personal shit

 but i got laid off last year right before the holidays which is the shittiest time in the world to lay someone off because absolutely nobody hires you at the end of the year because that’d be wild to hire before the new budget and also everyone’s just out for the holidays. My boss was very respectful about it and gave me privacy and like blocked the window to my office with his body so nobody could look and see me crying which was very nice. But the CEO had a stick up his butt about there had always only ever been two IT people before and he felt that having three was a waste of money. Ben the other sysadmin had been with the company (not in IT though another department) for 5 years which left only me on the chopping block. Even though I consistently closed the most tickets and put the most work in. And he said it was nothing about my work and that he’d recommend me to any contact that asked for a sysadmin and he’d be happy to answer any reference calls for me. And honestly a week after new years, i got a very sexy new job making 20k more than i was and doing like 10% of the work? so it worked out very much in my favor but it was a very deeply shameful fact for me that I was unemployed for two months. it felt like i failed my wife and it was awful for my mental health i couldn’t sleep i was straight up hallucinating and had trouble telling what was cooked up by my depression soup brain and what was real. Looking back on it I think I might have schizophrenia or something that emerges due to stress because things were not good during those two months. 

And also the unemployment website said to keep track of all work search activities because they might randomly request a history of your work search activities but to not upload it unless specifically requested. So it was the week of new years and new job postings were still pretty slow so I spent deadass a whole day of 12+ hours making an excel spreadsheet and going back through dice and linkedin and all the other random job applications and documenting every single job I applied for and every interview I went on. There were fucking 500 entries. Not even 2.5 months unemployed and I had 500 work search activities. The minimum to claim unemployment is 3 a week. And I was doing 50 a week (just a cool 17 times more than required) like I was putting the work in on searching for work. It was a major point of pride that I was going so far above and beyond but it also fucked me up that I was putting myself out there so much and not getting any traction. And I remember thinking wow it’d be funny if now that I put all this time into documenting all my work search activities if i would get a job offer because then obviously i wouldn’t claim the unemployment any longer and thus wouldn’t need the list that the work search commission nebulously may or may not ever call for. 

And literally the next day I had an interview go extremely well (all my stories and answers were well honed by the hundred other interviews at this point) and they were in a rush to hire someone by next monday so literally a few hours after the interview they sent me a job offer on like a wednesday and asked if there was anyway to go ahead and do the paperwork and drug test by the end of that week. And I was like well hey i won’t have to interview any more so getting to cancel those freed up my days. So the next day I did all the paperwork online and went in peed in a cup that morning and then had a follow up interview with them that afternoon and they were so impressed that I helped them get this done in their accelerated timeframe that they game me like a $5k raise. I had already signed and submitted the job offer but they voided and sent over one with the increased salary. It’s with an MSP so it’s a company that just does IT for other companies. But it has like the most room for growth possible for someone like me. They have a team of 500k app developers so if i want to start doing that they’ll show me how. But the gig I have right now is a 5 year contract to be the helpdesk guy on site at this union. But we’re outsourcing all the mundane remote helpdesk stuff so I literally just have to do the onsite support but it’s an office of like 20 people. It’s the cushiest gig I’ve ever had. 

First IT job was doing everything for 150 users, then I asked for a raise after 5 years of the same salary and was denied so I moved to that last company and was there for 1 year. It was 250 users that I had to do everything for (that also had a history of ransomware attacks and I overhauled their whole security and then they fucking laid me off that same year wild) but for 10k more. And now it’s 20 people for 20k more. So anyway I’ve been here for a month now. The first couple weeks were really hectic settling in so that’s why I’ve been offline mostly. But incredibly grateful for this opportunity. The whole point of this was to actually say that since I’m working for a union right now the mindsets of my coworkers is such a heelturn than what I’m used to. All my users before have been very entitled old white dudes. So I’m used to having to have them spew random vitriol out of nowhere and having to pretend that their incredibly hurtful words is totally fine. But working for a union is great everyone here is very pro worker. You can leave early if you need to. We were watching a senate hearing and everyone’s rooting for the worker’s rights side and it’s just such a liberating feeling to work somewhere that shares your point of view.