Optimistic

Well they got me. Last Wednesday my boss walked into my office looking like he had just been forced to sit through a 12 hour looped marathon of Herman Cain performing gospel favorites. Seriously, the man does gospel! Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZe75JSXhyU . What a clown, he’s got a whole album worth. Anyway he starts by saying, “Warren we need to talk.” Now I don’t know about you but I’ve never had someone start off a conversation with “we need to talk” and give me good news. It’s not like he was gonna say “we need to talk, you just won 12 million dollars”…hasn’t happened to me yet. So according to him we needed to talk but really I was just listening. He told me that he had fought for me but in order to cut costs the company felt they needed to eliminate my position…as of Friday…two days away. I still didn’t feel the need to talk. Well that’s not exactly true, I could have talked but it would not have been pretty and anyway there’s that whole bridge burning thing to contend with. Unemployed? Yes, but with excellent references. You know I really should have seen it coming. Company sales are drastically down from last year and they’ve already had a round of lay-offs and there was that whole thing last year with them and their mandatory work furloughs.

So now I find myself a living statistic, I’ve joined the ranks of the unemployed. Yes sir a living breathing member of the California 12% club or 16% if you’re African-American. You know one of those people that conservative politicians like Herman Cain claim, “if they are out of works it’s their own fault.” Despite fighting charges of sexual harassment this buffoon still has time to make idiotic statements. But yeah that’s me, unemployed because I want to be. Living the life of Riley, on the government dime, sitting on my ass…no worries. Because they’ll be paying my mortgage and car note, my credit card bills, student loans and health insurance…right? Yeah I’m satisfied Herman, being out of work and just waiting for all those millions to roll in from unemployment. Unemployed due to my own fault! Wow. Funny, I thought it was the fault of a sagging U.S. economy and Republican politicians refusing to pass President Obama’s jobs bill. I thought it was the eight years Bush spent tearing down our financial system and spending trillions of dollars on manufactured wars instead of focusing on jobs…but maybe that’s just me.

But rather than worry about how I’m going to find money to pay taxes next year on the unemployment benefits I receive this year, I plan to focus on the positive. Thankful that the company had to pay me for the accrued vacation and personal time I had managed to hold on to, which serves as severance because they certainly weren’t offering any. Thankful that someone anonymously pointed out to them that you cannot make exempt employees use their accrued time to pay for company enforced job furloughs simply because you decide you have no work for them…ok it was me. You’d be surprised what you can get from a simple Google search. Thankful that I didn’t fall for their request to convert that accrued time to their worthless company stock. Seriously, .70 cents a share? So I refuse to be down, one door closes and another opens. I’ll just keep on trucking, head to the sky, ain’t no stopping us now (feel free to insert your own applicable R&B titles here) I know a change is gonna come, I’ve got a new attitude, boogie nights (okay that last one was just cause I feel like dancing) ultimately, down but not out…optimistic. Who knows what the future holds…right?