On Monday, March 18 I went into the office pretty early. I needed to finish, once and for all, this fucking problem with the Mexico consolidation. I got in at 8:00 and I started pounding on the keys. We had resolved that we would leave an error from last year uncorrected, but we had initially decided to try and correct the error in the current year. The error barely matters or doesn't matter but we'll have to revisit it and explain it later, so we want to try and get it as right as possible, given that it is wrong no matter what we do. I hoped to have this done well before my 10:00 meeting at the other office.
I didn't quite get the work done, but I needed to leave for my meeting. I walked over the the other building and sat down with the CFO and we talked about the upcoming quarter and also flyfishing and photography. The meeting went well but I hadn't prepared for it very well. I realize that now. But, I was actually better prepared than some because I had visited the company's website for examples of how to disclose something or how not to disclose something, regularly.
After the meeting I went back to the mine, and I got my table done after another short period of banging on the keys. We grabbed a sandwich at lunch and I had a strong beer with the sandwich. The beer was a collaboration type beer and I was excited to get to try it. It was $5 and it was strong. After lunch I stopped back at the mine office, then had to leave for a meeting with an HR lady. I was a little nervous about the meeting, but I was practically excited for a negative outcome, because it would give me a chance to LIVE again. I came in her office and sat down. She had a binder of information on me, and she first flipped to a discrepancy on my credit report. Hmmm. I could not really understand why they cared about a $417 charge that initially I didn't pay because I didn't agree with it, but settled in full several months later. I explained that I didn't agree with the charge, but that I had paid both that bill and an 1,100 ambulance bill after coming to terms with the situation and stopping to give a fuck about money or credit reports. Fuck the man, I told her. I fuckin hate authority, bitch. Ha ha just kidding. I didn't say that, but maybe I might as well have.
She got the information she needed and smiled at me. She didn't hint or indicate one way or another, at all, whether my prospects were "good" or "bad" or whether what I had done fell on the wrong side of the company's code of ethics. I did not ask.
I knew the meeting didn't go great and I knew that she was going to "disclose" this to my potential bosses. I did not care. I had a "different" sort of week, because of the uncertainty of the outcome, and indeed more importantly, which outcome I preferred. I made it very clear that she could try what she wanted. Maybe I just knew that there was nothing she could do to help me avoid this mess.
A few days later I was in the building working on a project. She wondered when I might have time to visit with her. Immediately, I said. She had been reviewing my initial application and wondered why I hadn't disclosed the crime at the time. I explained to her that I didn't believe I was guilty of any crime and had not been convinced that I would need to disclose anything. My incident was one month, my application date a month and a half later, and the "conviction" (which was not a conviction at all; it was a bargain that the state offered me to get off my back and I accepted. It was not n admission of anything) was another 5 months later.
I went back to work, feeling slight "more" of whatever I had felt before. Was I hopeful that I would be denied employment? Was I afraid of how it would make me feel? Would I have been made stronger by it?
I worked hard this week and I submitted bills to the company today so that I may be paid for my efforts in two weeks. I say the payroll ladie, and the junior hr lady, knowing that they probably know about my dark background, and I just keep wishing it were real.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
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The absolute dis-reality of it all--how I have come to know all the things that naturally fall into place when you want to get to know a fella, judge his character. I've run into quite a few people, families, who, after about a day or so, would want to hire me to work in a hostel or stay with their family. If they met you, they would feel the same way. The would find you a virtuous and harworking person, and say, hey, Chrome, please, we need people like you. We trust you. Please come and work with us.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there is this other, completely fake reality. What they say, what their values are, is all random garble. Credit report? My god, doesn't exist in most good parts of the world. "How many carrots do you eat on Tuesday afternoons? 7? Sorry, you go to hell unless the answer is 3." Just madness, absolute madness. I would break out in laughter.
Your instintive responses show a great virtue and strength. You don't back down. It is refreshing: you know you are moral. You know the questions are absurd noises. Frankly, the only responses these inquiries require is a loud fart. That would be an intelligent conversation in the presence of such questions, in my opinion. An idiot robot asks a question, you respond with a loud fart. Or maybe you just stand up and urinate on the desk. That would make way more sense.
What a matrix it has all become. I say these things, of course, not sheltered in some South American paradise, but with the fresh memory of how the matrix just recently tried to snag me. I remember the weed pulling not just over a month ago. Christ, I remember. Keep up your guard and your moral instincts. We need more people like you to show moral superiority, to instinctively reject each trap of the matrix that slowly deadens and enslaves men and women born otherwise freely in this world.