*I got distracted by an email from X and spent the last 45 minutes responding to her and telling her about this.

He accused me of lying without actually accusing me of anything. He mentioned my unwillingness to work. The first things he accused me of were completely untrue. The thing about being unwilling to work is only half true. I am willing to work because I want to get out of the house and get paid, but I don’t exactly want to work.

I am debating whether or not I should post his email to me. It would require a lot of editing and name changing on my part, so I’m not really inclined to do it. As I was reading it my shoulders went numb and I literally gasped like an old timey lady whose sensibilities had been offended. I was really, really upset and began to cry which angered TBU. He started berating my boss and telling me to quit. The idea sounded crazy at first, but now that I think about it, it’s not so bad. I mean, I bend over backwards trying to give my clients the best service possible (no, I am not a prostitute) and I get accused of not being willing to work. I have been begging for more hours since fucking MAY and I get accused of being unwilling to work. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

TBU, ever the office politico, thinks they are trying to force me out. I don’t think they have any motivation to do that though.

Bossman accused me of “leaving information out” during a conversation yesterday and said the whole thing didn’t “sit well”** with him. His exact words were, I do feel like you were leaving information out and then the whole car thing came up later and something about phone reception… Seems like there have been some goofy things going on. That fucking ellipsis kills me. It’s so passive aggressive. And all the “goofy” things happening were entirely legitimate. I won’t give you the details, because they are boring, but I will tell you it involves a smog check and phone reception.

**TBU and I were joking that if it didn’t sit well with him it must stand poor with him. hahahaha…

I wrote a restrained tirade in response. I haven’t sent it, I’m going to sleep on it and perhaps edit it in the morning. How adult of me, because what I wanted to write was, “Fuck off, I quit.” But typing it here also feels pretty good.

I am so angry at the whole thing. Feeling this way about my job is reminiscent of the visceral depression I went through while I worked at Wells Fargo. Just placing those letters together to form those words makes me feel like I have to take a huge shit. I have never been more depressed in my life. I would get to work five minutes early so I could cry in my car before I went in. It was my preparation for dealing with the onslaught of rage and aggression I knew I was going to have to endure for the next 8 hours. People yelled at me, threw things at me, belittled me, said all sorts of insane things to me, and it wasn’t just the customers. Throughout the day I would steal away to silently sob. My red eyes were a result of “allergies” or being “sleepy” or any other thing I could think of. Once I said my eyes were puffy because I got mosquito bites on both my eyelids, wtf? I was desperate, obviously. It just got to the point where I didn’t care anymore. Once I quit, I realized what a waste the previous 10 months had been. I promised myself I wouldn’t let it happen again.

Now with this whole drama happening I’m wondering if it is. I’m wondering if action is required of me or if it’s something that can be resolved. To be perfectly honest, I’m pretty hurt by the allegations. I know how hard I work and how much genuine interest I put into helping these people. It is pretty disheartening to give something your all and to be accused of doing nothing. It’s almost worse than what happened at Wells Fargo. At least then I knew it wasn’t personal, that these people were just out of their minds. But now it’s entirely personal. It’s directed specifically at my actions and targeting my ethics. Normally it wouldn’t bother me what anyone thought of me or my ethics but I respect these people and enjoy their company. It’s like having a friend call you a liar on something that never seemed like a big deal.

I don’t know, I’m feeling pretty foggy and over the whole thing. And I think it’s too late to chug a glass of wine, even if we had any. I know it’s immature to quit a job because you’re pissed off but I also know it takes a certain level of maturity to not deal with someone’s bull shit. And that’s where I am right now. Deciding what the best thing to do is. Of course, I’m going to try to work it out but the possibility of this is always going to linger.

The Millionizer sees your bullshit and raises you a blog post

[UPDATE: Bah! I just sent the email with almost no edits. Now I'm nervous.]

[UPDATE 2: I recieved an email back and the jist was that I read his first email wrong. To which I say, riiiight.]

I tried listening to that old Snow Patrol album, the one that made too tan sorority girls think they liked alt music. There is like 4 minutes of quality on that album. So then I put on some Crystal Castles, which is a good time and all, but I can’t sing along to that shit. I knew what I needed and it’s disappointing because I am so fucking predictable. But I knew the only thing that would make wasting my gas bearable at a dead stop on the 1 (I know. Boo fucking hoo, right?) would be a smooth cocktail of my most sing alongable tracks. Dashboard and Fallout Boy to the rescue.

I got home and immediately tried to raid the kitchen because I find calories are the best way to deal with stress. But we have more alcohol than food so now I’m drunk on wine and have a few sunflower seeds in me. And I have gleeked on the screen like 14 times since starting this.

The Millionizer wants you to pass this on

[tags]drunkorexia, commuting, when you want to fuck but no one’s home and it doesn’t matter anyway because you’re on your period and you’re just not into that way[/tags]

People are often surprised to learn I work with retar cognitively impaired* people. Like you become some righteous asshole as soon as you start the job or something. I (mostly) love it but here are some adjectives that would also accurately describe my day

• frustrating
• extremely frustrating
• gross
• confusing
• irritating
• boring
• limiting
• excrutiating
• and on and on

So yeah, I need to be able to have a sense of humor about it. The funny part about me saying retarded is the fact that my clients are constantly saying it. They even call each other retarded. But not in like a mentally challenged way, they use it like we use it. I’m not really defending myself because you’re going to be offended if you’re going to be offended and I’m just going to keep on saying it. I’m just giving you some context, yeah you. You know who you are.

I’m totally in the Mimi Smartypants boat on this one. I think she said something like, “If we can’t use retarded to speak about actual retarded people can’t we use it for the rest of us?” She’s getting at the fact that it should be obvious we aren’t referring to a “special” person when we say retarded. And honestly, any euphemism is equally if not more offensive. How often have you heard someone say special, slow or simple with quotes around it?

When I called my cat retarded, it would have been rude to call her cognitively impaired or whatever the nicety of the moment is. Wouldn’t that be rude to people who are actually dealing with a disability? Not only to the person with a disability but to their family. They aren’t helping a retard they’re caring for a person with a disability. Often families spend all their time and money caring for this one person and comparing my dumb cat to that is um stupid.**  Because my cat is (probably) not cognitively impaired but she is definitely retarded.

Retarded means impeded in some way. Here are some retarded sentences

• Getting home is being retarded by all this traffic
• I’m retarding the growth of my 401(k) by buying all these drugs
• My cat just tried to run outside but was retarded by the screen

Do you see my point? Are we going to start coming up with PC ways to say fire retardant? Because that would be retarded.

Personally, I’d like to see the other blogs BlogHer isn’t linking to because of their offensive content. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ones they are linking to, I’ve just seen them all already.

*And jeez you can’t even use any of the ambiguous words you think are correct because you probably don’t even know what the persons disability is. How would you like it of you had a completely normal mind but were called cognitively impaired or mentally challenged because you used a wheelchair or had a speech impediment? Or if your disability has nothing to do with your development but people insisted on calling you developmentally delayed?

**Much like the time I was talking to this woman and accidentally compared the vet losing my cats ashes to when she went in for surgery and woke up to realize they had performed an unauthorized abortion. Do you see how ridiculous that is? We can’t allow this to continue.

[tags]retarded, working with the disabled, my cat is dumb, the dss, tact is for the unwitty[/tags]

Back when I was sick a couple weeks ago, I was studying for a chemistry test. I was wearing jeans with the button undone because any pressure on my stomach was so painful I couldn’t breathe. I hear a knock on my neighbors door, I hear them talking and the whole while, the person is jiggling my doorknob. I’m like FUCK can’t she control her guests? But my neighbor goes back in and the assault on my door continues in earnest. I decide to ignore it until they stop because I am sick, studying and too short to see out the peephole. It doesn’t stop, so I get the stool from the bathroom to assess the situation and tell whoever it is to shut the fuck up. I look out and all I can see is some small, boyish child flailing about maniacally on and around my door. I swing it open angrily and freeze. She looks at me and stops, her big eyes look up at me and her small, spindly arm raises to point a finger as she squeaks, “Yooooou…” the way death might greet you if it were a small, evil child.

“What are you doing here, Michelle?” I said in a tone used for exorcisms. She began to flail again, I was reminded that she was just a 76 lb retarded child and the tension eased.

“I’m here to see your house.” Eep!

“No Michelle, is your mom with you?”

Her eyes got big for emphasis. “No, she’s dead and I ran away,” as she freakily breathes in with each word. Then she put her hand down her pants and laughed with her head thrown back.

I tell her to go home and close the door. I called TBU and told him what happened. He paused for a second and said, “Shouldn’t you go check on her or call he police or something?” Uh, probably. Now, in my defense I was seriously sick at the time and I was trying to concentrate on my chemistry test that was 4 hours away and more importantly, she is fucking scary.

So I go back out and find her throwing her body against another neighbors door with her pants around her ankles and, of course, no underwear. I grab her hand and pull her pants up hoping no one sees me. She wiggles away and her pants shimmy down her legs as she screams in the parking lot, jumping and waving her twig arms. I lumber behind her, pinning her arms to her sides with one arm as the other pulls her pants back up, really, really hoping no one sees me. She screams and rants nonsensically as she thrusts her butt into my stomach. Itispainful.

I forced her into my car and she thrashed against the seatbelt, yelling at her dead mom. I am close to tears from the pain. Her house is only two blocks from mine and as I turn the corner to her street, it is blocked off by half of the Santa Cruz police department. I roll up, get out and scream, “I have her!” Her mom ran over and PUSHED me AGAIN! and opened my passenger door. An officer looks at my stomach and I look down to see my unbuttoned jeans. He asked me how I know Michelle and how I know where she lives. I answer and he nods, satisfied.

Meanwhile, mom hasn’t gotten crazy child out of my car. She’s just yelling at her and asking where she went. I wait patiently for a few minutes but goddammit I need to study and writhe in pain before my test. Finally I mention that I have to go and mom whips her head around and gives me an evil eye. How dare I interrupt her futile investigation of her devil seed. She yanks Michelle out and glares at me. I start walking to the drivers side, the officers thank me and tell me to have a good day. Mom? Well mom is a crazy ass motherfucker and doesn’t say a word to me. She’s probably pissed I brought her back. No ‘Thank you’ just sighs and huffs. Of course her daughter is the way she is, I think mom is just yet to be diagnosed.

I don’t think Michelle knows where I live, I think she just started meandering around and I happened to be in the radius of her flail. Thank god.

And that is how I saved a small child from the clutches of a pedophile. I mean, I assume she would have encountered some kook eventually, who would interpret her hate of clothing as a sign from the pedo god.

PS One more thing about crazy mom. She told me that she was the landscape architect for a super posh restaurant in town with absolutely beautiful landscaping. I was impressed. For like a second. Teebs and I went there for his work’s Christmas party and I asked the maître d’ who the landscape architect was. You know, out of curiosity. He told me, and it was not crazy mom.

*I’m mocking vegan literature, not hijacking the plane to guiltsville.

Yesterday, I was at the Goodwill during work and I found a Spirograph set, for $2.25! I hid it under the stuffed animals and got my wallet from the car. Dude a Spirograph set for $2.25! I always wanted one but we never had enough money.

• Spirograph set in 1989: like $400.
• Spirograph set in 2008, missing two pieces at the Goodwill: $2.25.
• Finally getting to make pretty swirlies with mathematical precision: Priceless.

Here are a couple other things I purchased while “working” today

Only ten dollars!

A dollar each! Adorable pencil cases for the serious student

Flip flops for five bucks, with skulls!

And here is some crazy stuff I saw while working today

Somebody had to actually sew such well formed boobs on that stuffed hippo! The
stuffed bikini wasn’t enough to suggest cleavage? We have to sew in pink fuzzy boobs?

This guy was biking his Christmas tree. Somewhere.

I noticed my upper lip had like three slightly darker hairs on the left side. No mustache, just slight pigmentation. Ever the perfectionist, I epilated that shit. Who knew the skin on your face was so sensitive? Now I have a Kool-Aid mustache on one side. It was less noticeable before I started fucking with it. Lesson learned.

The Millionizer has desperate desires and unadmirable plans

In better news I bought two pairs of jeans for $13.50 at the Goodwill yesterday. I don’t know why but it kinda blew my mind. I have been buying my jeans at the gap since I can remember. First, I was 13 and thought I’d be cool if I shopped at the gap. Then I was 16 and already set in my ways. Then I was 18, off to college, lazy and knew what size I wore at the gap. It was really a convenience issue. Sure, I was aware of child labor and other human rights violations supposedly committed by gap inc, but I was just buying the clothes. Was I really part of the problem? Then it dawned on me. Why pay $30 for jeans that inevitably wear out in the crotch and ass? Dumb kids don’t know what they’re doing. So I walked into the Goodwill downtown, found two pairs of jeans and walked out only $13.50 poorer. I’ve always liked thrift shops but there was something liberating about purchasing essential wardrobe items there. I don’t know what I was thinking buying my jeans at the gap all those years. Thanks Goodwill downtown you are far better than the Goodwill on 41st.

I had my first test for my anatomy class last night. I’m pretty sure I rocked it. I’ll let you know.

TBU and I will be in San Francisco the weekend of October 12. I am excited, there are talks of a private karaoke room a la Lost in Translation. I’m totally going to buy a pink wig. You should be there too. I am already drunk off the impending great memories.

Umm I had some epiphanies while being forced to watch a block of music videos on vh1 as I worked out but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about them yet. Hint: Kanye West may not be the #1 human.

NOTE: I thought I published this but I actually just saved this. This post is like 4 days old. But that doesn’t matter, themillionizer.com is not time sensitive. I am kinda cranky about the whole thing though. <harrumph>

[tags]Kanye West, Mr. West, the gap, Goodwill, karaoke, work, my ass[/tags]

When I started my job in May, I was told to make sure I got a planner because a planner is essential and you will need to keep your schedule straight, so make sure to get a planner asap. So I did. The only problem was that it was May and all the planners and calendars left were for 2008, which doesn’t make sense either. I can see that 2007 is half over and you don’t want to produce and distribute obsolete product, but 2008 is too far away to be buying planners for. At least in my opinion. After three stores I wound up buying a $50 planner/calendar/address book thingy. It was the cheapest one available that 1) allowed me to fill in the dates myself and 2) had room for me to write my schedule in. Which is what the whole point was. I turn in my reimbursement form and get all kinds of guff for the $50 planner. I agree it’s expensive and I would never pay for it if I was just getting a planner for shits and giggles but you said the planner was essential and told me to get one asap. And that’s what I did. You didn’t give me any rules or warn me that it didn’t necessarily have to be functional as long as it was under a certain price. You gotta warn people of this shit, otherwise they’re just gonna get something that can do the job. So then I got this email today entitled “your expenses:”

Regarding your planner, whenever you make a purchase, please ask me or Jake ahead of time how much you can spend. Typically we approve no more then $20 for a calendar/planner. Do you still need the binder I gave you?

Uh, yeah I still need the binder you gave me, it’s completely different. If they were the same thing we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I hate this stuff. <bleh>

I have to go to bed. I am just dillydallying.

The Millionizer lied about it not having meat

I am up early with extra time to post because I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m also used to getting up at 7am for my last job with Student. That’ll change.

Why couldn’t I sleep? Well that’s a good question.

1) I always get wired and spastic over change

2) TBU freaked me out by saying I probably won’t actually start my job until my fingerprints come back and I haven’t even gotten them done yet. But if that is indeed the case why didn’t they tell me to go get fingerprinted 2 weeks ago? I am getting ahead of myself here.

3) I’m pretty sure I’ve decided to go back to school to get my master’s in nursing at San Jose state. That is if they’ll have me.

4) I kept perseverating our red night light in the bathroom. It’s an LED that changes colors but I keep it on red because when I go in there in the middle of the night, red is the only color that doesn’t make my brain think it’s morning time and prevent me from falling back asleep. I know there’s some sort of color spectrum/rods and cones reason for this but I was proud for having figured it out on my own. Like I’m a rogue lifehacker or something. Also I think it looks like a bathroom in a whore house. Assuming whore house bathrooms have red lights. And if they do, what’s that all about? It’s certainly not for the same reason as me.

Ok, time to do makeup in the hue of daytime professionalism.

I’ve always loved themillionizer.com but there were always things that were complete mysteries and frustrated the shit out of me. But now I feel like, if there’s a problem, yo I’ll solve it. Interestingly enough, Friday night was also the night TBU and I went to Trader Joe’s and I was in such a magical place I thought (mostly) everyone was beautiful. My head was full of spring blooms and compliments for the public at large. That’s a RARE occurence, let me tell you. Something inexplicable was in the air because we got home and WordPress and I just started meshing.

Oh and the killer whale up there. The file is saved as ‘fruit of my labor.’ That’s because I spent a whole day at work wasting time and coloring to my exact specifications. I had the kids running around sharpening the colored pencils. When I got home I put it up on the fridge. Then I thought I might like it for my new header. And I do. Thursday was my last day at that job and I’m a little sad because I know I won’t have the opportunity to do nothing and get paid for it anymore. More on that later.

The Millionizer suspends belief daily

[tags]Wordpress, Getz 2.2, pretty orca whales, I slept with WordPress and now we’re friends, thinly veiled references to Vanilla Ice[/tags]

1) I’ve been lying enhancing my timesheet everyday by 15 minutes. It’s not much until you consider that I also said I worked full days when I didn’t even show up. They’ve begun to ask questions.

2) The first thing I do when I get there in the morning is pick up two newspapers; the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the San Francisco Chronicle. The school gets free subscriptions. I tear out the sodoku and crossword puzzles. I set Student’s desk up to look like she is doing work. Then I work on the puzzles for as long as possible. Sometimes they last all day, other days I blatantly read the newspaper like your grandpa in a lazyboy.

3) When Student bitches and moans, instead of working through her behavior like it’s my job, I just take her outside and walk a couple of laps. I like the extra exercise and I don’t have to pretend to care about the root of her behavior. This one may or may not belong on the list though because she seems to generally enjoy doing laps.

4) I can’t stand her PE teacher.* We go off campus everyday and do some bullshit activity which is basically ‘let’s go to the park so The Millionizer can be exposed to sunlight and ruin her perfect complexion.’ But really, her PE teacher is a major bitch hole. So when I really don’t want to deal with her I make up some excuse for Student not to go to PE. I also use my history of knee issues against her best laid plans. Sorry PE teacher, The Millionizer cannot go on a hike. Nope, nope, she can’t lead a game of tag either, sorry. And even though swimming is really good for her knees she plain refuses to go swimming with the handicapped PE class. The thought of being in a public swimming pool with a bunch of retarded kids triggers many of my personal hygiene red flags.

*Juicy gossip alert: The PE teacher and CLL used to be in a serious relationship and even bought a house together. Then they had a messy break up. Now whenever I want to bitch about the PE crazy I just waltz into CLL’s room. Would you believe? Lesbians are as crazy as us.

5) I take extra long breaks. Everyone there does, but I am especially flagrant in my tardiness.

6) I gossip. A lot. With everyone. It’s definitely not grounds for termination but it just isn’t great of me. And when they list the pros and cons of keeping me around this just might be the thing that tips the scales.

7) I take and make phone calls throughout the day, whenever I feel like it.

8)** I don’t take initiative. If my student is set up for a few minutes and I have the opportunity to help other students, I don’t. Remember those puzzles?

** The only way I could get 8 ) not to magically transform into was to put some ** or I could’ve used a space like I did here, buuuut no. And why should all of my numbers look small and unprotected just because 8 looks like a pair of eyes?

9) I have a generally sour attitude. Except when gossipping, then I light up.

10) There is this one fart stain in the counseling office (where the copier is) and apparently her life is so fucking terrible from being a low level school district buttwipe for the past thirty years she can no longer smile. So one day I walk in there to make some copies (natch) and I can see a sign on the copier. But instead of walking all the way to the copier just to find out it’s broken from her ugly face, I ask, Is the copier not working? She barely looks up and says, Yes, it’s not. And because her reply was annoying as all hell and I knew she wasn’t sorry I said, in my most snarkiest manner, I’m sure you are. Now she kills me with her eyes everytime I see her. If she could get me fired she would. And maybe she can.