First A Happy Dance, Then A Dick Dance

I HAVE A JOB!!!!!

There, I got that out of the way. That's the Happy Dance. At least, I have a job as long as I pass my drug test. That's the Dick Dance.

Not that I think I'll flunk my drug test, I just didn't have much luck the last time I took one. Kelly lost the results, or somebody at Kelly entered it in the computer wrong or something. All I know is what should have taken a day or two ended up taking more like a week or two. If patience is a virtue I became very virtuous.

Let me start at the beginning. Tuesday morning I woke up bummed out. Put in applications all day Monday & still unemployed. Plus, last Thursday I called the unemployment office to see if I can get unemployment checks again. The guy on the phone said 'sure, no problem'. Just call Kelly first Monday to make sure they don't have a job they can send me on then call the unemployment office again & get it going. So Monday I called Kelly. No job for poor me. Then I called the unemployment office.

The nice lady that answered (after I spent a half hour pushing 1 for this & 4 for that & 2 for something else on the automated recording bullshit) told me I was screwed. According to her, since I had a claim last year & stayed on it until I ran out of money in my unemployment account I can't reapply until my previous claim runs out. Sometime in the end of March. And I got laid off in the beginning of March.

Can you go for a month without a paycheck? Because I sure as hell can't. Not unless they discover the cure for cancer in dog shit. Then I could just scoop black gold out of my front yard, but somehow I don't think that's ever going to happen.

So Monday, like I said, I put in a bunch of applications. I even drove all the way to Wenztville & talked to a lady at the Serco office about that Obamacare job I was conditionally hired for last summer but never got. A couple of months ago they even sent me an e-mail & called me saying they were thinking about starting a second shift & wanted to know if I was still interested. Yes. Yes I was. Then they sent me another e-mail saying they changed their mind, they're not going to start a second shift after all.

Fuckers.

Anyway, I went in there & talked to a lady about what was going on. Maybe somebody quit or got sick or fired or died. I'm not picky. Any of those would be good with me. She said they needed to hire some more people, but before they hired anybody they wanted to shuffle their current employees around, let people move up in rank. Then hire people to fill in the unwanted positions.

I would be happy with an unwanted position. Just hire me. I'll mop the floor, I don't care, just hire me. No more of this conditional hiring bullshit. Hire me. Let me work, then pay me. Everybody's happy. So she took my new resume & said they'd call me in a week or two or I could call them. Not exactly don't call us we'll call you but close.

I want a job so bad I even called a bunch of restaurants to see if they had any kitchen openings. Not surprisingly a bunch of them did. I didn't call any fast food places because they don't pay Jack shit but real restaurants, at least as real as Applebee's or Longhorn Steakhouse, pay a little better. I'd still be lucky to get $10 an hour at one of those, but a choice between a low-paying job or a no-paying non-job is a pretty easy choice to make. The choice between a low-paying job & unemployment is a different thing. If you factor in how much gas it takes to get to work some jobs are worse than staying on unemployment.

Tuesday I was all ready to go hit the kitchens, but then Kelly called.

They had a job for me.

But it was horrible. The job itself wasn't too appealing. Answering the phone for the gas company in St. Louis. Listening to people bitch about their bill or beg me not to shut their gas off all day long. At least it would be air conditioned & I could sit on my ass all day. But it was way way way down in St. Louis on Olive. It would cost $6 every day just to park down there, & that's just if I got their early enough for it to be the Early Bird Special Rate. Otherwise it would be even more. Just to park. Not counting how much it would cost in gas to drive down there.

For $10 an hour. After three months they would give me a raise. A whole dollar or two.

And I only had 20 minutes to decide if I wanted to take the job or not.

I had to politely decline.

I was just about to break the news to Keith that I was going to go back to working in a hot, steamy, greasy kitchen somewhere when Karen, another lady at Kelly, called.

She had another job.

This one didn't pay $10 an hour. More like $9.75 give or take a dime. But it's right in O'Fallon, just a few miles from where I was working before. So even though I would be making less than the gas company job, I would be making more.

It's a factory job, making wire nuts & connectors & other little plastic pieces as far as I can tell. About the only real down-side I could see was they work four 10-hour days. Monday through Thursday 3:15 to 1:45, off Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. I'd save a little on gas but have to work till almost 2am.

Karen barely finished describing the job & I was already telling her yes.

Before I could start I had to go to the Kelly office & take a manual dexterity test. They had this board with holes drilled in it & a bunch of little metal rods & washers. They timed me to see how many rods I could get in the little holes in a minute with one hand, then the other hand, then I had to stick in a rod & pop a washer on top.

Apparently I passed that test, but then came the drug test. I took one before I started working at Citibank, but that was 6 months ago & this company won't accept a drug test that's more than 3 months old, so I had to go pee in a bottle. Again. For a crap job.

Drug tests just piss me off in general. I mean, I could see drug testing a jet pilot or school bus driver, but this sounds like a trained monkey could do it. I think the whole war on drugs is a plot between the people running all the jails & the ones running all the drug labs.

Not that I thought I would fail, but like I said, last time they dicked me around with my drug test.

This time was no different.

I went in for the manual dexterity test Tuesday afternoon, & when I got there Karen told me I was going to have to take a drug test. Great, I thought. Hopefully they won't fuck up this time.

Hope springs eternal.

They fucked it up again.

I got to the drug lab & first I had to sit in the waiting room about 20 minutes. Then I finally got to give the nurse or technician or whatever she was my paperwork & she just stood there staring at it.

Not good.

I asked her if something was wrong & wouldn't you know it something was. The paperwork Karen gave me had a lab's name printed on it. The lab they sent me to was not that lab. This lab couldn't use that paperwork because apparently it's a crime to cross out the other name & write theirs in the little space.

So I called Karen & had her talk to the lady at the drug lab. I would have just gone back to Kelly & got another form, but supposedly all of their forms had that other lab printed on them. She swore they never had any problem with the forms before, but the lady at the drug lab said maybe this was a new batch & the old ones didn't have the other drug lab's name printed on them but these ones do. Either way, she wasn't going to take the form I had. They ended up ordering a drug test on some web site, DrugFox or TestFox or something like that, but even that was a dick dance. Karen couldn't find the site, then didn't have a password or ID code or something.

Eventually they got it straightened out & I had the joy of peeing in a little cup. And all over my fingers. But mostly in the little cup.

Karen said she didn't think they'd get the results back Wednesday, but probably would Thursday. Maybe if it came in early enough the factory would let me start work Thursday night. So I called Thursday afternoon. No drug test results. No working Thursday night.

Today I got up & called Kelly, but Karen wasn't in. It seemed like forever before somebody called me back & said the results were in. Apparently I'm not a drug addled coke fiend. I should start work Monday afternoon. She just had to call the factory & let them know I passed my piss test & I'm good to go.

Thank God.

That lady at the unemployment office can kiss my employed ass.