"...and they keep pulling me back in!"
Apr. 28th, 2005 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneI was talking to my mom on the phone this evening. She informed me that a lovely document was on its way to my mail box: a notice for me to report to jury duty back in Utica.
Let's review. I've lived in Boston since January 2000. That means I've been here 5 and one-third years. I may have taken liberties with my registration change (I didn't do that until June of 2001, when the old one finally expired and I would have needed to get new plates) but I have not been a New York State resident the entire of the 21st Century. How am I getting a notice for jury duty? I voted here in Melrose back in November. I voted in Woburn the last time we had an election-like presidential activity. Christ in a hat, didn't they get the hint?
Guess not. They need me to provide explicit proof that I no longer live in Oneida County. "A phone bill or something." Okay, so it's time to dig up a bill. I've got the gas bill, the electric bill, the phone bill, the cable bill...
My mother had sent another letter that arrived today. It looks like the post office shredded some of it. She included an old pay stub of mine from my days at Sears. After taxes I'd brought home $133.28 on November 2nd, 1996. This was 20 hours of work t the training rate -- a rate much better than what I ended up with from the sales floor. Christmas was great but after March I was often stuck in "The Draw" -- a week where I hadn't made my $6 per hour in commission so they advanced it to me and then took it out once I'd made it back. I was working pure commission, selling boom boxes and stereos. I learned a lot about what I'd put up with and earned almost nothing. Yeah, I was only beating minimum wage by inches.
The only other thing in my mail box was my pay stub. It said I earned my regular half-month's salary plus a reimbursement for last month's trip to Armonk for training. Not only had they paid for my two-night stay on the campus and all the food and training, they paid me a ridiculous kickback for buying my own gas. I had told them I'd driven 400 miles (200 down, 200 back, which if I rounded I rounded slightly downward). Their travel reimbursement was more than I made that week in 1996 BEFORE TAXES. That gives me a lot of perspective on how much my life has improved.
I was having lunch with the wicked cool![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moominmolly today. She wanted to hear how I was liking the job now that I have real callers. I told her I loved it. It's true. I get to solve problems for copious pay that once I'd've solved for free. Thus I am at leisure to learn new stuff as part of my job. How cool is that?
Now that I have six computers towers on a rollable rack in the office, it's a lot easier to get things going. I can run the KVM wires, an ethernet line and a power cable to a box, flip the switch and get something done. This is what I've wanted for a long time. I can sit down to work on any one of my projects in a minute instead of an hour. I am thinking a four-way KVM may soon be a good investment.
I'm tired already. Tomorrow I occupy a different des at work -- one a lot farther from sunlight. However, it's also one that is closer to the other Unix geeks. I'll have my Sun box, the Dell with half a gig of Rambus and RHEL AS 3, and my normal business machine (it's fairly international, I dare say). All this makes life fresh.
-soon I'll have a weekend to enjoy, Dante
Let's review. I've lived in Boston since January 2000. That means I've been here 5 and one-third years. I may have taken liberties with my registration change (I didn't do that until June of 2001, when the old one finally expired and I would have needed to get new plates) but I have not been a New York State resident the entire of the 21st Century. How am I getting a notice for jury duty? I voted here in Melrose back in November. I voted in Woburn the last time we had an election-like presidential activity. Christ in a hat, didn't they get the hint?
Guess not. They need me to provide explicit proof that I no longer live in Oneida County. "A phone bill or something." Okay, so it's time to dig up a bill. I've got the gas bill, the electric bill, the phone bill, the cable bill...
My mother had sent another letter that arrived today. It looks like the post office shredded some of it. She included an old pay stub of mine from my days at Sears. After taxes I'd brought home $133.28 on November 2nd, 1996. This was 20 hours of work t the training rate -- a rate much better than what I ended up with from the sales floor. Christmas was great but after March I was often stuck in "The Draw" -- a week where I hadn't made my $6 per hour in commission so they advanced it to me and then took it out once I'd made it back. I was working pure commission, selling boom boxes and stereos. I learned a lot about what I'd put up with and earned almost nothing. Yeah, I was only beating minimum wage by inches.
The only other thing in my mail box was my pay stub. It said I earned my regular half-month's salary plus a reimbursement for last month's trip to Armonk for training. Not only had they paid for my two-night stay on the campus and all the food and training, they paid me a ridiculous kickback for buying my own gas. I had told them I'd driven 400 miles (200 down, 200 back, which if I rounded I rounded slightly downward). Their travel reimbursement was more than I made that week in 1996 BEFORE TAXES. That gives me a lot of perspective on how much my life has improved.
I was having lunch with the wicked cool
moominmolly today. She wanted to hear how I was liking the job now that I have real callers. I told her I loved it. It's true. I get to solve problems for copious pay that once I'd've solved for free. Thus I am at leisure to learn new stuff as part of my job. How cool is that?Now that I have six computers towers on a rollable rack in the office, it's a lot easier to get things going. I can run the KVM wires, an ethernet line and a power cable to a box, flip the switch and get something done. This is what I've wanted for a long time. I can sit down to work on any one of my projects in a minute instead of an hour. I am thinking a four-way KVM may soon be a good investment.
I'm tired already. Tomorrow I occupy a different des at work -- one a lot farther from sunlight. However, it's also one that is closer to the other Unix geeks. I'll have my Sun box, the Dell with half a gig of Rambus and RHEL AS 3, and my normal business machine (it's fairly international, I dare say). All this makes life fresh.
-soon I'll have a weekend to enjoy, Dante
