It all started about two and a half years ago. It was the “good ole days”, if ever there was such a thing, and I was fully aware of it. Things were going great, and getting better. I had a job I loved at a place I loved to be on the perfect shift (swing), my boss was ecstatic with my performance, and even home life was good. On the home front, my wife and I were happy, doing things we enjoyed like exploring, camping and just spending time together. We were even getting rid of all our debt, and had a plan to accomplish this. Life was better than it had ever been, and I was fully aware of how blessed we were. Life was great and I thanked God for each and every day! It was as if I had finally done something right in my life.
Soon we started looking to buy a house, our first home ever. We found a first time home buyers class that was run by a friend of ours from church. The class was good, and after about three to four months later, the week before Christmas, we moved into our new house. Our old house was a bit cramped, and we really wanted each child to have his or her own bedroom. The house we found was perfect, and we intended to live in it until we were very old. It had bedrooms for each child and was only four blocks from the beach. In addition, the house was the exactly what we could afford. I was due for a raise in a few months, and that would help take away the tightness of the new home. In the mean time, I researched, designed, and started building a small sailboat that looked like a traditional Viking long ship. I would go to the beach nearly every day, on my way to work, and I would come home at night, just as everyone was going to bed. On weekends we would fish, crab or dig for clams. A happier summer I probably never had and things were looking great.
Then came the beginning of the end…. The hospital decided not to continue their contract with the company I was working for. Part of the people would work for the hospital, parts were laid off, and parts would work for a new contractor. My position was terminated and I was forced to take a lesser paying job. I had been expecting my usual four percent raise that I had traditionally gotten every year. Instead I took a seven and a half percent pay cut. Fortunately the company I worked for was well disposed to me, and trained me in new and interesting things. If I could only hold out until I got a raise, six months, maybe a year at most…. Things would be tight, and we would half to bills around a bit, but in the end we could probably make it. For a few months we lived like this, barely making ends meet on my new pay, then gas prices shot up, doubling and more, and slowly following, the price of everything else went up as well. What was tight was now near unbearable. In addition, I didn’t get the six month raise that I though I would get; that manager had left for a better job closer to her home. I enjoyed working at the hospital and the new contract company, and really didn’t want to leave, so my wife and I talked about it, and decided to hold out for my annual performance review to see if I could get a raise then. Time went on, and things got tighter and tighter as we ran out of places to get money to pay bills. Many bills were just growing, waiting until I made enough money to pay them down. Just a little bit longer…. Finally came the day of my annual performance review. I rated myself good, and my boss had rated me even higher. Unfortunately the good ratings did not come with an increase in pay. At that point I decided that I needed to start looking for a job.
That summer was busy and interesting. My brother had been having problems making ends meet, having lost his job over a year before, and was living the life of a homeless person. We decided to take him in and give him another chance at life if he would go to college. In addition, I had been writing my oldest daughter, who lives in Spokane, and had received her phone number in a letter. We started talking, and I even talked to her mother. In the end we became friends again and they came up to visit over the Fourth of July weekend. Shortly thereafter, we received a call from my wife’s mother telling us that my father in law was not doing well, suggesting that we find a way to visit them in Montana. We piled up the van with everyone from home, picked up my daughter and her mother and went off to Montana. It was a strange and wonderful week and we went to Yellowstone, explored parts of Montana, and just enjoyed time together. But when we got back, reality started up again and I went back to work.
I started slowly, hoping for some miracle to come about that would allow me to save me from leaving, but that miracle never came. After a couple of months, I started doing practice interviews. I was still working on my resume, it was in a rough draft format, and wanted to try a few interviews before I started looking seriously. I got one good bite. It was for a small company in Seattle. In deciding how much money I needed to make I decided that the best place for me to look and get a job would be Seattle. I talked a friend of mine, who had previously been the director of information systems at the hospital, and she helped me practice interviewing techniques so that I would do well for my interviews. I went to the first interview and did very well. A couple of weeks later they called me back and wanted me to do another. Apparently I did well on this one too for a couple of weeks later they called me in for a third interview. Later that week, they offered me a job, and it was exactly for the amount that I needed to bring in. I hated leaving the hospital, but I felt that in order to keep the house and feed my family I had to take this job, so I accepted. It was a decision of both joy and great pain. I loved the people I worked with so much, but finances dictated that I had to leave. I talked to my boss, and he wanted to see if he could counter with something. He asked for a week, and I happily gave it to him. At the end of the week, he told me that they couldn’t counter. He knew that they didn’t need to match the other offer, just come up with a bit more. Unfortunately he was told that he couldn’t do it. Each day after brought me a bit of tears as I said goodbye to friends so close that they had been like family to me; each day I lamented the circumstances that had brought me to this point in my life. I tried to concentrate on the opportunities that lay ahead of me. Career-wise, I had made the right decision, and I would be able to use this as a way to spring-board myself into a better job a couple of years down the road, perhaps even back at the hospital. In the end, they threw me a farewell party, and I gave them all booklets of some poetry I wrote.
Finally the day came and I started my new job. In the original document they sent, it said that I would get a good salary, quartile bonuses, vacations, holidays, and an annual bonus to top it all off. It all sounded so good. When they went over the details, I had lost all of my vacation time for the first year, and would only get one week after that. I wouldn’t get paid for Thanksgiving, Christmas or New-years for the first year because they all fell in the first three months of employment, and the intense training that I had been promised consisted of the owner e-mailing me directions to a server that contained some files, and for me to figure out what was where and what was important. Furthermore, my boss, rather than training people, preferred to test them instead, and seemed to enjoy telling them that they were wrong on a number of issues. When I had questions he would be hostile, demeaning and derogatory, insulting my intelligence and person. By the end of the second day I realized the great mistake I had made and went to the HR person to talk. We discussed my problems and in the end she talked me into trying it out another week or two. I didn’t have much of a choice since I couldn’t afford to quit, and tried to hold out for as long as possible. By Thursday I realized that I wasn’t going to make it and e-mailed my old boss to see if I could get my hospital job back. I couldn’t handle working here, and everyday I sunk deeper into depression. I couldn’t think straight, remember common things or seem to do anything correctly. After a bit I realized what was going on, and started reflecting on my life, career and everything else. I wrote down my thoughts, as I tend to do, and got things ready for who ever it was that was going to replace me. I knew that I wasn’t going to last, and that I would probably be fired, but wanted the person who came after me to have a bit of a head start. I took all my notes that I had created and collected and put them together in a binder. Soon after, I was fired. While I was ready for it, and almost happy about it, I still had bills to pay, bills that had been piling up for nearly a year or more. It’s been a little over a week since I lost my “new” job now, and I finally have a new resume ready to send out to everyone and their brothers. (I have already sent out a few, but not in the quantities that I need to.) I don’t know where God will send me, or how I am going to make ends meet, but I just keep holding on that we’ll make it through…. As for how I’m doing, shell shocked is about the best term I can think of.
