Life management

So, at 7:36pm last night, I'm deep into four sit 'n go tournaments at pokerstars when I get a call on the work cell phone. The caller ID shows up that it is Garth, my immediate boss at the contracting firm I now work for. For those paying attention, about a month ago I started work up in Iowa, employed the contracting firm based in Wichita, KS, but working at a chemical plant in Iowa. I'd been working off a 90 day trial period with a likelihood of that contract being expanded to two years, and started on July 2, so it had been roughly a month.

I found it very odd, to say the least, that my boss was calling me at 7:36 in the evening, but I answered the phone. He asked me how it was going, and I said it was all right, but that I'd missed the past two days at work, because I was sick. "Could barely get out of bed the past two days," I said, "but I took a nap this afternoon and am feeling a lot better, so I should make it in tomorrow."

"Right." He said. "About that..."

There is the moment where my heart should have sank, and realized what he was getting at, but it didn't, because the thought that what was about to come was even a possibility had never even crossed my mind.

"What?" I asked.

"They pulled the plug."

"They what?"

"I talked with Wade this afternoon," he mumbled a bit (Wade was my immediate supervisor at the chemical plant), "and he brought up some concerns about your commitment to the job, your use of the Internet at work, and things along those lines, and said that they wanted to pull the plug on your contract right away."

It sinks in at that point, and I can only point out that I'm stunned, speechless, and that I am totally amazed that they took this step without bringing anything up to me directly.

Now, there had already been one bit of a ding against me, which bears explanation. About two weeks ago, a fairly high-up person by the name of Keith had shown up for a visit at the plant - a technical person who had done much of the design of the system I was working on - for a number of purposes. Keith turns out to be a bit of an asshole, and that week is the week that I am informed by my hotel that if I want to stay past the start of August, that might be a bit of a problem, as a huge race is coming into a town about 30mi W of here and "every hotel for 150 miles is booked solid." So, my primary focus had shifted over to finding a place to stay, an apartment that had vacancies for August. I spent a bit of time on the Internet, mostly at rent.com and similar places, and my workload was pretty light that week anyway, so I didn't see the harm in it.

A day after Keith leaves, Wade calls me into his office. "Got a second?" "Sure." The way he asks it makes me wonder if I'm in trouble, but the chat is just normal. He asks me how familiar I was with the hierarchy of people at the plant, and I said I felt like I was just starting to get a feel for it; he mentions that Keith is above him, and that Keith is, as he puts it, "a very work-ethic oriented person." From there he goes on to some administrative details, and leaves it at that. I figure, no problem, he's just giving me a heads up.

The next day, Garth calls. He asked if there were any problems, and I said no, and he said, "really, because I guess there was some kind of complaint made to Jim about you using the Internet at work." Jim is the president of my consulting firm (it's a fairly small firm, 50 or so employees) and the person who hired me. So I've just been backdoored. I state that nobody mentioned anything about it to me, and that I think it's kind of crappy that they go around my back like that. Garth agrees, and I ask around.

Not long after, Wade and Kirk are in my work area (shared with 2 others, a development room with about 10 computers in it) and I ask them if there was some kind of complaint, because it got back around to me that there was and I hadn't heard anything about it. "Yeah, that was kind of what I talked to you about the other day," Wade says.

I bite my tongue, because I'm about a step away from really saying something I'll regret. I want to say something along the lines of, no, motherfucker, we had a conversation regarding the personality characteristics of Keith -- if there was some specific problem that would have been the perfect time to mention it, and you didn't, asshole! But I keep it in check, and just say, "Really, I didn't get the impression that there was a specific complaint. But I guess there was, and somehow it got back around to my people."

"Oh, I know how it got back around to your people," Kirk says, a bit glibly. Keith came to me and told me to call Jim and tell him that you were on the Internet at work, so I did." Kirk was not my direct supervisor at the plant, but he and Jim go way back, and Keith knew this. I start to feel a little angry at Keith, now, that he would specifically tell someone to go around behind my back, and not say anything to me, but was getting the feeling that this was all Keith-generated.

So, and this is key, I specifically say to both Wade and Kirk, "Okay, well, I'm glad I know at least, and I'm a little upset that this went around the backdoor for me and that I had to find out from Garth, but if anything I'm doing is a problem, please let me know. Something like this is trivial to correct and it would be silly for it to get in the way of anything."

And Wade backs down. Says it's no big deal. "We want you to be able to find a place." It's just Keith, he's a stickler. They even laugh about it a bit, saying that Keith is a bit unreasonable.

So, last week is business as usual. I get the work that's in front of me done and rest my brain by checking out CNN or another news site, reading an article or two, and then getting back to work. I had pretty literally run out of things on my immediate plate.

I was out sick Tuesday and Wednesday, and Wednesday night Garth calls me up, and that pretty much puts us up to date.

So what now? Right now I'm waiting on a call from Garth to detail exactly what the hell comes next - I had been guaranteed by Jim that if the 90 day trial period didn't work out, that I would have a job in Wichita, but I didn't get the impression that either of us thought that that was seriously going to happen. Garth says there are jobs for me to do in Wichita, so I don't think that will be an issue, but this is going to be some seriously uncomfortable shit, heading into Wichita essentially as the fuck-up that couldn't hack it in Iowa. I get the impression that Garth is ready to bail on me. I dunno. I never got the impression that Wade or Kirk were anything but happy with the work I was doing for them, so that should count for something, but then again, the motherfuckers never gave me an idea that they were unhappy with anything else I was doing, right up until the point where they yanked the rug out from under me.

I honestly don't know what the fuck is next. Thank goodness I didn't sign my lease yet at the place I found - that would be just one more headache I don't need - but my house already sold, and I'm going to have to move my shit out of there within the next few weeks. I suppose I drive down to Wichita and go back into the offices there, look for an apartment there, pick up and move on. I should be able to thrive there. In the week that I spent there I already did some significant work for them, and my impression is that the other coworkers there (particularly one I was working with pretty closely) were very impressed with me, the guy I was working with actually verbally lamenting that I had to leave for Iowa to begin with.

So maybe in the history book of my life, I can look back at my month in Iowa as a detour through a scary place that didn't really do any damage. That's a best-case scenario at the moment, and that's just sad.