New Job

I swear that I'm a piss-poor blogger when I'm employed. When I was in college, I could write every day, but I've been a bum since graduation. Anyway, I guess the biggest current update is my new job (praise the Father!). I am going to be a teacher for youth with psychological maladjustment. And there's lots of news to come along with that.

Orientation Group

So every new employee at my new spot has to go through the same two-week orientation process. I was hoping to have either a very small group (just me) or a huge group, as to avoid any possible bullshit. Well, there were three of us: me (a teacher) and two older women (direct care workers). They both come off as motherly women, so I was hoping they'd be sensible and somewhat conservative (like my own mother). Well, I was wrong. They're both C-RAZY. Coworker's Crazy Stories

3-pc

So, in the second week of orientation, I went through a class called TCI (Therapeutic Crisis Intervention) for the first three days. It was done off-site, so I'd ride with one of the ladies. Well, Tuesday morning she decided to tell me all about her life, starting with her crazy male relatives. So, apparently, she has a cousin with serious mental imbalance (non-diagnosed). One day, they were hanging out and he was on his cell phone talking to his girlfriend. The conversation goes as follows:
Cousin: (to girlfriend on phone) Oh, okay...cool...yeah...mmmhmmm...well, I'm going to bring you a three-piece...yeah, I got you. I'm going to bring you a three-piece. Okay, bye.
Coworker: Oh, you going to KFC? I want some chicken too.
Cousin: Nah, cuzzo.
Coworker: So where you getting that three-piece from?
Cousin: You got it all fucked up, cuzzo. The bitch talks too much, so I'm gonna give her a three-piece. I'm gonna pop her in the eyes, nose, and mouth, fam.

Now this is problematic, I must admit, given the implication of domestic violence fueled by patriarchal dominance. However, it also cracked me the fuck up. I died laughing in the car. Who calls three punches to the face a 3-piece? I actually thought he was referring to something sexual initially when she told me this story. Then again, I tend to assume that. -shamed face-

Show Me That Dick

So, as if the 3-pc story wasn't enough, she decided to tell me another crazy story about this cousin. Apparently, she used to be a manager at a local KFC. So one Friday, one of her employees called out sick (as he was prone to do at the start of weekends) so she vented to her cousin that she was sick of him calling out. Sooooooo....the cousin robbed him the next day. -Sigh- And, to make matters worse, the cousin robbed him in broad daylight in the middle of the street AND after taking his money and his weed, he demanded, "Drop them drawers. Show me that dick! I want to make sure you're not hiding any more money or weed down there. Show me that dick!" -Sigh- I didn't even know what to do when I heard this.

Class Warfare (uneducated vs. educated)

In other job news, it's odd when you enter a new environment and have to become acclimated. I've been getting comfortable in my new job and the first thing I noticed was the animosity that the more ground-level (read: less educated, which equals lower pay) workers feel for the administration (read: college educated, which equals higher pay).

On the first day, my coworker M already had a grudge against the HR person. So, of course, i ask why and she says, "She is stuck up. She think she somebody, but that bitch ain't nobody." What was odd was that the HR person seemed very down to Earth to me. She's a very pretty, speaks exquisitely, and has a very professional manner. And these were precisely the things that M hated the most. "She thinks she's so damn cute. Talkin like a white person. That bitch ain't my boss!" Well, yes, she is quite cute. What is talking like a white person? And, though she's not your boss, she is your superior in this workplace, so get the chip off your shoulder. M was also apt to say, "She/he don't do shit. Why they getting paid so much more than me?" What seems like not doing shit is simply work that doesn't make much sense to her. The "shit" she was referring to was coordinating our benefits, conducting interviews, ensuring that we get paid in a timely fashion, ensuring that everybody isn't on vacation at the same time, making sure we understand company policy so we don't get fired, etc. Then again, maybe I'm biased, because I rarely trust the anger voiced by the undereducated when they realize that someone with an education is getting better paid than they are or is able to do a sort of work which doesn't require the physical labor that many unskilled positions require. Eh, I don't know.

But I guess it must also be said that there is a distaste for many of the ground-level workers on the part of the administration, because the executive director even said to me in my initial interview that many of them have lower IQs than the kids we service and that I would find that very few of them had much drive to better themselves AND that next to none of them has more than a semester of college education. All of this was said with distaste and was meant as a warning to me, so I guess the jaundiced eye is not exclusive to the ground-level workers. The administration view them in a homogenous, unsavory light as well.