Mat, I have to say, I was actually quite surprised to find out that you have read my blog. I honestly had no idea! lol. I guess that comes from you not necesarily having an account on blogger and commenting online or anything, but it was nice to find out that I have other readers other than my lovely wife and my best friend melisssa from down in Florida. I'm sure others might eventually make their way here, but hey, I'm in no rush. It's not like I have to have people reading my blog all the time, or be super popular at this point in life anyway. I'm just some random person that has a blog online, so I guess I'm one blog out of millions or billions of blogs.
Also, Mat, something quite interestin, I was on facebook on my lapto instead of my phone just as I was typing this blog, and was looking at the list of people that it says "you might know . . " And it's true, I did know quite a few, but I didn't add them. I don't understand a few things. 1) I don't understand people from highschool and the way they think. Yes I get that they feel that their high school days were the best times of their lives. I admit those times were really nice, but would I want to go back? Hell no. I'm fairly happy with where I'm at right now, minus a few minor details, but we will go into those in a bit. 2) I don't understand how some people have hundreds and hundreds of people on their facebook just because they went to school with them. If those people talk to all those people, then I can understand having everyone on there, but if you dont, then it just doesn't make any sense to have everyone on there I guess that leads me to my other point. It has been 10 years since I have been out of high school, and I just got a facebook reminder about our "10 year high school reunion." There is even a really big schedule of events planned for what we will do when we all go back to lil ol holdrege nebraska around the 15th of June. Seriously? I just don't get it. I was in a hurry to get away from holdrege. True I did have a small group of people from my graduating class that I hung out with, but not enough to make me want to go back and say "Hey guys! Haven't seen you since we all left! Whats up?"
I just don't see myself making the trip all the way back to holdrege just for that. In my opinion, high school was one part of life and it's in the past. I don't care to see how some of the old high school graduates are doing. They all have their own lives and I wish them the best. If I make any trips at all in the month of june, it will be either to see the east coast family, or to go to florida to visit grandpa blodgett and my friend melissa. I'm not sure quite yet if those wll take place, but it'd be nice, since I'm on unemployment. That's right! I haven't covered that yet! But first, since I rambled on a bit, mat what I was saying was funny about facebook right now is I was looking at photos of people online that it says I might know and I saw a "travis pell." I was like "Holy shit! Travis and kyle!" But I still didn't add him. I know I know, we are cousins and what not, but God it's been over 10 years since I last saw him. probably longer. I was probably 12 the last time we saw them, back when tommy was around, and married to Lu I believe, and he came out to visit us in las vegas and Sheryl showedup and was suddenly lounging in our pool, I don't know if you remember that or not.
So anyway! Unemployment.
Hopefully you can all see the image up above. Let me explain a bit first and then go into info about the photo up above. There is a guy at the hospital, whom is a guard like I was. His name is Eric. Eric was someone we knew from texas, whom had family troubles, and we helped him move to were we live in Clinton, Iowa. We helped him move up. Out of the hundreds that he had received from us in assistance, he said he would pay monthly to pay it back, and then I had to keep coming to him and asking him about if he would be able to pay anything towards what he owed. It's one thing if you have lended someone money and they said that they do plan to pay it back, but obviously can't right now. That we understand because we have other friends that we lended about $250.00 to help them, and they plan to pay it back, but haven't been able to yet. We understand that, and we don't keep asking. But with Eric, it was "here's $20.00.." and "here's $50.00." and then he stopped and would talk about how he had payed us back in full. I was like "um, how do you figure? there's still $250.00 that you haven't payed back and yet now you say that you payed everything that was owed?"
Apparently when he moved up, he said that the way he cleared all his debt from his credit report was he wrote all of them and requested that they send him proof that he owed the money. From what he said, only one or two of the 12 or so creditors could prove it, and so most of the debt he owed was cleared without him payin a dime. He told me I should do that too, but that just sounds wrong to me. I know I owe the money and am doing what I can to pay it back. It makes sense though, because he feels that he paid back everything he owed, and so it's like "you know what man? no you didn't, you still owe $200.00, but I'm not going to stress about it because we know that we will probably never see any part of it."
So, the rest of the story about Eric is like this. He came up here, had trouble finding a job for a month or two. I was working at the hospital as security through Securitas. I recommended eric to my boss, saying "you should give eric a shot. he's a great guy, he would make a good guard!" And I had been Guard of the Month once or twice already and was willing to work extra if needed, and so they trusted me and gave him a chance. The contract that they originally put him on was canceled and they made him a supervisor at another site because he is 40 years old, and had business experience, etc..... then after 6 months of him working that site, he was going to quit, but by that point my site, the hospital, was looking for another guard because we had gone to 24/7, and so Eric was put over with us. We had never had any official supervisors among us, and there were only 4 or 5 of us total, and so we had always been able to work things out and do a really good job. Well Eric, from what i have overheard from the bosses and maintenance we worked with, he went behind the backs of all the guards and made claims against us all saying that we each did such and such, to make us look bad, and then tried to talk himself up and that is how he was made supervisor over the rest of us.
The odd thing about this part is that I had been with securitas longer, and I had been with the hospital 3 times as long Eric, and the rest of the guards actually looked up to me as though I was a supervisor, even though technically I was not. When eric became the official supervisor, he went on a power trip and started saying "you have to do things this way instead!" and "stand out and be visible," and just little stuff like that, saying that he wanted us to go above and beyond and make a better impression on the client(Ie: the hospital).... I think that because I had been there longer than him and knew how to do my job, i could tell that he was out to try to find things to come up with that I might have done wrong, things to write me up about, but I wasn't going to give him any reason. He even came into the hospital during one of my shifts, at around 3 AM, and was pissed about stuff that he and I had already talked about. He just came into the office while I was updating paperwork, and he was pissed, and was like "Chris! I hear you have problems with me!" I was like "what the hell are you talking about eric?" He was like "Well I'm here in regular clothe and not in uniform, and that is 'unprofessional'." I was like "eric, have no problem with you coming up here in your free time in regular clothes, because you will do whatever you want, and that's your business."
He was like "Well, you are going around causing problems and that can result in paperwork." I was like "what do you mean paperwork eric?" He was like "I will have to write you up." I was like "write me up for what Eric?" He was like "for causing problems." I was like "How am I causing problems eric?" He was like "you're going around saying things about me." I was like "I absolutely have not. I don't say anything about you at all. The only person I talk to is matt when I come in to take over for him, but all we talk about is how the day went, and stuff like that." By the end of the conversation, I had defused him quite a bit, but that was a big stress for me because it was like, when I relieved matt the following night, I was like "dude, Eric came in last night and tried to rip me a new one." He was like "what?! why?" I was like "Well, he accused me of talking about him behind his back, and threatened to write me up, and I told him that I haven't done anything like that, and that he had no real reason to write me up."
So, it went eventless for a few more weeks, and then eric commented that when we have to patrol the parking lot in the morning and make sure that people don't park where they are not supposed to, he recomended that I stand out where people see me so that I am "visible," and greeting staff as they come in, etc, and so I was doing that. Well, Thursday morning, I came back from South campus about an hour before I was to be getting off work, and I noticed this car in the photo up above. The yellow lines are the end of the parking spaces, and as you can see in the photo, there are multiple open spaces near that car, and so there was no reason why they should have parked in this traffic area. Well, I noticed this car, and thought "i really should have this car ticketed, because it is a safety issue for drivers coming into the parking lot." The thing about it was, I felt that either way, I was going to be bit in the ass. I thought that I could 1) not do anything, and leave it and just not say anything, but if I did that, I felt that if something should happen, like an accident happened, they would look on the video tapes and see that I had seen the car, and I would have gotten in trouble for that... or 2) I call the police and have the car ticketed and that the car might belong to somebody high up the chain in the hospital, and that I would end up getting in trouble for that as well.
So, I thought, "if I'm probably going to get in trouble for either scenario, I would rather be able to say that I did the right thing. So I called the police and had the police issue a parking ticket. It would only cost the driver $25.00. Then I took this photo, and the cop took a photo just in case this ticket was disputed. I sent the photo to Eric, and told him what took place, and securitas asked me to send them the photo as well. I thought everything was hopefully ok, but had a bad feeling. Later that day, I received a voicemail from securitas saying that I was removed from the site, and that I needed to come in and talk to my HR manager at securitas the following morning. I told Erin that I was probably getting fired. She said "they wouldn't have you come all the way out there to fire you."
So, I drove out to bettendorf, IA, which was an hour trip, and sat down for 10 minutes with the HR manager. He basically said "you didn't follow chain of command, eric said some things about you and because of that, we feel that there is an integrity issue. The hospital paid the ticket for the vehicle owner, and was very upset with that, and so we had to take care of that, and because of all this, I had to remove you from the site, and I have to let you go from the company."
I was like "1) why did the hospital pay the ticket for the owner? As you saw from the photo I sent you, the vehicle was parked illegally and the ticket was valid. We did not have any written protocols and such about having to call and get permission before making a decision, etc. we did things this way since the day I started." He was like "yes they paid the ticket, the client was very upset about it, I'm not going to go into that right now." I was like "ok, then what is this about an integrity issue? I have never lied to you guys,I have always been up front about everything, and have never been written up for anything. What did Eric say about me because I can tell you right now he is completely full of crap." He was like "i'm not going to go into that right now."
So after that, I talked to a lawyer, and found out that there is nothing i can do....but I already filed for unemployment and will make more on that than I did with securitas.... So I am dedicating a lot of time to my classes and to writing in my book and spending time with the family.
So that is about it for now. That is all the dirty details about the events. I gotta go because I gotta grill some food for dinner!
C
*** Updated around 11:23PM**
Well the night is done with. After dinner *which I had to end my blog post earlier because I had to do the grillin, we were having Betsy's (erin's adoptive mom)'s recipe called steak teriyaki. It was good, and was very similar to our version of Teriyaki steak. There apparently are only a few small differences in the recipe, but I thought it tasted very much like it. Plus we had corn on the cob, asparagrass, and then margaritas to drink. After dinner, we went out on the lake on a pontoon boat, which I was very impressed with and actually would love to eventually own a pontoon boat to go out on the water with the family more often. Lots of room for many passengers, and very relaxing. The only downside to it was that it was getting dark so we weren't out on the boat long. Next time, hopefully we can hang out on the boat much longer. =) Something fun though, the girls both loved being out on the boat, and they even had their golden retriever Molly out there on the boat with us as well. After that, we drove the golf cart over to some friends of erins that she has known for a while. It was nice, then we got the girls both a drinks and they were both headed off to bed. Now just time to chill out and relax since even though it is 11:30 at night, it feels early! But, still one day left of our little mini-vacation and then Me, erin and zoe will be heading back home and ally will be staying with the grandparents for the month of june. If we're lucky, betsy and harry will be open for a visit around july 4th from us, and we can do a weekend like this again! Maybe we can go out on the lake in a pontoon boat to enjoy the fireworks, because I think that would be awesome! So anyway, that is it this time. Thanks for reading and don't be afraid to comment and letme know you were here! =)
