So, we left off last time where the office manager of my old apartments, the crappy apartments as me and some of the previous tennants that have come and gone would call it. Anyway she was at my doorstep yelling at me about when I was going to clean and basically in a nuttshell I told her my apartment was clean last week when she was suppossed to have done an inspection sorry she missed it and im not cleaning again. Well needless to say she didn’t like that but as I said in the previous post I had family in from out of town I was not going to discuss this. I cleaned up what I needed to I guess and while I was taking things to the dumpster I saw the office manager and the maintenance guy on the pavilion by the pool talking and it didn’t look like a happy conversation.
Oh, and a question you might have is where was your family who was visiting out of town when the maintenance man was in your apartment and when the confrontation between you and the office manager was going on? They were in a nice hotel down the street. However, getting back to the maintenance guy and the office manager and their unhappy conversation, Like I said I basically just did the bare necessities of the cleaning process, showered and went and joined my family at the hotel. A lot of you who have close knit families are probably thinking well why doesn’t your family stay with you when their visiting the city. Well, when I first moved to San Antonio it was 2013 and it was May and I was moving they’re from Lubbock and I had a pretty good-sized apartment, I mean it was old, but it was very well kept up, and at that time family stayed with me when they were visiting the city. I had another really good-sized apartment after that, and I guess I descent sized apartment after the 2nd one. The apartment that I just moved out of was a studio and the reason I moved there is that I was getting out of the call center, and I had been working at this company that sells time shares. It was still a relatively new company, so they were having some problems getting up and running so I was also doing some work for my dad at one of his businesses in one of the small towns outside of San Antonio. It was a bit of commute, but it was good because it got me out of the city when the city was getting to be a bit too much. When I lived in that first apartment there was this road that ran beside that apartment and some apartments a way down before you got to one of the main roads in San Antonio. it had this Mexican style architecture with the tiled roof. I noticed that it was an extended stay hotel, and I remember thinking to myself they really ought to turn those into apartments, and what do you know a year later that’s exactly what they did. I moved into that apartment when things weren’t going so well for me, and I had to downsize. Things got better for a while but then 2020 happened and then Covid and well things got weird again. Plus, my family new things weren’t going well as far as my living situation in that apartment complex and that is why they opted to get a hotel room. Well getting back to the topic at hand I was showing my family the sites and the hotspots of San Antonio and basically just had a good weekend with the family. That following week I was noticing I hadn’t seen the maintenance guy all week and it was later confirmed by another tenant that I knew very well that he quit, he basically just walked off site because the office manager was trying to micromanage him. I was kind of shocked but then not really. I knew how she was, and he didn’t really act like he really liked working for her. But I guess I felt better knowing that I wasn’t the only one that was having problems with her. I actually avoided her for that week and then the next week. Then it was the first of the month again and it was time to pay rent so what I did this time is I just got the amount off of the payment portal and wrote her a check and brought it to the office. When I walked in, she just gave off a short but gruff hi, and I said hi back in a tone that basically sent the signal yeah, the feeling is mutual I am not fond of you anymore either. I laid the check down on the desk and walked out of the office. That week when my family was in town and that confrontation between me and the land lady happened, I did kind of feel bad after it happened and I kind of yelled at her and smarted off to her. I told my parents about it and about how I felt bad about it. I even kind of felt like I should apologize to her. My parents were like; “well she was just doing her job.” Which she was but it got even worse than that in the weeks to come and I was wondering just how sorry for her I felt. We went for weeks with no maintenance team and work orders were backing up. There was someone in one of the other buildings making all of this noise at midnight. Then there was this one day two tenants were having a heated argument calling each other every name in the book. My apartment was on the 2nd floor but there was once incident that I stepped out to go take something to the dumpster and a guy was being arrested like right by the stairs. They were all downstairs, but I was thinking wow, and this is the office manager let’s call her Maria, I was like this is Maria’s idea of getting control of the place. This one day I needed to take an uber to pick up my car after a night out with a friend. My car was at my friend’s apartment and my uber driver just happened to live in the apartments in the same building as me. We had a good conversation, and I asked him; “so do you like living in the complex?” He told me; “I feel like if I mind my own business then I’ll be ok I told him; “I had the same thought.” We got to my friend’s apartment complex I wished him a good day and went about with my business. There was this one time when I was walking back from a nearby bar and grill, I was having a drink with a few friends and one of those friends lived in the complex too and they were also complaining about how that place has just gone downhill. I saw somebody laying in the middle of the parking lot facedown. I wanted to go see if that person was ok, but I was remembering what my uber driver was saying about minding his own business and how I felt the same way. I told some friends about that, and they told me, “I don’t know if I would have done the welfare check either, you don’t know they could have been hoped up something or they could have had a knife or something and stabbed you.” There was also something shady going on in this one area of the complex where it tends to be a little bit more darker or less lit than the rest of the complex. Imagine that, but seriously though it looked like a possible lovers quarrel that could have been escalating. I didn’t investigate further on that one either. I didn’t see it getting physical, so I didn’t see any need to, and plus couples get into it like that a lot, but again I was telling myself mind your business. Not only that, but I was also having my own problems at the time, so I really didn’t need to be involving myself in other people’s problems. This all happened over the course of several weeks. At work I explained my situation because I knew that they had ways that they could help their employees find housing. In some ways I did think that I was overreacting a little bit, but Human Resources was telling me it’s good to be prepared for the worst. That next week we all got memos from the land lady talking about how it had come to her attention that this this and this was going on and how it was a violation of the lease agreement. I was just like whatever, she needs us tenants and I pay my rent on time, and I don’t cause any trouble. The following week something else dramatic happened that incident I think I am going to leave out of this for privacy issues and to stay along the rules and guidelines of this hosting platform. Then the following week one of the tenants went around smashing windows of the downstairs apartments. I’m just glad mine was upstairs. The week after that was when I got my memo that they didn’t want to renew my lease. I was like that’s fine too. I went to the leasing manager’s office to confirm that I got the memo and what steps I need to take basically I said where do I sign. She said she would follow up with me. It was at that moment I knew what I needed to be done. I wasn’t getting enough hours at the warehouse that I was working at even though I was picking up extra hours, so I was definitely going to need better job. So, it didn’t take me long to find a job working nights in a call center and I used my days to work on getting an apartment and getting all of the documentation I needed to get a new apartment, and the conclusion of this story will be in my next post.
Something I feel like I need to say
So, about a week ago I believe it was a Thursday night, and it was cheat day, So I decided to call in a pizza from pizza hut for carry out. Usually that doesn’t take long to do I just pull up and go in tell them picking up and tell them my name the get it for me ring me up and pay and leave a tip and I am out the door. This trip to pizza hut was not so quick there was a lady in there before me and she was talking to the lady at the cash register and there was another person in the back making the pizzas. This was kind of a long conversation going on between the two wemon. Then another woman comes in the entrance and gets in line behind me and then the woman behind the counter disappears to the back leaving the three of us waiting. The three of us were waiting a while When the woman behind me spoke up and said this usually doesn’t take this long. The woman in the front of the line said agreed with her she said yeah, I mean I have quite a big order but even with the big orders I usually place I never have to wait as long as I have been waiting. She went on to say that it looks like they are short staffed, but there was a lady sitting at that table on her phone texting she then got up and went to the back she looked distressed. The table that the lady in front of me pointed to had one of those igloo type thermoses on it and some other items looking like it had been a slow afternoon until we placed our orders, but the lady went on saying she is probably back there texting away now. The lady behind me was saying that she was in the drive through of her bank the other day and when she pulled up, she put the information in the little cylinder tube and asked the teller a question to which the teller responded I’ll be right with you I have three customers at the window. and she disappeared behind the wall where the lobby desk was. The lady behind me was telling us that she use to work at a bank and if she had told a customer that she would have gotten fired. The lady in line ahead of me said people don’t have a work ethic anymore. The lady behind me said; it’s that and nobody wants to do these types of jobs anymore. The lady ahead of said that’s exactly right and it’s sad. The lady behind me said it is sad and it’s not only that people just don’t want to work anymore period. At some point during the last part of that conversation the lady that was at the counter emerged and began boxing up an order and then another lady emerged from the back and asked the name of the order to the lady in front of me. She gave her the name and went back to the back and brought her order to the front. The lady in front of me was not kidding when she said that it was a big order. She paid for her order and left then I got my order paid for it and left.
I agree with what these two wemon in line with me were saying. People don’t want to work. I remember when covid happened and after the whole quarantine and everything I was seeing fewer and fewer people working the fast food resteraunts. That was when the great resignation was going on. I remember
helping a friend with a water filtration campaign that she was doing, and we took a lunch break and went to Chacho’s here in San Antonio (A very good Mexican resteraunt by the way). They are known for their nacho’s; we got it through the drive through because their dining area was still closed, and she asked the guy at the window when will y’all be opening your dining area and he replied oh it will be a while people don’t want to work. I think I did read on google that they are trying to re open their dining area, or their dining area in some of the locations in the city. The fact of the matter is yes that is the truth people don’t want to work but the people that actually do want to work employers and recruiters don’t want to hire. I would think if I were an employer I would be reaching out and trying to hire anyone who is interested. I remember trying to get a temp to hire position and they asked me if I was familiar with excel. I told them I had used it in previous positions, and I use it when i am doing my taxes, but I am not what you would call a pro at it. Well, they gave me a test on certain scenario’s that I would encounter with the job, and I didn’t get the job because I didn’t know excel, Translation. I didn’t know it the way they thought I should know it.
There was a position similar to that, that I interviewed for and we were using some kind of weird system it wasn’t zoom of facetime or skype it was something that you used through a computer or lap top but they only heard your voice I didn’t know how to log in and the way I logged in was actually the correct way to log in but I thought I did something wrong because the interviewer wasn’t there, and I was on time so I logged out and tried something different and then I logged back in a second time the way that I had logged in the first time and it worked and low and behold the interviewer was there this time, but because I didn’t know how to log in I was a minute late to the interview and that was the reason I didn’t get the job and I just kind of thought ok either be on time to the interview you the interviewer is actually conducting or use zoom, FaceTime, or Skype like everyone else or both. I also remember reading an article online about how the teacher shortage was bad and it was talking about how bad they needed teachers. Well, if that’s the case then why are some of the teacher’s that I know, that I happen to know have been actively applying for teaching jobs. Why are they still unemployed.
One of the call centers that I worked in back in 2014 still test’s people in their training class. If I needed employees as bad as companies were saying they needed employees during the great resignation I don’t know that I would have been testing my trainee’s. I don’t know why they test the people that they are training for jobs anyway. It has been scientifically proven that testing people doesn’t prove that they know the material, and this was a very high credentialed psychology professor that told me that.
When I was brainstorming this blog post I did a google search and typed in is the great resignation still going on. The articles from this google search that I did said “the great resignation is not really a thing anymore, but there are still some lines of work that are hiring people and then they will work for a while and then they will quit.” I took a trip to see my parents this weekend I guess it was kind of a last-minute thing because I kind of had some stuff to do, and my dad who is an avid news watcher told me that there is kind of a recession going on right now. I thought that actually explains a lot of things that I am observing right now. Back in 2013 and 2014 me and a friend from college were talking about how sense we have been in the real world we are not sure how much we are liking it. We said that basically because we graduated when the recession that started in 2008 was going on and it still was going on, and just how employers or management was just rude and unprofessional.
In the call center I worked at where they are still testing people in their training classes I remember when I was in nesting which is when your actually taking calls but your still in training. When I and several other people were raising our hands to ask a question the people helping out with training were just rude. However, I just sort of got over it because I passed training and got out onto the floor. I really liked the team they had assigned me too, I’m not sure I liked the job, but I liked doing my sales that is what made the job fun, and I liked the people that I worked with.
But I think I was only on the floor a month when they called us all into a meeting and told us that they were changing the project on us. The project was a prepaid cell phone thing, and no one really wanted to do it but anyway that’s what was happening, so we all went through the training for it and when we got out of training for it, I was surprised how our numbers were very high on our score cards. However, a week or two after that it all changed. I went from being high on the score card to a lower rate on the charts. The deal was that people were calling in with problems that we didn’t go over in training which basically meant the phones themselves, and the customers were experiencing new issues with the phones and that made a big issue. I had a meeting with my boss at the time in private and he was telling me the issues that the client was seeing with me, and he was telling me that it seems like from what he has observed that if I say the wrong thing then I’m afraid that the customer is going to ask a whole bunch of other questions. I told my boss this is a call center you have to watch what you say anyway and a lot of that stuff we don’t have to watch because we might offend the customer a lot of it is that we have to watch what we say so we don’t offend the client. A couple of weeks passed after that, and we started seeing some changes at work people were being switched around to different teams.
See when I was back in training for the first project with that company one of the people that came to help me on an issue that a customer was calling in about was a woman that had been with the company for a while and the first time, she came over to assist me she had a bit of an attitude. For me if someone does that and I never trust that person ever again. I didn’t even know her, and she does that, it doesn’t do much for first impression because not only will I never trust you again I will never like you. It won’t matter how hard you try to smooth over the water latter. I heard that she was getting her own team and that week things were changing I was moved to her team. Why, I don’t know. At that time, I needed my job, so I didn’t ask questions I just went with it. She just never acted like she was in a good mood.
I was telling my friend from college about what all was going on at work and she wasn’t really happy with her job either and I was telling her about this radio station that I was listening too while we were still living in that college town where we went to school and the lady was telling the D.J. of the radio show that “she is in the medical field and she works in a very professional field and she was telling the D.J. just how unprofessional her work environment had become and that because of the recession that she is stuck and the people the she works for they know she is stuck.” I told my friend that is how I am feeling. I was feeling that way because well what do you do when your unhappy with your job? You go look for another one and it didn’t look like there were other jobs at that time. She said, “well these people in these high up management positions are thinking their all high and mighty now and it makes them feel empowered because they have these high-ranking positions but eventually this economy is going to get better and they’re not going to have people to work for them.” That’s what was happening when the great resignation was going on. It’s funny because my friend said that and we I guess kind of moved on from that conversation and didn’t think about it for a while and all this great resignation stuff happened and when we were talking on the phone one time when that was going on and I was like remember when your said that eventually this economy was going to get better and people weren’t going to have people to work for them? that is exactly what is happening.
It was after I switched projects in that company that I found out that my team lead that they moved me to from the one that I liked was actually having personal problems outside of work. That actually explained a lot. You as my readers are probably thinking well that doesn’t excuse any of it. Well, no but I’m over it I am not with that company anymore and probably won’t be ever again, but my point to this is the reason why people don’t want to do things such as fast food anymore is because it may pay more now but it’s still not a job where your respected by people. Not only that the younger generation that’s been graduating from high school and getting jobs or maybe even working or looking for work while in high school, if they had friends working in those types of jobs, they probably heard what they had to say about working in the food service industry and probably the same thing if they had relatives working in that industry. It’s probably more so if they had parents that worked in that industry trying to support them while they were growing up, and they saw what their parents went through. Working in a call center is not a job where you are really respected by people nor is it a type of job where management is actually displaying a whole lot of professionalism, but the reason why people are still working those jobs is because now you have the option of working from home and that is more convenient than commuting to an office.
A type of Air Freshener for people who have pets
If you have pet’s particularly cat’s one of the things that people are going to be continuously complaining about particularly in your living space is the smell. The fact that owning cats can cause your living space to stink believe it or not that could cause problems with friends, family, your dating life, I have even heard of it causing marital problems. You think it is ridiculous, but it does happen. I was in pet smart one day and came across the Fresh New Day Air wick. I thought it was actually at a great price for pet smart, so I got it and decided to try it out. It comes with a small can of Fresh Cotten air freshener. After I put it in its cute little plastic decorative holder and set the intensity of the sprayer in the air freshener holder after a few seconds it sprayed, and it made the room that I was in at the time smell better. So, I put it in the room that I intended it for the room where the cats are in the most which happens to be the bedroom and then I left the room. I returned a few minutes later after typing the contents above in this paragraph and the bedroom which is the room the cat’s frequent the most smelled better. Just a little heads up you can get refill cans for the Airwick at your local Wal Mart, target, and grocery store.
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