Friday, October 6th 2023

I’m just going to gloss over not posting last week. In my last post, I said I was thinking about breaking my schedule, so if anything, it just shows I’m a man of my word.

I quit my job yesterday. Pretty stoked about that. It’s a sour load to swallow coming back from the fast paced corporate job I had this summer; doing more, getting paid more, less BS, to the snails-paced ma and pop gig back home; doing less, getting paid less, more BS. I’ve been wanting to leave since February, around when I started getting my life together. It was the definition of a dead-end job. I felt like I couldn’t grow in my field at all, more accurately I felt like I had actually regressed in my skillset while there. Working at the ER in South Dakota resurrected skills and passion that I hadn’t touched in over a year. It made me want to be a good technician again.

I’ve been back home working for 2 or 3 weeks now; just this week my manager touched base with me on where I’m at with my career. I expressed that I wanted to grow and incorporate what I’ve learned over the summer (more like what I’ve already known how to do but haven’t been allowed to do back home). Pretty much got told that’s neat, maybe one day. I’ve been doing this for 5 years. They’ve always treated me like a total newbie. I come out of that meeting dissatisfied but hopeful they’ll start trusting me more – I’ve never given them a reason not to trust me by the way.

Then all this week, management has been on my ass on how I’m not meeting their expectations; I’m doing a bad job, I’m not following directions, I’m not holding animals properly, the doctors going to get bit. Didn’t get told anything remotely like this while working this summer, while I was doing more skilled work at a higher volume. Didn’t get told anything like this while I was at the vet I worked at before this one.

I know what they want me to do; they want me to wrestle animals into submission and just manhandle them. When I started out years ago, I was taught more fear-free restraint and personally pride myself on providing a safe and comfortable experience for the doctor, the patient, the client, and myself. When you wrestle a dog into submission, they’re going to hate coming to the vet. In hindsight, this job had a significantly higher proportion of dogs labeled as cautions (dangerous to handle) than the other vets I’ve worked at. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I operated more fear-free for over 2 years at my first vet, had to unlearn it when I started this job, and went back to it while I away during the summer. I’ve never even had a close call of my doctor, an owner, or myself getting bit during an exam. I think we just have incompatible and irreconcilable philosophies in handling animals.

Like I said, my manager has been up my ass this past week. Critiquing what feels like everything I do, and they’re super unprofessional about it. In front of coworkers, and in some cases clients, they’ll single me out and just get really nasty, scowling at me, raising their voice to a yell, and pointing their finger in my face, yelling “you know what you should be doing, do it right!”, instead of, y’know, pulling me into their office and without berating me in public view, giving me actual real feedback on what I could do better for them. Every time they gave me shit, I’d ask “what can I do that’ll work better for you” and every single time, I got “I shouldn’t have to tell you”. There was never a conversation.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I got yelled at for taking a temperature on a dog by myself. The gold standard of vet med intake is doing a TPR, which is temperature, pulse, and respiratory rate. Whenever I had a sick animal at the first vet I worked at, or over the summer, I’d do this, 9 times out of 10 by myself – asking a coworker for help when I needed it. I’ve never had an issue. Again, while I was working at the ER this summer, I got into the habit of being a real technician again, and started doing TPRs again. Well, we don’t do that back home. You only take a temperature, and you always get a coworker – no matter the situation. I had a guy come in with a 4 month old 10 lb shih-tzu puppy, and he tells me he’s worried about it having a fever, so I grab a thermometer and take a temperature by myself, without an issue. I continue the case as normal, then my manager finds out I did that, and in plain view of the entire clinic, lobby included, they explode on me. I tell them what I just told you guys, and I get a finger in the face and “I don’t care!”. It was fucking humiliating. So right then and there I decide I’ll finish out the week and give my notice before leaving for the weekend.

They came off as so angry, so vindictive, so just utterly disrespectful. If you’re paying skilled laborers less than what they pay 16 year olds at Wendy’s, maybe don’t treat them the way you do.

I think if this was happening 10 months ago, before my breakup, before I started working on myself, I think I would’ve just bitched out and taken it. I’ve grown a backbone and am not going to take disrespect and bullshit like that. I deserve basic decency.

I’m not unemployed and screwed. I got hired at both UPS and Amazon simultaneously. I applied for both earlier this week, and with giga-companies like that, you don’t really have to interview, me filling out my applications literally was all that was required to hire me, which I didn’t realize until today. So I’ve got to tell UPS I’m just kidding since I’m going with Amazon. I picked these companies because they pay >$20 an hour, which is about >50% more than I was making, offer benefits, and will keep me active and busy – something I desperately lacked at the vet.

I’m going with Amazon as I got a full time position off the bat, whereas at UPS I’d be part-time until further notice, and I need health insurance before the end of the year. I went to their physical location today, that was an experience. Everyone is extremely miserable, which I was expecting. The guy I spoke to literally said “this is not a fun job, you will not enjoy this job, but you will make money”. Which is fine, my main goal for the rest of the year is to stack paper.

Since we last spoke, I committed to the army. The marines offer little to no sign on bonuses, and the army tacks them onto almost all MOSs like bottle openers. There’s also significantly more and a wider range of MOSs (which are like jobs) in the army than in the marines. I really wanted to pursue the marines to challenge myself more, but it feels braindead to turn down up to $50,000 out of pride. So I broke up with my marines recruiter, which was honestly really tough. He was amazing and I cannot thank him enough for his time and effort he put into me.

The timeline for enlistment is January or February 2024. Due to my mental health history, I need a psychological evaluation clearing me. I can get one next week, but pay out of pocket $700. Or I could get one through MEPS, the military’s doctors, for free, but the waitlist is 3 months. Since I’m going to be waiting at least a month for all of the rest of my medical shit to get processed and cleared, and because I’m poor, I’m going to wait it out. Which gives me 3-4 months to grind, farming dinero and working on my physical training.

Speaking of which, I feel like I’ve really narrowed down and gotten to a great spot. I’m taking 1-3 rest days between lifting sessions and doing low-volume high-intensity, and am seeing and feeling significant results. I recorded myself doing a PR earlier this week, and that was such a positive experience. I watch that video back multiple times per day. I haven’t done any running, I’m doing no-run-October. Ever since I blew up my leg on the treadmill 2-3 weeks ago, I’m just not fucking with it until November. Primarily because I’m not risking any issues with getting into the army. I’m doing stationary bike and the stairmaster for my cardio, which moves the pressure from my calves to my thighs, so I’m happy

No review this week (I think the last one was over a month ago). I was planning on reviewing a movie made by a local director, who’s a client at the vet I was working at, and the movie actually featured the clinic in a scene from what I heard, but with the stress from work and the fact I was leaving, it just didn’t feel right. I think it’s such a cool idea, but feels morally ambiguous to do after leaving. Maybe I’ll revisit it, don’t know.

I’ve been in a star wars phase recently. I finished Ahsoka, and my ass tried filming a thoughts and review video I was planning on posting on YouTube. I’ve never done that before. I had the house to myself for an hour, and just filmed myself in my room talking about it without a script. I’d eventually mess up my words, stop the recording, and delete it. I had a 21 minute video going, stuttered, and gave up. I know I can just cut the video, but I’m annoying and OCD and that pisses me off. I might revisit the idea, we’ll see.

That’s all I really wanted to talk about. Thanks for reading, I’ll talk to you next week. See ya 🙂