’m in the new apartment — yay! :D

I’ve updated the original ‘New e-mail addy‘ post to reflect this, but the e-mail addy I thought was going to work…won’t. So, my real new public e-mail address is djwudi@myrealbox.com. Sorry for the confusion….

Oh, and incidentally, if you for any reason need a new e-mail address, give the guys at MyRealBox a try. Looks to be a good deal.