Apartment #13: 2973 Fir St., San Diego CA 2002 - 2003

I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be the 11th and final apartment I would have in San Diego. This meant I averaged one apartment for each year I lived there.

I was getting at the end of my rope in looking for a roommate to move in with. Abed and Pesd had already found their own place and were getting ready to move in at the end of February. After going through roommate ads and dealing with possible rents that started at $350 and then went all the way up to about $450, I decided my best course of action, if I was going to spend that much money every month, was to find my own place, probably a studio apartment.

I managed to find a listing at a property management company I had dealt with before. They had a studio for $500 a month in the South Park area. I went to check it out. It was part of a building that had been a duplex. It was renovated and split up into five units. there were two units downstairs and three upstairs. One unit had stairs leading up to it indoors from the front. The other two upper level units had external stairs.

When I first visited the apartment, I found the stairs were rather rickety at the top. There were two doors at the time, right next to each other. One door lead to the living room and the other to the kitchen, but they were right next to each other. (The photograph above shows that they replaced the kitchen door with a wall and a window. Also, the gate in the photo that leads to the stairs was not there before.) Inside, I saw there were two refrigerators, a large one and a small one. I wondered why anyone in a studio apartment would need two refrigerators.

The apartment had a rather large bathroom with a full tub. The tub had eagle claws on the bottom. But there was a large metal ring where I would need to put two shower curtains. That wasn't really a problem, but I knew it wasn't going to be very spacious in the shower.

I went back to the property management company and asked a couple of questions. I asked if they were going to fix the stairs. He said they would. I also asked about the two refrigerators. He said he had just been informed about that. I told him I only needed one and he could take the large one away. He said it would be gone before I moved in. I still had to go through the credit check process and provide him with my latest two pay stubs. My monthly pay needed to be three times the amount of the rent. Fortunately, I had worked four forty-hour weeks in a row, so my paystubs actually reflected that amount. I would also need to pay the $500 rent and the $500 deposit. I had just received the cashout of my 401(k) plan from my old job, so I had the funds for that. This was one of the few times in my life that things went my way.

I moved in about a week later. They had indeed fixed the stairs, but there there still two refrigerators in the kitchen. I would have to wait another two weeks before they finally came and took the big one away.

When Fraz came to see the apartment for the first time, she saw the eagle claws and thought the place was too cool for me. She also chastised my description of the area as South Park. She said, "Fayd! You live in Golden Hill! Stop trying to sound like you live someplace hip!" However, there were banners on the next street over indicating that this was indeed South Park. I'd always expected to find the South Park signs with bumper stickers of the TV show characters on them, but I guess that was a joke that got old real quick at the time.

This was one of the best locations I'd lived in during my time in San Diego. Even though there were three liquor stores in the area, I was across the street from a church, so I wasn't concerned about crime. I actually felt like my car was safe on the street. There were also a lot of cool places to eat, including a Mexican restaurant and a couple of pizza restaurants, one of which sold giants slices for $1 each. I ate there quite often. There was also a 7-Eleven and a laundromat close-by. In addition, I was just around the corner from the famed Big Kitchen.

I only ever met two of the other residents. I recognized the woman who lived below me as an employee of the Ken Cinema. She had a boyfriend who lived around the area where my postal mailbox was. He didn't have a car and would ride the bus. I would frequently see him at her place and then over by the postal convenience center. That was always awkward. The other guy I just saw one time, but he demonstrated how the garbage and recycling cans were supposed to be put in the street. It was no one's official duty, but someone had to do it. It usually wound up being me.

One interesting thing was that I had been warned by the property management company that the apartments had a tendency to have the main breaker switch shut down electricity to all the units. When that happened, someone just needed to go to the breaker box and turn it back on. But the whole time I lived there, that never happened. I'll bet it was because of the second refrigerator that had been in my unit.

Sometimes you just don't know that you can make a positive impact just by moving in.

Apink for another year!

2019 is officially off to a great start, now that I have gotten my Apink calendars in. Like I did two years ago, I purchased two for this year. The first one I received will be good for this year and 2020!



I also ordered the Season's Greeting "Eternal Jewels" calendar. I found out ahead of time that there was some sort of delay in getting them shipped, so I wasn't caught off guard when it took almost two weeks of the new year before I finally received it. It made me glad I ordered the other calendar.



The bad thing is knowing that Apink's contract expires in 2020, so I may only get one more Season's Greetings calendar. I hope that isn't the case.

Searching for a new roommate

Early in 2002, after I had become a lot more secure in my job at Walmart, Abed and Pesd decided they wanted to move into a new apartment. We had been having issues with mold and she felt like it was affecting her health. They wanted to get their own place. This meant I was going to have to find a new living situation.

I didn't think I was making enough money to get my own place, so I figured I would have to find a roommate situation. I remember how relatively easy it was to find roommates a little more than seven years earlier. However, that was when I was in my 20s. I would soon discover that it would be more difficult in my 30s. Making it more difficult was my work hours. At the time, I appeared to be on a permanent 4pm to 1am schedule. After work, I would come home and watch TV until 4am before falling asleep. I don't know how I got into that routine, but I didn't seem to be disturbing Abed and Pesd.

I combed through the roommate ads in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Reader. I found a few prospects. I came across a couple of residences that catered to renting rooms to college students. I really felt like I didn't belong there and the vibe that I got from the current residents was that they felt uncomfortable having me there because I wasn't taking classes. I wasn't going through the same things they were going through. I was working and would be spending free time watching TV in my room. They were all (supposedly) going to be studying during their free time.

I recall one woman who had one rule: You could not go into the room of another resident, even if they invited you. I don't know what happened before that she had to pass that edict, but I'll bet there had been property damage.

I really didn't want to move in with a female roommate, but my options were becoming rather limited. I talked to this one woman who was 49 years old. She was an artist. (And I was surprised I'd never met her in my dealings with other artists that I knew in San Diego.) She had one room in a two-bedroom apartment that she used as a studio, but was going to have to rent it out because money had suddenly become tight for her. I thought we connected rather well and she even called Abed for a recommendation. He told her that they hardly ever saw me and that they never heard me coming home in the middle of the night. They also never heard me watching TV until 4am. He thought he talked me up pretty well. But she decided to go with someone else.

I went to another multi-room apartment to see about moving in. I met this woman. There were four bedrooms in this apartment that happened to be about a half-mile away from the Walmart where I worked. She appeared to be in her late 40s/early 50s. She was wearing a black and white uniform. It looked like she worked the front desk at a hotel. She appeared to be rather humorless and was all business. I really couldn't get a read on whether she could even tolerate me. But she told me that she called me in because I was 37 years old and they were looking for older roommates. However, I don't think she liked the part where I would be coming in the apartment in the middle of the night. I never did hear back from her. But a few months later, she came through my line at Walmart. I said to her, "Hey! I tried to become your roommate." She had a rather disturbed look on her face, similar to how she looked when I told her my hours. The man she was with said, "Well, it's a good thing you didn't start living with us, because we had to move out of there!" I never saw them again.

And as my deadline for finding a roommate was getting closer, I met with another woman in a four-bedroom apartment. She was in her late 40s and seemed rather friendly She didn't initially appear to have an issue with my hours. One of the other roommates called me up to have a chat to see if I would be suitable for living with them. He told me that he had applied for Walmart, too. He'd also recently lost a good-paying job and he was just looking for any kind of work.

The only problem was that it took a long time for them to get back to me. In the meantime, I had found my own apartment to move into. (I'll have an article about that on Monday.) After I had paid my deposit and rent, I left her a voice mail message telling her I'd found my own living arrangements and they no longer needed to consider me to be a roommate. It felt good to be the one making the rejection.

However, a few days later, she called me up to tell me that they had decided not to choose me to be the new roommate. "What? I left a message telling you I'd found my own place." "Oh, I guess I never got that message." This made me mad. I wound up getting rejected anyway!

But I was glad to have my own place, so it was still worth it.

Walmart: How to Be an Employee

One interesting aspect of starting to work at Walmart is the training. There are two types of training: One that you receive on the floor while you're doing the job and the other is Computer-Based Learning (CBL) modules.

As I mentioned before, there were a few things missing from my training that I later learned were wrong. In a perfect world, I would have taken the CBLs first and then started my floor training. However, Black Friday was a little more than a week away, so they needed all the new cashiers up to speed. They'd probably had experiences with some employees taking longer than expected on the CBLs. I counted about ten that I had to do. At the end of each one, you had to take a test. If you didn't pass the test, you had to start the CBL over and take the test again. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that there were a number of new employees who would fail the CBLs on purpose so they could delay their floor training as long as possible.

The CBLs often included video clips of what things should be like on the job. In addition to the modules on how to be a cashier, they showed you how to work the sales floor, zone, be the door greeter, etc. There were also the legally-required safety and sexual harassment videos.

The funny thing about the videos is that they rarely showed things taking place with any customers around. If you weren't familiar with shopping at Walmart and watched these videos first, you would get the idea that nothing really happens in the stores except the employees interacting with each other. It looked like everyone was able to go about their business without frequent interruptions by customers.

Reality was never like that. Our store opened up at 7am every day. There were always around 30 people waiting outside at that time to come inside the store. This meant that once the doors opened, the customers already outnumbered the sales floor and cashier associates. If you were working the floor, there was going to be a customer looking for you. And as a cashier, you would be surprised at how quickly you could wind up with lines at your register.

There were other times that the videos did not reflect reality. In a cashiering video You were instructed to take the merchandise from the belt, one at a time, in the order it was presented to you. You were not to reach back on the belt to get other items. This was a safety issue. It could cause strain and repetitive motion syndrome. However, you were also instructed to put the merchandise in the bags in a certain order. You had to put the larger box items on the sides and then fill the middle with smaller items. However, you almost NEVER got the merchandise in this order and you'd have to switch back and forth between bags. Maybe they should have gotten the customers to take the CBLs so they know what order to put their stuff on the belt.

I remember getting scolded by a CBL that trained me how to enter currency. The total came to $10.26. It was a $10, a quarter and a penny. I was instructed to touch the buttons to complete the transaction. I manually entered in 1026 and "Cash." The next screen came back: "WRONG!" I was supposed to hit the "Cash" button because it was exact change. I didn't put in an incorrect response. It would have worked either way. Can you imagine checking out, giving exact change and hearing the register yell, "WRONG" at the cashier?

The sexual harassment module was amusing. I've never been subjected to sexual harassment at work and I would hope that no woman ever thought I was behaving in a harassing manner. But the examples they gave in the videos were so blatant, it made me wonder what the world used to be like before there were laws in place to try to prevent that. If anything, the modules sort of indicated that you needed to be subtle if you were going to engage in that type of thing. And there was only one example of same-gender harassment. They said that back massages were not allowed anywhere in the store. The image they showed was of one woman massaging another. But the photo didn't look like anyone was being forced to give or receive the massage as a form of harassment.

There was a module about inappropriate behavior that dealt with being sensitive to diversity and cultures. It was informative, but included a segment on telling jokes in the workplace. The example they showed was of some telling a lawyer joke. You were then asked if the joke was inappropriate. If you answered yes, you got a screen that said, "Let's not get carried away. It is okay to make fun of a profession." I thought, "Great, that means I can make Assistant Manager and Store Manager jokes." (But I never did that.)

Some modules didn't properly train you. There was a fishing license module you had to take if you worked in the Sporting Goods department. There were a lot of details. The only problem was that there was so much to know, I couldn't retain what I learned. The only way I learned how to sell licenses was by actually doing it a few times.

They would update the modules from time to time and I would HAVE to take them. (This stunk. We were required to do these modules, but we were also so busy in the store that it was always inconvenient to take time off the floor to do them.) A new module showed a typical day in the life of a cashier. You would see everything from the cashier's perspective, including interactions with the Customer Service Manager and customers. You had to make a series of choices in certain scenarios. If you made the correct choice, you would continue. If not, you'd get a strike. Three strikes and you had to do the module over. I remember one scenario in which a woman was buying groceries and mentioned that she was going to be paying with food stamps. Then she motioned toward a toy she'd placed on a belt, indicating that her daughter was going to love it. If you chose the option "Inform the customer that food stamps can't be used to buy the toy," you'd wind up with the woman getting on your case. "I KNOW THAT! HOW DARE YOU!" (I don't remember what the other options were, probably one to ring up without making any comments.) But I have to wonder why the woman would bring up the food stamps and then talk about the toy in the same breath.

Another choice you had to make came after the CSM told you to take your break. A woman walks up, says she's got only one item and asks you to ring it up. The correct choice was to go ahead and ring her up. But just as you're starting the transaction, a customer nearby slips and falls. You're then given options on how to take action. From my view, even though you made the correct choice in ringing up just "one more item," making that choice resulted in you having to deal with an injured customer. Even worse is that you're not going to be able to ring up that customer because you're tending to the injured one. It was Walmart's version of the Kobayashi Maru.

But in the end, me working at Walmart turned out to be a no-win situation anyway.

Walmart: The Christmas Shopping Season

I was aware that we were entering the busiest time of the year for Walmart in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We had survived Blitz, but that was just a steep hill we had to climb before reaching a brief summit. We had a much higher hill to climb, although the incline was a lot less severe.

While the lines never got to be as long as they were on Black Friday, there were very few times that I wasn't ringing up customers. It was a very steady flow that continued to get heavier as we got close to Christmas Eve.

When I looked at my schedule for the 24th, I saw that I was working 11am - 8pm. I thought, "Good! That means I won't be here when the store closes." A couple of days before, I found out that the store would close at 6pm. That meant I would be there at the close and have to stay two more hours having to help clean everything up. I was not looking forward to that.

6pm came around and I still had a long line of customers at my register. The line was almost as long as the one for Blitz, but I could see the end this time. I was close to the front door, which had been closed. I could see people outside banging on the door, begging to be let inside. This was one of the few times I didn't see any Door Greeters nearby. I wondered how many people would have rushed in if I had opened that door.

Around 6:30pm, I rang up my last customer and watched her walk out the door. I started putting the money from my till into a zipper bag. Suddenly, I realized that my last customer had left a lot of merchandise at the register. It was about ten items and one of them was a mop. (Who was she going to give that to for Christmas?)

When customers leave items at the register, we have to take them over to customer service and log them in. We have to enter in the bar code from each item. (This is so they can be matched to the receipt when the customer comes back.) I was going to have to spend the next 15 minutes logging this stuff in. I really didn't mind. That just meant 15 minutes less I would have to work on helping to clean up other departments.

In the middle of this, the customer returned to the front door. Fortunately, no other people were outside banging to be let in. I was able to give her the merchandise and send her on her way. I'll bet someone was glad to get that mop for Christmas.

I went to the back to find out which area I was going to have to go to. There were a crowd of other employees back there asking the Assistant Manager if we could go ahead and go home. I guess this was something they did every year. They would schedule everyone to stay until 8pm, but let them go home early in case it took more than an hour to clear the lines out. The Assistant Manager agreed, and we all got to go home. It was rather nice. I didn't mind losing an hour's wages not to clean up someone else's mess.

The day after Christmas was also very interesting. Because this is when we get people returning stuff. In fact, there are so many returns, we had to use half the front end registers for returns. This meant that we couldn't use those registers for ring up customers buying new things. And those customers did not reduce by 50% just because it was the day after Christmas. This resulted in long lines AGAIN!

And I was looking forward to the whole shopping season being over. I expected that after January 1st, things would calm down and be a lot less stressful. I eventually found out how WRONG I WAS! It never really slowed down, at least at the store where I worked. We were consistently busy ALL THE TIME! It was not at the level it was at before Christmas, but there were very few times that I would reach a point in which I had cleared all my customers.

But we had good news as we entered the new year. All of the cashiers they had hired for Christmas were being retained and receiving raises because the California minimum wage had gone up. In a way, this was good. I didn't have to continue looking for a job for awhile. It looked like I was settling in.

But I did find out that the tree lot job I had been offered during the application process was the shaft position. The person I knew who had been hired for that was not asked to return as a regular employee. That could have been me.

Walmart: The Blitz

So all my training for the previous week was all leading up to this day: Black Friday. At Walmart, they call it "Blitz." And all the employees were buzzing about it. One of the things that helped with the hype was that we got the newspaper supplements that showed what all our specials were going to be that day. Everyone was pointing out what items were going to cause people to line up as early as midnight. The main item was a 26" TV. I can't remember the price, but it wasn't one of the main brands. I recalled that a year earlier, I had purchased a 19" TV at Walmart before Christmas because I had gotten a DVD. I saw a lot of the off-brand TVs, but decided to pay extra money for a name brand. It looked like those off-brand TVs were the Blitz item from the year before.

Up to this point, I'd never been shopping on a Black Friday before. I knew that people tended to rush the front door and tear each other apart trying to get to bargains, but I never felt the need to do my Christmas shopping that way. In my past jobs, I usually had to work that day anyway. So I was shocked at the number of people waiting in line outside the store.

In 2001, the Walmart store where I worked opened up at 5am, two hours earlier than normal. We were scheduled to arrive for our shifts at 4:45am. I didn't think that 15 minutes really gave us much time to prepare, but it looks like Ms. E was bound and determined to get the most amount of work out of us that day, and 15 minutes was being awful generous.

I walked around inside before I had to go to the front end. I saw that there were HUNDREDS of the 26" TVs. They were stacked up all over the store. I knew that every person in line who wanted one of these TVs was going to get one and there would be several left over like the 19" TVs the year before.

Just before the store opened, they had all the cashiers go up to the "red line" in front of the registers. This is something you're only going to see at the beginning of Black Friday and when a new Walmart store opens: All of the cashiers are lined up at attention and ready to take customers. Most people probably don't even notice this as they all rush to the Electronics and Toy departments, but it's a nice little touch everyone should try to appreciate.

Things did not go completely crazy when they started letting the customers in. There was a lot of noise from the crowd, but everyone appeared to act civilized. But I also didn't get to see what was happening in Electronics or any other departments with a limited supply of special items. All I had to worry about was ringing up customers.

I wound up getting the first customer. He just came in to buy a TV and was ready to leave. He was NOT going to stick around to shop some more. Years later, I would hear about people who make plans to hit up several retail stores on Black Friday and strategize to get the best deals. He must have been one of them. He was probably going to head out to another store that opened a little bit later.

Fairly soon, we started getting a steady stream of customers. For me, the day was a complete blur of customer after customer buying TVs and other merchandise. I remember looking up fairly regularly to see how far back my line stretched. Sometimes, I couldn't see the end.

But I do remember one unusual thing that happened. We had been told ahead of time that lunch would be provided for us. But when the first set of employees took their lunches, they found that there was no food available. This was because sandwiches had been ordered ahead of time at the Sam's Club in Lemon Grove. However, when the people picking up the food arrived at Sam's Club, they discovered that they hadn't made the sandwiches yet. They had to wait for them to make the sandwiches. It took almost an hour for them to get the food back to the store. This would mean that we would have employees who hadn't eaten because they didn't bring lunch since they were expecting to be fed. So the Store Manager decreed that everyone who didn't get food on their lunch could clock back in and eat while on the clock. This was even though they were needed on the floor to assist customers. Fortunately, I only had to wait 30 minutes for my lunch, so I wasn't impacted.

At the end of my shift, I was glad my part was over. But it didn't mean the end of the Christmas shopping season.

Action in the living room!

Sometimes, it's fun to just turn off all the lights and let the toys do their thing:



No real people were harmed during this scene, but there was a lot of yelling.

Walmart: The First Day of Training

In November of 2001, I showed up at Walmart in San Diego and started my training as a cashier. I'd run a cash register before when I worked for Landmark Theatres, but this was going to be a completely new experience. I had no idea what all it entailed.

After I clocked in using my badge, I reported to the store's Front End. Here is where I would find a Customer Service Manager, someone who supervised the cashiers. This person was responsible for assigning cashiers to registers and sending people to breaks and lunches. I would find out later there was a team of CSMs and there could be up to three of them working at any time.

She sent me to train with this one woman. She started by having me run merchandise across the scanner and using the gun to scan the larger items in the baskets. She demonstrated how to bag the items. She showed me how to collect payments in cash, ring up coupons, approve checks, credit card and debit transactions. I also got to learn how to remove the anti-theft tags from the clothes and other merchandise. This was of particular interest to me. The bad thing was that the device used to remove those tags was also embedded with the element that would make the alarm at the door go off, so there was no way I was going to be able to walk out with that.

For whatever reason, my trainer kept getting sent to other cashier locations in the store. She had to train me on how to do returns at the Customer Service desk and putting items on Layaway. My head was swimming at this point. It was a lot to take in. I was starting to understand why I would encounter really slow cashiers those times I shopped at Walmart.

Later in the day, I met Ms. E, the Front End Manager. I wasn't completely aware of where she stood in the hierarchy because that wasn't really explained. The whole day had been a collage of going this way and that and meeting and trying to remember everyone's names and positions. When she met me, she asked me if I would be interested in working in the Layaway department. I was so overcome with everything I was learning that I just couldn't respond. All I could think in my head was, "I'm just starting to learn all this and you want me to do something different?" I found out later that there were only two male cashiers on the staff, including me. She was looking for someone to help with the heavy lifting. She probably noticed the stunned expression on my face and told me not to worry about it.

After lunch, my trainer was told to go work the register at Electronics. She trained me how to work the register there. The main difference was that there was only a hand-held scanner there. While I was ringing up customers, Lilz from my old job happened to come up to buy something. It helped to see a friendly face on my first day of training. She had to write a check. I told her that even though I knew her, I still needed to see her ID. I would see Lilz in the store one more time and then never again after that.

At the end of the day, my trainer showed me how to dump all my cash into a zipper bag and turn it into the cash office. I was a little perplexed by this. I was surprised that we were not required to count the money in the drawer and try to balance. I guess they didn't give you time to do that. (And I found out it was a little impossible to do if you worked past midnight when the store closed. Anything you rang up after 12am went on the next day's count and you couldn't get an accurate amount.)

I came in the next two days and trained with the same woman. At the end of the third day, she said I was ready to be on my own and had Ms. E come up with a schedule for me. I would be working morning shifts the first couple of weeks, including on Black Friday. Everything we had been doing was leading up to that. This will be the topic of my next post on Monday.

But I would like to take this chance to address a shortcoming in my training. One of the things that was not explained directly to me was that I should avoid putting chemical products and foods in the same bag. I mean, yes, this is common sense. But when you're trying to take in all this information and properly execute it, you really aren't thinking about these aspects of bagging. (Not to mention that my trainer did most of the bagging while I was scanning and ringing up customers.) I had to have a customer yell at me before that common sense thing kicked in. Later, I took the Computer-Based Learning courses about how to cashier. One of them did explain that we were not to put the chemicals and food in the same bag. Well, I should have taken these courses before I started to train. Anytime I trained someone after that, I made sure that the first thing I told them was to not put chemicals and food in the same bag.

Walmart: The Orientation

When I was first hired at Walmart, I was asked to attend a new employee orientation session at the store. It was going to last a couple of hours. At that time, I would be given my work schedule for the next couple of weeks. I was instructed to bring my ID and my Social Security card.

I arrived and found there were about six people in the HR office. One of them I remembered seeing at the clinic where we did our drug tests. We were given several forms to fill out. Afterward, we watched a few company-produced videos. One extolled the virtues of choosing a career at Walmart. One of the things it stated was that the company would often implement employee ideas. As an example, they talked about the Door Greeter position. That started as an idea from a regular employee around 1973 and was spread out into every Walmart store. Me being the cynic, I noticed that they didn't give any more examples of employee ideas that have been utilized. If we went strictly by the video, it would appear that Walmart hadn't used any employee ideas in almost 30 years at that point.

The video also showed employees in various functions at stores across the country. It showed them in store meetings clapping and doing the Walmart "cheer." It also showed a large group at an employee convention. Everyone seemed so excited about working at Walmart. I knew I was never going to be that excited.

Another video downplayed the company's anti-union stance. The video claimed that "We are not anti-union. We are pro-associate." But it went out of its way to demonstrate that unions were less than reputable organizations and their only interest was in collecting dues from the thousands of people who worked for Walmart across the country. The message was to tell anyone who appeared to be from a union to go away and that we didn't need them. It didn't matter to me how Walmart portrayed unions. I'd never been in one, and any job I applied for that had a union showed no interest in hiring me. From my perspective, having a union wasn't going to help me at this juncture.

(And I should make it clear that I am not anti-union. It's really just something I don't feel would help me in the long run with regards to work.)

We spent the rest of the time filling out paperwork and agreeing to terms of employment. We each had to go to a computer, log in and read the conditions. We then chose the "Agree" option and the next person would go to the computer and do the same thing. After everyone cycled through this, the Store Manager came in. He appeared to be just a few years older than me, but he seemed to have a positive outlook on working for Walmart and was rather friendly and charming. I actually felt a little better just after he spoke to us. I got the idea he was able to sweet-talk his way past any customer complaint. He appeared to be friendly and approachable, unlike some other bosses I've had in the past.

We were all then given vests and told when to show up for our on-the-job training. My short period of unemployment was coming to an end. I almost hated to see that happen.

Job #19: Walmart-San Diego Era (2001 - 2003)

Yep. This is where I wound up working. I never expected this. And what I really didn't see coming was that I would work for Walmart for more than four years. (I spent my last two years at Walmart after transferring to another city in California. That will become Job #20.) This was just supposed to be a seasonal job and I had been planning to collect Unemployment after January 2002. However, I knew continuous employment would pay me better in the long run.

I hadn't planned on applying, but I figured I stood a better chance of getting a temporary position there than just about anywhere else. Walmart had recently gotten the reputation of being one of the most successful companies in the country and was on the cusp of becoming so very hated. But none of that mattered to me. I just needed to work someplace that would hire me.

I went to the location in Kearny Mesa (which wasn't too far from where I used to work at Aradiant). I went to the customer service desk and asked where I needed to go to apply for a job. They directed me to the back of the store, where the Layaway department was. There were several people there filling out applications. A lot of people had the same idea I did. I filled out the application and also took the criminal attitude test (similar to the molester test at Toys R Us). After I had finished, a woman asked me to come back to the employee break room to talk with her. She asked about my past experience in retail. I told her about working at Kmart before. She then asked me which department I was interested in. I said, "Electronics." All of a sudden, she got up and said she'd be right back. A couple of employees at the next table (whom I found out later were department managers) snickered and told me I was speaking to the Electronics Department Manager. However, they said she'd be right back.

I sat there waiting for about 30 minutes. Finally, another woman asked me to come with her to an office and she would talk to me. She didn't explain what happened to the Electronics Manager. We talked for a little bit. I said that I was interested in a seasonal position. She asked me if I would be interested in working the Christmas tree lot. I said sure. That REALLY sounded temporary. I envisioned myself cutting Christmas trees and loading him onto people's cars. For some reason, images of shivering outside in a snowy lot eight hours a day popped into my head (even though this was San Diego). At the very least, it wasn't going to be a job I was going to have to think very hard about. Maybe that's what I needed right about now.

She said I would likely be called back for another interview, and if they decided to hire me, I would have to submit to a drug test. I had an objection to drug tests, but I had a bigger objection to not having a job, so I knew I was going to have to do it.

A couple of days later, I got called in for the second interview. They referred to it as a "Post-Orion" interview. Orion was that test I took. The man who interviewed me had me justify some of my responses to that test. I mostly based it off my previous experience as a supervisor. He then had me go talk to another woman. She asked me what position I had been offered. I said the tree lot. She asked me how I felt about being a cashier. It would pay 25 cents an hour more. Even though I had hoped for a job that I wouldn't have to think hard about, I figured I should try to make as much money as possible during the short term I expected to be there. I said, "Sure, I can do that." She then gave me some paperwork with the directions to the clinic where I needed to do the drug test. When I arrived, I saw some of the other people who had previously been waiting for interviews there to do their tests. I didn't talk to any of them. I just waited for my turn.

Even though I knew I was going to pass the test, I was still wary that something would go wrong to produce a false positive. However, it wasn't going to be the end of the world if I didn't get hired there. I would continue to look for a job and I still had some money left over from the severance package to last me through the end of the year.

A couple of days later, someone from Walmart called me to officially offer me a job as a cashier. They gave me a date and time to show up for orientation. I was in!

My experience at Walmart was unlike any job I'd had up to that point in time. So I can't possibly summarize it all in one article. What will follow in the next few weeks will be a series of essays about my observations of working with such a successful company that has been subjected to so much hatred. It wasn't the best job I ever had, but it was far from the worst.

Job Hunting in the Age of the Internet

After getting laid off from Aradiant, I found myself in a position I hadn't been in for more than eight years: Having to find a job from scratch. A lot had changed since the last time I was unemployed. The Internet was now available for assisting me in my job search. I was optimistic that I would be able to find a position with comparable pay in very little time.

One of the things recommended to me was to post my resume on Monster.com. In addition to there being a number of job listings, companies could see my resume and contact me to come in to interview for a position I may be qualified for. The day after I uploaded my resume, I received an e-mail from a company called Primerica to consider applying for them. I didn't really know much about the company, but they featured the umbrella logo that was used by the Travelers Group. I'd heard of them and figured this was a reputable company.

I visited their website and viewed the job description. They were looking for people to become financial planners and sell life insurance policies. It appeared that employees would be sent to the homes of people who contacted Primerica for financial solutions. They would do some kind of analysis on their earnings, and if there was enough funding left over, the employees would try to talk the clients into purchasing life insurance or some other product. I didn't want to do this. I then looked at the fine print of the job description. It said that employees would be required to pay $200 to go through some kind of insurance licensing and certification. I definitely knew that I didn't want to do this.

However, I saw this as an opportunity to brush up on my interviewing skills. I called them up. The person I talked to asked if I had seen everything about the requirements for the position online. I assumed he meant the part that I would have to shell out money in order to work there. I said I had. We arranged a date and time for an interview.

I dressed up like I meant it. I went down to the office. I could see they had a room set up for a presentation for about 20 people. However, I was the only one there. I wasn't sure if they were going to do an interview or a full presentation with a lot of other people. A man came out and asked me to come into the office. I went in and the interview started. It was a standard interview. I don't remember anything special about it. I know I wasn't trying too hard to impress him, but I did my best to answer his questions to his satisfaction. He told me that if they were interested, they would call me back.

A couple of days later, he called me back to see if I wanted to come and take part in a seminar they were offering. This seemed to be what the presentation room was for. I didn't want to waste any more of their time, so I told him I wasn't interested.

(A few months later, at a job I did wind up at, I assisted a customer. Immediately afterward, she gave me her business card and she said she could offer me a free financial planning session. It was a Primerica card. I knew what was up with that. It even looked like they had trouble getting leads, so the employees were required to hit the streets to drum up business.)

In addition to the interview, I attempted to apply for a lot of jobs that were listed on the website. There were many positions that I appeared to be qualified for and it was very convenient to apply for them, but no one ever called me up for an interview. I came to the conclusion that every job that got posted probably got THOUSANDS of applications, even from people far away from the locations of the jobs. They probably just looked at the first 50 - 100 applications that came in and pooled their interviews from those. The others just weren't looked at. (And keep in mind that there were a lot of people who lost their jobs in the aftermath of 9/11. There was A LOT of competition.) I would imagine you had to get your application in SECONDS after a job was posted in order to be considered.

Under these circumstances, I came to the realization that I was not going to find a job through the Internet. I was going to have to apply in person if I wanted to get a job. Since I really just needed something to get me through the end of the year so I could attempt to get Unemployment benefits in January of 2002, I decided to apply at retail establishments.

I started at Kmart. There was one just a couple of miles from my house and was within decent walking distance in the event that my car broke down. Since I had worked for Kmart before in Artesia, I thought there was a strong possibility they would hire me for seasonal work. But they never called me back, even though the application asked if I'd ever worked for Kmart and I clearly stated I had.

Next, I went to Toys R Us. It wasn't that far away from my house, but I would definitely have to use some form of transportation to get there. I applied and took their test that tried to figure out if I was a child molester. I was called back for an interview a few days later. The person who interviewed me said he liked that I'd had inventory experience because that meant I could help with their audit prep, which would allow me to continue working there a little past the Christmas shopping season.

But I had to do a little role play. He asked me to go out onto the floor for about 15 minutes, pick a toy and then try to sell him the toy. I didn't like where this was heading. I looked around and found a Harry Potter toy. (The first movie was about to come out.) It featured Harry riding a broom and trying to catch a Snitch. I figured I could talk about the excitement surrounding the movie as a pitch for the toy.

The age range for the toy was 11 - 15. When the role play started, I asked the interview if his child was a fan of Harry Potter. He said yes. I then asked how old the child was. "10." "D'oh!" (Yes, I actually said that out loud.) Because this was the toy I chose, I had to stick with it. I asked if maybe the child might be considered a little advanced for his age. He said yes, and I continued my pitch. I flashed back to my roleplaying in the high school DECA competition after he didn't give me a definite "yes" to buying the toy. He said he'd call me if they wanted me to work for them. I never did get that call.

However, I did get hired at the next place I applied. I'll go more into detail about that tomorrow.

Internet Tease #3: Argz

In another effort to find a girlfriend on AOL, I took another dip in the "Big & Beautiful" pool. I came across Argz, who lived in the Los Angeles area. She was 28 years old and Hispanic. She had 13 brothers and sisters. She was still living at home.

(I should point out that even though I was trying to meet an Asian woman on-line, I wasn't having much luck in that department. All of the chat rooms that featured Asian women wanting to meet white men proved to be filled with women who had no interest in IM'ing or even making any effort to get to know any men outside of what was getting posted in the chats. AND since Asian women don't tend to be very overweight, finding them in the Big & Beautiful rooms was nigh impossible!)

Argz was also pregnant. The man who was the father wasn't interested in making a commitment to her. She still communicated with him, but he didn't appear to want to be a permanent part of her life.

We continued to chat and e-mail each other. I sent her my picture and she sent me hers. She was overweight, but she was still rather attractive. I got brave with her and asked her if she wanted to talk on the phone. She agreed and gave me her number. I called her and we had a nice conversation. Toward the end, she told me that she really liked my voice. She was afraid I was going to sound kinda of "wimpy," but she was impressed with the way I talked.

She had a baby girl that weighed eight pounds. It was a rough delivery as they had to induce labor. She said shortly after she and the baby were taken to their hospital room, the father came by to see them at the hospital. They talked about having them move in with him. However, she didn't think it was going to happen because they were both hard-headed. Also, he wanted them to move out to Oxnard, which she thought was too far away. She sent me a couple of photos of the newborn.

We talked on the phone a couple more times and we decided to meet. The plan was that I would drive up to her house and just hang out with her and the baby there. It was a Sunday morning. Right before I was ready to leave, she called me and said that the baby had been up all night and she wasn't in a good mood for me to come up. I was disappointed, but knew I couldn't force the issue. I figured we'd find another day that we could meet.

A few weeks later, I called her. She said that she and the father decided to move in together, so it wasn't a good idea for us to talk to each other anymore. Yeah, I wasn't going to get in the way of that. We said our goodbyes and that was it.

I don't remember her last name, so I don't know where she's at now. But that baby girl is 17 years old now.

Internet Tease #2: Norz

After being romantically involved with a woman who weighed more than 300 pounds, I knew I no longer found overweight women unattractive. In my efforts to try to meet women on the Internet, I decided to specifically seek out overweight women because I knew I had a better chance with them. (Even though my overall experience with Jolz was not all that positive.)

I went into an AOL chat room called "Big & Beautiful." I found a woman who had the word "Smart" in her username. I asked her if she was really smart. She said she had a Ph.D. Yep, I'd call that smart.

Her name was Norz and she worked at the University of Washington in Seattle. This was where she got her Ph.D. in Political Science. She had recently achieved that degree and was working as an Academic Counselor. She also taught some classes. I was afraid she was going to think she was too smart for me, but she continued chatting.

She was 32 years old and Hispanic. She lived by herself. She grew up in Bakersfield and her father still lived there on a farm. She described herself as a Christian. She shared a photograph with me. She looked cute, but it featured her with a child who had been partially cropped out of the photo. She said that if she shared the photo with a guy she didn't really like, she would say that was one of her five children.

We had many wonderful IM chats on AOL. One night, I had started watching the pilot episode of "Alias." I went over to the computer to see if anything was happening on AOL. Norz was on, so we started chatting. I still "Alias" on in the background and at one point, I could hear a song by Peter Gabriel. All of a sudden, Norz asked if I liked Peter Gabriel. I wrote, "You must be watching 'Alias.'" I thought that was interesting.

A little later on, I wrote that I was about to go on a vacation in a few weeks. I was going to go to Phoenix to see my Mom, to Artesia to see my Dad, then to Denver to catch up with my old friends. She wrote, "You mean I won't get to chat with you then?" Suddenly, I realized that she probably really liked me. I had to ask, "Do you want to talk on the phone?" She said, "Sure!" I gave her my phone number and she called me.

I was surprised by the soft sound of her voice coming through the phone. It was very soothing to listen to. She told me that she was frequently complimented on her voice and that a few guys had asked her out without know what she looked like. But they were disappointed when they met her face to face.

Late one night, my phone rang. She just wanted to talk to me. I thought this was cool. I was usually the one who had to reach out to the woman. This was a pleasant turnaround. I was beginning to think this was going to lead somewhere.

About a week before my vacation, I had a proposition. I told her that I hadn't told anybody in Denver yet that I was coming out there. I thought I could come up to Seattle instead to meet her. She said she would have to think about it. The next day, she told me she wasn't ready to meet now, but she would let me know when she was. I accepted that and continued with my plans.

I drove to Phoenix and spent time with Mom and Dend. At one point, I left so I could call Norz. We talked for about an hour. I also called her from Dad's house when I went to see him and Gred. We really seemed to enjoy our time on the phone and online. At the time, she thought we was going to come to Bakersfield for Thanksgiving and there was a chance we would be able to meet then. However, her father and brother decided to come up to Seattle to see her instead, so that didn't happen.

And then I lost my job. When I told Norz about it, I suggested again that this was a good time for me to try to come meet her in Seattle, since I had a good sum of money from my severance package. Again, she declined. I was really starting to get irritated.

But it all came down at Thanksgiving. She didn't call, e-mail or connect with me on AOL once. I shot off a e-mail that indicated I was rather disappointed that she was ignoring me. I felt like she was doing that because she didn't want her family to know anything about me because I didn't have a job and it would appear like I was trying to leech off of her.

She finally e-mailed me back and told me her father had to be taken to the hospital while he was in Seattle. He recovered, but she didn't have any time to communicate to me. I felt stupid for that. She decided she didn't want to pursue any kind of a relationship with me and shut me out. I felt even more stupid.

I tried to chat with her online a couple of times after that, but she always cut it off short. It was definitely over. I was very heartbroken over this. The bad part was that I had become rather fond of talking to someone with a similar level of intellect and knew it was going to be hard to find someone else who could do that AND like me.

I managed to keep track of her. About a year later, she became an Assistant Professor a CSU-Chico. We were both living in the same state for about four years. Then, she moved back to UW and worked her way up through the administration there. She appears to still be there, but I haven't found any updates for the last couple of years. These were easy to find because she posted her resume online in 2015. I also found some photos. She still looks about the same as when she shared photos of herself. It doesn't look like she ever got married or had kids.

But that's not my fault.

Internet Tease #1: Jarz

After I was able to connect to the Internet toward the end of 2000, I decided to use it for its intended purpose: Meeting women.

Or, that was the plan anyway. As it turned out, I didn't get to meet many women over the Internet. My batting average was far worse than when I was doing personal ads. Up to this point, I'd heard all kinds of stories about people meeting each other on the Internet. And sometimes, they left their spouses for what were supposed to be temporary flings. I didn't want to break up a marriage, but it sounded a lot easier than it turned out to be.

The biggest problem was locating women who lived nearby me. I was up to meeting women who lived in Southern California and willing to drive up about three hours, but even those opportunities were few and far between. I couldn't catch a break.

I had no intention of getting on a plane to meet someone halfway across the country because I certainly didn't have enough money for that. I barely had enough money to afford a trip in which I could fly out to Missouri to see my Mom and Loyd earlier in 2001. I couldn't imagine a situation in which I was willing to shell out money for an uncertain meeting with someone I barely knew in a place I wasn't familiar with.

Jarz was one of the first women I IM'd on AOL. We were in some chat room together and I looked at her profile. She was 28 years old and was a single mother. She lived in Michigan. What I really remember is that she had an amazing profile photo. (I wasn't brave enough to put my photo on my profile.) She was one of the few people I would describe as "sassy." She was very attractive, but I didn't feel like she was out of my league. We started chatting with each other.

One thing I should point out about my AOL experience is my chat method. I was very hard-wired to type correct grammar, punctuation and capitalization. I knew I was a pretty fast typist and didn't view having full sentences as an obstruction to trying to get a message across. About 30 minutes into our chat, she mentioned that she was trying hard to correctly type everything. I looked back at the beginning of our chat and saw that she started out with all lowercase letters and no punctuation, but that had changed midway through. I wrote, "Oh, you're trying to impress me!"

After that, we would occasionally find each other online and chat. After awhile, I got brave and asked if we could talk on the phone. She said we could, but she wouldn't give me her home number. I would have to call her at her job at a particular time of day. She worked at a Big Lots! I'd never heard of it before. But I did call her up. We talked for a few minutes before she had to start work.

She told me about how she had met someone else on AOL a year earlier and they arranged to fly do a destination in the middle to meet. But she didn't go into detail about what happened after that. I imagine it just didn't work out. I already knew I wasn't going to go that far to meet her, but it was nice to connect over the phone.

Once I went to a street fair in North Park and hung out with Tez and a couple of other guys. She needed to buy something, so we went inside a Pic 'n' Save store. (I always thought it sounded like something you weren't supposed to do with your nose.) Inside, I noticed that their bags said "Pic 'n' Save/Big Lots!" NOW I GET IT! They were both part of the same chain.

I talked to her at work a couple more times. Then, she told me she'd met someone and I didn't need to call her any more, so I never did. I never knew Jarz' last name, so I have no way of finding out what happened to her.

But I was fine with not talking to her anymore. As you'll find out, I had a couple of other women online I was making efforts to meet.

Lostop #4: Verz

I would like to point out that this is the last Lostop that I will write about on this blog. (What's a Lostop? Click here!)

I first became aware of Verz when I went over to the Balboa building for NDC to interview for the LDA position. I went up to Camd's Supervisor station and I saw a woman with black hair talking to him. From the back, I thought it was Mitz and that she was also interviewing for the position. When Camd turned his attention away from the woman to look at me, she turned around and I could see it wasn't Mitz. She went and sat in her cubicle next to the Supervisor station. That was close. I considered Mitz strong competition. I didn't know anything about this woman, but it was apparent she wasn't applying for the same job I was.

The day I started working as an LDA, I was formally introduced to Verz. She was 20 years old and had large brown eyes. She was very beautiful and WAY out of my league. I didn't really talk that much with her. After a few days, I got to know a little bit more about her. One of the things that surprised me about working at the Supervisor station was how many of the employees would come up and chat with Camd and myself when they were supposed to be on the phones answering calls. When I was a dispatch agent, I never dreamed of wasting time like that. I was too busy concentrating on making my monthly bonuses. Hanging out at the Supervisor station would have literally cost me hundreds of dollars.

Camd especially seemed to enjoy when the younger female employees would do this. He never did or said anything inappropriate, but it was apparent that he was encouraging this behavior. Sure, I have to admit that I developed my crushes along the way, but his activities was even being noticed by some other members of the staff. I'd overheard the QA people making comments about how they could tell he wanted to start things up with certain agents, including Verz.

After a few months, Verz started talking to me more and more. One of the things I knew about her was that she had a boyfriend, but she couldn't tell her parents about him. The problem was that she was Indonesian and he was Japanese. Her grandfather had been tortured by the Japanese in WWII, so she was forbidden to have anything to do with anyone of Japanese ancestry. In addition, her previous boyfriend had also been Japanese, and she hadn't told her parents about him, either. I kind of wondered what excuse she gave her parents when she was going out on dates with them, but I never asked. He turned out to be a pretty big jerk (in the abusive sense), but she still stuck to him.

Verz then started creating "artwork" for me during her downtime. She made these little paper dolls that resembled her and the woman who had the cubicle next to her. When the other woman was promoted to QA, another woman took her location and Verz made a doll of her to give to me. I got the idea that Camd got a little jealous that I had received these gifts from her. But it made me wonder that if she didn't have that Japanese boyfriend, maybe she might have some kind of interest in me.

The day I got laid off, I got a little brave and asked for her e-mail address. She gladly gave it to me.

A couple of days later, I e-mailed her and was surprised to get a response the next day. She told me that morale was down at the call center and everyone was somewhat angry that the company president didn't express any kind of sympathy for those who had lost their jobs. She didn't think she was going to be there much longer and was going to start looking for another job.

So this was the beginning of a regular correspondence between the two of us. When I started writing this post, I thought that we had e-mailed each other back and forth just a few times. However, I discovered I had saved all her e-mails and we actually wrote each other once or twice a week for the next year. I do remember that I was trying to set up a situation in which we would be "dating." I never called it that, but I was definitely making the attempts when it looked like she was going to be leaving her boyfriend.

Here's what happened: I actually got to see Verz a few times after getting laid off because she and her mother would frequently come to where I worked. Her mother seemed to like me and smiled when she saw me. I tried to get Verz to go out with me "as friends." I was hoping we could do this on some kind of regular basis. I thought maybe she might enjoy the times she was with me and wouldn't enjoy the times that I wasn't around. And perhaps, we could go beyond being friends.

But anytime we made plans, something happened and we weren't able to go out, even if her mother might have approved of me. Later, I found out it was a pipe dream, because she later became involved with an Indonesian man, who actually treated her well. This was another boyfriend she didn't tell her parents about. She said that her parents didn't want her to date an Indonesian man. They wanted her to marry a rich white man. Well, that meant I had no chance, at least as far as her parents were concerned. However, she was going to have to tell them about the new boyfriend because she was pregnant and wasn't going to be able to hide it much longer.

I stopped writing her so much after that. (But mainly because I became involved with someone else.) I did keep in touch a couple more times. She had a little girl, but hadn't married the father. She did later get married to him and they had another girl. She didn't say anything about the drama involving her parents, but they appeared to accept what was going on.

We're currently connected on LinkedIn, but we haven't communicated with each other. She works in the healthcare industry. To this day, I wonder if she's aware that I had romantic designs on her or if she thought I was just trying to be her friend. Either way, it doesn't matter. She's still out of my league.