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Not being able to buy games isn't a problem. It's just that it's a little scary that I no longer have that "comfort zone". It's a little alarming when, all of sudden, you're about $60 shorter of what you used to be after paying all the necessary expenses. Before, when I had that comfort zone, it wasn't such a big deal shelling out a couple bucks here and there for someone's dead grandmother. Annoying, yes, but not life-threatening. Now, it's a MUCH bigger problem.

Anyway, the conversation this morning went something like:

Bill collector walks in, shoves 2 envelopes and cards under my nose.

Him: (Someone I've never heard of before)'s mother passed away and (another name I've never heard before)'s father passed away.

Me: I'm REALLY sorry, but I don't have any money right now. All I've got is a few dollars for my lunch and that's it.

Him: *shrugs shoulders and shoves cards and envelopes even closer to me* That's okay. *then starts handing me the pen to sign the cards*

Me: No, I'm sorry, but if I give you my lunch money, I'll have nothing to eat, and I'm a hypoglycemic. I have to eat something for lunch.

Him: *laughs* I know, but...here. *motions at me with the pen*

I stare at him for a few moments and he refuses to budge.

Me: Well, how much do you need?

Him: Whatever you can give me.

Me: *I reluctantly pull out my purse and dig out the four dollars I had waiting for my lunch* Is that enough?

Him: That'll do.

Me: *as I sign the cards* Do you know that if I don't get something to eat, it could result in me having a low blood-sugar attack?

Him: *laughs, takes cards and envelopes and leaves, while still laughing*

Did he at least have the decency to check on you during your lunchbreak to see if you'd gotten something to eat?

No, he didn't and I would expect no better. None of my relatives died. Therefore, I don't deserve any of their sympathy or understanding.

Another problem I have with donating all this money is that I still have *no* idea what the money is for. If it does go to help pay funeral expenses, then it's a little more acceptable. But I don't have any guarantee that this fucktard isn't just going to go spend it on a six-pack of booze.

I probably should just get up the courage to flat-out tell these people "No", and send them packing, but I'm just too afraid of looking like a "scrooge" in front of everyone else who does donate.

His persistent behavior even after I told him I only had money for lunch tells me that he probably gets told that a lot, and that he just didn't believe I was being sincere (though in reality I did have an extra five dollars I didn't know about, but that's really beside the point).

Crawl tells me that I just have to "stand up for myself" and not let them take my money. Well, that's certainly a better response than my mother's "You've gotta go with the flow!" lectures. But it's just not that simple.

But then again, maybe if other people really are as unhappy about this donation thing as I am, and enough people would refuse to donate, then others would start refusing, too, and we could put an end to this.

Mostly time, money, the usual blah blah...

I just really need to get over it. If I had gone to school for art, maybe things would've been different, but there's also the chance I wouldn't have met Crawl if things had gone that way. And now, it's just too late for me to even think about art. If I did go back to college, it would have to be for something else, and I don't even know what. Until I figure that out, I have no right to be complaining.

You see, this is why I need to learn to stick my hiatuses. Making posts while I'm depressed, in a foul mood, have had continuous nightmares, and really bad days at work results in this sort of crap.

BTW, as far as just "working at my own pace" and not worrying if they fire me goes...There's a problem with that. If I was fired, I wouldn't be able to put this place on a resume, which would leave a huge gap in my employment record (something, according to monster.com, companies frown on.) Also, according to Crawl, if I was fired, I would NOT be able to collect unemploymen. Only people who are laid off can. Being fired because (they think) you're not doing your job right isn't the same as being laid off because of company cutbacks or closure.

I haven't gotten an official warning yet. They did fire one person in another department, but already they're having regrets about it. Her replacements don't do as good a job as she did (though, in a selfish way, I'm hoping they don't rehire her because she used to drive me nuts, leaving somewhere between 5-20 messages in my voicemail a day for things she wanted me to do for her, as though I was her own personal secretary or something.) However, I might get a warning when it's time for my review, because if they're anything like my previous two jobs, they'll use it as an excuse to say they can't give me a raise. That's what happened during that "big promotion" incident at my last job. A similar thing happened at my first job. The first time I was up for review, they raised me 10 cents an hour. The second time, they had this long list of things I was "doing wrong". At the end of the "inquest", they asked me what it is that I wanted (which I thought was a strange question, but I gave them an honest answer). I told them I wanted a real data processing job, not a bill collector's job. They (unbelievably) told me they didn't have such a position available. I told them that isn't what their ad said. Their ad called for a data processor, not a bill collector. THAT'S what I applied for. Their response was something like, "Well, (name of other person in my department) does all that now."

I later found out via other people who had worked at that same company that they did stuff like that to almost everybody, unless you were lucky and they liked your personality. They liked the personality of the other person in my department so much, that they didn't care that she often wandered in 1-2 hours late, and then hardly did any work after she did. In fact, at one point, I was specifically told that I couldn't leave any work for that person.

I'm just beginning to think that the office environment in and of itself is something I just don't belong in. I wonder what it would be like working a job at a place like Home Depot, instead?