Taking a pledge….

There will be no comments on Jeff Bezos’ recent trip yesterday. Nor will there be any comments about what his rocket ship looks like, or whether or not the designer[s] have the surname of Johnson. Even if he is one….

An adventure journeying by bus….

Actually, this should be titled ‘An adventure trying to journey by bus. I have signed up for text notifications for all the Pierce Transit/Sound Transit routes that I normally take. This saves a lot of frustration when there’s a missed trip (which happens a lot more due to covid)…

So my work week last week:

• Wednesday was normal. Buses ran. There were a couple of missed trips, but not the trips that I took.
• Thursday, the bus I needed to take was a missed trip. And because at the time my bus ran, I couldn’t take the earlier bus, and the next bus was an hour later. So, I was going to be an hour late. I called in late to work, and I facebooked a co-worker who took the same bus (because I’m nice, and I don’t want her waiting an hour for a bus that wouldn’t arrive). So the late bus comes. I board. And later on she boards, and then she gets the driver to call ahead and get our connecting bus to wait for us. So we make the connection and we end up being on time. And I caught a hard time from my boss because I wasn’t late at all….
• Friday night, they ran. I was able to make all my connections and got to work on time.
• Saturday night, I saw the missed trip text for the 8:35 bus. Having just woken up, and not really reading my texts, I thought that the bus was again an hour late, so I called in late, and went out to catch the bus an hour later. Which didn’t show up (because it was the missed trip). So, I ended taking an Uber. Cost me close to $40+. But I made it to work. On time. I promised my boss that I would put a lot more effort into being late from now on.
• Sunday night I just ignored my text messages and went to the bus stop on time. And caught the bus. This day’s missed trip alert was for the trip right before mine.

I suppose I could’ve just called out on a couple of these days and burned my vacation time if it wasn’t for the fact that they are cracking down on attendance at work. And I prefer having a job to looking for a job. But the real reason is that I’ve already booked my vacation in August, and that’s going to use up my vacation time.

BTW, my vacation request was approved…

An anniversary of sorts yesterday….

Four years ago yesterday, Home Depot fired me. Yes, it still hurts. It is never a pleasant experience to be called into the office, told your employment is being terminated, and asked to leave the facility. But you also have to move on. I had an interview and a job offer from my current employer in three weeks (but that’s another post). It may be hard to bounce back, but you have to. Yes, my current job has a two+ hour bus ride each way (whereas I had a 20 minute walk before). But I feel like I fit in better where I’m at here than at my previous job. When I was at my first location, I fit in pretty well (I’m still friends with many of my co-workers there). But when I transferred, the ‘read’ I got of the situation in hindsight was that I wasn’t really welcome (it actually took the intervention of somebody form the district office to get them to take my transfer request seriously). In fact, it was because my transfer was forced on them probably put a bullseye on my back, and the first mistake I made was the only opportunity they needed to fire me). Hindsight is always 20/20.