CACJ Debacle

 

I started working for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice in 12/2021. I was hired by the Executive Director, Stephen Munkelt. CACJ as of this post, is a non-profit organization that provides ongoing education to defense attorneys in California. 

I joined the organization because I felt that fighting for criminal justice was a noble cause. It's a small organization of around 1,000 members and my job was to manage the accounting, membership database, member meetings and help out with 2 of their main events of the year.

The main office was located at 1610 Arden Way, Ste 140, Sacramento, CA 95815, a very convenient location just across the street from Arden Mall. The commute was a little far but I was given the flexibility of working mostly remotely. 

The office staff consisted of myself, Stephen and the program director, Tara Da Re. Throughout most of my time there, I pretty much kept to myself, just doing my work and helping out as needed.

At this point, I would like to say that in the many years of working for organizations, I became used to the near certainty that at least one of my coworkers would be difficult, or more to the point, a pain in the fucking ass. I never would have expected that of the other 2 people working with me, one would turn out to be a malignant narcissist, in some ways similar to Trump. 

My strategy for dealing with difficult people is to avoid whenever possible and if needed, be as neutral as possible in my communication. However, even though I tried my best to be neutral in my dealings with Tara, with all her insecurities and personal issues, she was a challenging coworker to handle. Her attitude and demeanor towards me was both condescending and dismissive. On numerous occasions, I felt like I wanted to just leave, walk out and never come back. Fortunately, Stephen was a moderating influence. And in fact, he confided in me that he agreed that Tara was a bitch and if he could he would fire her. However, he admitted that the organization was too dependent on her as director of all the events and so he could only suggest that I try and be understanding of her flawed mental state. 

Tara Da Re

Stephen retired the end of January of 2024, leaving me to deal with Tara alone. I managed to make it through most of the year but Stephen's exit became a vacuum and Tara filled that vacuum, essentially making herself the de facto manager in Stephen's absence. I noticed her becoming more authoritarian and more demanding during the year and even though the current President, Emily Dahm meant well, she was never really available to help deal with Tara's obnoxious and condescending behavior. 

Every year, there is a Criminal Defense Seminar held in San Francisco at the Nikko Hotel the first week of December. After the last board meeting of the year concluded at the hotel, Tara came up to me and proudly proclaimed that she was the new manager of the office. I had a bad feeling about this since I knew that she was obsessed with power and control.

My worst fears were realized. Sure enough, the next Monday morning at 8 AM I received an email from Tara saying that she was taking over the payroll. I could not believe what I was reading. She then demanded that I teach her how to do payroll. Why would someone want to take over a task that they know nothing about unless it was a raw power play or ploy to deliberately fuck me over and piss me off. At first I ignored her because I didn't think it was legitimate. She kept bugging me and bugging me for my timesheet. I didn't trust her at all to do the payroll correctly. In any case, she forced the payroll through even though I told her not to process my payroll.

By the end of the day, I contacted the new President, Robert Boyce and asked for a meeting to discuss the situation. We agreed on 9 AM the next day. 

In the meeting, I recounted everything that happened and my position was that it was breach of protocol. Normally, the bookkeeper handles all the financial transactions of an organization for purposes of maintaining a degree of control to prevent unauthorized use of funds. Tara not only removed my admin access, but also went ahead and gave herself a raise. Again, I want to point out that the executive director or someone higher up such as an officer of a company would normally announce someone's promotion and new rate of pay. But the officers of this organization completely dropped the ball or from another perspective, couldn't give a shit about notifying me. What they failed to see, perhaps in their ignorance about financial control in an organization, especially payroll, was how sketchy Tara's raw grab for power looked that day.

So yes, I was already angry AF when the meeting started and when I tried to explain that it looked to me like a serious breach of protocol, the unanimous response from everyone attending the meeting was that Tara could whatever she wanted. 

As soon as I heard that response, that was it. I had enough of their BS and ignorance so I announced my immediate resignation.

 

Chaos At Work

When I agreed to partner up with Dino Gilli and Joe Sandino back in 2013 to restart Custom Development of California, I had no illusions about how difficult the job would be. Yes, the economy was doing better. Obama had helped pull the country out of a deep recession and everything was beginning to look up. But running a company is a challenging endeavor that requires an incredible of amount of cooperation with everyone running in the same direction. That has proven to be an ongoing challenge.

Joe, who didn't last even a year, left the company abruptly, taking all his furniture with him and demanded a settlement of $10,000 or he was going to make our lives difficult. And so began a revolving door of unstable, incompetent people coming to work for the company and leaving behind a mess in their wake. I will describe the ones that have damaged the company the most and the one person who I hold most responsible.

Vasile Rilea

Vasile came on board the same time as Joe since they were working together at Joe's previous company, Weatherite which crashed and burned. Vasile and his assistant Nikolay were skilled in bathrooms and windows. My first impression of Vasile was that he was a pretty skilled worker and in his job as production manager for the most part things went smoothly at first. But very early on, I began to see some things beginning to happen under Basil's (as he liked to be called) watch. He began to hire outside people to do work on some of the larger jobs and this almost always created problems. The one project that stands out the most is a siding job in Oakland where Basil went ahead and hired a subcontractor without checking the subcontractor out and the subcontractor turned around and hired someone who had no clue how to install siding. The end result was the entire job had to be done over again at a tremendous loss to CDC. In addition, Basil apparently didn't feel that writing change orders was necessary which created problems in adding a justified cost to jobs. He sometimes ordered product incorrectly and not to customer specs, adding unnecessary cost to the job.

After bringing Kevin on board to head up production of the bath division, Basil was put in charge of kitchens, an area that he wasn't as familiar with but still well within his skill set. Towards the middle of 2017, he found himself way in over his head in projects that had gone south, with no quality control. By October, there were multiple projects that had turned into disasters. But rather than ask for help, Basil just threw his arms up and announced he was going to be resigning as a production manager to work for another company but he was still interested in doing window installs during the week. The mess he left behind has pulled the company down to nearly the point of closing its doors and I am literally fighting to keep the company afloat..

Rent a Whip

This is the continuation of my previous post about Marshawnda Blackwell, that lazy sloth of a person who had no intention of paying me for the Ford Fusion I bought to help her out.

Marshawnda

Marshawnda was so lazy and lacked any drive or interest in working and improving her financial situation that I actually stepped in to try and help her find a job. I scoured the ads on Craigslist and other job sites and by accident came upon an ad that was soliciting car owners to lease their cars. I had vaguely heard about renting one's car out for a fee to the public but didn't know how the whole process worked.

Frankly, I was feeling very stuck with my arrangement with Marshawnda. I really didn't know how I was going to get the car back from her since I couldn't imagine her giving it up voluntarily. I wanted to try something different but I wasn't sure I was ready to just hand over my car to some other company or person. I called the number in the ad and spoke to Mae Schmidt, the owner of  a company called Rent a Whip. The name sounds a little kinky but that didn't bother me in the least. The whole concept actually sounded pretty good. Rent a Whip would maintain the car, keep it insured and lease it from me for a weekly fee.

I was a little wary about handing over the Ford Fusion to this company after my 5 1/2 month ordeal with Marshawnda so I needed to find some way to test them out. That weekend I stopped by the warehouse and saw the minivan just sitting there taking up space that I need for wrestling shoots.

Mae Schmidt

I suddenly came up with a splendid idea. I could take the minivan home, free up some space in the warehouse and then lease the van to this company. Could it be done? Oh yes. I called Mae that Saturday and she said they already had someone who wanted to rent the minivan. What? "Are you kidding?" I asked. Mae assured me that the demand was very strong. In fact, it was so strong she told me that they are desperate for more vehicles to add to their fleet. I wondered how they could be doing such good business and that is when she revealed how the company came into existence and the niche market they seem to have found. It turns out that Mae herself had bad credit and as anyone trying to rent a car from a traditional rent a car company can tell you, it isn't easy to rent a car when you have damaged credit. Car rental companies typically require a functioning credit card with a down payment to be reversed or adjusted at the end of the car rental. For many people with challenged credit, that requirement is a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome. From Mae's personal experience, she thought that there must be others who had the money but not the credit to rent a car and so Rent a Whip was born. Originally operating out of San Diego, Mae and her husband Andrew moved up to Sacramento in January of 2017 to be closer to their relatives and move the company operations here as well.

Andrew Schmidt

Without hesitation, I took the van over to their office in Carmichael. Andrew was there to meet me. He drew up a contract and printed it out but the quality of the print was terrible. I signed and had him email me the text of the contract. On the spot he gave me payment for a one day rental with a weekly rental of $160 guaranteed over the term of the contract which we set at 2 months.

I was a little uncomfortable coming into their office every week to pick up cash so I asked Mae if they could pay me via Google Wallet or Paypal and she said no problem. I also told Mae about the Ford Fusion and my situation with Marshawnda. She assured me that Rent a Whip would arrange to recover the car for me at their expense. This was literally music to my ears since I had no clue how to confiscate the car from Marshawnda. Mae also offered to pay me $250/week rental fee which would cover all of Marshawnda's debt and pay off the auto loan in a little over a year. How could I refuse?

The next day I gave Mae my copy of the car keys to the Ford along with key information about Marshawnda, including her address in Cool, CA and pictures of her. That weekend I was down in Fresno with Pumpkin for the California state taekwondo championship so I couldn't be present when the car was confiscated. I coordinated with Mae and the repo guy she hired by setting a trap for Marwhawnda. I led her to believe I was still in Sacramento when I told her that it was time for her to give the car back to me. I knew in my mind that it was not going to be so easy and as I predicted, Marshawnda missed the agreed upon location of Starbucks on the corner of Fulton and Marconi. All of this drama was being played out in text messages between Mae and me while I was in Fresno. Finally, late Friday night I received a text from Mae that they had recovered the car. What a relief!

I was so grateful that my car had been recovered, I let out a humongous sigh of relief and quietly celebrated by eating a giant bowl of spicy Vietnamese Pho at a hole in the wall restaurant outside of downtown Fresno. I had visions of receiving a weekly payment of $410 every Saturday for the foreseeable future. How desirable such an arrangement would be!

[Inner Voice]
"Bad David! Naive David! How could you think life would go so smoothly? Don't you know about the law of life's train crashes? It doesn't make any difference how much good karma you spread in this world, you need to go through 10 train wrecks to arrive at a one pleasant stop along the way." [Casey Crupper Words of Wisdom Chapter 2]

Ok, so I ignored my inner voice. But after 5 1/2 months of a grueling slog through the swamps of Marshawnda Blackwell, I really needed to feel optimistic that the money was just going to roll in on a German train schedule, every Saturday at 6 PM. But nope, that wasn't going to be the case as I would soon find out.

I made an appointment for the Sunday after I returned from Fresno to inspect the car and sign the paperwork for the lease agreement. When I arrived, the first order of business was to inspect the car. Thankfully, the car looked just fine, except for a cigarette burn in the back seat upholstery. I also noticed a new tire installed on the right front passenger side. Apparently, Marwhawnda decided to leave a parting gift by slashing one of the tires just before the heavily tattooed repo man grabbed the keys and took the car away from her.

Being the detailed oriented, anal person that I am, the thought of having to sign a contract printed so that only 1/3 of the words are actually readable was patently unacceptable to me. The day before, I spent hours redoing the leasing contracts for both the minivan and the Ford Fusion, putting the whole thing in Google Docs. I even brought my laptop just to show them how its done. Mae fumbled a little bit but seemed to get the hang of it after I guided her on how to upload a document into DocHub for electronic signature. So all is good so far. I got my 2nd payment on the minivan plus a one day rental fee for the Fusion in cash.

The next Saturday I was expecting the payment for both cars through Paypal but there was some problem with Mae's credit card and the bank had put some kind of hold on her account. Ok, that was somewhat believable though not anything I ever experienced. In hindsight, this trivial glitch represented the calm before the storm that was about to arrive that evening.

Sometime Saturday evening, I received a text from Mae telling me that her son Justin had slipped in the bathroom and hit his head on the toilet, creating a large gash on the side of his head. She even showed me a picture of the side of Justin's head.

She told me that she had to immediately rushed him to Sutter Roseville to evaluate him for a concussion. By the next day, she informed me that the hospital had him moved to Oakland Children's Hospital. I knew at this point that his condition must be serious because Mae told me that he was having having seizures.

Throughout the early part of the week, I kept in contact with Mae, hoping for some good news, that it was just a concussion. I had already looked up brain injuries to the head and it didn't look good. There is an artery that runs along the side of the head that is vulnerable to head trauma. There is a medical term called epidural hematoma which refers to hemorrhage of the brain. The good news was that when this medical condition is detected early and treated immediately, the recovery rate is 96%.

I didn't receive much news from Mae both Tuesday, April 10th and Wednesday the 11th and I didn't want to bother her knowing she must be focused on her son. But by Thursday, I decided to contact her again in the morning via text and she unexpectedly called me back telling me in a frantic voice that the doctors just whisked Justin away into the operating room without telling her much. I could tell that she was very upset from the uncertainty. I tried to calm her down and told her to please get back to me when she could.

That afternoon, I took Sammy for a walk along the American River Parkway. I knew in my mind that things were looking pretty bad and I began to contemplate the worst case scenario. "What if the boy dies?" I thought to myself. I knew that Mae was the driving force behind Rent a Whip and I wasn't sure how she would react if Justin died but I knew that if that was the case, it would represent a major setback for the operation of Rent a Whip and by association a big blow to this carefully arranged plan of mine to get a nice weekly income. I couldn't imagine Andrew taking over the business because Mae told me herself that he was just a courier for the company, someone Mae used to run errands but not run a business. And he certainly wasn't very tech savvy as he struggled to use Paypal to send me a payment.

I tried to remain positive the rest of the afternoon until I received a text at about 4 PM from Mae's phone number but it wasn't Mae. It was her mom, Claire sending out a text blast to Mae's contacts informing everyone that Justin passed away at 1:27 PM.

"I hope this mass message reaches everyone in my daughters contacts ok because I am not sure who is who. But thank you all for your thoughts and prayers but I'm sad to announce that Justin passed away at 1:27 this afternoon. We are beyond words at this point and my daughter and her husband Andrew ask for prayer at this most difficult time. Please message or call me for anything, when service time and date becomes available all will be welcome to attend, Claire."

"Oh no!" I thought to myself as I read the text over and over again. This was the worst case scenario. I tried to imagine how Mae was doing and what was going on. The next day, I received a text from Mae:

"David it's Mae, my son passed away yesterday and I am a complete mess right now! Thank you for your condolences, we would love to have you at the services if it wouldn't be asking too much. I'm still in Oakland I have to wait until tomorrow for the social worker to have me sign paperwork for releasing my son's body...oh god I can't believe he is just a body now :'( to the Sacramento coroner. I have funeral costs that I have been told are astronomical now and was not expecting this at all. He had a blood clot that broke within his brain and he hemorrhaged and the doctors could not stop it in time and it took him. I'm so lost right now and haven't even informed my other children."

On Saturday the 15th of April, I received a text from Andrew as the weight of the tragedy began to sink in:

"Hey David it's Andrew I was just about to message you, Mae has been a wreck, and the kids inconsolable. We have to meet up with a funeral director on Wednesday and I think Mae is going to lose it. The social worker was great but I felt like I was in the twilight zone and just zoned out and Mae just about passed out from the pain of it all. We are a mess and I spoke in private to the worker this is going to be almost 10 grand if we bury him and 3 to 4 for cremation. I haven't even brought it up to her but I guess her mom is going to try to handle that part. I'm just barely hanging on myself. Happy Easter though to your family I hope you're in a better state than we are."

Any mother who just lost her son would be devastated and I could only imagine the grief and pain this woman was feeling. As the new week progressed, I kept in contact with Andrew as he relayed Mae's deteriorating depression. She began to talk about wanting to be with her son. I told Andrew that kind of talk must be taken very seriously and that she may need outside intervention. I also gave him the number to the National Suicide Hotline.

On Saturday, I reached out to Andrew again and the news wasn't good. Mae had been admitted into the Napa State Mental hospital and was self-inducing vomiting in an apparent desire to starve herself to death. They medical personnel had to put her in a suicide suit so she wouldn't hurt herself and she was just not very responsive. At this point, I had that sinking feeling that she may never fully recover from this tragedy.

Though I knew things were about as grim as they could be, I had resolved to do whatever I can to help them keep the business going. I made it clear to Andrew that I am willing to help out any way I can to make sure the business doesn't go under but I know that I may not be able to do much with Mae in the condition that she is in.

Such is life. I really wanted to turn the bitter lemon of my ordeal with Marshwanda into a refreshing glass of lemonade but it looks like that is not going to happen anytime soon. I think I have a few more train wrecks ahead of me.😟

Fry's Ordeal

The day pumpkin and wifey left for Taiwan, June 6th, 2010, my computer started wheezing and beeping. I could tell that what was happening was the CPU fan was starting to fail, causing thermal overheating and thus the warning beeps. Since it has been about 4 years since the last time I upgraded, I figured it would be a good time to build a new computer. I usually do all my own upgrading, putting together a new motherboard, CPU and ram since it is pretty simple stuff to do. This particular upgrade turned out to be the upgrade from hell as you shall see.On Monday morning, I scanned the latest Fry’s ads for motherboard/CPU specials. There was a good special going on with a AMD Phenom quad 4 processor. I hopped in the car for the 25 minute drive up Hazel Ave to the Fry’s in Roseville to make the purchase.

An hour and half later, I was back home, busy putting everything together. I didn’t waste any time and by early afternoon, I was ready to flip on the power switch. I turned it on and nothing happened. I checked all my connections and knew something wasn’t right so I figured that it was worth a trip back to Fry’s. At the service desk a technician took a look at the computer and found the problem right away. There is a secondary 12v power supply connection on the Gigabyte motherboard that I had missed, probably because it was a 6 pin connection and my power supply had only a 4 pin connection. I asked the technician if it was okay to plug in a 4 pin male to a 6 pin female and he said "Oh sure, no problem." Okay, I could accept that and feeling a little embarrassed, I packed up the unit and took it back home. As soon as I got home, I turned on the power and it did the POST (power on self test) with no problem. Okay, that’s good. Next step was the operating system install. I put in the Windows XP disk and started the install. Usually when I get to this point, the job is pretty much over since the operating system installs itself and just asks me to plop in a CD when it needs a particular driver. However, this time, I got the blue screen of death at about the halfway point. WTF? I checked all my connections and everything looked fine. Now what? Time to take it back to Fry’s. This time another technician took a look at it and said, "I know what your problem is. You have to install Windows 7." "Are you sure?", I asked . That seemed kind of strange. "Oh, yes. Look right here." And he showed me on the side of the Gigabyte MB box a sticker that said Windows 7 compatible. Okay, I guess he must be right so I packed up the unit and took it back home. I had to pay $100 for Windows 7 Home Premium edition, I justified this purchase because I had always promised myself that eventually I would replace my aging Windows XP system. I put in the disk and the install bombed with a memory address error at about the halfway point. Not again!, I thought to myself. That same afternoon, I got in the car yet again for another trip to Fry’s. By this time, I am starting to get frustrated. Some people would already be dropping their unit from a 20 story building but I am not the type to be easily defeated. I was determined to get it working. At the service desk, I told the technician that I was having problems installing Windows 7 and could they do it for me. Certainly, for $100. Okay, I guess I have to do it. I dropped off the unit and drove home. There was something nagging in the back of my mind about Windows XP not being compatible with an AMD Phenom quad 4 processor and when I got home, I called AMD directly and the support tech guy said that is absolute nonsense that their Phenom processors only work on Windows XP systems. In any case, the next day, the unit was ready for pickup. When I got to the service desk, I asked the technician if he encountered any issues during the install. "Nope, everything was fine," he said. "Are you sure?", I asked. How come he didn’t have any problems and I did? Was there something magical going on? Life wasn’t fair. I took it home and powered it on. It didn’t even get as far as the initial windows splash screen before a memory error came on and when I rebooted it, I got the blue screen of death. Something like bad_pool_not_equal. I was starting to get a little fussy. How many trips have I made? 4 and counting. That is 20 miles/trip which is 40 miles roundtrip or 160 miles. Time for trip #5. At the service desk, I explained my problem and also pointed out that AMD quad 4 processors should work fine on Windows XP. "We have to do some diagnostics", the tech guy told me. Well, duh! How come that wasn’t done during the Windows 7 system install? I can’t imagine that install going without a hitch. "Don’t worry, we’ll find the problem." Famous last words. In any case, I had to leave the unit with them and wait for the results. The next day which was Friday, I called to ask how things were going. "Still performing diagnostics", the support desk answered. "How long is this going to take?" "Try calling tomorrow." Alright. I suppose I could deal with one more day without the computer . After all, I have 4 other computers at home so it is not like I am left high and dry. Regardless, I was anxious to get this issue resolved. The next day, I called in the afternoon. "Sorry, the guy working on it is not here. Try again tomorrow." Now I am getting pissed. See how long it took? I could have gotten pissed back on Wednesday when the Windows 7 install bombed. And looking back, that should have been when I trusted my instincts and thrown in the towel. But I don’t give in very easily. But the operating system issue was bugging me. Why should I have had to buy Windows 7 if it was supposed to work with Windows XP? I decided that it was time to return everything. I should get a refund on the operating system install because the tech guy gave me wrong information and I had an email from AMD supporting my argument. I got to the support desk and showed the tech guy the email from AMD. Okay, he said. He was getting ready to give me a screwdriver to dismantle the system right there to remove the MB and other parts so I could return it. Just before he handed me the screwdriver, another tech guy, Josh said, "I was the one who worked on it and everything works fine." Okay, I wanted to see proof. He turned it on and it seemed to boot fine . However, he did mention something about a graphics dll file in windows system32 that had to be replaced. That’s weird but okay, what else could I say? No charge on the diagnostics but this was definitely going to be the last time. I took it home and booted up. It froze midway during the windows startup. That’s it. No mas. I promptly removed everything and placed all the parts in the original packaging and jammed up Hazel Avenue to return it. The woman at the service desk was getting ready to refund me everything including the operating system install but there was just one little problem. I had forgotten to include the I/O thermal plate. Without that tiny piece of metal, she wouldn’t give me a refund on the motherboard. I did get a credit for everything else and drove home to pick up the remaining piece. Altogether about 7 trips back and forth for a computer upgrade. I resolved that I was never going to Fry’s again for computer parts or service. And so ends my 8 days of hell with Fry’s.

Moving to New Office

It's been a while since I have blogged and it being a Sunday night with pumpkin in bed reading with mommy, I can have a little free time. The economy of course is down the toilet and that has affected Custom Development. So much so that we are now forced to move. Yep, the landlord wants us out as in GTFO. And who can blame them? We haven't paid the rent in months. No, I take that back. We have paid the rent but only 1/2 and that has been pissing off the landlord in a big way. I guess he just snapped. The bad news is that business is so crappy we can only afford a tiny little space in the back of a light industrial park. The good news is that it is just around the corner from where I live. No more long bike commutes through the streets of Rancho Cordova.  I was riding on the bike trail but the truth is that although it has some great views of the American River, I just couldn't stand some of the asshole riders wearing their Italian bike gear who came up quickly behind me and then warned me with their condescending "On your left" notification. Sorry, I don't need that kind of unpleasantness to disturb me while I think. Yes, I like to think while I ride and by the way, I always rode on the far right. I never hogged the trail like some of the others I have seen. So the perfunctory "On your left" warnings started to irritate me very early on as I view them as totally and completely unnecessary. That unpleasantness drove me to look for a new route to follow to work. I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to discover a route with zero other bike riders and practically no cars that was actually faster than going through the bike trail. Reason why is because it was a more direct route. Much nicer, quiet and fast.

40 year old Virgin

Brittany, Jess and I had a good laugh when Brittany said I looked like the 40 year old virgin. Hey, I am not a virgin. Okay, I am over 40, I like to drink chocolate milk and ride my bike to work but that is just a coincidence!  Honestly. Now I really have to see that movie.

Helping Bobbie Move

Last week Bobbie came in to my office and had that anxious look on his face again. Okay, what’s the matter? He had asked everyone he knew if anyone could help him move and everyone flaked out. Somehow, I just felt like I had to help him and out of the blue said, "I’ll help you." He had this incredulous look on his face like, You? Yes, not a problem. Saturday morning 9:30 AM at Bobbie’s old house in Elk Grove off of Mack Road. Not a very nice area and I understood why he was anxious to move. He told me he found a really nice place in North Natomas for around $1,500.

First order of business was to get the truck. Bobbie didn’t feel comfortable driving a large truck so I offered. On the way over to the U-haul place, Bobbie called to confirm and the agent denied there was an outstanding reservation. Not looking good on the first day of the month. We arrived and Bobbie got into an argument with the 2 agents up front at the counter. At first the woman denied making his reservation and when Bobbie pointed out her name on the computer screen next to his reservation, she backpedaled and then claimed that the reservation was for the previous day. We left U-haul, with Bobbie feeling angry and frustrated. Headed back to his old house and we all got on the phone and started calling around to other places. Finally, found Budget on Auburn Blvd had a 24 footer available to pick up in the next hour. We raced over there and got there with time to spare. Like the pro that I am with big trucks, I shifted into gear, turned up the radio to 97.9 La Ke Buena, la que toca puras buenas and headed back to Elk Grove with Bobbie tailing behind me. A couple of Bobbie’s friends came over to help. It was a young couple and actually it ended up being just the guy, Rick? Forgot his name, oh so what. So Rick, Bobbie, Brianne his daughter and I loaded the truck up and then it was off to Natomas to unload. The whole process took about 4 hours so we were done before 2 PM. Hot, sweaty and smelly, we returned the truck and I got into a conversation with a woman who also had some choice words for U-haul. Bottom line, don’t use U-haul unless you absolutely have to.

A Second Job

3 days a week at CDC is just not enough. I like Dino and they do treat me nice there but no basta dinero. Found an ad in Sacbee for part time bookkeeper position 2 days a week and holy bajoly it is only 1 mile from home. Yes, me gusta mucho.

Interviewed with the owner, Glenn and the outgoing bookeeper, Andrea.Both seemed nice.This is most definitely a small time operation. There are only3 people working up in the front. All the action takes place in the warehouse where they import speakers and parts from China, assemble and sell domestically. At first, I liked Glenn. Seemed intelligent. He told me his story about how he worked his way up in the business and now runs this successful business. Chris and Tony were the two guys working up front. Both were pleasant.

The office isn’t much to look at, kind of scattered type look but what caught my attention the first day I started work was the large sign hanging on the wall above me that essentially was a rambling diatribe about immigrants and how they should learn English or get the hell out of the U.S. Most definitely inappropriate for a front office. This was my first clue to Glenn’s eccentric personality. The other thing that he mentioned frequently was how he was Polish and the self-deprecating humor that revolved around his ancestry. Like I give a flying fuck. Now the personality profile is starting to emerge along with the setup for the impending confrontation...

Security, security,he would tell me. I don’t like things laying around and I want stuff to be tighter, more secure." Yes, makes sense. I understood perfectly but the weird thing about it was that this was the most unsecure office environment I ever observed. All the computers were essentially wide open, even the bookkeeper computer. I figured that if they want to have it that way, fine. But I was going to at least make my own login password protected and leave the rest alone. Mind you, this is simple Windows XP login screen where you select a user and login, nothing else.

Last Tuesday, I was working on the computer and suddenly Glenn walked in and began telling me about how he was locked out of the computer all day Sunday and couldn’t get in. What the fuck? So I asked him what login he was using. Didn’t let me finish a sentence. I tried asking him to trace back what he was doing and again he essentially told me to shut up cause he didn’t want to hear it and I was wasting his time. Instead of explaining his problem which turned out to be ignorance he chastised me and would not let me get one word in. That was it. I had had enough of this asshole.

Believe me, I completely understand when someone says, hey I am really unfamiliar with how to operate a computer so please do not make any changes without letting me know first. That is a lot different than saying, hey, don’t fuck with my computer. I was nearly ready to attack him physically I was that angry. I really wanted to beat the living crap out of him at that point. I forced myself to calm down. It was quiet in the office and the time went by slowly. It was around 3 o’clock and I signed off and got up to go into his office but his phone rang and I had to sit down again. A half hour went by and he was finally off the phone. I calmly got up, picked up my sunglasses and cell phone and walked in.
"I am resigning," I said calmly. He told me to sit down and I proceeded to tell him that no one is allowed to treat me the way he did out there. He started trying to justify himself but I wouldn’t have any of it. It was getting hot and I was now raising my voice. Asshole. You think I haven’t seen this shit before? Ever work at a company where the boss is completely clueless, running around like the emperor without his clothes and lashing out at others instead of doing something about their ignorance? I could have been mean to him and make him feel as bad as me by saying you think your ignorance is anything but transparent? How about spending a couple of hours in a class to learn about the most important piece of equipment in your office instead of spending all your free time driving around a track at a 150 mph? Get a fucking life.

No wonder his assistants, Chris and Tony are so meek. They must be intimidated by his quirky nature. I really don’t get it. He bragged about his education - MBA and engineering degree so I figured he must be somewhat intelligent. But here you have it. You can have the best education in the world and still end up being an idiot when it comes to how to run a business and more importantly how to manage people. I have absolutely 0 patience for assholes like that.

Addendum: A couple of years after this incident, I happened to be at California Family Fitness and ran into a colleague of Glenn’s. I casually asked him about NSA and he said that the company was out of business and Glenn had fled to China to look for cheap labor for another business.

Bed Availability Beginnings

Finished 2 of 4 projects. Laura 2nd set of mockup response for Bedavailability.com done. Aging class online done. Finished fixing eldercare online database. Imported facility records - done. Need to finish rest of table imports and run parallel for a while.Now just Eric’s database to do. Should be able to get to it by next weekend. This week looks busy but feeling good about it.

Office X-mas Party

Today was the office x-mas party with gift exchange. I ended up with a personal vibrator. Mo brought food. I bought a tic-tac-toe game that you play with shot glasses. Rich ended up with it but Dino took it away. Haydee had maple syrup and kept asking me if I wanted to trade but I held on. Now that I think of it I should have traded because I really like maple syrup on pancakes, especially on Saturday morning and this was the real stuff, not the fake corn syrup.Work is getting smoother now that I have the company on ADP. Desiree came in after everyone else had left to pick up her check but someone had taken it. That pissed her off so I hung out until the missing check saga was resolved. Mike was sick with a fever and told me to keep away. Trevor and Shannon are in Costa Rica enjoying their vacation.