I have always prided myself on being self reliant. Even though I work in the service industry I am good enough at what I do and thrifty enough to never have been in a risky financial situation. I have never borrowed money from a bank, got a car loan or a credit card (until recently) and paid as I went. Many times it was paycheck to paycheck but often I have had reserve funds and even enough to enjoy myself sometimes. I never owed anything to anybody with the exception of the Bank of Mom to the tune of a few hundred dollars that is always repaid. I have never been unable to pay my bills, from my time in South Carolina, my move to and time in Vegas and my move to and time here in Portland, until now.
update
To be clear, I am short on my rent and deposit on my new place. I didn't include a link to my gofundme page I had set up for another purpose because I am not entirely sure how short I am and I don't want more than I need, others are in need too. That didn't stop Aji from putting a post up on her site, wonderful woman that she is. You can find the link there for now.
http://ajijaakwe.blogspot.com/...
I am going now to pick up my check short lost time and a check for flex time cashed out, I should be able to figure out how much I need after that.
It has been one of the most stressful periods of my life over the past few month the summation being I moved and started a new job, but it is not quite that simple. I wrote about my new job recently, I love the place. I love the ladies I work for, I love the concept, space and menu and I make a decent livable wage for someone with no debt and only myself to support. Such a welcome and healing change from my previous employer. My last job, that I got fired from, was very stressful. I made good money but worked for a year with what I can only describe as a mean old lady. I tried and tried but her default position was to do things to try and make me angry and try to make my job more difficult. I complained through the proper channels from nearly the beginning and nothing ever was resolved although they did demote her and make me the bar manager but never let me manage. The problems persisted to the point I put in my month and a half notice, I wanted to honor what I put on the calendar. Well it was not to be, the lady who everyday tried to make my life difficult wouldn't let up to the point it caused me to raise my voice one day. Because of that I sent an email using the term "hostile work environment" because for me it very much was. Well that got their attention, and not in a good way. From then on the enacted policies to "alleviate" the situation but ended up only making my job more and more difficult. They also requested I document and send them specific examples, I did, and they fired me the next day. Escorted out of the place no less, though only for a day, they were dumb enough to let me join as a member.
By the way, I was unemployed for exactly one hour and started at my new job the next day. It was supposed to be temporary as I had other job prospects I couldn't turn down if I got. The ladies I work for had a problem employee they needed to get rid of and when they explained that he was a misogynist with no respect for them the owners in a place where 80 percent of our clientele are women I agreed, he had to go. After working one week there I just fell in love with the place. The owners, my fellow employees, it has been so spiritually healing working there these past seven weeks.
I moved here to Portland to be a solid room mate for my little sister and her now husband to help them get established and not move back to South Carolina. It worked out well for the better part of two years but things started going south around their wedding. My sister doesn't share my frugal nature and her husband is worse and they spend money like there is no tomorrow. It got worse during their wedding fiasco. I did the catering for their wedding to save big bucks but when it came time to buy the food and cook it earlier in the week so I could spend time with family coming into town my sister didn't have the money to cover it. I asked my mom about it and she had given her 1000 bucks a few days before for food and wine. Where did the money go, to dumb shit they didn't need. Bluetooth speakers for music, oh those don't work better get new ones. A nacho bar style crock pot for pre wedding food, never used that sits unopened in the box to this day. Other stuff like that. Not to worry, there is plenty of money right, it grows on trees.
It only got worse the following year, and quite frankly they are slobs. They really never cleaned up our townhouse since the wedding, wedding stuff came home got thrown in a corner and there it sat until we recently moved. My brother in laws parents bought them a house recently and I was to move in and help with the mortgage payment, that is until I saw the room I was to live in. Barely big enough to put a queen sized bed in. The common areas of the house all cramped and nearly unworkable and the place is the better part of 20 miles from my work. Meanwhile they have 800 square feet to themselves, the entire upstairs, but they wanted me to pay a third of their mortgage for rent. Well that shit just wasn't going to happen so I set about to looking for a place to move into.
Finding affordable decent housing in Portland is challenging to say the least, took me to the wire to find a spot that I could get moved into in time to clean the old place. Turns out it was in with a guy about my age from Columbia, SC, no shit. He worked at a bar across the street from a bar I worked at in Columbia at the same time but we never met back there. I get my stuff out and set about cleaning my old place, my sister waited to put notice in longer than I thought she would so for July I paid rent at 2 places for half the month. As the deadline to be out approached I noticed there was very little getting done and moved out of their stuff. Well it was because they were busy working on their new house to get ready for a visit from his parents and Grandmother. It came down to the night before the last day we were supposed to be out of the place, I only had a few things to clean and 2 trips of stuff to take to the new place, but there was no way they were going to be done.
So my sister begged my mom for money to extend our lease for another 10 days, then promptly spent them hanging out for the most part with his family. I had to throw all of their wasted food out of the fridge and cabinets just so I could clean them. They made a show the last 2 days of finishing cleaning, but a lions share was done by me, after work. They had a nice little vacation though, and spent a few hour cleaning up the rest of their mess I refused to. Now I find myself on a but of an unscheduled vacation right now myself.
Last week was my birthday week and boy was it a shitty week, literally. I went to work for a meeting with the ladies I work for on my birthday and found them mopping up backed up sewer water on the kitchen floor, the week went down hill from there. I went in early the next day to get everything cleaned up properly and the landlords unhandy man was there fixated on the toilet even though the back up was from the kitchen and alley behind the place. I had found evidence of a smaller one Monday morning when I arrived to work but couldn't determine the source so I cleaned it up,
let the owners know and chalked it up to a one time thing. After Tuesday I figured the main sewer line for the entire building was blocked as we had been having other issues as well and told the unhandy man that, he was fixated on the toilet and the landlord was fixated on making our mess to clean up and not hers.
So the unhandy man snaked the line from the toilet and it fixed the problem temporarily until Thursday when I was about done a huge surge of sewage came from our grease trap. The one owner and I set about cleaning it up with a shop vac and it was mostly done, we were dumping the water in our compost bin and not running any water in the place through the drains. We knew at this point it was a big fucking deal. After we had mostly got it cleaned up we were deluged again, with more sewage water. I figured it was someone doing laundry upstairs and cut the water off to the entire building and went and sat in the alley and had a smoke, at that point it was far beyond our ability to clean up. While smoking the unhandy man showed up and set about plunging our toilet to fix the situation. I told him it was the main sewer line and that wasn't gonna solve shit (again quite literally) and he looked at me and asked "well do you know anything about plumbing" as if to dismiss what I was saying. I nearly slapped the shit out of that man, would have been just a drop in the bucket. I decided instead to walk around the corner and have a drink.
After my drink I came back and unhandy man was still working on the toilet. He had taken the toilet off the floor drain to show me the toilet paper in it to PROVE he was right. I told him the water wasn't fucking going anywhere because the main line was clogged and he finally agreed. Right about that time the drain for the toilet backed up spilling yet more sewage into the front of our restaurant because his dumb ass had cut the water to the building back on. There was back and forth but the next day the landlord finally called a plumber and when he tried to jet the line from our side, yet more shitty water onto our floors. The City of Portland was called and shit got serious, they fixed the clog from their end, and it was on their end, but now the entire place is a hazmat clean up zone.
That is what my place looked like yesterday. The insurance companies are fighting it out with the city, shit is being flung every which way, and we are gonna be closed for at least 2 more weeks. Everyone is trying to keep their sense of humor.
Fortunately insurance is covering lost wages after the initial 72 hours of lost time. Those are my longer days I make good tip out on so I am set back around 500 and have been spending money I normally wouldn't because I can't eat at work anymore. I have been remaining productive taking the time to do things like help my homeless Uncle out with some food, bedding, shoes and getting him to the laundry mat because he is dirty. I also picked Horace up from his Mountain Island yesterday and brought him to town to hang out where I am house sitting because of the abundance of internet. Waiting on some temp jobs to come in to cover lost time but trying to enjoy my unscheduled mostly paid vacation, I really needed one.