Round Two – Float Like a Butterfly

Afni, Inc. – A Great Place to Work


heh, riiiiiight. Allow me to explain.


I really shouldn’t be amazed by my recent descent back into unemployment. My pinched nerve (which we now know is caused by two herniated discs thanks to an MRI) started acting up last month. With each day, it got worse, but I have to tell you, I didn’t expect it to get this bad. By “this bad” I mean that this is the worst it’s ever been in these last two years. I can’t even sleep for more than four hours without a muscle spasm waking me. Today, the Flexeril stopped working. Great.


Being still in my 90-day probationary period, I was expected to have 100% attendance, of course. And that makes perfect sense, right? Hell, I made it through three weeks of 10 ½ hour days, five days a week without missing a damn day. I think I may have been tardy once, but that’s it. Near perfect attendance, even once we hit the floor. At one point, my supervisor told me I had 100% adherence. That like never happens. So what does that say about me? Exactly.


Then one morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I called in, thinking I’d just go to the ER and get some meds and that should take care of it. It worsened over the weekend and the next week, but I still made it to work regardless of how much pain I was in. Did my employer do anything to help me? No. Give me any special accommodations? No. I asked these questions by the third or fourth week. FMLA only covers you if you’ve been there a year. On Friday the 15th, my supervisor said he talked to the HR manager and they agreed that I could have HR breaks. All that means is they tacked on an extra five minutes to my breaks because I walk so damn slow these days. Honestly though, I don’t know what the point was because they were getting ready to fire me anyway. I could feel it coming on.


Let me explain something here: with every single absence, I was in the ER at some point during the day. I missed three and a half days, I think. The other ER visits happened over the weekend so I wouldn’t miss work. I had a doctor’s note on the 12th stating that I couldn’t go back to work until the 14th. My supervisor told me that if I didn’t show up at work the next day, they would have to let me go as he gave me a final over the phone. So what did I do? I went to work. And it got worse. I ended every damn day at that job nearly in tears because I was in so much pain. This, of course, affected my sales and quota. Yes, there was a quota for the sales, a little tidbit of information that was left out when I interviewed for the job. Isn’t that nice? It would have been the deciding factor for me on taking the job, regardless of how desperately I needed one. 


Afni, I don’t care about your 90-day policy. I wasn’t calling in after a night of drinking or for a minor cold or flu. I couldn’t fucking move. You care about your employees? The hell you do. Perhaps if you were a bit more selective in your hiring process, you wouldn’t have to have such strict rules everywhere else. You hire anyone who can pass a drug test and a background check, which in my opinion probably isn’t very thorough. You hire with only a phone interview. Seriously?


I was fired because there were four tardy occurrences after being given my final. The first occurrence, I admit, was a bad one – I was 15 minutes late because I had a hard time getting out of bed. That’d be right after the doctor note that stated I should have had the day off. The other three occurrences consisted of one minute late or three minutes late. Wow. Now you’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of me. I did my best. I went in every day when I wasn’t in the ER and I did my job through the pain. I hope to God you all never have to feel the type and amount of pain I’ve been going through for the last month. It is excruciating and NOTHING takes it away. I recall back in January when I went to the Banner Desert ER, they gave me morphine, and even that didn’t touch the pain. When a muscle spasms, there isn’t much you can do aside from muscle relaxers and waiting it out.


After I told the HR manager what I thought, which pretty much consisted of the above statements, she had the gall to tell me I could reapply in 60 days. Are you fucking kidding me?


Now that I’ve vented that shit out, here’s what I’m doing next. I’ve already applied for AHCCCS again with the first ER visit because my insurance hadn’t kicked in yet, so I went to the site and reapplied for the food stamps, because you know, I have to eat. For whatever reason, I never qualify for their cash assistance program. Hell, I’m not even sure what it is. I don’t qualify for unemployment because I didn’t work there for 6 months, but the girl asked me if I wanted to reopen the 2008 case. I declined because in all honesty, there isn’t much I can prove to win against those assholes even with the recording I have.


I will be reapplying for disability because I think this past two and half months has pretty much proven that I can’t even work at a job where I sit down all freakin’ day, and we know that any other jobs are pretty much ruled out because I can’t stand for long periods and I can’t lift anything. If they deny me, I’ll appeal this time. Let’s hope it all doesn’t take as long as it did the last time. I’m CALLING them tomorrow morning.


On the bright side (yes, there is one and I can’t believe it either), I have time to edit and write again. Here are my goals:


NEMESIS – deadline 31 October 2010
GODS OF WAR – NaNoWriMo project starting with the short story FALLEN
NATIVE MOON – deadline 31 December 2010
DUSK OF DEATH – edit deadline 30 April 2011
GRIFFIN – no real deadline; just needs to be written in full
DRAGONFIRE – outlined and plotted


With all of that, I’m also publishing parts of my fantasy Tir na nOg in our magazine Forever Nocturne, much like Sharon is doing with her story Malakh. Once the story is finished, it will be available as an ebook, and I believe Sharon is doing the same with her novella.


I’ll be working on articles again to make some money wherever I can, and you know that means I’ll likely become the night owl you all know and love … and miss. So get ready, folks, because the Queen of the Nocturnal Tweetdom is about to return.