money, it's a gas

Stress, man.

I try very hard not to let it get the best of me, and despite the fact that this gyre of debt only seems to get larger and more ominous, I still manage to get by.


I called the Department of Unemployment Assistance today to ask why my unemployment check, a meager $99 a week, hadn't arrived in the mail yesterday like it usually would.  I was told my previous employer had informed the DUA that I had quit.  Which isn't true.

June 26 was the last day I worked, for only a few hours.  Due to some serious scheduling woes, coupled with corporate demanding we basically double our staff (while cutting our store's hours), I had gone from having twenty to thirty hours a week down to ten.  Or eight.  Or five.  Add to that that I was only getting eight bucks and change before taxes and some of these weeks would only net me $35.  And it costs me almost $10 just to drive there each day.  It was not a survivable income.

Now, the online system made it impossible for me to see if I was on the schedule for a given week.  Schedules which were posted no earlier than the previous Thursday, sometimes as late as Saturday.  So I had to call in on Saturdays to find out if I was working the next morning or any other time in the week.  For the duration of the month, I either A) was not scheduled at all for the week, or B) was scheduled for a time I had already made clear I was unavailable.

Finally, at the end of July, the truck shift manager told me he'd give me a call when I had hours, as "some stuff was going on" that was making it difficult.  Some stuff was indeed going on, as I later found out the scheduling person no longer worked there.  Quit?  Let go?  Retired?  I don't know.  But that was the last I ever heard from anyone at the store.

Six weeks pass, and we're in September.  I finally decide to apply for unemployment, because after ten weeks of no work, I assume I've either been let go, fired, what have you.  I get unemployment benefits for three weeks before it suddenly stopped this week, as explained above.

So now I don't have access to unemployment benefits (which by the way are less than half of what I should/will be getting, due to a weird rule they have) because my old job is saying I quit.  Meanwhile, I'm living at home in a house that continues to fill with people, while desperately trying to keep my car on the road, and SallieMae from defaulting what I can only assume is a world-record student loan debt.

Meanwhile, I've struggled for the last seven weeks to hunt down another person who owes me money -- a check for a wedding video I shot back in August.  I've literally heard from him once, only for him to ask (again) what my address was.  There's at least one phone call a day, and now visits to the physical address that result in nothing for me.

I am so fed up with money.  And not for lack of trying, I am job-hunting.  I was apparently a shoe-in for a job similar to Bose (but for health insurance! and not selling anything! and helping people concerned about their well being! and paid every week! and unlimited overtime!) and never heard back at all.  For comparison's sake, I earned less at my most recent job than I did from my unemployment prior to getting hired.  Yeah.  So when my unemployment gets back on track, I will be getting more than I made at the job that just said I quit.

I am desperately trying to get myself situated for a teaching position that is on the horizon, the question is whether or not I'm ready, and whether or not it'll be soon enough.  I fear I've missed my chance to move to Davis Square (which is pretty much exactly where I want to be right now) because of this horseshit timing.

If this sounds like just a long rant, well, it is.  It drives me mental having to keep dealing with this, struggling to make any headway, and have someone else go "Oh, yeah, we'll get back to you."  Because no one does.  Four separate times in the last two months, all employment and money related.  I just want to keep my car on the road and the loan people off my back.  I can deal with not having much besides that, I really can.  I have, for years.  It's just...

Stress, man.