Hunt for a real job pt 2

This week my hunt for a real job was more stressful than last week. It started like it always does, with my daily emails from Monster, CareerBuilder, and an assortment of insurance companies. As I was going through the different job opening and applying, I found a promising entry level position with decent pay, hours, and location. I figured it must be too good to be true, but it wouldn't hurt to apply. So I did.

Had I known the application processes would take me three hours and only lead me to a staffing agency I am not sure I would have done it. But, as I was applying, I figured I had to be getting close to the end of this application. I mean, even The Never Ending Story ends eventually! It made me miss the days of Comcast and applying for shitty retail jobs. I thought 45 minutes was a long time! Jeez.

But, I set up a meeting with a staffing agent and it went extremely well. However, before I could meet with the agent I had to fill out even more paper work, sign a bunch of documents and watch a safety video with a test afterward. The video covered everything from the appropriate way to use the stairs (apparently the rail along the side of stairs is not just for aesthetics), how high my heels should, or better yet should not be, the jewelry I can wear, how to properly type, how to properly use a filing cabinet, and that I should not let people at work touch me. The test was on safety materials covered in the video and the general policies of the staffing agency. I am not sure what my grade was, but I hope I did well.

Regardless, I left feeling upbeat. I was stoked to compile a list of 20 start-ups that I would be interested in working for, it seemed like the woman I met with was also pleased with the possibilities of placing me.

Then, the next day happened. I got an email from the staffing agent telling me of an opportunity to start immediately. I had to turn her down because the schedule at my current job is out and there is no way I could get ALL of my shifts covered in such a short amount of time. The rest of the day was basically terrible and ended with me going into my work to check if I had accidently left my keys. I hadn't  My manager invited me to sit down and have a drink, but I politely declined telling him drinking in my emotional state was not the best of ideas.

I came to work the next day ready to work. After about five minutes, I knew I had made a huge mistake by coming in. I walked into the office and started sobbing. I told my manager I couldn't do it, that I needed to go home. He awkwardly put his hand on my shoulder, told me to breathe, shifted around so I could take a seat, and left the office to figure out how to run the floor without me. A few minutes later he came back in, told me everything was figured out and that I should head home. I did.

By Sunday, all was well, and then I went to work. My shift was ridiculous! It was one weirdo after another. One crazy situation after another. When my shift was finally over I couldn't have been happier to get out of there.

Now, Monday is where things get tricky. Sometime earlier in the week I had agreed to trade shifts with a coworker. I was supposed to start work in the morning and be on a double. Of course, this completely slipped my mind. I didn't realize I had missed my shift until 2:30 in the afternoon, when I checked my phone. I was greeted with a voicemail from my manager asking me where I am and why I didn't show up at my scheduled time. Suddenly it all came back to me. I had downright forgotten and screwed over my coworkers in the process.

Now, I still have to go in to work my night shift. I am not looking forward to disappointed look I am bound to receive, nor am I looking forward to the “what the hell is wrong with you” questions I am going to have to answer. I feel obligated to go above and beyond at work today, but I know doing that does not change what happened this morning.

This has been an extremely unsuccessful work week and hunt-for-a-real-job week. 

My hunt for a job...pt 1

The quest for a real job has led me into some ridiculous emails, awkward conversations with HR and the longest three minute conversation of my life.

An Insurance company has been trying to hire me for what feels like ages. They call and usually I let it go to voice-mail because I do not recognize the number. On this particular day I figured if I am looking for a job I should probably start answering phone calls from strange numbers. This was my first mistake.

The woman on the other end of the phone had an accent I can only describe as a cross between Chinese and Australian. It was obvious she was reading off a script and her words ran together in a fashion that madeitseemlikeshewasjusttryingtogeteverythingoutbeforeIcouldasktoomanyquestionsorhangup. Eventually she got to the point. Apparently, the point of this call is that my sales experience from six years ago is in line with the skills they are looking for, so I was cordially invited to attend a seminar. After all, who doesn't like seminars?!

So, I ask this woman what I would be doing specifically. She rambled on about something, but did not answer my question. I figured there must of have been a breakdown in communication, maybe a language barrier. So, I rephrased my question by asking her what my specific job title would be. Once again, she rambled on in a half coherent fashion and neglected to answer my question.

I knew I couldn't stay on the phone much longer as I had a meeting at my current job, which pays me in real money.  It was a slight relief when she finally invited me the seminar and gave me a date in time. I told her I didn't think I could make it, hoping she would get the hint and hoping I could finish getting ready for my day. Once again, the language barrier must have gotten in the way because she again invited me to the seminar with a different date, hoping to fit my schedule better. This time, I decided to be more blunt and tell her it wasn't about the date and time, it is the job offer that I am not at all interested in, and because I am not a heathen I thanked her and the company for their interest in me.

Before hanging up, she reiterated the growing market of much needed insurance in the Bellevue area and told me if I ever change my mind they would love to have me attend one of their seminars to discuss the growing Bellevue economy and opportunities to work with the elderly to negotiate with pharm companies and some other stuff I couldn't understand due to either a bad phone connection or the strangest accent known to man. 

Not really a blog...

What is it about growing older that makes us less likely to express our frustration with those people we see on a regular basis? Toddlers are more than willing to let everyone around become aware of their discomfort, whether they hurt themselves or simply do not like something another child is doing. We are told from a young age to be nice to others but it is also engrained from a young age to tell someone if we do not like something they are doing regardless of if that something is touching us, calling us a name, asking too many questions, not being helpful enough, whatever. At some point talking about what bothers us changes. It turns from telling the person we might have an issue with to talking to everyone except the person we have an issue with. These conversations are rarely out in the open, instead they are in hushed voices, in that hidden corner of work, behind closed doors, but never, never out in the open and to the person.

Full-Time students spend a huge chunk of their life at school, full-time employees spend a majority of their life at work, and usually roommates spend enough time together that any issues within these areas of our lives, logically, should be addressed. It would make sense to tell a coworker that you are tired of answering her phone, fixing his grammatical errors, booking her events, running his food, facing her product, et cetera. In school it would make sense to tell a classmate you are tired of taking his notes, doing her homework, picking up his slack in the group, maybe tired of trying to hear the teacher over her recounts of shopping and drinking mayhem over the weekend. At home it would make sense to tell your roommate you are tired of doing her dishes, washing his clothes, buying food so she can eat it. Yet, time after time I see adults not address these issues and instead let them fester.

Obviously, the annoyances from these problems can only be swallowed for so long until they come spilling out in a snappy, unnecessary comment, a brash insult, a crazy tirade, or possibly some combination of these things. And I am not saying I am innocent to this behavior, Lord (and my 7^th grade science class that witnessed my Britney-esque mental breakdown) can attest to that. But I can say that when asked directly what my issues are I am willing to discuss them. I cannot say that I am always politically or socially correct when bringing them to light, but I can say that I try and I can say that I least I am willing to voice them when prompted. However, I cannot say that for others.

Maybe our willingness to voice our issues is like a bell curve. When we are very young we are very open about the things that annoy us, make us uncomfortable, or dislike and I notice the same to be true of the elderly. I have rarely met an old person that is quiet about the things they disagree with or dislike. Yet somewhere between our toddler years and our Social Security Medicare years, we seem unwilling to clearly, simply, and plainly discuss what bothers us with the people it seems most valuable, even if confronted by said person.

Why is that?! 

Day Eleven: Something I Get Complimented on the Most

Day 11: Something You Seem to Get Complimented the Most


I was told that I have procrastinated long enough and need to get back to work on my blog project. Honestly, I have to agree. This blog is late mainly because I had no idea how to answer. What do people compliment me on?! Sure, I get told I am pretty, thin, have nice eyes, great lashes (they are totally fake! I glue them on every day.), but those compliments are generic and how am I supposed to write about them at any length? I would sound like the biggest asshole, ever. After trying to remember the compliments I get, my manager said it “Frankie, you are a straight-shooter. I like that.” I am not sure if it counts as a compliment and I am pretty sure it is a nice way of saying “Frankie, you are a bitch and you have absolutely no filter on your mouth, but I don’t have to read between the lines of what you are trying to say, so I appreciate it”…or you know, something like that.

My manager is not the only person to express this type of sentiment to me. Like I said before, I am not sure if it is actually a compliment, but I think it is the closest to a repeating compliment I am going to get. In the PNW a lot of people are passive-aggressive. People are not clear about how they feel or what they think. Reading into what people are trying to say, as opposed to the actual words coming out of their mouth, becomes a skill and art form. While being honest and open in any other region of the US would be considered normal, in the PNW it is, apparently, refreshing.

I am not going to say I am tactful because most of the time, I am probably the complete opposite of tactful, but I figure if I am being honest and direct, that it should count for something. Of course, being too honest can make my life more difficult. How does that saying go, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar? Vinegar seems to be my seasoning of choice. Seriously, red wine vinegar on a salad is amazeballs. I digress.

Dating can be more difficult when a prospective significant other is not used to blunt, brutal honesty. Plus, most girls are liars. They wait a few months to show their crazy. In fact, I think this is true of most daters in general. But, when you are upfront about your crazy, your hard boundaries and soft boundaries it can throw off a potential date.

And trying to spare a person’s feelings means I come off wishy-washy and as if my decisions are up for discussion, like I might change my mind.

But in general, it seems that people, at the very least, put up with my abrasive and overly honest attitude, some even seem to consider it a breath of fresh air. Although I think it makes me seem tactless and rough around the edges. I suppose the thing I get complimented on the most is what makes me a diamond in the rough…or I am just horribly conceded. Either way. 

Day Ten: Someone I Need to Let go or Wish I Didn't Know

Day 10: Someone you need to let go or wish you didn’t know.


I am not sure I can complete this blog challenge. I have been thinking of people in my life that are really toxic to me and I cannot think of any particular person.

Usually cutting people out of my life is something I am good at. Once someone screws me over and betrays my trust, I cut them out. I have very little mercy for people who are damaging or toxic to me. Obviously, I wasn’t always this way and have had a few heated words with former friends telling them I wish I had never met them, and I still feel the same way, but more often than not, I do not let my relationship with someone become that negative.

Honestly, I am going to go ahead and say I cannot complete this post because this topic does not seem to apply to my life, in my opinion.

Obviously I will update this post if some epiphany happens. 

Day Nine: Someone I Didn't Want to Let go, but Drifted.

Day 09: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but drifted.

Most of my friendships end in a drifting sense. Rarely ever have I gotten into a huge fight with a friend and vowed to never speak to them again. More often than not I allow the rest of my life to get in the way of my friendships or my friends and I simply change too much and no longer have enough in common to maintain a relationship. Some of those friends I regret losing.

Probably none more than my friend KAM, she is one of those people that everybody loves. She has a quiet presence that I love about her. Most people are average people, not good, not bad, but KAM is a great person, one of the best people I know. I am not sure I have ever met a more loving and caring person than her. She would do anything for her friends and family and would always be there for them completely selflessly.

Anytime I ever needed her, she would be there for me. More than once she let me sleep in her bed with her, or she would force me to eat when I was dating Bitchell. She let me cry on her shoulder every time me and a boyfriend would break up, or my dad did something completely crazy, or because I was having a shitty day and generally felt not good enough. Some of my favorite memories involve staying up all night talking with her about everything and nothing. She truly was the embodiment of a best friend.

I think our drift apart rests primarily on my shoulders. KAM is great in so many ways, but she was never very good at laying her burdens on her friends. She wasn’t closed off or guarded by any means; I think she just felt guilty for asking anyone to carry some of her emotional baggage weight. However, this makes people like me feel guilty for always dumping on her, and anyone that knows me knows I have incontinence of the mouth.

I know I was a bad friend to her anytime I was in a relationship (which was an overwhelming majority of our friendship), but it was never on purpose. I always wanted her to call me and ask me to hang out, to come over, to get ice cream…because I freaking love ice cream. But more often than not, I was calling her to make plans and then I would forget about the plans or she would have something come up and we would fail at rescheduling and I would give up. My life gets so hectic sometimes, which sounds like an excuse and it kind of is, but for a while I had a very full plate. I needed a reminder of our plans and I unfairly put that burden on her instead of just being an adult and getting a day planner like everyone else.

Eventually holidays and birthdays started slipping by unnoticed and we totally fell out of touch. Recently I found her on the Internet; apparently she decided to come back into social networking. We are cordial and it is nice to be able to keep in contact with her, but so much has changed. Her life is totally different and kind of unbelievable! I have no idea how this course of events took place, but she seems to be happy and I could not be more happy for her. But, I miss her. I miss the friendship we had. I wish I had been better to her, because if anyone deserved the extra effort, she did. 

Day Eight: Someone Who Has Made Your Life Hell

Day 08: Someone who has made my life hell.

Okay, I hate this topic also. Seriously.

I suppose there is the obvious answer of everyone in middle school, especially the cunty girls. Or the neighborhood boys who were always jerks about everything and seemed to get off on making my life more difficult. But I think the person to take the cake is my crazy ex. To be nice, I will leave his name out of it and simply refer to him as Bitchell.

When I first met Bitchell, he was great. Instantly there was an attraction. It took a couple years for anything to happen between us, but when we started dating I was stoked. He was so attractive and funny. Hanging out with him was simple. I didn’t have to be smart or quick or guarded. I could just hang out. It was nice being with someone who wasn’t hyper secretive and openly cared about me. We both led totally separate lives and managed to come together and it seemed to really work at first.

We were total opposites. I was going to fake college, planning my transfer to a four-year university, I was working, and I was totally straight edge. He was jobless, not getting his education, and loved to party. I was fine going with him to parties and acting as the DD. Being able to be myself and laugh all night made the whole situation seem worth it. I thought I had met my match.

Then, he started taking a turn to crazy town. I am not sure how things progressed the way they did, but we went from being a happy couple to a totally dysfunctional couple in what, looking back on it, seems like minutes. I was raised by guys and grew up in a neighborhood with predominately males. Being around the opposite gender is comfortable for me. Most of my friends were and still are men. Bitchell did not like this fact. He became extremely jealous of my guy friends, thought all of them were trying to break us up, thought I was trying to hook with them. He reacted to this information by gathering a harem of random chicks to always be at his beckon call.

He would constantly rub his other girls in my face. Run to them any time we had a fight, portray me to seem crazy and irrational. On the other hand, he accused me of lying to him about who I was spending my birthday lunch with when he heard the waiter speaking to a different table. Heaven forbid I be in the same restaurant where men are allowed to eat. I was bombarded with questions and accusations of cheating and lying. If he had a single ounce of rationality, he would know that between school, work, taking care of my father, and dating him I had zero free time to cheat on him. I made the mistake of using this logic on him and was then accused of only being faithful because I didn’t have free time to be otherwise.

Multiple times I tried leaving the relationship. I knew he was dumb. I knew he was crazy. Then, in some twisted way he would win me back by driving past my parents’ house to see if I was home, or calling my phone 38 times a day (conservative estimation).

In a twist of fate I ended up living with him.

My father and I got into a petty fight and he told me if I didn’t like it I could move out. So, I grabbed a bag or two full of things and left. I did not want to burden my oldest brother by asking to stay with him; I knew his wife didn’t really want me there. I called Bitchell. The first night I stayed with him and he was very nice and supportive. The plan was to call my best friend and stay with her. Her parents had taken others in, I knew they loved me, I figured they would help me out. They didn’t. I stayed with my best friend only one night. My brother didn’t ask me to stay with him when we talked, so I stuck with my original assumption and did the only thing I could think of, I moved in with Bitchell.

Bitchell was living with his sister and brother-in-law at the time, so he and I shared a room. I kept telling him we were not together and insisted on sleeping on the floor at first. Eventually the comfort of the bed and his general craziness won me over and we, once again, became some semblance of a couple. Most of those nights were terrible and too personal to discuss here. To this day I still deal with the events that occurred during those months. I will always be scarred. Those nights have completed changed my sleeping patterns.

Living with Bitchell only exacerbated his insanity. To deal with his craziness and everything else in my life I decided to stop eating. My weight dropped more as I became more and more unhappy. Instead of eating on my lunch breaks, I chose to walk around for an hour, then I would go back to my active job and pretend I just had a very filling and satisfying meal. I would lie about what I ate and how much. I only ate around friends for show; even then I would mostly just pick at food or eat a plain salad without cheese, croutons, or dressing, just a squeeze of lemon wedge for flavor. Anytime I did eat a proper meal, I contemplated throwing it up. For once, I wanted to show someone on the outside, the way I felt on the inside.

Bitchell knew I was starving myself. He would watch me push my full plate of food away; defiantly saying I was full or had lost my appetite. He saw my body shrinking, saw me looking more and more gaunt. Yet, he continued with his psychosis.

When the lease he had with his sister expired, he and I got a two bedroom apartment together. I loved it. It was spacious and cute. I finally had my own space again. I was very firm with him that we were really not together anymore. He was never to enter my room without my permission, ever, especially at night. Of course, he only half respected these rules. He was smart enough to never try and crawl in bed with me, but he continued to treat me like his girlfriend. It was easier for me to pretend and go along with some of it.

Then I was allowed a few nights of freedom that led to one of the worst nights of my life. I met a guy through one of my girlfriends. I really liked this guy, he was attractive, older, straight edge (like me!), smart, nice, and seemingly mentally stable. Of course, I knew better than to tell Bitchell the great news, so I did the rational thing and lied to him. However, I under estimated his insanity. After an argument Bitchell grabbed my phone while my back was turned. I had forgotten to delete some text messages and he found out about the ‘other guy’. Bitchell fucking lost it! He punched a hole through my door, not in it but all the way through it, pushed me against my closet and started screaming at me. When I admitted I had been hanging out with other guy he became violent. For a few minutes, I thought he might actually kill me. His hands around my neck did not seem to have any inkling of letting go. He kept telling me he was going to kill me, it seemed logical to think he might.

That night I was trapped in my apartment for hours. He had my cell phone, he had my keys, he was obviously stronger than me, and he was faster than me. Every time I would bolt for an exit he would get there first and physically harm me in some way. When he eventually did allow me to leave, he made me promise not to go to the house of the ‘other guy’. I promised. Then I headed straight for ‘other guy’s’ house. It must have been two or three in the morning when I knocked on the door.

Eventually the ‘other guy’ and his roommates helped me get my phone back along with my keys and a bag or two of stuff. The boys made me call the cops. When the cops showed up Bitchell decided to toy with me and them. He continually called my phone, letting me know he could see me, but that I could not see him. The cops couldn’t do anything about someone they couldn’t find.

I filed a police report and promised the guys I would go to the courts.

I got a permanent protection order that doubles as a no contact order. The first judge I saw ordered me to move all of my things out of the apartment. She also order Bitchell to vacate while I there. Of course, in true Bitchell fashion he refused to leave and I was too scared to call the cops again, plus I had my brothers and the ‘other guy’ with me. I was just ready to be done with him.

A few months later I found out Bitchell had been evicted. Even though I broke the lease a collection company was coming after me for $2,000 worth of unpaid rent. My credit was better than his, so it made sense to ask me for the money. It took roughly two years to prove I was not legally responsible for any of the damages or unpaid rent. Within that time, Bitchell decided to email me an apology, and then he spent a night in jail and retaliated by portraying me as an obsessed nut job on his MySpace page.

Until recently, I hadn’t heard from him again. Then he decided to email me again, asking me a favor about some pictures of us on the Internet. I am still weirded out that he would go out of his way to find the pictures in which he is referring. I called the cops again. The issue went to court and was eventually settled out.

Even now, years after the initial incident I am still completely (and slightly irrationally) terrified of him. Receiving the email sent me into a string of panic attacks. Thinking about when I saw him in court for the first time in years makes me queasy. Constantly I am reminded of the ripple effect that relationship had on my life. I see the way it influences my current relationship and my possible relationships with others. Some ripples therapy might help. Other ripples have become more like unstoppable tidal waves, issues I will deal with for the rest of my life.