Person #10

I’ve been a little absent from my blogs lately, although I’ve been trying to leave comments at everyone’s posts whenever I can. Perhaps I should explain the situation.

Let me begin . . .

If everyone will remember, I recently went through some troubles in my life. It mainly dealt with some family problems, and it dealt with finding out someone in my family was doing things harmful to the other family members and basically didn’t care. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I’ll just say that I was one of the victims along with an older sibling. I moved from where I stayed, got new work at a company and a new place to live.

Everything was going great with the job, a debt collection company, or so I was lead to believe. What I was unaware of involved the way that the company did business. It acquired bank portfolios, strictly dealing with credit cards, to stay afloat. The money was always moving, exchanging hands, much in the way that investors handle stock portfolios. Liquid assets.

Anyway, the credit company needed newer portfolios. It had a certain one in mind, yet in this time of economic instability, the company needed a way to make itself look not only stable but also able to handle the work.

This was where I came in. The company went on a hiring spree: employing 32 new workers in a two-month period in the effort to say to the prospective client, “Look at us! We are hiring employees eager to please. We are a growing company. Give US your business.”

It didn’t work. The bank didn’t bite on the shiny pseudo-carrot dangling before its nose. It pulled out of the deal.

So . . . what happened to the credit company? Well, it now had 32 new employees on top of all the others already on the payroll. It had no new work for those employees. And the existing portfolios in its possession were being worked to death. A point in time came when I sat at my desk calling dead air numbers - for two weeks.

The company couldn’t have that. The three owners and the two executive owners of the bank it represents showed up at the place of business. Things were discussed behind closed doors. Then, the head honcho sent out a letter.

The gist of the letter basically said there would be a freeze in salaries. Our managers had us believe it meant the incentives and bonuses. What a bunch of poor liars. I didn’t buy into it and was looking for new work while preparing for the worst. The worst soon happened.

Within a three-day period at the end of March, the company began firing employees. They called many of them, telling the people not to bother coming in. Of the others, supervisors deliberately strolled up to their workstations, told them to log off their computers, and then had a private meeting where they were told the company was releasing them from their jobs due to “performance issues.”

I was Person#10 from my division. After watching three other people escorted from the room to never return, the supervisor came for me. I logged off my computer, got my bag, took the papers they handed me, and walked out.

Yet, I still had work.

About two weeks prior to my “firing,” I had been hired to write on-line content articles. A paying gig. I had figured I would make some extra money through this while working for the credit company. Now, that’s not the case. I have found other temporary work (outside of the article writing) - work that will pay me more money than I had made from the credit company in the two months I was there. On top of this, I will be working on my freelance writing, hoping perhaps the day will come when I can make this into my sole source of income and live comfortably.

This is the reason for the lack of new posts. I’ve been busy with my new job training while getting in the habit of writing content articles. Whenever I’m not doing those two things, I’m dead tired. So please be patient while I get into a familiar routine with the new status of my life. I’ll have the ending of “Jack the Giant Killer” when I’m able.

Hopefully, I will also have many new interesting stories to tell.