Time At The Bank

This part of the story last left off in May 2000 with my being sacked from my fireplace tech job, and moving into another summer of renewal. The first job I ended up with was via another friend of the Queen's who hasn't come into the story too much, which is odd because they're really good friends (have been since college). Her husband (who normally doesn't command our respect) was working at an apartment complex, and he let us know they were in need of a person to perform "make ready" duties. A Make-Ready person goes through empty apartments and ensures that they have all their light bulbs, hinges, window locks, etc. before someone moves in.

He was on maintenance there and taught me a variety of things regarding maintenance, which actually impressed me, since we didn't know he was capable of doing anything up to that point. Unfortunately, the work bored me to tears, and as the job also entailed picking up people's trash, the occasional cleaning, and a bunch of other miscellanous duties that geeks just aren't cut out for, I quit at about the same time they were going to fire me...but not before I managed to pick up pink eye from someone else who worked there. Super fun.

The plus during this period, though, was actually a boon for the Queen. She was offered a teaching position and was to start as a first grade teacher come August. She was super excited about it, and I was very happy for her. She had to leave town post-haste to get to a teacher retreat or something at Shangri-La, which is a resort in Oklahoma. I was left with Rock Girl in her absence. We were still more than a year before The Socialite would come onto the scene.

After the Make Ready job, I found my way into a temp agency where I got on at a bank working with a guy who had injured in hand. How did he do this wonder? Well, in the basement of this bank, there is this room where a bunch of equipment lives, and among them are (I believe) some air conditioning units. Now these units suck in a lot of air, and when the door is open, they pull in a lot of air from the hallway, and in the process, try to pull the door closed...hard. He had left that room one day, and the door slammed onto his fingers, bending them backwards (possibly breaking them, I don't remember). They could have either tried to train someone else in his position, or get a helper to do the heavy lifting.

Enter me for the heavy lifting. The job was a total cakewalk. Drive around a couple times a day. Climb some ladders. Carry some boxes. But mostly sit around in his office and do nothing until the next time we had to do something.

While there, I made a mistake, though. You see, they recognized my propensity to work on computers and make them talk. It was easy for me. So when my term as a temp employee was up because they guy with the broken hand was all healed and could handle it on his own again, they offered me a job baby-sitting their servers from 2pm to 10pm. It would have been a great position for me, but at the time, I was narrow enough to only want to work during the day: a 9 to 5 job. I said no. Stupid...stupid...stupid. It would only be a matter of time before I'd be landing a night job, and this would have paid so much better and been so much more fun.

This isn't the only time I did this either. Maybe I mentioned this one before, but I don't remember the time frame in which it happened. You see, when the Queen was a teacher, they also recognized my propensity to make computers do what I wanted, and suggested I apply at Tulsa Public Schools as a computer tech. I was between jobs at the time, and actually applied for the Queen's old library assistant position when the principal suggested that the computer tech would be better.

Well, when I interviewed, and they told me about hardware and networking (which would have been awesome to learn), I said I was better with software and walked away. I really must stop doing stupid things...