Covid casualty

Well I guess I should begin at what feels like the beginning.  Prior to my last vacation, which is now going on two years ago (Christmas 2018), the change meter was sitting at a total of 2655.79, since then the total has more than doubled, with me collecting another 3129.98 since then, so if we add the numbers together, which I hear you need to do in order to get a total sum, the change meter now sits at 5785.77.  While it has been more than a minute since I have been on this page, I am back to at least report on a Covid casualty of sorts.

Since my last entry, many moons ago, a pandemic broke out.  Perhaps you heard about it, lots of people wearing masks or throwing temper tantrums for being asked to wear a mask.  Schools closed, businesses closed, there was a big write up on it in the news.  As for me, I have been biding my time through it, furloughed from my part time gig, picked up a couple of temporary full time gigs, brought back to the part time gig, they were all time wasters until my summer vacation, which of course would be a return trip to Vancouver.  Thankfully I had everything paid for prior to pandemic 2020.  Or so I thought.

I went looking at my bookings, both flight and hotel as I wanted to be in Vancouver for the Honda Celebration of Light, it is along the lines of a week long festival and on three of the nights there are fireworks displays out in English Bay.  The competitors come from three different nations and are judged with one nation being the overall winner, based on presentation, synchronization with the music etc., etc.

Anyway I double checked my flight with the festival dates, all good, then i checked my hotel booking and it was a couple of days later than day one of the festival.  Apparently i got the wrong date stuck in my head when it came to booking that piece of the puzzle, so i went and booked a second hotel room for the missing dates.  This was partially solved through the jobspotter app (now deceased) where I racked up enough Amazon gift card cash where I could purchase a hotels.com gift card to alleviate the cost of a second hotel.

That was until the hotel I originally booked was sold.  I wish I were making this stuff up but it is true.  The cool thing was the company that owned them owned a second hotel in downtown Vancouver and they were letting people rebook at the second location, which I took advantage of, so crisis averted there.

Then along comes the pandemic, at first it closed the US-Canada border until March 21st.  Little did I realize that living in a country being run by a full blown retard, 6 months later that closure would still be in place with nary an iota of leadership coming out of Washington DC.  State governors have been left to fend for themselves with varying degrees of success, in part because some places wanted to do nothing and others wanted to hurry up and return to the status quo of prepandemic days.  Meanwhile I am watching days disappear from the calendar, and things get worse here, not better.  It is now at the point where the rest of the world is telling Americans to basically “Fuck off!”.

Where that was readily apparent for me was in the flight booking.  Flights to and from starting changing on an almost weekly basis, departure times would change, then destinations would change.  My return flight was to be Vancouver to Toronto (at night, so I could get some shut eye on the plane), then Toronto to New York City and from there New York to Pittsburgh.  Then the changes started rolling in, I would go from Toronto to Atlanta to New York to Pittsburgh, then it was Vancouver to Seattle to Atlanta to New York to Pittsburgh to when the border closure was extended on Tuesday I would be on the ground in Seattle three hours after I was to board a plane in Atlanta.  Heck while I was in the air from Seattle to Atlanta I was also supposed to on a plane from New York to Pittsburgh.  Needless to say, that was still a work in progress.

I checked how things were going in my destination, they were racking up about 100 Covid cases a day, or what would pass as a typical day in Pennsylvania.  But as I was looking I saw the Honda Festival of Lights was one of the things that was cancelled.  Social distancing and all that jazz I am sure, but I still had the plane ticket (sort of)and hotel, I think I could amuse myself for a week if need be.

Then Tuesday rolled around.  I finished a book I started reading (it is on top of goodreads to the right) and I was just heading into a eye appointment ( which took about a month to get, thanks again Covid).  I sit down in the waiting room and crack open the phone to see what is going on in the world and that is when I see the border closure has been extended to Aug 21, well after my bookings.  Not that I blame Canada, if I could keep my people safe by denying entry from a nation of fucktards, I would do it too.  Every day it seems there is another video from someone who is throwing a tantrum like a 5 year old over being asked to wear a mask.  Literally like grow the fuck up or do us all a favor and get sick and die already.   I am cool with culling the gene pool of these obvious living defects.

Anyway before I get more ranty, I spent this morning cancelling my hotel reservation and my flight, so yeah, I guess I am still a little pissy about it all.  The hotel was easy because I had paid for the rebooking yet, they were to take their money two days prior to my booking (they have my card info) and the airline, while not refunding cash, did issue me a credit for the cost of the flight that I have two years to use.  Hoping to try again next summer, but relying on my fellow Americans to take responsibility in getting a handle on this pandemic is probably foolish so good thing the credit is good for two years.

Lies and more lies

     So, I had an interesting meeting on Friday.  Seems that my last full time job, where they gave us a whole one day notice they were closing before they closed (see last blog for more about that), had an issue with me for filing for unemployment because I left two days before they locked the doors permanently (I spent two weeks just sitting in the store every night babysitting their property because they were too lazy or stupid to make arrangements to have it picked up in a timely manner) and I was offered a transfer to a store that I told them I couldn't get too, a downside to be reliant on public transportation but not sure I would have wanted it even if I had a means to get there anyway.  I am not one who lets people fuck them over twice, you get one shot then you are dead to me. 

     So I started scheduling interviews figuring I might as well get the ball rolling on getting on with my life.  While I was busy doing applications and scheduling inerviews and waiting on callbacks, I went ahead and filled out an unemployment claim, figuring worst case scenario I would have something to fall back on at least temporarily.  All is good, got some paperwork from the unemployment people including signing up for the state's jos search website (PA Career links), had a handful of interviews and figure if one of them pans out I should be good to go.  Untl a couple of weeks ago, when I get a letter from the state saying my former employer is contesting my initial claim.

     You might think this is a bad thing, but I would argue it is not (at least if you can get by for a couple of weeks with a diminished income).  Because then you get to go to an appeal hearing to make your case regarding your claim.  You go and sign in and they hand you a folder to review.  In that folder is everything your former employer wrote about you, which is awesome becaus then you get to see everything they lied about.  Which I am guessing they knew because while both parties were notified about the hearing, they didn't even show up.  So I got to explain to the mediator that no one besides my store manager ever mentioned a potential transfer to me, and I explained then that I would not have a means to get to said location.  The mediator asked if I could take a cab or Uber and I said the charge on that on a nightly basis would have been probably half what I made that shift, and working for like 6.50 an hour isn't even minimum wage, so the offer was not practical.  He asked if I spoke to anyone else, I said the management team never gave me a time to sit down with them and discuss other options (which is true), I was asked if the other notes in there were accurate and I said no, the lone offer of a transfer I was given would have also resulted in a cut in my hours so not only would I be spendng have of my shift money getting to and fro, there would be fewer shifts for me as well and my pay rate may be the same, I could be cut as much as 20 hours a week (and still be called full time), so it was a pay cut all the same.

     The arbitrator seemed to agree with me, as he told me I could refile my claim at the next available opportunity, which hopefully will not be needed as I am waiting on a background check to come in on a potential job opportunity (the offer has been extended, pending my background check) which will be more money than I was making at the last job as a starting wage (not after 2+ years) so I have my fingers crossed (though there is nothing on my record so I don't know what the issue would be).

      Like I said though, the appeal was a good thing if only because it taught me what people who I thought were at least decent to me at one point, really thought of me overall and were more than content to stab me in the back at first opportunity.  To them a hearty "Fuck you!".  I figure the reason they did not show up for the appeal would be they would have to defend their lies in what passes for a legal proceeding, and they didn't have the balls to do that.

It’s dark

It’s dark.  That is about all I can say as we head into a new year.  Just sitting at work, listening to Pandora (so you may get Pandora updates in here) and trying to blog.  Not that I like blogging from my phone, or that I like having time enough to attempt this at work, but what can I do about that?

Our saga begins on my Sunday night/Monday morning shift.  Since I am almost strictly overnight, I never know which day to call a shift.  On the schedule it is a Sunday shift, even though the majority of it takes place on Monday (11pm-7am).   Anyway enough about that, usually on overnights I have a list of things I do besides the normal waiting on customer stuff, including making sure the coffee station is refilled and ready to go by 5am, sweep and mop the store, count all of our cigarettes and restock missing ones, run the daily reports from the previous day and check in and scan in any incoming orders.  This particular Sunday/Monday however, i was more productive, I managed to change the garbage cans in the parking lot as well as get half of the walk-in cooler restocked as well.  It sounds simple, but in both instances I have to leave the floor, which I am not allowed to do if someone comes in (I work alone and am not allowed to leave the store unattended).  I knew I still had an order coming, so I retrieved the scanning gun from the office for the occasion.  Everything was going swimmingly, or so I thought.  

My boss, Beth, shows up around 6am, we do the normal hi, hellos, how was your weekend thing, she is followed by the Frito Lay vendor.  Nothing unusual there, he always comes late (at least late for me as it is in the middle of morning rush) but he doesn’t have anything with him.  Nonetheless I grab the scanning gun, prepared to scan in whatever it is we ate getting.  He says he isn’t bringing in anything because we are closing, to which I say that is news to me.  I explain to Beth what I have been told, so she calls the district manager who informs us that at 10am on Tuesday we are closed permanently.  Mind you this is 6:30am Monday.

So what am I doing here Tuesday night you may ask?  Apparently they want someone on site at all times until all of the crap is removed.  Which should be a fun task since the employees were not the only ones who were left in the dark.  Tuesday morning I had to refuse deliveries from Coke, 7Up and McKee foods as nobody told them that we were going out of business either.  Right now I am here to prevent potential looting and when I step out for a cigarette it is eerily dark, with no lights, no glow from the pumps and the signage all turned off.

Not even sure what the future brings at this point.  There comes a point in life where you get tired of starting over and I feel I am dangerously close to it.  I have an interview set up for Thursday (thanks Doug) though I don’t know how long I get to hang out and prevent looting.  It could be one week, it could be one month.  There was talk of transferring employees to other locations, but not sure I want to work with people who treat employees in such a manner.  Plus if I take a transfer not sure how that effects my part time job.  I am tempted to just take unemployment for a while and sit on my ass.  Explore my possibilities, maybe just get the hell out of here altogether.  Who knows at this point.