The whole IT thang done played out. Ain't nobody want to hire a washed-up, over-the-hill programmer. As the saying goes:
"If you're still in IT at age 50 and haven't made it into management, your career is over."
I thought they were joking, but, much to my dismay, they weren't. There's ample evidence that I and others who were laid off last year were victims of age discrimination. The company shuffled old farts and youngsters around in one department to make it look like they weren't targeting the geezers. The smoking gun: as a condition of accepting the severence package, we had to sign an agreement not to file an age discrimination grievance. Now why in the fuck would you worry about someone accusing you of something they hadn't thought of accusing you of unless you had a guilty conscience?
I spent most of the past year looking for another job in the same field, and was told I "wouldn't be a good fit for their corporate culture." Who did they think they were fooling? Every company's HR department dictates an identical cultural Marxist culture. The "cultural fit" horseshit is HR code for "no old white men." They know it, I know it, and now you do too.
I burned through my severence pay, unemployment benefits, and savings over the ensuing nine months, ended up homeless in May of this year, and moved in with the parents in June. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be dependent on your old man at my age? Everything I spent the last 10 years working for is in a storage unit in Oklahoma, and I'm about to lose it all because I can't pay the rent. That's my reward for giving the best years of my life to a slimy corporation. The only thing of value I have on hand now is a .357 revolver, and it's getting mighty goddamned hard to find excuses not to put it to good use. You know D-FENS had a point because he really did have a fucking point, all right?
Oh well, best to be moving on. The year of our Lord 2018 needs to just die between sheets of burning plastic already. On the bright side, the parent company of my company also owned the Weekly Standard that just went out of business, and the other publications in the group probably won't last much longer either. Sucks to be them.
Anywho, it's evidently hard to find honest, dependable people to help elderly and disabled people with their daily needs: cooking, cleaning, running errands, chauffering, and so forth. Some people think 20 miles is too far to drive to a gig, and others just want to rob the old folks blind.
This weekend, I cleaned an old lady's house, and tomorrow I'm taking her to get her hair done. The gal who was previously helping her did a half-assed job of cleaning. It's a tiny apartment that takes no more than two hours to clean, but she would take off in the middle of the job to go smoke weed with some ol' boy. The old lady was letting her use her car, and she ran it smooth out of antifreeze, so the old lady took it away. That pissed her off, and she didn't call or come by for two weeks. That's how I ended up with that gig. I'm applying to local agencies to pick up a few more clients.
"If you're still in IT at age 50 and haven't made it into management, your career is over."
I thought they were joking, but, much to my dismay, they weren't. There's ample evidence that I and others who were laid off last year were victims of age discrimination. The company shuffled old farts and youngsters around in one department to make it look like they weren't targeting the geezers. The smoking gun: as a condition of accepting the severence package, we had to sign an agreement not to file an age discrimination grievance. Now why in the fuck would you worry about someone accusing you of something they hadn't thought of accusing you of unless you had a guilty conscience?
I spent most of the past year looking for another job in the same field, and was told I "wouldn't be a good fit for their corporate culture." Who did they think they were fooling? Every company's HR department dictates an identical cultural Marxist culture. The "cultural fit" horseshit is HR code for "no old white men." They know it, I know it, and now you do too.
I burned through my severence pay, unemployment benefits, and savings over the ensuing nine months, ended up homeless in May of this year, and moved in with the parents in June. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be dependent on your old man at my age? Everything I spent the last 10 years working for is in a storage unit in Oklahoma, and I'm about to lose it all because I can't pay the rent. That's my reward for giving the best years of my life to a slimy corporation. The only thing of value I have on hand now is a .357 revolver, and it's getting mighty goddamned hard to find excuses not to put it to good use. You know D-FENS had a point because he really did have a fucking point, all right?
Oh well, best to be moving on. The year of our Lord 2018 needs to just die between sheets of burning plastic already. On the bright side, the parent company of my company also owned the Weekly Standard that just went out of business, and the other publications in the group probably won't last much longer either. Sucks to be them.
Anywho, it's evidently hard to find honest, dependable people to help elderly and disabled people with their daily needs: cooking, cleaning, running errands, chauffering, and so forth. Some people think 20 miles is too far to drive to a gig, and others just want to rob the old folks blind.
This weekend, I cleaned an old lady's house, and tomorrow I'm taking her to get her hair done. The gal who was previously helping her did a half-assed job of cleaning. It's a tiny apartment that takes no more than two hours to clean, but she would take off in the middle of the job to go smoke weed with some ol' boy. The old lady was letting her use her car, and she ran it smooth out of antifreeze, so the old lady took it away. That pissed her off, and she didn't call or come by for two weeks. That's how I ended up with that gig. I'm applying to local agencies to pick up a few more clients.
