Notes in the key of C

    If you’re from the Islands, chances are you like Chinese cuisine. (See, I was gonna say Chinese food, but doesn’t “cuisine” add an exotic, tantalizing twist to it?) Anywayyyyyyyy…..as I was saying, being an Island boy myself, that kind of food rates right at or near the top of my choices of going-out-to-eat or getting-takeout food.

     So, it’s lunch time and I swear there’s no place to eat near where our office is.  I jump in the Jeep, head downtown (about a ten minute drive) and pass by the “Fortune Chef”. Ahhhhhhh! Visions of delicious sweet and sour pork, kung pao chicken and “governor’s shrimp” are dancing in my head.

After all, “Fortune Chef” (then located on the other side of town) used to be one of the best places to go.  So, I thought, “what the hell, it’s gotta be good!”  I hit the drive-thru. First rule broken!  That rule is, if it’s lunch time and there’s few or no cars in the parking lot, keep on going. But my hunger blurred my sense of reason and I ordered the broccoli and chicken.  Back at the office, I sat in the breakroom, my broccoli and chicken and a nice, cold can of Coke in front of me, ready to do some damage.  Okay, they must have misunderstood me.  I said broccoli and chicken. What I was looking at was rice and broccoli. Hey, how come some of the broccoli is green and crunchy and some of it is brown and limp?  And WHERE’S THE CHICKEN? I searched underneath the rice………NO chicken. I flipped through the multi-colored broccoli. There’s one! And by the time I’d swallowed as much as I could before I lost my appetite, I had found two or three more small pieces. Hey, the rice was pretty good.  And I didn’t even have to pay for the headache, churning stomach and the irrestible urge to deposit what I DID eat immediately afterwards in the nearest bathroom.  Suffice to say I won’t be eating there again.

  Thank you, Jesus!!  The power of prayer, persistence and a little bit of good fortune came together and from it sprang that one missing ingredient in my life.  Exactly two weeks, to the day, since I was informed that my services were no longer needed at my last job, the door is apparently about to open on a new chapter of my life.  I’m declaring on THIS day that the old job and the a–holes that conspired to remove me from “one of the highest paying” jobs there, are now officially “water-under-the-bridge”.  A new job awaits and I welcome the opportunity to rejoin the work force.

   Fourteen days of checking my e-mail for responses to resumes posted on two different job sites.  Fourteen days of sipping coffee, while studying and searching the classified ads in the newspaper, first trying to find a job that was similar to the one I lost,  then just trying to find anything that would pay enough to cover those bills that continue to show up even after the final paycheck is just a memory.  Fourteen days of faxing resumes, filling out applications and doing internet searches, with the pressure slowly building.   Fourteen days of waiting, not knowing if that unemployment check  would even be coming to help us keep our heads above water while the search continued.  But I was surrounded by famly and friends who offered prayers and assurances that I would find something soon.  There was a job out there and I just had to keep looking until I found it.  And now, today, I’m declaring the search over ……..and the mission accomplished.

    
Wow!  This is great!  Tomorrow’s Monday and I can sleep in. No alarm clock for this guy.  Stay up late and wake up when I’m damn good and ready. Wronnnnnnnnnnggg!

It’s just not the same as having a vacation when you don’t have a job to return to. You work five days a week and then some, always in anticipation of that week or two weeks out of the year when you can finally leave it all behind, temporarily and get away to some vacation destination or just stay home, unwind and perhaps catch up on some projects around the house.  “Temporarily” is the key word here because under these circumstances, there’s a job to return to when the vacation is over.  You may say you hated to come back but in fact you can’t deny that it’s the job that helps pay the bills and everything else in life that a steady income takes care of.

   Unemployment has always been a “dirty” word in my vocabulary and one that I’ve always done my best to avoid.  I can’t remember ever voluntarily leaving a job without having another, better job waiting. Two weeks notice was the rule I tried to follow even though I understand state law allows an employer to terminate employees for no reason or any reason. Hmmm! Sounds fair, doesn’t it?

   It seems to me that many people who for whatever reason find themselves collecting a weekly unemployment check can look at this situation as a time to sit back, make sure they meet the minimum requirements to keep the checks coming and for the most part, not make a serious attempt to rejoin the workforce.  For these people, unemployment IS a vacation of sorts.  But not for me.

   Now I wonder which looks worse to a perspective employer who’s reading your application or resume. Circumstances aside, are you less likely to get hired if you quit your last job or if you were terminated?  For me, as bad as the working environment was getting and even with the increasing pressure that hurt my appetite and often made it difficult to sleep at night, I simply could not let myself walk away voluntarily. I saw what was coming and I tried to ride it out, even though I had very little hope that things would improve under the current management.  I guess how it all ended won’t be “water under the bridge” until I get another job.  The search continues.