The first thing I had done when I lost my job with Ascendant Solutions was call the Texas Employment Commission and get my unemployment benefits started.
If you’ve ever been unemployed in Texas, you probably already know there are certain qualifications you have to meet in order to receive unemployment and that you have to be actively looking for work to continue receiving benefits. I hadn’t been fired for incompetence or insubordination, and I hadn’t quit or abandoned the job, so I was able to receive benefits. I had worked a full year beforehand, so I qualified for the maximum amount available.
Having never leached off a government agency before, I had trouble with making the semi-monthly phone call and getting a check for it. It went against my upbringing that you earn your keep and you work for money. In my family, unemployment means poverty—period. You don’t get handouts and you can’t just borrow money without being expected to pay it back. Mom paid a phone bill for me once and I worked it off by painting a room.
So yeah, I was looking for a job. That was my job. And one night Kristin called me up and said she had a line on a job with three openings for a late-nite position. We cajoled Phil into joining us on this little adventure and the three of us reported for work at SDS the next night. It was a simple refurb joint and all we were doing was slapping together used machines and imaging drives. Blah—easy peazey. It was $12 an hour and I knew it wasn’t going to last past Christmas, but it was a job and it wasn’t enough for my unemployment benefits to stop. It meant I got to buy some Christmas presents and pay the rent.
They let Kristin go the next day, but that’s really because the manager was a fuckin’ homophobe hick bastard. I mean that. The hick bastard and his girlfriend were stealing parts from the company ("Where’d that stick of 128 meg go?") and having an affair which was really a shame considering the hick bastard’s wife gave birth to his first son the second week we were there. The hick bastard was also making illegal copies of software and threatening his boss for better pay ("I could shut this place down with what I know.").
Phil managed to get Über-Dave hired on (sorry Kris!) and so it was just Phil, Dave, myself, the hick bastard, and the hick bastard’s girlfriend. Phil, Dave, and I were turning out some 80 machines a night—which was about 20 machines more than the 6 day-time guys were doing. The hick bastard and his white-trash girlfriend, meanwhile, were trying to install NT4 on a machine without a copy of service pack 3 and a nasty infection of Back Orifice (tee hee!).
We were only there 4 weeks and it was enough extra pay for Über to get his bike.
So I was unemployed again and still collecting a check every two weeks.
Phil had worked out a deal with the Gavin/Monique collective to pick them up from work at night. Their shift at Internet America ended at 1 AM and they were missing the last train home. Phil agreed to pick them up in exchange for gas and smokes.
Eventually Phil and I applied for positions at Internet America. I didn’t get it (oh well!) and Phil left the company three weeks later. Gavin left about a month-and-a-half later after he was passed over for a promotion for the fifth time; some cute girl who didn’t know anything got the position after being there a week.
And I’m sorta glad I didn’t get the IA job because those people suck. They lied to us during the interview about what the job-site was like and then they lied during training to Phil about what the call-floor was like and they're just awful people.
Case in point about Why I’m Glad I Don’t Work for Internet America: when the whole 911 went down in 2001, management fled the building like the little bitches they are and called from their homes to tell the call-floor techs to stay on the phones. Now, the Internet America building is pretty tall and smack in the middle of downtown Dallas. I mean, that really tells you how much they value the people who work for them; to call from a remote location to tell people they can’t evacuate a building during a national crisis is a new low. To tell people that evacuating the building is a termination level offence—that’s just absurd. But to tell someone that after you’ve fled to some other location?
Nazi officers had more honor than that.
Anyway, Phil left Internet America way before that. He hated it there.
But the problem was, my unemployment benefits ran out a month afterwards and neither of us had any real prospects for employment. I had been looking at working for FedEx at the time, but they had a hiring freeze at that time and UPS wasn’t doing much of anything either.
I had a brief stint with the Southland Corporation, but that didn’t go very far.
And right before I turned in an application with Half-Price Books, the Dallas Morning News position materialized. I thank god for that little miracle. I suppose the universe didn’t want me working for a bookstore again.
After the Morning News contract ended, I slipped back into unemployment. Our second wedding anniversary came and went and we couldn't go do anything because neither of us had a job at the time. Phil was also dealing with the fact that it was the second anniversary we had where he was unemployed. He was starting to slip into depression and we were arguing more often. The car still didn’t have A/C and I was starting to worry about rent.
Bush’s tax refund was making the rounds, so that took care of a month’s rent, but I hate being without work. I hate rolling cigarettes and I hate powdered creamer. I don’t like ramen that much and I’m not too keen on cheap-ass ground beef. I was bitchy. I needed income and I needed to feel better about myself.
Now, I had signed a contract with Spherion which said I was an employee and that if they couldn’t find me a contract in a reasonable amount of time, I could claim unemployment again. I had to wait until October in order to do it, but I filed and was accepted once more. By this time, I had already had an interview with NCO and started working over there. I hated the job and I resented Phil for not finding work and I was going crazy. We weren’t talking to each other and when we were we were fighting. I started to make unfair comparisons and things were looking bleak on the home front.
I guess Spherion realized I had claimed unemployment off them and they decided to put me to work in Houston. I was there three months and sending money home.
And Phil and I were arguing over chat! It was insane.
The sad thing is, I define myself with my work. If I’m not doing anything, I feel worthless. I had to explain that to Phil once, after I had an abnormal pap smear, that I didn’t want to make him support me. I didn’t want to be dependant on someone else. Living by myself, poor or not, was more satisfying because it gave me a sense of accomplishment. I also have trouble getting any work done when I’m unemployed—I mean my own stuff: fiction, web page, etc. It’s difficult to create a work environment and I just don’t feel like doing it. And when I’m not working, I don’t feel like I’m contributing anything. I slip into a self-loathing that I usually reserve for others.
And when I got back from Houston, Phil still didn’t have a job. We used our tax return to pay bills and the car still didn't have A/C. Phil sank further and further into depression while I was getting spiteful and cruel.
More importantly, I was starting to not care.
And that’s really the death of a relationship right there: when one member doesn’t care anymore. Sure, I was looking for work, but it was more out of some grand plan to move out as soon as I could afford it.
And that’s the awful truth right there; and maybe it makes me petty and awful and shallow, but I couldn’t deal with Phil being unemployed. When I got back from Houston, he had been without stable employment for two years. It’s hypocritical of me, I know, because my employment hadn’t been all that stable; but I knew I was trying to get a job and I didn’t know that about him. I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it. I was looking for an excuse to get rid of him because it was serious and I knew it was going to take a lot of work to get things back where they needed to be for us to be happy.
In May of 2002, Phil started working second level DSL support in Plano while I was doing work for badgies.com. We were starting to communicate a little better and work out issues from the last two years. Phil was feeling better about himself and I was feeling better about myself and we were feeling better about each other.