They call her ol' one-shoe

Click Here to see the above comic at full size.

True Story. Just yesterday, I DID, in fact get my shoe wedged in the seam between the door and the step of the work shuttle that brings us back to our cars. I was already 3/4 of the way out of the van and managed to just barely avoid falling flat on my face. That still left me on my knees in the middle of the parking lot with only one shoe, though.

It would have been a lot more embarrassing if I hadn't personally found it so completely hilarious. All that time spent imagining that I could exit the van with the grace and form of an expert gymnast . . . What a waste!

You've got mailing address!

Ugh. So many comics to catch up on.

I'm touched by the number of you who read the last comic and sent me a message to tell me your own personal stories of apartment-hunting/craigslist horrors. Luckily, my workplace has a nice distribution list for all manner of outside-purposes. So I fired up an email and pretty much spammed my whole company.

And within a matter of minutes, I'd gotten about 6 possible candidates for hassle-free roommates who had already had a background check run on them. Convenient!

Roommate Rumble

Click here to see the comic in full size.

So, a job in Connecticut must beget an apartment in Connecticut, right? 'Cause there's no way in hell I was going to drive to and from Jersey every night. Wasn't going to happen. So where does one who is broke, and relatively friendless find housing on the cheap?

Craigslist, of course! Except that the results of any given search on Craigslist varies greatly. I do not think the majority of people in the world are crazy, but I think it's safe to say that a solid percentage of the folks posting on Craigslist might just be certifiably insane. If they weren't insisting that I could only have a single visitor per month, then they had overzealous dogs, or were smokers, or just wanted too much money. And if none of these things applied, then it was in Bridgeport where there is apparently a magical zone where people will not rent to tiny white girls out of fear of what might happen to them. Curses!

The Interview

Click here for full size

The interview process at this company is hardcore. They’ve been looking for someone to run executive support for MONTHS, but until someone can run the gamut of all 4 interviews successfully, every candidate thus far has been turned away.

But! My interview was so much easier (probably because I’m a consultant). I was in and out in a matter of minutes. And considering I’d driven all the way to Connecticut for it (and in rush-hour traffic no less, right through NYC), it was almost disappointingly simple. Not that I’m complaining. Employment is damn good. It’s just that I’d just spent two and a half hours in a car chanting my new mantra: “Truth! Honesty! Openness! Truth, Honesty, Openness!” which also happens to be the mantra at the company. Have you ever gone to an interview with the sole objective of telling the truth and being completely honest? It’s a hell of a mind game, let me tell you.

It's Quittin' Time!

My, but it's been a while since I posted a comic, hasn't it? Here:

Well, that pretty much wraps up THAT story arc. I'm sure none of you are shocked that it ended this way. Shortly after quitting that deeply demeaning and abusive job at the boutique, I landed myself another position a little higher up the chain but in Connecticut. More details will be coming. It's better, but as you'll all see, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. My GOD, I wish there were unicorns.

Lunch negotiations

There comes a time in a young woman's life when she has to stand up for all that is right and good and delicious. I don't care WHO you think you are. You do not get to make me work during my lunch break. Lunch is only for eating and decompressing.

To see the comic full-size, click here

I swear if I had to eat in that place, I would keel over from the sheer physical pressure it would require to keep myself sane. And it wouldn't actually be do-able. I would probably throttle her first.

Dis R-E-S-P-E-C-T

There isn't really much that gets my heart pounding more than being called into the boss' office and being told to shut the door. Because once that door is closed, people have not reason NOT to say some really incredibly offensive things.



Maybe I'm just soft from my days working out on the west coast (where they not only probably coined the phrase "passive-agressive", but they also have positive opinions toward taking "mental-health days"), but I was sure that working in some no-name boutique would at least be a little less militaristic than working at a company where I'm nothing but a number. Harsh.

Leading by WHAT Example?

Good Heavens! Where have I been? Oh, that's right, looking for employment. It's certainly been a roller coaster (the least fun kind--the kind they have at the kiddie parks that just goes in a glorified circle and is shaped like a snake or a dragon and you feel mortified by the mere thought that someone might see you on it and recognize you).

Ultimately, my struggle for the acquisition of money meant that I couldn't very well turn down a job offer, even if it was a crap job with no benefits, poor pay, and a mean-spirited boss. A job in the hand and all that.

Meanwhile I keep looking for something significantly better. To give you an idea of the range of pay scales I've been offered, I'll tell you that the hourly salary of the highest-paying job was 10 times greater than the lowest paying job. That is a SIGNIFICANT difference, even when you don't consider statistical significance.

My current job suffers from a great amount of apathy from all who work there, including the owner of the gift shop, where I now wrap gifts [while being heartily lectured on "girl" colors and "boy" colors for gift wrap ('where does green fall on this binary gender range,' I wondered? 'Don't use it,' the managers replied. But come ON! There's a whole stack of green tissue paper and several rolls of green ribbon! If you didn't want me to use it, don't put it out there to tempt me!).

The best option, at this point, is to just find something better. I will feel unreasonably guilty about quitting, but I'll certainly have a much happier outlook once I'm out of there.

The Final Straw

Oh, for pete's sakes!

My coworkers and I might just be the only people who can say "we hate our job, and our job hates us."

I'm a Survivor

True Story:


You have to wonder about a company that seriously considers asking its workforce who they would eat first in the case of desertion. You have to wonder about it even more when this company considers this question to be part of "team-building". Personally, I'm not too thrilled that 140 of my coworkers now know that in case of a dire emergency, I would eat coworker Keith. This doesn't make them trust me more, and knowing who they would eat doesn't make me like THEM any better.

Where back at headquarters, so I'm back on a M-F schedule and working 8:30-5. I'm still working on adjusting my schedule.

This comic clearly depicts 4 of my coworkers. I don't think the women will be too unhappy with their portrayal. I think they're sorta cute, and they always are impeccably dressed. The managers however??? My dad thinks I drew one of them kinda girly. Ah well. There's only so much that facial hair can do. You all know that drawing males is not my strong suit. Plus, their clothes are always so boring.

I'm home for the holidays! Hurray!

Upside-Down World

The thing about working in hospitals, is that you're constantly being exposed to all sorts of nasty things. MRSA, Meningitis, TB, not to mention just about every cold and flu making the yearly rounds. So I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised last April, when I first started working in the hospitals and found myself getting ridiculously sick on a weekly basis.

Things have stabilized since, and for the most part, I'm fairly healthy. I take precautions when working (like washing my hands frequently, not touching patients or really ANYTHING, and keeping away from rooms with warning signs on them). But even the most careful person can't avoid a cold when every one of her coworkers has managed to catch it.

And that's where I find myself today; Sore throat, dry cough, woozy, droopy, blah, and feeling like I'm under 66 feet of water (that's two whole atmospheres of pressure!). I'm not imagining my coworkers are hagfish or hairbrushes yet, but I feel the time is close at hand.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life

It's official. Today, the people in my position in Northern California are all becoming hourly employees, and therefore, legally "exempt". And all the joys that go with that.



There are a lot of whispers about what this all means for us. Let me enumerate:

Pros
1) Paid commute time! (we were already getting paid for mileage)
2) Shift differential! (not so great for the night shift, which is only apparently getting about 30 cents more per hour than the evening shift)
3) Extra pay for working on national holidays!
4) No more responding to Payroll emails!

Cons
1) Only 30 minute lunches (No more going out for lunch).
2) No combining breaks.
3) We must clock in and out. We've got only 3 phones in our command center and there's as many as 30 of us on duty at a time.
4) No more leaving early if there's nothing to do.
5) No more taking lunches together and the first lunch of evening shift must be taken at 4:20pm.
6) All time worked and commuting time must be signed off by at least 3 people.
7) PTO requests (even PTO that's already been okayed) has to be submitted through a faxed form to several parties who all have to agree it's alright for you to go missing for a day or two.

Seems to me, there's a lot more down than up, but then, I'm a pessimist. On the other hand, it's looking like I'll be getting paid a good bit more, based just on commuting times. Of course, just 12 days from today, we go back to Emeryville, and we don't get paid commuting time OR mileage. Lest you think my company actually LIKES hemorrhaging money.

Bending the Rules

Now that we've been at this hospital for over 3 weeks, there is REALLY nothing to do there. I mean, it's ridiculously slow. Naturally, being an intelligent individual, I am endlessly searching for something to keep me occupied. Unfortunately, nothing is allowed by our "managers". damn. Now we're at a really really small hospital in Manteca. There are more of us than there are nurses! So we get thrown off the floor because we're crowding them.

Twist of irony: I drew this at work two weeks ago, and I am posting this update from work now. MUAHAHAHAH! I'm subverting the system!

Replacement Pests

Point of Fact; I have traded the roaches, not for ants (which are actually one of my greatest fears), but for Earwigs, which are relatively harmless (according to wikipedia), but altogether still rather too gruesome for me to allow crawling around my home.

Still, given the choice between one or the other, I'll take the earwigs. Maybe the spiders will take care of them.

Man, I hate ants.

My Unfortunate Guests

I am extremely sad that my PhotoShop hasn't resurrected itself. It'd been months since I made a comic, but I drew this one today. You'll be disgusted to know that this shoddy workmanship is all I can cobble together using a strange combination of MS Paint, Powerpoint, and ComicLife. I also frittered away $1.80 utilizing the scanner at Fedex-Kinko's to bring this to you, so I hope you guys enjoy it! You'd better!

My work provides me with corporate housing which varies widely in condition. When I lived in Sacramento, the housing was really pretty nice, with access to a pool (necessary. It was damn hot out there) and it was pretty clean. My housing in Modesto is not exactly nice. In fact, it's plain dirty, and when I first moved in, I was not aware of my cirtterly pests. I found one of them galavanting in my sauce pan and I just about had a heart attack. I resolved then and there to take care of it.

You're SUPPOSED to be HELPING

I wish I could say that this hadn't really happened at work, but unfortunately, it sort of has.


I like the color palette for this one!

A Sudden Rush

The generalities of work:

It could be better.
It could be worse.
Overall, I'm just happy I'm getting a paycheck. On the other hand, an 8 hour shift with nurses who are constantly stressed out and don't really want you around... well, they could be paying me more to deal with that sort of thing.



For the uninitiated, my job involves teaching the nurses at a local hospital how to use the new computer system the health-care company just set up there. They have to use the system for EVERYTHING. "Go-live" was on February 9th, that was the first day all the people in the hospital were required to use the program. No more paper.

Study, Study, PANIC

One would assume that if one was in a training class for four months and the average time required to pass the training exam was approximately one month, that one would be quite over-prepared by that time.

The day I drew this, we found ourselves in the awkward position of being trained in the SAME. EXACT. CLASS. as we were in the month before. Same topics being covered. Same doctors teaching us. They didn't recognize us at all. It was as incredibly mind-numbing as it was the first time.



Then, one of the head honchos came in at the end and quizzed us (this happened last time, too, so it wasn't much of a shock). But he decided to act offended that we didn't know how to do anything in departments aside from our own (if "Lisa" works in the emergency department, why on earth would she care to know how jerky a surgeon is going to be when she doesn't know where he should click to learn his schedule. "Tanya" wouldn't be interacting with surgeons anyway!).

In any case, all the doctors started freaking out that we didn't know anything and "Go-Live" is in just 9 days, and our exam is in 2. It's a little late to question your teaching methods, no?

Awfully Glad to be Unhappy

2 Months in to work, it was not going too fantastically. I'd come home very depressed when my shift ends at midnight. And one night's conversation with one of my 'managers' didn't much help. The way things are done at this company really frustrates me sometimes.



I'm trying to let it go though. This was drawn on my last day of work before my "weekend". It'd been 7 days straight, where I'd been doing day shifts, alternating with evening shifts, and it's hard to adjust. I was tired and cranky.

When It Rains, It Pours

This is perhaps the busiest looking comic I've ever drawn. And there's not a ton of movement either, it's mostly facial expressions. So I apologize. It was necessary.



This sort of actually happened. Right after I accepted a job with my current employer, I got a call from Kelly Sciences. Of course, I didn't reject them outright. I waited to hear how much they would pay me (not very well), before declining their offer. I guess it's true that as soon as you're employed, everyone else wants a piece of you.

So that's it. This was my official announcement. I'm staying on the west coast. I have a job, and I'm here to stay. I miss my east coast friends already but hopefully, we'll have plenty of opportunities to visit one another. Now I have to settle in and really make some friends in the area. I don't know how the next 3-5 years are gonna go. I can only hope for the best. Tally ho!