A day to unwind

This morning SDXB plans to come into town. We’ll drop my car off at the ineffable Chuck’s Auto Service for routine service; then drive in his truck back to M’hijito’s house, where we’ll park the junk and walk to the lightrail depot. Our plan is to ride all the way to the end of the line, getting off midway at the campus for a picnic lunch. This, we hope, will make for an effective way to unwind from the emotional roller-coaster that is the layoff melodrama.

Weather is supposed to be iffy today, but I don’t think it will matter much because we’ll be inside the train most of the time. In the unlikely event that it actually rains much, we’ll punt and go to a movie instead.

Yesterday I ran the numbers again and found that a 6 percent drawdown from total savings will allow me to stay in my home and continue to help pay the mortgage on the Investment House. It frosts my cookies to have to draw out that much from savings. However, my advisors tell me that at 6 percent the fund will last another 100 years; at 8 percent, it will last 50 years. Since I’m not likely to last that long, myself, I guess it will be OK.

In 2 1/2 years, I’ll be able to earn any amount I want above and beyond Social Security; by then Funny may be generating some cash, and also by then the economy may be reviving a bit. Signs of life are out there: my big Fidelity fund made $3,800 last month, the first gain in several months. The guys at Stellar say that the economy will lag the stock market by about a year. So if we’re seeing the market start to improve now (and last month’s increase wasn’t just a fluke), then happy days may be just around the next bend. If that’s the case, maybe I can cut my drawdown at the age of 66 and find some other way to generate enough to live on for a while. Then when I reach the point where I can no longer work, there’ll be enough left that I can take a larger cut to cover expenses.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in a flying rage. A very minor incident triggered all the fury I feel toward My Beloved Employer, and I swear to God I didn’t come down off the ceiling until after dinner at La Maya’s house. Even as I was walking home from her place late last night, I was still mad as hell. This layoff business literally has set my psyche on a roller-coaster: from elation (no more hated drives to Tempe! no more bullshit!) to depression to abject terror (how, really, am I going to live? are we going to lose the house? both houses?) to profound anger and loathing.

The community college needs an official copy of my transcripts sent directly to the chair of the department. So I called over to the transcripts office and asked where I should go to purchase the same. The woman who answered said the “Student Services Building.” Whoever heard of such a thing?

“You mean,” said I, “the building that’s all the way down Rural Road on the other side of the railroad tracks?”

“Yes,” said she, “but if you’re on the clock, you can just come over here. Come on up to the cashier on the second floor.”

Yeah. So I traipse off campus, get my car, navigate through the usual hellish traffic on University, dodge a murderous fellow driver on Rural, park illegally (there’s no legal parking near the building), and march inside.

As I’m enjoying this mini-ordeal, for some reason the single worst incident that I’ve ever had at GDU comes to mind.

The College hired me to found and grow a unique editorial office, which is the only operation like it anywhere in the world. My dean and I were told we were to enlarge this office steadily so that it served a large number of faculty editing scholarly journals. We needed a graphic artist.

About a year into the thing, one of the most prominent graphic artists in the Southwest, a very talented and highly-paid woman, was laid off her job with a large regional magazine, as the publication (like all magazines) was hemorrhaging readers. On the job market, she wanted to design books and periodicals. She applied to our office for a 50% FTE position and at the same time applied for a full-time job in the President’s office. The f/t job would have had her designing posters and ads, something she just abominates. She wanted our job because it would provide her health insurance and leave her time to develop her own business, for which she had clients standing in line.

The people in the President’s office were pushing her to say whether she would take their offer. Meanwhile, the Dean’s office as usual was dragging its heels. Finally, written permission came down to give her an offer. By then, she was in Vermont attending her son’s college graduation. I reached her on her cell. She accepted our offer and then called the President’s office to say she was turning theirs down in favor of ours.

And therein lay a problem: she shouldn’t have told them where she was going.

Out of sheer spite, the Dean of Deans (not Her Deanship, who herself is an underling in that bureaucracy) cancelled the hire. That was after I had given her an offer in writing and after she had accepted!

It was, of course, wildly illegal. By now she’d lost the only other offer she’d had, which as repulsive as it was to her at least would have put a steady supply of bacon on the table. I gave her the name of a lawyer, handed her the written permission to hire I had from Her Deanship, and advised that she sue the university up one side and down the other. The bastards would have settled for enough to support her freelance business for the rest of her life.

Back to 2009: ruminating about this incident as I’m driving over to the Services building puts me in a state of stratospheric dudgeon. All the reasons I hate, hate, HATE Our Beloved Employer come pouring back into my dainty little mind. The place is run by people who act out of pure meanness and petty vengefulness, and their nasty tricks create real harm for innocent bystanders like my art director friend. It’s quite enough to make your employees miserable. But where do you come off screwing with members of the public?

I enter the building, hoping no campus cop comes along and tickets my car while I’m dorking with this procedure, and the receptionist where the cashier is. She says I have to do this in Human Resources.

“Huh? They’re not going to take my credit card in there!”

“That’s where you have to go.”

So I stalk into HR. Now I’m furious. I glare at the wretch working the reception desk and say aloud, “I hate ASU!”

“Pardon me?” she asks.

“I hate this place,” I say. “I can’t say how glad I am they’re canning me!”

She looks alarmed. I explain that I need to pay to have my transcripts mailed to a new employer.

She now looks puzzled. “Who told you to come here?”

“The receptionist in the lobby.”

“But…?”

“That’s what I was told. The transcripts people told me to come to the Services building and fork over ten bucks.”

“Oh. That’s the Student Services building! It’s on the campus…” She breaks out a map.

To get there, I now have to drive all the way back to the metered parking north of the campus, hike a good half-mile, then hike back to my car.

“Screw it!” say I. “I’ll just mail them a check.”

There’s no ball-busting hurry, after all, to get the transcripts over to the college: the new job doesn’t start for another five months.

So…as you might surmise, I can use a day to unwind!