No, Because....

I've have a difficult day. Let me tell you about it.

It started well, with a rather pleasant job interview across town. I was surprised and pleased to discover that the downtown stretch of I-10, the ramps to which have been closed for over a year, was finished and the ramps were open. I found the right building with no trouble, was intrigued by the project for which I interviewed, and liked my potential employer. The only bad part was that it is strictly a temporary position, expected to last one to three months. The money is such that I was interested anyway, but it did put me in an awkward position with respect to a permanent fulltime job I was supposed to interview for this week (and still will, it turns out). My interviewer hoped to have an answer by the end of the day. John and I agreed that if offered the temporary job, I would take it, and ask the other employer to keep me in mind for later in the year when the contract is up.

On the way back I detoured to the office of the recruiter who sent me out on this morning's interview. She was impressed when I told her that I'd apparently done well on the other company's computerized assessment and had been scheduled for a phone interview.

So far, so good, right? But on the way home, I noticed that a) smoke was billowing from under the hood of my car and b) temperature gauge was on H for Horrendous. I let it cool off for a few minutes in the parking lot of a grumpy signmaker, and then managed to get it over to my mechanic. I'd literally blown some gaskets, and probably needed a thermostat as well. Again. This will take the 2-week total in car repairs to my 1994 Eagle Vision up over $1000. By the way, I checked, and its fuel economy is exactly 1 mpg too high to qualify for Cash for Clunkers, even if I had a good job and the money to spend on a new car.

I got an email from the recruiter for the company that did the computer assessment last week, rescheduling the phone interview to Friday. It had been postponed from Monday because she was out sick. I explained that I was waiting to hear back on the temporary job, and she said I could cancel the interview later as needed. Fair enough. But it made me nervous that in my efforts to behave ethically toward both potential employers by providing disclosure, I was shooting myself in the foot with both of them.

5 PM came, and my mechanic called to say that the car was still leaking, and they needed to keep it overnight.

6 PM came, and I didn't hear back on the temp job.

6:30 PM came, and John came in with three pieces of mail from the Arizona Department of Economic Security. Having already changed their minds four times about what I do or do not qualify for and what I need to do to get an unemployment claim going again, they have found yet another excuse not to start paying me as promised. To wit:

BENEFITS CANNOT BE PAID AT THIS TIME BECAUSE OF YOUR AVAILABILITY. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS BELOW IN DETAIL AND RETURN THIS FORM WITHIN 5 WORKING DAYS FROM THE DATE OF THIS NOTICE. [....]

What it comes down to is that because I work 2 to 6 hours a week and have been reporting that income, they're not convinced that I'm available every day to accept and work at another job, despite my having told them repeatedly that I was indeed available to work each day. The form asks "WHAT TYPE OF EMPLOYMENT ACTIVITIES ARE YOU INVOLVED IN?" I have already explained in detail to at least one, possibly two of their deputies, that I'm working part time at St. Michael's and that the church is flexible about when I put in my few hours a week, freeing me to work full time elsewhere. But because my file is passed endlessly from deputy to supervisor to who-knows-who, and isn't as straightforward as one full-time job and then nothing, the people at DES can't settle on one determination about my case and go with it. They have to second guess it over and over, changing their minds and leaving me stuck until I can contact them again. And again. And again. This has been going on since June. I've repeatedly been told that I'm qualified for one kind of claim or another, but then the ball is dropped or someone else looks at the file, and it never actually goes through. And I'm sick of it.

Please, oh please, let me get the permanent job with the good company!

Karen

Unusual or Infrequent Items

If you're not an accountant or frequent user of financial statements, you probably just looked at my subject line and said Wha...? It's a phrase that cost me at least an hour of confusion Sunday night, because of two nearly identical questions in a CPA review module in which I missed the fact that one said "unusual or infrequent" and the other said "unusual and infrequent," and my unfamiliarity with the way the module shows you where you went wrong. If it's both unusual and infrequent, it's called an "extraordinary item." If it's only one or the other, by GAAP criteria, it's not extraordinary.

By those standards, I guess today wasn't extraordinary.

Starting this entry with the above is what's known in an entirely different profession as "burying the lede." But I have my reasons.

I got a job today. I wish I were more happy about it.

As per my usual ethical stance on discussing my job online, I'm not going to say too much about it. I can tell you that it's a seasonal position doing income taxes, something I haven't been applying for because my only income tax experience consists of one class 3 1/2 years ago, doing my own taxes using TurboTax, messing around with TaxCut, and doing my mom's 1040EZ exactly once circa 2001. I figured I wasn't qualified, not without some training, at least.

I start this job at ten o'clock MST tomorrow morning, pretty much the exact time Barack Obama starts his new job on the East Coast. I may or may not get some training when I arrive at work. Otherwise, I'll have to refer people to another location or ask them to come back later in the week or something. Don't worry; I won't do anyone's taxes tomorrow morning on unfamiliar software while someone sits at my desk. Probably. The good news is that I'm very good at learning new software, the venue is expected to have mostly people with very simple returns, and I'll be referring anything tricky to a CPA offsite.

The money isn't terribly good, but it beats the heck out of McDonald's or unemployment payments. And tax accounting is a good skill to pick up for future employability.

Why am I not thrilled to finally get a job? One is that I'll be paid a lower wage than I would have considered four months ago. Two is that it's another temp thing, so I'm still not secure. Three I'm not prepared to discuss. I'm hoping that it will all be worth it, though, good experience and a good bridge to a better job when the economy starts recovering.

Meanwhile, it's led me to a decision I hadn't even considered until about half an hour ago. As you may know, I've been spending many hours at this computer the last few days, struggling through an assignment for an online seminar. The first assignment, emailed Saturday night at 11PM MST, was to complete all the reading and get a score of at least 90% on all the online tests for the following modules:

1. Environment of Financial Accounting
2. Financial Accounting
3. FASB's Conceptual Framework 1
4. FASB's Conceptual Framework 2
5. The Balance Sheet and Disclosures
6. Related Party and Subsequent Events
7. Income Statement
8. Discontinued Operations
9. Extraordinary Items
10. Comprehensive Income
11. Earnings Per Share 1
12. Earnings Per Share 2
13. Statement of Cash Flows 1
14. Statement of Cash Flows 2
15. Statement of Cash Flows 3

I had already done the first two when the email arrived, but that left me with 13 more to do in approximately two days. Since the grading is Tuesday and no time was listed, I was shooting for having it all done by 9AM Tuesday, which would leave me all day to watch the inauguration, visit my 103-year-old friend Eva, give blood, and get a jump on the next assignment before it arrived.

I have started using my old textbook to help with concepts I've forgotten.

Only I'll now be working 10-7 tomorrow. And as of tonight, after hours or struggle with Earnings Per Share I, I still have four modules to get through by morning, none of which have anything to do with reviewing personal income tax concepts. I'm taking much longer than the average student on many of these things, probably because my original coursework was in 2003 and 2004 and I'm getting a little distracted at times. (A little? Ha!) I could get it all done by tomorrow morning, but only if I start a new job on three or four hours of sleep. And how do I complete another 15 modules every two or three days once I'm working full time?

Dug out my income tax textbook, too!

Fortunately, I have an alternative. The course is set up so that I can add or drop a seminar at any time. So I just dropped the January 18, 41-day seminar, and picked up the 61-day one that starts January 29. This means I've already put a dent in the coursework for the later course, which will give me a little time to get even farther ahead, and see if there are any modules that will help me develop a better conceptual basis for the new job.

I kind of feel as though I've been defeated by the 41-day course, and I'm being a quitter. But I know better. I'm basically adding 11+15=26 days to my preparation time for an exam I haven't even applied to take yet. And it gives me a much more rational schedule to accomplish things in, given my unusual or infrequent (but not both) new job circumstance. I can even use the lag time to get through more modules of the AUD (Auditing) course, which is 8% completed already.

But for tonight, I'm saying goodbye to earnings per share. I'm going to look up info on the tax software I'll be using, study income tax in general a little bit, watch a little Doctor Who, and try for a good night's sleep.

My last weekday sunset at the dog park for a while.

Yeah. I feel better already.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #238: What a Rip Off!

I've decided to follow Carly's lead, and combine the new Weekend Assignment post with the previous week's results. Please let me know if you have any objection to this. First we'll cover the new topic, and then we'll double back to review your responses to last week's entry.

Weekend Assignment #238: As you can see from the entry below this one, I found out on Thursday morning that someone ripped me off by plagiarizing a poem of mine all over the Web. Tell us of a time you've been ripped off - that is, stolen from or cheated in some way.

Extra Credit: Is there anything you do differently now because of what happened?

Seeing my best poem garbled and reposted under someone else's name is a minor annoyance compared to a few memorable ripoffs of yesteryear. When I lived in Columbus, Ohio in the early 1980s, I had a Honda moped that was stolen. It was chained to the side of the house, and we were home at the time, but neither we nor Jenny Dog noticed anything until the following morning.

The register I had to empty for a robber - twice

A year later I was held up at gunpoint at work - twice. I was managing a location of Buzzard's Nest Records (albeit without a manager's title) for $4.00 an hour when a guy came into the store on a Saturday afternoon. I was alone. He said to give me all the money, "and don't look at me like you want to get to know me." All I can tell you about his appearance was he was white and wore a stocking cap. I gave him all the money in the register, and then lied about whether there was other money on the premises, thus preventing him from getting the money in the Central Ticket Office outlet operation or the petty cash in the back room. That bit of dangerous loyalty wasn't good enough for my boss, George. He claimed that the guy must have cased the store (unlikely, since he didn't know about the ticket money). George also ranted that there was a standing rule (never, ever mentioned to me until that night) that if you couldn't get to the desk in the back room with the extra cash, you were supposed to "skim" the twenties and hide them in the bottom drawer of the cabinet under the register. Needless to say, I was not pleased with my boss's compassion that night for his distressed employee, who had put her life on the line to save him from losing even more money to the robber.

A week later, again on Saturday afternoon, the same store was robbed again. This time there were two of us working due to shift overlap, but it made no difference. All I can tell you about him was that he was black and wore a stocking cap. Oh, and one more thing: he knew about the "skim the twenties and put them in a drawer" trick, and made me hand them over. Again I lied about whether there was any money in the back room, and again the ticket money was not discovered. The guy then ordered us into the back room and ran out the front.

As far as I know, neither robber was ever caught. A detective did bring around mug shots one day to try to get the first guy identified, but none of the photos matched my memory. Whoever the detective thought it was, it wasn't.

Since arriving in Tucson, I've had a few things stolen. Someone broke into our van in 1987 or so, and stole me Canon AE-1 and a pair of John's slippers. And about seven years ago I came outside one morning and discovered the ignition was missing from my 1987 Chrysler New Yorker, which formerly belonged to me mom. Some would-be thief or joy rider had tried to use a screwdriver in place of a key but had not actually managed to drive the car away. So I guess it doesn't quite count as a rip off.

I don't think any of these experiences has changed the way I look at the world, except maybe to be just a smidge more careful. I still prefer to assume other people are honest and reasonable unless reason or evidence suggests otherwise.

Your turn! Tell us of a time someone else tried to cheat you or steal from you. Write it up in your blog along with a link back here, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with a roundup of your responses.

Speaking of which...

For Weekend Assignment #237: Spending Spree, I asked you to pretend you were obligated to spend a $10,000 inheritance in just a week or two, as asked how you'd spend it. Let us count the ways:

Julie said...

Like Karen, though, I'd probably spend it on travel. And not just to England, to part of Europe as well. There are three of us, so the money won't go as far as her trip with John would. Still, we would like return to England at some point. We visited in 2001 (pictures here, in a part of the site that desperately needs revamping) and had a wonderful time. Chris was just eleven or so at the time, which was a little young to appreciate a few things. This time we would like to get a car and drive around the countryside and stop in Scotland to see the Holy Grail castle among other things. Since this is a frivolous expenditure, we'd pay any extra fee to the rental companies so he could take a turn behind the wheel. I still don't know if they'd let him, since he's under 21, but we'd certainly try.

Tall Paul said...

Who needs a week? I head on over the Yamaha Dealer and put down the ten grand on a Star Midnight Warrior. Hey! The rules never said I couldn't put the money towards anything that cost over $10,000!

(He also has a detailed Plan B.)

Jama said in comments...

This is going to be easy to spend for me, just grab a few laptops, plasma tv, DSLR, and some home furnishings. :)

Martha said in comments...

I was going to write about it but it's not long enough to post a whole entry about - I'd get a face lift! (I'd probably be too scared in real life to do it, but since this is fantasizing...)if there was anything left over I'd buy a new clothes.
Can't remember the last time I bought something for myself that wasn't a necessity ::sigh::

Florinda said...

Hmm, I could use some new bookcases. I never seem to have enough space for all my books, since I keep getting more of them. But I'm not talking about the IKEA build-'em-yourself kind of bookcases. I'd like some real furniture, the kind that comes on a delivery truck and gets set up in your house for you.

Mike said...

I'm not going to go into specific brands or anything, but most of the things I'd buy would be electronic gadgets. Or toys, if you like. First, I'd buy a laptop. I may have mentioned that before. I don't know what kind exactly, but with 10 grand to spend I can buy whatever I want. Then, I'd buy a new camera. Did I tell you ours broke?

Kiva said...

I would love to take my husband and my dog on a train trip around the U.S. in a private railroad car. We could stop any where, explore the area, and then get picked up by the next train to somewhere. Can you imagine the great pictures that I could take and what fun we'd have?

Carly said...

I can't do much about changing my priorities at this point, so I think I will find some things that will aid me in my life. Not necessities, but practical all the same. For example; I love to cook, so I would love to purchase a new set of cookware, and some new food processors. Also, I have never owned a really nice set of China, so I would buy me some dishes and flatware in a pretty pattern for all those gourmet meals I like to make! With what's left over, I will pick up some new clothes, like the ones I found this past week at my favorite store, Old Navy.

APOOO said...

With everything going on around us…sometimes we need to dream, hope, smile, smell the roses…even when it is not the weekend…who says we can’t do this little exercise on any day.

(APOOO did not actually answer the question, but passed it on to her own readers, along with an interesting bling photo.)

That's it for now. Don't forget to post your ripoff stories, and I'll see you back here in a week!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #237: Spending Spree

The economy being what it is, I was going to ask about luxuries you'd give up if necessary. But that's too depressing! Let's go in the opposite direction, and indulge in a little harmless fantasy.

Weekend Assignment #237: A long-lost relative dies and leaves you $10,000. But there's a catch: the will states that it cannot be saved, invested, given to charity or used to pay bills. You've got a week (sorry, let's make it two weeks) to spend it all. (Anything left over will be used to buy tiny wheelchairs for injured pigeons.) What will you do with the dough?

Extra Credit: Excluding food and necessities, what is the most recent thing you've bought for yourself?

Hmm. Well, I know how John would want me to spend it. The house is full of long-delayed home improvement projects: the bathroom walls that were never repaired after mold remediation, John's shower, the wall of my bathtub, new lighting for the kitchen, new floors, new doors, and new doggy door. And yes, sure, we do need all that stuff.

But you know what? Right now I have no work obligations except job hunting, which can be done with a laptop, a phone and an internet connection. And I haven't been outside the U.S. in a decade or so, and that's too long. So if I have $10,000 to squander, I'm going to travel.

Let's see; where shall we go? We've been to England, but barely made it out of London. I want to see Yorkshire and Cornwall and probably other places, and range out from there to the rest of the British Isles. I want to see David Tennant play Shakespeare, but depending on the timing I'd be equally delighted to see him film one of the 2009 Doctor Who specials in Cardiff, Wales. Scotland and the Republic of Ireland also deserve a stop. While in the UK I'll buy some Doctor Who merchandise as well.

Is there any money left? If so, let's stop at Walt Disney World on the way home. The last time I was there for more than a day, there was no Disney-MGM Studios, no Animal Kingdom. And I knew that even in the Magic Kingdom and Epcot there are lots of attractions that have been built or upgraded in the last 15 years.

The last thing I bought myself? Nice slacks to wear to the job interviews I haven't had.

Your turn! What would you do with $10,000 and a mandate not to use it for anything sensible? Spend your fantasy cash in your blog or journal, and please include a link back to this entry. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week to celebrate your spending spree!

Karen

Unemployed, Dog-Loving Woman For Obama

Recent sidebar updates notwithstanding, I'm not the most political person in the world. Oh, I do my research and I have my opinions, and there are times (such as now) when I'm even a bit of a political news junkie. But I've never volunteered to work for a candidate, never made a phone call, stuffed envelopes, or gone door to door on a candidate's behalf. I'm way too shy for that, and far too averse to conflict and confrontation. My last letter to a newspaper (comments fields aside) was probably when I was in elementary school. My last day going door to door over something even vaguely political was for a job I quit after one day circa 1979. As for cold calling, I'm still haunted by the trauma of those 1975 calls involving Emmet Kelly Jr. (I'd link to that story, but Google doesn't like my blogs any more and won't find anything in them that's more than a year old.) I don't even like blogging about politics unless I happen to be in full rant mode. I don't want to be pushy, and annoy you, my readers. Also, I tend to get upset for a day or so when someone leaves a comment that implies I'm going straight to hell because I'm pro-choice or pro-immigration or pro-tolerance or whatever.

But when I gave a smallish donation to Barack Obama last month, I ended up with a MyBarackObama.com page, scoring my commitment to the cause on the basis of all these extroverted activities I could never do. I've written a few blog entries over there, the latest of which I wrote a week ago, intending to repost it here. But the news this election proceeds with dizzying speed, circumstances change daily, and the entry is so last week that it's not worth importing at this point.

Really, blogging is about the only thing I can do even semi-comfortably on Obama's behalf, and on behalf of us all. Even that is something I can't do all the time. As much as I care about the constant lies about Obama emanating from anonymous emails, ignorant and mean-spirited commenters on news sites, sanctioned and unsanctioned attack ads and from the Republican candidates and their proxies, I don't always have "something to say" about it, as Paul put it a week ago. I am out of work at the moment largely because of the mortgage crisis and all that has happened to the economy since then, and I'm certain that John McCain is not the person most likely to help make things better. But that's all I have to say on that subject, at least for tonight. That's not where tonight's rant is leading me.

I said before that blogging for Obama was pretty much all I can do to help get him elected, but aside from the actual voting, there's one more thing. In the past year I've made about three donations to the Democratic Congressional campaign fund, or whatever it's called, one to my particular Congresswoman, and three to the Obama campaign. Being unemployed, I can't reasonably fork over any more virtual cash for a while. But I can enlist your help, from those of you who agree that the election should be about issues, and on the issues, Obama is the candidate with the best chance of leading us out of the numerous messes GWB et al. have gotten us into.

The Obama website encourages donors to set up something called a personal fundraising page, and tonight I went ahead and did that. You can see a donation thermometer thingy on my sidebar; click on that (or the one to the left of these words) to get to my fundraising page and make a donation to the Obama campaign. I have no idea whether any of you are willing to help me with the with the $500 goal I set, but maybe a few of you will kick in a little. I hope so, anyway.

The text on the page is my own, except for the first sentence in each paragraph. I'm not a fan of canned text, written in the first person by someone else as supposedly coming from me. Still, I think I managed to adequately merge their message with my own.

With some hesitation I ended up with a "Women for Obama" page instead of being less specific. I have misgivings about this. As far as the issues are concerned, it shouldn't matter whether I'm male or female, black or white, living in New York, Ohio or Arizona. But I went with the women thing in solidarity with the recent NOW endorsement of Obama, and to remind folks that just because Sarah Palin is female, it doesn't mean that other females have to vote for her regardless of her policies.

And no, you don't have to be a woman to donate.

Thanks. Tomorrow I'll write about something else. Probably.

Karen

Am I Wrong? (Plus Dog Pictures)

I've been a bit depressed all afternoon and evening over something that happened earlier today. I've done my best to treat my depression with a light snack and copious amounts of Doctor Who; I guess I feel a little better. Let me tell you about it.

Since September 2007, I've been making what would have multiplied out to $XY,0000 a year, had I managed to stay there a year. This was, I think, $1,000 more than I was making at First Magnus. I never bothered to divide that out and see how much an hour it was, and when a recruiter asked me a month ago whether I'd accept $1Y.00 an hour on a temporary basis, I kind of felt pressured to say yes. I later did the math and discovered that that was too little money. I called the guy back and told him how much I'm making now. I meant to imply that I want the equivalent of $XY,0000 a year if at all possible, but the lower $1Y.00 an hour stayed in my record at that particular recruiter's company.

Today my main recruiter called to set up a job interview for me tomorrow morning, at a local non-profit agency. I was pleased and relieved and excited until she said that they wanted to pay me a dollar less than the $1Y.00 an hour, but that she'd convinced them to try to come up with the extra dollar an hour to get me. I was a little shocked, but I agreed to the interview. Then I did the math. That's still almost $2.00 an hour less than I've been making. She told them I wanted to work my way toward eventually making the amount I've been making. They thought it over, and canceled the interview, saying that I wouldn't "be happy" there. My recruiter called me back and gave me the bad news. She sounded disappointed in me.

When I got home tonight, I read the recruiter's email, written before the interview was canceled. It said, in part,

To be honest with you, the job market is really tight right now and this is a good in with a good company. The only other jobs I'm placing right row are [several things that aren't even possibilities]. As you can see - it's slim pickings so I would definitely try and nail this position!!

John, of course, is on the opposite side of the fence on this. He thinks it would be foolish of me to take a major cut in pay, especially this early in the process. He knows we've got my student loan, the mortgage, the credit card debt (much of it from Tuffy's cancer treatments), and rising expenses for gas and food. It would be tough on our budget to work for $1Y.00 an hour. So why do I feel so guilty and depressed and desperate? Plus there's this: if I'm out of work for a month, that's the difference in pay right there.

(I expect at this point you can probably work out the actual dollar values algebraically, if you care. Please don't bother.)

So I put it to you: am I wrong to hold out for at least the same salary as before, with the possible exception of a temp job while I wait for a better one? Would a temp job at $1Y.00 an hour get in the way of my making more later?

Enough of that. Let's look at pictures of dogs, in advance of Steven's Feline & Furball Friday.



The dogs have a rule. Whenever anyone comes home, they get a treat. Whenever a dog or a human comes in from the back yard, the dogs get a treat. Whenever a human wanders into the kitchen, the dogs get a treat.

Y'know, somehow I think they're starting to take advantage of us. I could have sworn that when it was just Tuffy, the treat was only due when we came home from work.


Yep, Pepper is a demanding little dog! But so cute! Someday she may even deign to lick me.

She does seem to be glad to see me, though. In fact, she hangs out with me a lot. And she's finally warming up to John, after a somewhat shaky start.

Wherever one dog goes, the other dog has to go too, to make sure of not missing out. This is especially true of trips to the back yard, or in from the back yard.

Karen