Hello my friends. Did you know it is Shark Week? Apparently it is Shark Week. I am too poor to afford premium cable channels such as the Discovery Channel, but I have heard about this phenomenon from Twitter. I haven’t seen any sharks this week, but yesterday at Target I did see one of the two people who laid me off stalking through the aisles. I was with Trish, who was similarly laid off by this person, and when I saw this person at profile about three paces in front of me, I immediately engaged evasive maneuvers and dove, grabbing Trish, into the nearest aisle: ottomans and stools. My heart was pumping like I’d just run a mile and my mind was racing with tactics for keeping the situation from escalating. It was, I imagine, exactly what it must feel like to know you are sharing the waters with a shark: Did the shark catch my scent? Do I have any open wounds? Does it smell blood? Why didn’t I go wading wearing full body armor?
I didn’t know what was going to happen if I ran into this person, so I thought it best to avoid the situation completely. I mean, you don’t KNOW that a shark is just going to try to eat you, although it’s not a bad guess since that’s what always happens in the movies, but you can be completely sure that it’s not just going to ask you over for tea. So Trish and I immediately devised a plan to continue our shopping while avoiding this person: we took extra care to poke our heads just beyond the endcaps of the aisles and to look both ways before we stepped into any larger thoroughfares, and we took roundabout routes to pick up the last couple of things on our list, always going via parts of the store where we guessed this person would never shop: Intimates and the Bargain Bins.
We arrived at the checkout lanes having avoided an encounter completely. We were clearly nervous-looking, though: even as I got a 20 oz. bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper from the little refrigerator at the head of the checkout lane, I was glancing shiftily from side to side and I was also making sure to be aware of where the exits were in case I needed to bolt. The cashier noticed this, and I said, “Oh, I’m not stealing anything. I saw someone here earlier and I’m trying not to be seen by them.”
She looked unconvinced, so I added, “I’m avoiding the person who fired me.” And then the cashier told me how she lost her own job after 14 years and that’s why she was working at Target. Gosh bless her, she promised to double-scan everything in this person’s cart, should this person have the nerve to try to be checked out in the express lane: people with high-paying jobs don’t need to shop ten items or fewer at Target. That’ll show ‘em. Shark ‘em right back, baby. Resharking.
Not much has been happening on the employment front. I am still un-. I recently had another interview in Chicago, and I did not get the job—at least this time I wasn’t expecting to, so it didn’t come as a surprise when I got my rejection letter. Also new this time, the people who rejected me were quite nice—none of this calling me on a Sunday morning business—and even sent me a job description for another position open with a different organization for which they thought I’d be a good fit. I guess I am thankful for this, because this rejection hasn’t elicited any of my usual post-interview-rejection bile. Still, I’d rather have gotten the job—but at least they saved me some researching trouble for this week.
I’ve completely exhausted my standard unemployment benefits, and last week it was time for me to make the switch to federal extended unemployment benefits. This means that I had to call the unemployment hotline repeatedly, because apparently there is even a waiting list to be put on hold while you wait for an operator. God forbid I apply for this extension using an online form submission. After about three hours of calling, I was finally put on hold for a surprisingly short period of time before I spoke to an operator—only about ten to fifteen minutes. I gave her my name and social security number, and after three or four yes-or-no questions, I was off the phone and apparently set to go. I’m not entirely sure that was the most efficient system for this process: I mean, if they’re making me call in to keep me from defrauding the system, they did a piss-poor job of making sure I was actually who I said I was. I guess I shouldn’t care as long as they continue funding my mendicancy.
Speaking of mendicancy, my hospital bills are up to $2000. I vaguely remember having sent in a form asking for financial aid and telling them I couldn’t pay anything, but apparently they ignored this and have decided to bill me the full amount anyway. Interesting. This merits a phone call. Because not even a shark can shirk his hospital bills. Not even a shark who has done nothing but sleep past noon and play 90’s computer games all week.
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