Caught In The Track

 I talked about my co-worker Roni who drives me crazy with his lazy ways.   The rumor is he has been on several PIPs and somehow has managed to come out of them.    I suspected that my manager has been documenting all his behavior in hopes of having enough evidence to terminate him.   I got confirmation of this indirectly.    Roni reached out to ask for assistance on my team's channel on a case after it got escalated by the customer.   The case in particular is a bit messy and even I would need help on it.    

I messaged Roni and invited him to a meeting to discuss the case further on Friday.   My plan was to have him drive most of the investigation with me guiding along in the background.   My hope was that he would learn more on how to handle these types of cases.   But he never responded to my meeting invite.   He also purposely stays offline so you never know if he's there or not.

So his case got escalated again on Monday.  My manager reached out to the channel leader and myself to help Roni out.    The funny thing is our team is encouraged to assist each other on the channel but a lot of times it winds up falling on my channel leader or myself (as backup) to assist on the majority of the cases.   There are times when the channel leader asks if anyone else in the channel can assist.   He initially did so on Roni's issue.    I wound up looking at it because I knew nobody else would.   Hours later Roni's direct messaging me asking for help.  I wanted to scream.   But I did give some initial feedback and asked for Roni to follow-up with the customer.   I checked on the case that Friday and saw that the customer was getting more agitated.   That's when I reached out of Roni for the meeting.

So after my manager posted the message on our channel, I direct messaged my manager privately saying that I did try to meet with him Friday but he didn't respond.   So then my manager told me to mention that directly on the channel.   It then hit me that she wanted to have someone mention Roni's inaction so that she would have more evidence to share on Roni's incompetence.   I mean why else would she want me to mention it in the channel if not to have a paper trail.

Roni does get on my nerve but I still felt guilty calling him out on the channel.   But I went ahead and mentioned it.   I honestly wanted to cover my own tail and not be accused of not wanting to assist which was why I messaged my manager initially.  Roni of course in his Roni way did not react to my message.   But everything that's happening to him, he's definitely bought it on himself.   Last week my manager reached out to me to give an initial response to the customer on one of Roni's cases because it was in danger of not meeting the SLA.  She tried to reach Roni but he was not responding.   That is yet another of several examples that I'm sure she's documented.

Now it may be a long while still before he winds up getting terminated.   Another colleague joked that it would probably take five more years before anything happened.   I mean he started at the same time I did which means he's been employed for over 3 years now and nothing has happened yet even though folks have known about his ways since 2023.   But yeah we're all being tracked for sure.   Thankfully so far though I'm on the right track.

Commissioned Out

 Dom has been missing a lot of work these days.    He's already been counting the days till his retirement.  As a high school math teacher, he's been complaining on the daily about misbehaving students who do not understand even the basic math equations.   He's been dealing with a lot of health issues as well which has caused him to missed days.   For the third or fourth school year in a row, he has maxed out on his allotted sick day time off so each time he misses a day now, he doesn't get paid for that day.   He's also started ordering more doll crap based on various shows like Wednesday (every company that makes a likeness of the Wednesday Adam doll, he has to order) and of course Wicked.   He's been pissing me off there because he's had me stay home on certain days because he doesn't want his packages staying out in the cold too long.   Of course I have to juggle my home days with my return to office mandate that dictates I have to be in the office 3 days a week.   It's so stupid since I can do my job at home but I need the paycheck especially since I'm responsible for the majority of the household bills and for both of our health insurance costs.   So I gotta play the game till they decide to lay me off or a better opportunity comes along.

So I'm home today for work because of more packages (I went to the office Monday & Wednesday so far and will go in tomorrow to make my 3 days).   However he wound up staying home too because he's been experiencing pain in his left shoulder and his hands continue to ache from carpal tunnel.   I would've went in to the office today but I woke up a little later and didn't feel like rushing to get out of the house.  I had already set up my makeshift office as well.

I hate that he's back to spending money unnecessarily (in my opinion),especially since he's not working full-time.   He keeps talking about slowing his spending and decluttering his collection.   I continue to feel frustrated seeing how cluttered our whole house is.    Every room is full of junk.   I just imagine if he didn't spend the little money he has on this stuff, we could've had the mortgage paid off by now.   Even if he gave $200 a month to put into the mortgage, that would quickly add up over time.   But I'm managing to pay the necessary bills each month and continue to pay off my credit card bills.   I was glad to keep my total credit card payments to just under $2000 this pay period.   $3000 is the goal I usually have (this includes gas, insurance, food, transportation toll fees, and other miscellaneous items) so I exceeded my goal.   Last pay period I was slightly over $3000 so that varies.  

Speaking of credit cards, he still doesn't know yet that I canceled his one card.   I will probably add him back again.   I was just extremely frustrated at that time how he used the card for a non-emergency expense and didn't bother to tell me.  

Dom was told he would need to have carpal tunnel surgery on both his hands to alleviate the pain he's experiencing.   He was hoping to push that off till June but he's thinking he may need it sooner.   He's been wearing hand braces at night to try and help ease the pain.    But it doesn't always help and he also is noticing weakness in his shoulder muscles. 

He also mentioned Tuesday that he had a kidney stone that caused him to not be able to pee initially.  He was going to head to the E.R. but luckily he was able to push the stone out.   I too may have had a small stone a few weeks back as I was experiencing weak urine flow.   But that has since passed.  The joy of being older, right?   We're continuing to push through this thing called life.   I just needed to vent again.

Max's Back!!!

 I was in the office today and had a free moment to listen to Youtube videos.   To my surprise I saw the following video pop up on my screen.

I was pleasantly surprised to see En Vogue announce the return of Maxine Jones.   I've been lamenting about the ladies breaking up for years.   It had been awhile since I've spoken on the group.   Dom and I went to see Cindy/Terri/Rhona when they performed at the now defunct Star Plaza.   I also saw the current reincarnation of Cindy/Max/Terry/Rhona in 2008 at a park in Country Club Hills, IL.   This was just before Dawn briefly returned and Rhona graciously stepped aside till Dawn left again. 

En Vogue has teased in the past about getting back together but things always fell apart.   I'm hoping this isn't another false promise that falls by the wayside.   The ladies are all in their 60's (well Rhona's is pushing towards 50 - will be 49 in May) and it is about time they squash whatever beef they had.   Seeing Max back naturally has fans wondering if Dawn will follow suit and return.  Sadly I don't think Dawn will be coming back.   But I do feel like Max will add back some of the soul that's been missing from the group.

I do sincerely hope they release a new album with the four of them.   How nice would it be to hear a new song or two with a four-part harmony again.   We shall see what becomes of this latest announcement.   It's no doubt garnered some excitement among us diehard fans.   Come on ladies, get it together!   You all still look great but time waits for noone.   In fact ya'll wrote a song about it, want to hear it now, here it goes.

  

Mysterious Neighbor

 Since Dom and I lived in our home back in 2016, there was a small bungalow with a detached garage across from us that was mostly abandoned.   There was an older gentleman that would stop by periodically to do stuff in the garage.   I briefly chatted with him a few times over the years and he seemed nice.   Dom mentioned that the guy told him that he was underwater on the place and for whatever reason couldn't sell it.   For the most part though, the house had no activity.   

That started changing about two years back.   A bunch of random folks would stop by either inspecting the house or the garage and then leaving.   We suspected that something must've happened to the older gentleman.   But then he would appear as well occasionally.   This random activity continued on for a bit.  Then there started to be a crew that would come by daily to make repairs on the roof and other parts of the house.   I looked at realtor.com and then discovered that the house was sold to another buyer.

The repairs started to continue and I got to see the transformation of the house firsthand since we live right across from it.   They finished up the roof, replaced the windows, refaced the outside of the house and garage, added gutters, and remodeled the garage into a separate living space.   Over the months they've unloaded so much junk that the nice older gentleman had accumulated in the garage.  Dom and I used to joke that he had "centipede" people living there that he occasionally came to feed.  My curiosity peaked over who the new owners would be.   Dom and I prayed it would be a hot gay couple.   But of course that didn't come to be.

The new owners it ended up look to be a couple (I know one is a guy but I can't tell if the second person is a guy or gal).   Maybe it is a gay couple after all...but with the winter, it's too dark to make them out completely.   And they are not very sociable.   Then again I guess I'm not either.    They live in the garage and apparently they have random people possibly from the same job living in the main house.   It's basically a smorgasbord of activity now.   This group basically leave the house together but in separate cars early in the morning and then roll back in the afternoon.   I wonder why they can't just carpool together.   It'll be interesting what develops when the weather warms up.  Since they live in the garage, I've seen them grill stuff outside.  The other day I saw they bought in a stackable washer and dryer that they placed by the downstairs entrance.   I assume they placed a bathroom in there as well.   I'd definitely love to see what they did to the place but alas since it won't be in the market anytime soon, I won't know.   Since they made the garage into a home, their cars have to reside outside of the garage which sucks when it's winter.

Anyway it's an interesting mystery so far.  I guess as long as they don't bother us we'll be okay.   One good thing to come from it is at least the house is not abandoned now and it's reduced the number of lurkers who would randomly drive by and park there or near our house.   It's the curse of living in a corner home.

More Layoff Blues

 I found out today that my company did yet another round of layoffs.   It gutted me to learn that two of my colleagues were impacted.    I saw an article last week from a random business periodical mentioning my company was letting some resources go.   

I had my weekly one-on-one with my manager scheduled for today.   She initially messaged me with the cryptic message of joining a meeting in 9 minutes.   I thought she was referring to our one-on-one initially.  But then she mentioned moving the meeting to another time because she didn't receive responses from other team members.   I then asked if our weekly team meeting was being moved to Tuesday.   She gave the affirmative but I never saw a link.

She wound up meeting with me one-on-one afterwards.   She didn't say anything right away but I could tell her mood seemed off.   I went over my list of topics unaware of the layoff at that time.  I then mentioned the article that I saw and asked if we would be impacted.   That's when I learned of the team members that were already impacted.

It just makes me sick to see how these companies just willy nilly let people go to save money to cover the higher up salaries and make stockholders (which I guess I am part of) happy.    Our Orange leader tried to mess up the stock market with his stupid tariff wars on Canada and Mexico.   Those were cancelled but not before China retaliated against tariffs on them with their own tariffs.   What a mess.

It's hard to believe a year ago I was celebrating a promotion.  That came a year after additional layoffs.  One of my colleagues affected was also someone that got promoted at the same time I was.   What both my colleagues had in common was that they were fully remote employees with long-time tenure at the company.

I'm really praying I can get my financial life in order before I get impacted.   I was hoping to make it at this place till 2033 but I may not last even through 2025 the way things are going.    My manager did say that this seemed to be the last of it.   But we truly do not know.  It's the last for now but who knows what the future holds.  Uggh.