Oh yeah, this other thing about working...

There was one other thing I had been wanting to write about. I've been a substitute teacher for more than 10 years. I have had a couple other jobs along the way, the longest of which was working for the post office for 6 months during Covid when schools shut down. I was ready to hang up my hat when I went to work for a sandwich shop last month but as soon as I realized that wouldn't work out, I found some substituting jobs right away that worked with my schedule. I just got back on that horse so to speak, with it technically causing no disruptions in my employment status with the school district. Last year my district sent an e-mail about giving us pins for years of service-1 year, 5 year, 10 years, and some others-those were the ones I qualified for. I just filled out the request to get them and didn't think about it again. They called me in November to come to the district office to pick up but I got busy with various things and then figured I'd waited too long to pick them up so I never went in for them. About a week & a half ago, they called me again and asked me to come pick up the pin and I was working that day but said I could come in the next week (which was last week). They only told me to go to the district offices. If you're a full-time teacher, they'll send them to your school but if you're a substitute, you have to track down your own pins. I went into the offices on Wednesday. The first receptionist I talked to said she hadn't been left any pins for me but she'd make some calls and I had to fill in this whole big check-in request to be able to talk to anybody else or go anywhere else in the building. I got that all filled in and she said she called somebody who was willing to come bring me a pin but I was lightly reprimanded as she told me I was supposed to fill out a request online. I told her I had filled out the request online and had been called just a few days earlier to come pick it up. She told me to go to Human Resources and check with them. I went there and talked to another receptionist who got upset with me right away. She was mad I even came in there asking about it and I said the other receptionist had sent me. She told me to wait there and went and talked to another person in Human Resources that I could also hear get upset. They both insisted on walking me back to the other receptionist, chewing me out along the way and telling me I was supposed to fill out a form online, which I had done and which is what got me in this whole mess to start with. They got mad at the other receptionist for sending me into their office and then she was more upset with me because of that, even though I had only been doing as everybody so far had instructed me. The lady who had been called who had said she could bring me a pin showed up, reprimanding me again for not filling out a form online. I tried to tell her I had done that but at this point I was just thinking about how little I care about service pins and how much I care about getting out of this horrible place!!! This lady chews me out and then flips a switch, smiles, and says, "Well, here's your pin-thank you for your service!" and hands me the pin and that's that. This pin was NOT worth getting chewed out by 4 people for on one of my days off work. The offices are far away from anywhere I normally go so I had a long drive back home to think about this. It was pretty indicative of what my experience as a substitute teacher for this district has been like. There have been a handful of teachers over the years that have gone out of their way to be kind and supportive to me and they will never know just how much that has meant. There are a few administrators at a few schools that I have had a lovely experience with and adore. Overall, it has been a chaotic shuffle around to schools where I get an earful about things I haven't actually done wrong and I get treated like a nuisance and a pest as I come in to supervise hundreds of kids who pull out all their latest and greatest tricks, trying to get away with something while there's a substitute. Because I recently applied for an administrative job at a school nearby, I found out that even though I've worked for the district for over 10 years, they don't consider substitutes internal employees and they don't want us to have any advantages in applying for other jobs in the district. We're held to a higher dress code standard than teachers and we get blamed for things that go wrong on days we're at the school, even if those things have nothing to do with us. I've loved the flexibility of the job schedule but I'm definitely feeling like I need to re-think some life choices here. If this is the way the district "rewards" employees, I never want to be rewarded again!

Tying up Loose Ends

There are 3 things I want to write about and without further adieu... 1. I had a job in a sandwich shop. I thought I would get out of the education business and work in a sandwich shop. A new, high quality family-owned shop opened within walking distance and I thought that would be far less responsibility and headache than being in charge of on-average 30 students at a time so I went for it. It was a huge pay cut and I thought, "This is probably mostly a job for high-schoolers" so I didn't think there would be a LOT of employees my age there. Yeah, I was a couple decades older than any employees other than the owners. There were very strong pros and cons that I just want to note. A downside is that I REALLY struggled with maintaining my identity while working there. They gave me a LOT of hours, way more than I wanted and it felt like I was always at work. While at work, our hair always has to be pulled back. Our nails always had to be really short. Also, there was a protocol for doing almost every task there. They do not want us coming up with our own ways of doing anything. We were not allowed to use our phones at all. When I'm there for 7-8 hours at a time, with my hair pulled all back (which is almost never a way I wear it by choice) and I'm just going through tasks that are very regulated and I can't communicate with anybody outside of that place for the whole time (oh yeah, no breaks by the way), I really started to struggle to feel like a person. I'd come home tired and then needed to do many of the things I normally fit into the time I'd been gone and it was just draining. That would not have been sustainable to my mental health but there are a lot of pros and I'd rather talk about that. I had a job in a sandwich shop when I was 16 years old, at Schlotzsky's Deli. When I was first hired, they scheduled me for a variety of different things. I was a great student and good at memorizing things. I'd cram for tests at the last minute and ace them all the time. I'd been sent home with a list of sandwiches and what goes on each of them but for some reason, I could NOT recall sandwich toppings. I was SO SLOW at making sandwiches!!! It was painful for me and painful for the other employees. I still remember another guy my age, named Joe, who begged our manager, Rich, to never let me make sandwiches again and we were both relieved when that never happened. I mostly ended up doing front-of-the-restaurant things-cashiering, cleaning the dining room & restrooms, stocking everything a customer would see, and all of that stuff. Going to make sandwiches almost 30 years later is a whole different experience. My memory is definitely not what it used to be and yet I've had years of practice of making lots of people foods in customized ways at home. Now I found sandwich-making a breeze and I got really fast at it and now I was the one impatient and frustrated when the other employees struggled to pick it up. Also, at my age, I'm much more confident and don't need a lot of direction or approval. It feels much better to operate with confidence instead of wondering all the time if the boss thinks I'm doing okay. I love the owners! It's a father & his wife and their son & his wife that own it and they are wonderful people that really put their heart & soul into the place. I've used a lot of past-tense verbs here so it's probably no surprise that I don't still work there. It was a very physical job and I liked that overall but I'm still recovering from a car accident and the routine would have made recovering fully impossible so for now, I'm back in the education business after all. I'm glad I had the chance to go give something else a try though. I mostly found it to be a good experience but I don't think I could have stayed there for years. 2. This is a petty complaint but seriously, what is up with all of the selling on the shows we have casually watched over the years?! Everything from Good Morning, America to Entertainment Tonight. They used to be a kind of burst of pop-culture-y news and entertainment but now there are dedicated segments to present a bunch of crap they want you to buy. They always say it's on sale-"deal of the century" and all that jazz-but that's just marketing. We already see commercials and get bombarded with stuff people want us to buy. I HATE that part of the show is direct selling. The shows aren't that valuable to start with and I've never been a regular watcher. It just makes me not want to watch at all. It's not worth it to hear about the Kardashians, who I don't care about in the first place. Even our local news shows will sometimes present several "deals of the day" and sell garbage there, too. Good thing I don't watch mainstream news much these days either. 3. Finally, I just went to the A.I. Doc movie tonight, which actually cost a lot to see in the theater. The ticket price didn't sound too bad for a Friday Night Flick so I started checking out and then with the fees & taxes, each ticket was close to 50% more than the original ticket price!!! Yikes! Unfortunately, it wasn't worth all the moo-lah. The director was dealing with his existential crisis related to A.I. and it's role in the world as he learned he would soon become a father for the first time. After nearly 2 hours, that's the journey we went on was his existential crisis, not a deeper understanding of A.I. or technology or the people running the main operations with AGI. They interviewed the biggest names in A.I. in the country and what did we really learn from the interviews in this movie? Nothing! A.I. could be good. A.I. could be bad-that's pretty much the broken record message most experts said in various forms but we didn't really gain understanding. Don't most of us know that already before watching the movie? I don't need an expert to tell me this. If I had an expert available to interview, I would want to know what ethical battles they've personally faced in the race to the A.I. domination. I would want to know how their views have changed and about if and how any of their boundaries with technology have changed. Walk us through the ways that you, as an expert, have navigated the complications of the ever-changing tech. I would want to know how their projects or experiences with A.I. have changed their relationships, whether professionally or personally. There are all kinds of things I would want to know but I would never say, "The whole A.I. thing-is it good or is it bad?" and get their diplomatic answer to that simple and meaningless question and say, "Ok. Thanks for the interview." There are many movies that are really just somebody exploring how they feel about something. I am usually a little annoyed when I realize a movie is pretty much just that-somebody exploring their own feelings about a certain thing. However, I find it far more offensive when it's done with a documentary!!! I expect more. There's a certain amount I want to learn and grow from a documentary and none of that happened with this one. Probably most people are not rushing out to see this show. There were 6 other people in the theater with us and that's probably telling. However, if somebody is considering it, I would not recommend it. A.I. could have written a better documentary itself-ha! That's the real irony there. That covers my loose ends for now.

Reuben snob

I have been a bit of a reuben snob. For many years, I've hated pastrami. It seemed really gross to me (I thought of it as a dirty meat) and when we would go someplace with a reuben sandwich (which I love), I would ask if they use pastrami or corned beef. If they use pastrami, I would order something completely different and steer clear of eating that, even if it was recommended and they'd say, "Our reuben is so good!" Pastrami was a deal breaker. I spent a small amount of time recently working in a sandwich shop. I was there when they've taken their big hunks of meat and slice them in house and portion them out for sandwiches so I saw that all the meat is a very high quality meat. As I made sandwiches for customers, the pastrami started looking so tempting to me!!! I caved and finally just tried a pastrami sandwich on their very soft and delicious ciabatta bread and it was HEAVENLY!!! There were so many tasty options but once I tried the pastrami, I didn't think I could order anything different for a while. I really like the store owners and other employees and was learning a lot and getting into a flow for the work days there but I'm also still recovering from a car accident. I realized pretty quickly that I would not be able to keep that job and still progress in my recovering so I had to part ways with the job. During this last week that I didn't go into the sandwich shop, I started doing lots of research on pastrami. I found out it's not drastically different than corned beef and I had not even ever known that it was beef as well. That would have made a difference to know. I've tried buying some items at various grocery stores to recreate this sandwich I'm obsessed with. I haven't found an identical substitute yet but I've had some pretty good sandwiches. I also had a reuben last night that's made with a pastrami that's flown in from a New York deli and that was very tasty. My days of being a reuben snob are over now & I can't wait to make up for lost time!

Called to Witness

I've been reading about the disappearance & murder of Ashley Pond & Miranda Gaddis from Oregon. It led me to another docu, Ghosts of Highway 20, as well. With Ashley and Miranda, there were many people in the community that would never give up searching for them and finding their killer-friends, family, community members that had never even met them before, and law enforcement members. To this day, there are many who cover this story still and keep that little light of these young girls burning even when somebody evil tried to fade it out. I was incredibly touched by Byron Pickle, the brother of Rachanda Pickle, who was murdered as well as Bart Swanson, the brother of Sheila Swanson, who was murdered. These two men have spent decades trying to find justice for their sisters and keeping the memories of these loved ones alive. With Byron, nobody else initially affected by this murder was by his side for the full legal battle. He went to court essentially alone (his mom didn't go and didn't emotionally support him. Even though he was also abused by her boyfriend, his mom doesn't even acknowledge all the proven things that have happened) and made the decision alone of whether to let an evil man plead for a deal or to take the whole thing to trial. With Swanson, he has made all these journeys to the spot where his sister died just to be closer to her, to remember, to keep himself in line with the goal he set for himself to make her the focus of his life once she was gone. There are holes in hearts and emotions that are still close to the surface after all this time. You can see this takes a heavy toll on these people but they feel the weight of their call to witness. They witness the lives lost and carry young legacies that were stifled too soon. I felt very inspired by their commitment. I believe I've asked it before but I circle back around to it again-who or what is it that I have a call to witness? Am I doing it? I do not know. This is different for each of us & I may be on to my path as a witness & I may not but I don't think it hurts to stop and reflect on this from time to time. I appreciate all those who are called to witness someone or something under difficult circumstances but they refuse to turn away or take the easy path. It's a beautiful sacrifice to see that people put burdens on themselves that simply verify those things that would otherwise go unnoticed or invalidated.