Seven Day Theory

Westside, Outlawz, Makaveli the Don, Solo, Killuminati, The 7 Days...

The seven days... Seven days ago I made my grand escape. Seven days before that, I implored you to mark it down. That was the day that I realized what I had to do. Today, seven and fourteen days later, I went on my first interview and they made me an offer!!! I start on Monday. It would have been more perfect if it were a week from today, but oh well. The pay is good, I'll be making more than $200 more per week, and the benefits are the best I've ever had!!! The field isn't exactly where I've been or even where I've been looking, but hey, nothing I can't handle. I tell you, I feel that this can be nothing but the hand of God.

In six days, however, is the ten year anniversary of a most tragic event. Be sure to commemorate it in an appropriate way.

Not to complain (or rub it in, Lilly, I'm sure your new career is on its way shortly... at least I hope so), but I had rather been hoping for a little more time before I found a job. I never got a chance to draw a day's unemployment insurance, and I never got to do any of the hundreds of things I was thinking I could do on my off time. And who knew, being unemployed is actually quite a lot of work in itself!!! I have several posts that I have wanted to do, but have hardly found a moment to even read what everyone else has posted and comment.

Today I also finally made it down to my old place of employment. Here is the slightly interesting "more to the story" that Naomi referred to in her comment to my "No Escape" post: A week ago when I was let go, the owner gave me two handwritten checks for my last two weeks of pay. Since I had been putting in LOTS of overtime, they were both pretty healthy. However, they didn't have a check for my vacation pay that I was still owed. When I got home, my wife noticed that neither of them were signed!!! My mother told me on the phone that evening that banks can call a business and verify that the checks are "OK" to cash and process them that way. The next day I tried, but my bank would not accept them. I called into work and tried to talk to the owner. He was unavailable, so I spoke to the plant manager. He tells me that on Saturday he is going to be close to where I live most of the afternoon, so he'll call me around noon and we will arrange a meeting for him to sign the checks. I kept busy most of the day, but was near the phone. He never called, and around 5:30 I call him. He tells me that something had come up, and it involves me. They had looked for some file I had done on my computer, and a bunch of them had been deleted. He said that the log showed that they had been deleted while I was still there. Him and the owner were deciding what to do about this, and were not going to sign my checks until they did. OK, whatever. I told him that the only files I had deleted were some pictures, but he wasn't hearing it. He told me I should think about it, and they would be in touch with me. OK, I'll do that. And I did. What I came up with was either scummy or sinister, depending on which way things went down. Either the guy who does all of the computer work there deleted the missing files and manipulated the log file to make it look like I had deleted them, just to make me look bad, or he had done so under instruction from the higher-ups in order to achieve a means to deprive me of some of my final pay. The unsigned checks and the fact that two days later there are missing files discovered seemed to support the latter hypotheses. Sounds like a case for the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. I went down there Monday early on and got my case filed. Down deep I had a feeling that whatever had happened to the files, they would somehow manage to recover them without much difficulty. Guess what happened???

I don't know if the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement contacted them or not, but they had all of my checks for me today. Clearly they were in violation, and according to the guy who helped me start the process there, they may have to pay me for every day between when I was let go and when they did finally pay up. I'm not going to go in there making demands. I'll let the Enforcers deal with that.

Oh, the guy who does all the computer work there (and who has managed to torpedo the other two competent CNC operators that have briefly worked there and is widely believed to be the true reason I was let go) asks Sammy today if he thinks I would have come down there and scratched the windshield of his car!!! Pffft. I don't think enough of him to waste the time going down there, much less to do something like that.

There you are, most of the rest of the story. Happy ending for me!!!