Exit Interview

This spring will mark ten years since I left the job that occupied most of my adult life.  Leaving wasn't my idea, but when a company is sold to another company in the same business, mass layoffs on both sides is the usual result.  The sale was no surprise to anyone, as we had been told we were up for sale before the holidays of the previous year.  Some of our group left on their own accord, but others with many years of service, like me, stayed until the takeover so we could collect what was a very generous severance package and could remain eligible for our pensions.

As the takeover date drew near, those of us who had been told that our services were not needed by the new overlords faced the looming specter of unemployment in different ways.  Some of us, like me, developed a macabre sense of humor.  Others, like the woman in the cube next to me, became manic-depressive, laughing for no reason one minute, and crying the next.

During the last week of our employment, we were asked to participate individually in an exit interview with our supervisors.  I've never really grasped the concept of an exit interview.  I don't believe that it's a federal requirement.  From the articles that I've read, I gather that it's a method for the company to improve its operations by having a frank discussion with the soon-to-be-gone employee on ways that it can improve its something, something ...  The explanation eludes me because it's always given in that business-speak bullshit that I hate to such a degree that my brain shuts down whenever I encounter it.

But we all agreed to do it, mainly because the company was still waving the severance package over our heads, and at that point we were all hopping around like monkeys on crack so we wouldn't lose it.  My exit interview was given to me by my new supervisor, SCJ. SCJ had been chosen to be my supervisor several weeks previously even though he'd never supervised before and didn't want the job.  During the last months before the sale, my supervisors changed constantly.  I began to understand what a lower level German staff officer must have felt toward the end of World War II, when all of his superiors were being removed involuntarily by Allied gunfire or treason firing squads.  On the day of my exit interview, I skipped into SCJ's office, and we got down to business.

SCJ:  This is awkward.

Me:  Tell me about it.

SCJ:  They gave me this script.  I'll just read the questions, you answer them, and we'll be out of here.

Me:  Okay, shoot.

SCJ:  Why did you decide to leave the company?

Me:  Because you fired me.

SCJ:  They didn't fire you.  They laid you off.

Me:  Are they going to un-lay me off?

SCJ:  I doubt it.

Me:  Same thing then.  Look, just write down that the company was sold.  Okay?

SCJ:  Okay.  Next question.  What do you think the company can do to improve itself?

Me:  Huh?  The company is going to be extinct in the next couple of days.  How do you improve something that doesn't exist?

SCJ:  C'mon, I didn't write these questions ...

And on it went for a half-hour, until SCJ had read all of the questions and was covered in flop sweat.  Since he was in the same boat as I was, I felt sorry for him and was glad that I hadn't been put in his shit position.

In the past ten years, I've had one more exit interview, from a job that I left entirely for my own reasons.  I never gave that supervisor a reason for leaving, other than I was just moving on.  I know this grated on him because it reflected poorly on his performance.

But in situations like that, I like to evoke that old saying ... If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

Murder Corner

I'm not one for sitting still very long.  I don't think I used to have this urge to always be doing something, but it's the way I am now.  So, after I was through with mowing the grass this morning, I decided I needed to go pick up a few grocery items for dinner.  On the way out, I passed a pile of books on the table and decided that since I wasn't going to read them, I'd take them back to the library while I was out.  I generally like to read, but not so much during the summer.  This doesn't stop me from checking out a pile of books, but they generally just gather dust until they come due, and then I cart them back to the library, unread.

After dropping off the books, I headed over to Murder Corner to buy the groceries.  Murder Corner has a regional chain grocery store that also has a bank inside, and an empty space where there used to be a coffee shop, but I guess no one liked the coffee, so it was closed and they board up the space with decorative displays of soda cases and Triscuits.  But you can still see the counter and tables inside.  Apparently, no one wanted to cart the furniture away.  Also on Murder Corner is a shuttered-up Burger King.  It has one of those glass encased two-story "playlands" inside, like those at McDonald's.  I don't know why the people at Burger King spend their lives trying to emulate McDonald's.  You would think they would try to differentiate themselves, but they never do.  I guess they're fine with being Number Two in the burger world.

I don't think anyone else calls this little two acre parcel Murder Corner, but me.  I have names for almost every place in this area.  It simplifies it when Jan asks me where I'm going.  I gave Murder Corner its name because there were two murders there.  Well, technically, only one murder.  The other was "death by swat team". 

Earlier in this decade, a young man was being chased by the police for some serious crime that I've forgotten. During the car chase, the young man thought it would be a good idea to stop at the grocery store.  So he hopped out of his car with his shotgun and ran to the back of the store and hid in the meat department.  Human nature as it is, several shoppers flagged down the police and pointed them in the right direction.  Hours were spent in negotiation, but the young man had apparently been watching "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and thought he could shoot his way out.  He was wrong, and was removed in several pieces.

Later in this decade, a middle aged manager, who happened to be a woman, was opening up her Burger King early in the morning to get ready for the breakfast trade.  A former employee followed her in and strangled her with her own necktie, part of her Burger King uniform.  The former employee was arrested about a week later and still sits in jail awaiting trial for murder. Ironically, the woman had just been transferred at her own request from another Burger King because she had been robbed at gunpoint at that location, and wanted a safer work environment.

I like to think that I don't get spooked easily, but I suppose I'm just fooling myself.  After the incident at the grocery store, I wouldn't shop there for 6 months or so, and after I did resume shopping there, I wouldn't buy anything from the meat department.  I know they cleaned up all the blood and body parts, but there's just something about buying raw meat in a place where someone has been blown apart that doesn't set well with me.

The Burger King had only been open a short while when the murder occurred.  They tried to make the best of it for a while, offering free food and coupons, but it didn't work and people stayed away.  There's something about a murder that crushes the happy atmosphere of a burger place.  The business was closed and it remains empty today, with a forlorn lease sign in front.  The husband of the murdered woman shows up on the anniversaries of her death to camp out over night.  The local police used to hassle him, but they leave him alone now.

To me, it's odd how one business stays open, and another closes after incidents of these sorts.  I suppose it's all in how different kinds of deaths are perceived.

The Dark Side

It's been a long time since I've been in a structured learning environment (a.k.a. school), but that doesn't mean that I don't remember anything I learned.  That is, unless you are counting my business classes, of which I remember little or nothing.  This is unfortunate because it happened to be my major in college.  But this doesn't really bother me because exactly one day into my first job after graduation I realized that I would have been better off receiving a daily enema than enduring months and years of classroom blather about marketing strategies, supply & demand and the Peter Principle (hee, hee ... "Peter").

No, the disciplines I enjoyed and remembered are from those "filler" classes for dimwit business majors like English composition, political science, history and psychology.

Especially psychology.  I couldn't get enough and particularly devoured those classes featuring psychology in its more heinous forms; abnormal, deviant and criminal.  I loved covertly analyzing others and often wondered how others classified me.  I learned early on that this was called a "neurosis",  but at least I had a name for it.  And once you have a name for something, it's not supposed to bother you so much, right?  Boy, I hope I am, otherwise I have some problems ...

I bring this up because for the last week or so, I've been bringing my rudimentary knowledge of psychology into my everyday life.  And it boils right down to the Big Three:  Id, Ego and Super-ego.  Here's the way I interpret these three guys;  The Id is the Tasmanian Devil, a slobbering beast only interested in self-satisfaction.  The Ego is like an NBA basketball referee, trying to keep the Id satisfied, but without getting everybody into trouble while managing the point spread. And the Super-ego is God, who makes the Id and Ego feel lower than whale shit for every rotten fucking thing they've ever done in their miserable lives.  Here's how these three bastards are messing with my shit this past week ...

Case One.  Yesterday I was supposed to get something out of the freezer to thaw for dinner.  Id says fuck it, I'm busy.  If I forget to defrost something, I'll just go get a pizza.  Ego says well, that's a thought, but you ought to get something out.  You can always put it back in the freezer later if you change your mind.  Go ahead and do your thing and wait a bit to get it out.  Super-ego says get that goddamned thing out of the freezer now!  Pizza costs too much and it's not good for you, you lazy ass punk!

Late in the day, Id and Ego told Super-ego to go take a flying fuck at the moon and picked up a tasty pizza.  Plus they felt no guilt.

Case Two.  I keep thinking about buying a new flat screen TV.  Id says go buy it, plain and simple.  Ego says, well your present TV is only 5 years old and there's nothing wrong with it.  Maybe if it starts going bad, you can think about getting a new one.  You know, maybe it will fall off of it's stand or there will be a power surge or something and you can get another one then.  Super-ego says, are you fucking crazy!  Do you know how much those things cost?  You shouldn't be wasting your time watching TV anyway.  Go to the library and borrow a book to read, you lazy ass punk!

Super-ego seems to be winning this one for now.

Case Three.  I'm presently unemployed.  Id says, you've got a roof over your head and plenty to eat.  Enjoy yourself, you've earned it after busting your ass all of these years.  Ego says, I don't know, you need to keep spending a portion of your day looking for work and going on interviews.  After all, you're not ready to retire yet. Super-ego says, you had damn well better spend the majority of your day looking for work, and when you're not looking for work, you'd better goddamned well be feeling guilty about not having a job.  Everyone else does you lazy ass punk!

Ego and Super-ego definitely have the upper hand in this one, and I'm glad they do.  The only thing about this is that when I do go back to work, I'll feel bad that I didn't enjoy my time off because I was so worried about getting another job.  Super-ego wins twice on this one.

In proofing this, I wonder if I need to go see a therapist. Nah ... Super-ego would make me feel guilty about it.

I hate that guy.

Hammer Time

The other night, I was going through the visitor numbers on my blog site and ran across a new visitor.  New visitors always get me excited, because I like to hit the "referral" button and see how the newbie ran across my blog. Sometimes the paths are predictable, but once in a while, you come across one that makes you scratch your head and wonder how they found you when they were looking for something so completely different.

This one new visitor was a case in point.  He or she had been looking for tips on how to repair water damaged floors.  It took me a while, but then I remembered I had posted a couple of stories about re-doing my entry way, and I must have mentioned the water damage I had encountered.

Wow.  I wonder if I helped the person, or if he was just annoyed he had wasted his time.  I'd like to think I did help him, because ... well, goddamnit I'm getting pretty good at fixing shit around here.

I know Jan gets nervous when I start something, because she thinks I'm going to fuck it up and then we'll have to call someone in to make it right, but we haven't had to so far.  And besides my success with the entry way, I've done a few other projects over the summer that I'm sort of proud of.  In fact, I took pictures when I was through, and I'd like to share them in the hope that I can give someone the confidence to start saving money and fixing up their homes for fun and self satisfaction.

The Mailbox Project.  During the winter, some yahoo snow plow driver hit my mailbox and snapped it clean off. Well, since we had drifts that lasted into March, I just stuck what was left of it in the snow by the road and got by until the thaw.  Then the mailman stopped delivering because he didn't want to get out of his jeep and put the mail in the box that was now lying on the ground.  I was getting tired of running to the post office to pick up my mail, so I thought about a solution, and just taking things from around the house, put in a very respectable mailbox ...

Best Looking Mailbox On The Street

The Toilet Project.  When a house gets to be about 20 years old, there are probably a few things that need to be updated.  I'd never replaced a toilet before, but then there's always a first time for everything.  So I went to my local home improvement store and got a terrific deal on toilets.  Two for the price of one.  The only problem with the second one was that it had a part missing, but as you can see, no problem.  The first toilet was intact, but I had to do a little carpentry work to fit it into the space.  Again, no problem ...

Who Needs A Water Tank When There Are Other Alternatives?

I Should Have Bought That One With The Front Flush Lever

The Drain Project.  After I put the toilets in, I found that they were draining a little slow.  So I checked out the basement and figured out a new plumbing configuration to help with the drain time.  Sure, it got a little complicated, but I figured it out ...

A Work Of Modern Art

The Roof Project.  One day after a mighty blow, I was walking around the house to see if we had lost any shingles.  The shingles were still there, but I discovered a disturbing bow in the roof.  When I went in the attic to check it out, I found that one of the rafters had broken. Boy, talk about shoddy craftsmanship by my builder. Well, I either had to have part of the roof taken off to fix it, or I could tackle it myself ...

That Roof Won't Bow Any More Than It Is Now

After thinking about all of my success with home repair this summer, I believe it might be time for me to hire myself out to help others with their predicaments.

If you're interested, just give me a call at 555-687-2474. That's 555-OVR-CHRG.

P.S.  Here are pictures of my finished entry way.

Tis The Season

September 1st.  For all of you weather heads out there, this is the first day of meteorological fall.  That's right ... summer is gone, kaput, finished, a day old memory.  Yes, I know that Labor Day hasn't even occurred yet, but due to some catastrophic failure in the Gregorian calendar, it won't happen until almost the middle of the month, so we should just ignore it this year and go to work on Monday.  It missed it's chance.  Fall is here.

Normally, I would miss the passing of summer, but this year I don't give a shit.  If I hadn't spent two weeks in the southwest in July, I would never have believed that the cold, damp, dreary days that made up the last three months here in the upper midwest were actually supposed to be summer.  When you have air conditioning, and your highest monthly electric bill is 15 cents, you know something is wrong.

So, bring on fall.  It has all the cool holidays anyway. September is National Chicken Month, October is National Pizza Month and November is National Epilepsy Month (Yay epilepsy!).  And of course you have Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Very cool.

Even my mailbox knows that summer is over.  Today, when I grabbed my mail, I was delighted to see my first Christmas catalog!  Actually, I was pretty happy to see it, because I have two particular items that I want to buy this season.

The first is a new snow blower.  My poor little Toro was overwhelmed last winter and couldn't tackle even the smallest drift without emitting a feeble cough and dying. Actually, I didn't use the descriptives "poor" and "little" when it did this.  I'm trying to recall exactly what I said, but I think it had "motherfucker" as one of the words. This year I'm going to buy something so humongous that it will blow snow into driveways three houses away from me.  Ah, that'll piss people off. 

The second thing on my list is a brand new all natural fake Christmas tree.  Our present all natural fake Christmas tree is as old as my son, which is pretty old. It's been hauled out and put back so many times that I'm sure it would look right at home in one of those stick man cartoons.  And besides, Jan's been after me for 87 years to get a new tree and I figure she's way overdue to get her way.  What a guy I am!

Sorry to be a buzz kill, but it's time for the seasons to move forward.  I know I'll regret saying this when I'm walking through some parking lot with the temperature at zero and wind cutting me in half, but I'll be the first one rooting for spring next year.

So Merry Christmas and ho, ho fucking ho!