I consider myself a pretty patient man on most fronts, though it is well-known to most of you at this point that I don't like (or want) to be. I don't like waiting on things (or for) people that I shouldn't have to wait on. I have, apparently, an unrealistic expectation that if someone has a job to do, that person should do their job to the best of their ability at all times. This is the philosophy I've always had in everything I've done. When I was a college student, I was the best college student I could be. When I was a cashier and stocker at four different grocery store chains, I was the best cashier or stocker I could be -- no, the pay wasn't the best, but I still had a job to do, and I did it. When I was a college professor, I was the best professor I could be, even if it meant going above and beyond the call of duty and sacrificing social time or sleep. As a husband, I try to be the best husband I can be to Daisy -- and that includes doing everything I can around the house to balance the workload and contribute as much as I can to our marriage and living space, as well as continue to foster a positive environment of open communication in our relationship.
It's about being honorable.
Everything I have done is not because it's been expected of me or because I'll be punished if I don't do it (translation: I won't), but because it was the right thing to do in those given situations. Yeah, I could've flunked out of college if I'd not cared about it. No, I didn't have to go to graduate school. Yeah, I could've gotten away with doing less than half of the work I actually did for my students when I was a GTA as well as when I was a professor, and if I really didn't want to, I wouldn't do anything around the house now and let Daisy take care of it all. But that's not who I am. I have a very strong sense of honor, responsibility, and accountability for my actions or inactions. It's not like lives are in the balance, or anything like that, but that drive is at the core of my being as a human.
So, when I observe people who have certain important responsibilities not by choice, but because it's part of what they do for a living, and to a large portion of the people who they deal with, that is who they are -- yes, I get angry and irritated when they don't do their jobs. Especially when, in not doing their jobs, they inconvenience or otherwise discount/ignore me. I am not a fan of incompetence, and I am not a fan of people who don't follow orders and/or don't respond to questions that need to have answers. It gives off the sense that I are beneath them and not worth their time -- and believe me, as I have told Daisy in the past, nobody is allowed to make me feel inferior, or treat me as such, when I know in many ways I am indeed a better and more intelligent person than they are. I have always been a leader, not a follower -- while I can be a follower in certain situations where there is a true leader present, one who I can respect and admire, that shit changes really fast when said leader reveals him/herself to be a fucking idiot. Any of you who were around for the first incarnation of this blog 5-7 years ago remember that, as I wrote about my experiences working in the grocery store in Missouri.
Daisy has told me at times that I have a sense of entitlement about some things, and that is very true to an extent -- yes, I do have a sense of entitlement in some cases, but it's not the false, "give it to me because I deserve it because I said so" entitlement. No, any entitlement I feel about anything is completely justified. For example, if I apply for a teaching position at a university, and I meet the minimum qualifications plus have another degree and years of experience above what's even asked for in the "preferred" section of the job description, yes, I feel entitled to an interview. I see no difference in this compared to as if I'd bought an expensive electronic device that broke under warranty and I requested a replacement or a refund. I want to take what's rightfully mine, what I qualify for, and what I should have. That's not false entitlement, that's a reasonable expectation for a reasonable outcome. No, I may not get the job, but I do feel entitled to a shot at it if I've applied and my qualifications reach/surpass what they're looking for. Unreasonable expectations would be if, say, I applied for a teaching position that required a PHD as well as at least ten publications and ten years of teaching experience (none of which I have), and demanded an interview anyway.
Anyhow, I'm being long-winded and am belaboring the point.
I was told last week that I had been recommended for hire at Daisy's company by at least three managers/supervisors (Daisy herself, one of her fellow supervisors, and the guy who interviewed me) and could have received up to two more glowing recommendations from others within the company who have met and/or otherwise know me as a candidate for the position there. I was also told that my application was being "pulled" in order for them to file the paperwork to get me hired, and I should hear back from the HR people sometime quite soon. I covered most of this in my last post.
Whether that actually happened is beyond me, honestly, as it's now Wednesday and I have heard nothing from anyone at the company, when I was expecting something by Monday or at least by yesterday. Still nothing. Daisy's fellow manager who recommended me has done all he can do, though he has been monitoring the situation (he hasn't heard anything yet, as she checked with him last night). It's all in the hands of HR now, and the HR person who originally recruited me and vetted me for interview waaaaaay back in April (or even late March, I can't remember) has now mysteriously become unreachable, when previously he would reply to every email I sent within five minutes of sending it.
Daisy has also told me there were many people who called multiple times, over and over, before they were eventually hired. I interviewed for the position there five weeks ago now, and have requested updates on my application status at least three times -- requests which have apparently fallen on proverbial deaf ears. My application status on their website simply says "applied," but doesn't give me any updates past that (as many other employment portals do). So, truly, I'm in the dark about this.
Here's the problem. As mentioned before, I knew I had some decisions to make here -- my interview/presentation with the university was scheduled for today, and part of the weekend was to be spent putting together that presentation, as you know. However, I didn't want to plot out a ton of time and put a ton of work into that presentation for an interview on Wednesday if I got a call on Monday from Daisy's company offering me a job -- it would've been wasted effort, calories burned for no reason, as I would've immediately taken the job at Daisy's company and canceled the interview at the university.
Before you say anything, yes, I would love to work in academia again -- but the university job is a temporary position that ends in a few months, and requires much more work, effort, travel, and fake smiles compared to a full-time, non-temp job of sitting at a desk in a climate-controlled, comfortable office at a computer...which is basically what I do here at home. And the pay is pretty much the same.
As an aside, Daisy told me that she thought her job may be too stressful for me. I told her there's a lot of stress and bullshit I can overlook when a sizable paycheck every two weeks is involved, and this is completely true. If I do get the job at her company I will start at over $10k a year more than I've ever made at any job. To put that into perspective, I made $12,000 last year as a professor. Before taxes.
Anyway, I'd planned to use Saturday night to make the presentation, but I was really fatigued and was feeling sick and lethargic all evening, so I went to bed early. Daisy had to work overtime that night and didn't get home until really late in the morning, not getting to bed until 11AM -- which was when I got up.
Okay, I thought, so we'll go have dinner with the parents on Sunday night as per the usual, and then I'll come home and work on it then. The presentation only has to be fifteen minutes in length, roughly, and there's time at the end for a Q&A session. I find the whole "Q&A session" a fairly laughable concept, as the only stuff I know about the university here is from what little Daisy has told me about her college years and the sparse information in the packet they sent me.
When we went to dinner at the parents', it was brought up that the parents were going to visit Daisy's sister the next day (a road trip about two hours north of Omaha, close to the South Dakota border), as it was the fourth birthday of Daisy's sister's oldest boy. We were asked if we wanted to come with them -- a day trip consisting of leaving fairly early in the morning, driving up there, spending the day with Daisy's sister and the kids until our brother-in-law came home from work, eating dinner and doing the birthday stuff, and then coming back.
"You can go," I told Daisy, "but I don't want to."
This led to Daisy getting upset with me -- despite the many reasons I gave for not wanting to spend all day traveling and around children, the least of which being that I had a presentation to research and create -- I recanted and told her that if it was that important to her, I'd go.
Let's step back here for a moment and fully admit something -- yes, I could've made the presentation at any point over the course of the week prior after I'd received the information from the university. This is true. So, yes, it's totally my fault that I'd put it off for as long as I had. However, one of the reasons I had done so, as mentioned before, was because I was waiting on Daisy's company to contact me with a job offer, since those wheels were already turning. That call, at the earliest, was expected to be on Monday -- when we'd be gone at Daisy's sister's place, a place where I wasn't sure I'd have any cell phone signal whatsoever to receive said call.
As an aside, I did have cell phone signal up there, but it wasn't T-Mobile service and it didn't matter, because I received no calls anyway.
So, since everything was agreed upon and we were going, we left the parents' place, went immediately to get a birthday present for the kid, and then came home and went to bed. The parents wanted to leave at 10AM or before, which meant that if I wanted to be functional throughout the day at all, I had to get up around 7 or so. Which I did, and we went, and it was fun -- but it was also tiring. We were gone for fourteen hours, the entirety of Monday from morning until close to midnight, and I was completely exhausted by the time we got home. There would be no presentation-making that night -- I had to sleep. I had to sleep a lot.
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