Exit Strategy

If any of our faithful readers recall, on inauguration day I had a job interview. I needed suggestions on what excuses to use to call off. If you didn't read it check it out here. Well in that post I revealed how shaky things were at my job. I didn't go into details at the time. But just know when I say shaky I'm talking shakier than a man with Parkinson's at the craps table having an epileptic seizure during an earthquake. LoL. (No offense to anyone with any of those ailments, I was just illustrating my point).

Basically after 5 years of dedicated service can these MFs wrote me up last month on some you got til the end of February to get your #s up or we're going to replace you. I took that one on the chin and in front of my boss I first laughed, then shook my head, signed the write up, and walked out of his office. If you only knew how deep this got. I'm the only black person left. They fired the only other black person about 4 months ago. So I knew I would be next at some point. To be real I been on the grind for the longest probably about a year and a half on and off trying to get the hell out of this place. But for the last 6 months I been on the grind non-stop. I've been on several interviews, but just having no luck so far.

Well good people, I am thrilled to report that I just got a call from the company I interviewed with inauguration day. And they offered me the position!! I will be starting on Monday February 16th. I plan on giving my notice sometime tomorrow. So here's where I need a last bit of help from you readers. I'm trying to figure out how I should exit. Below are the choices I'm throwing around in my head.

1. Give them a regular letter of resignation tomorrow, put in my final week next week and leave respectfully and honorably. Thank them for 5 years of employment, and just say goodbye.

2. Give them my letter of resignation tomorrow detailing how bogus, racist, and discriminatory they are/were and forward a copy to the EEOC.

3. Show the hell out! Curse everyone that I didn't like out. Bitch slap a couple people I really couldn't stand, and do something to mess them up somehow. Nothing crazy like putting a virus on the computers or anything. But just something funny like taking all the damn toilet tissue out the place. LMAO. There was a skit on The Dave Chappelle show where he quit his job after he thought he knocked Oprah up. If you haven't seen it, check below he showed his ass in that skit. I mean literally showed his ass! LoL. (Thanks for the link Malika)

Chappelle's Show

Dave Gets Oprah Pregnant

Charlie Murphy Videos
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy
True Hollywood Story

4. Wait until next Friday right before 5pm and throw them the deuces. Most jobs fire you without notice and wait til 5 damn pm to let you go. 2 weeks notice my ass. Feel free to take up to 2 weeks to notice I'm gone!!

Wait I better subtract a finger. LoL

5. Can't think of anymore so feel free to get creative and give me suggestions or ways you've quit bad jobs in the past. I'm all ears. LoL.

I want to thank those of you, including friends and fam that wished me good luck and maybe even said a prayer for me. I Thank God for this blessing especially in these tough economic times. The saying "He's may not always be there when you call, but he's always on time" definitely applies to my situation. Also, a special thanks to my bff. She was there from day one helping me grind, update and fix my resume, find jobs for me to apply to, and motivate me to keep going after each denial.

Just keep in mind most of my blogging was done from work. So there may be a slight hiatus after I start on the 16th. So hopefully my brother will be able to hold this down and keep the blogs coming regularly. I will update you on next week as to how I made my exit. LoL. Lastly, I'm not really a New Year's resolution person. Well I don't write them down at least. But this year I had 4 main things I wanted to accomplish. Number one was to finally find a new job. So that makes one down, and a second in the works. I'll update more on those as they're accomplished.

Thanks again to all.

--C-Recks--

"N"th Degree

Well it all became official today. Like many of you, I woke up very early in the morning (6:30 L.A. time), and watched the swearing in of our first official black President. I know some of y'all don't want to remember, but we unofficially claimed Bill Clinton. Only because we never thought we'd actually live to see this day. But I digress. So I woke up to the alarm, got myself out of bed, and began watching the pomp and circumstance of the inauguration. This wasn't the first Inauguration that I'd watched. I want to say that I'd seen either Reagan's second, or George H. W. Bush's inauguration while in school, I don't remember which. Needless to say, Obama's was by far the best that I'd ever seen.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but I love being an American. I'm sure at some point during the day, you may have heard one or several somebodies speak to the orderly and peaceful transition of power in the United States. Well all I have to say is THANK GOD. I mean, elections are hard enough. I couldn't imagine living in a country in which the only means of "Regime Change" would be through the plotting and scheming of the current President's demise. Nor the fact that merely speaking out against that current President could get you jailed or killed. I know that when this country was formed, the founding fathers didn't quite bestow the complete status that I now enjoy as a Black Man in America, but I still have to thank them for their enduring wisdom as to how we cycle through our elected leaders.

The next part of the day that stood out to me was the massive amount of people that showed up this event. The last estimate that I heard was 1.4 million people. May God bless each and every one of them, because frankly, I couldn't do it. I mean, I know that history is made in the moment, but I've been to D.C., and its a miserable place to get around on a regular day, let alone during this particular inauguration. I know we kind of take D.C. for granted, but it's on occasions such as this that I have to say, the people of D.C. do the rest of America a tremendous service. They hosted this massive event, and pulled it off without a hitch. Do you believe that the same would have occurred if this happened in L.A., Atlanta, Chicago, or New York City? I'd say probably not. So my hats off to D.C.

Speaking of hats, did anyone catch the massive head piece worn by the Queen of Soul Ms. Aretha Franklin? Who am I kidding, of course you saw that thing. I believe the Hubble Telescope picked up that thing. Black women, I love y'all to death. (I swear I do!). But why do some of y'all do that to yourselves? All eyes should have been on Aretha for her singing, not the giant ribbon that adorned her hat. Unfortunately I had to say to myself, you'd only see this at the inauguration of a black President. Black women of my generation (20-40 years old) I ask this of you: please leave this fashion to our mothers and grandmothers. When it comes time for you to strut around the church, please get ya church lady hat game up? That's just a personal request, you can take it for what its worth.

And now to the true purpose of this blog. I want to state that I am awe struck by President Obama and his beautiful family. I know that normally when you see well to do black families, sometimes you say that they're bourgeoisie, but that's never even crossed my mind when I've seen the Obama family. And during these inauguration festivities, the thought that really comes to mind is elegant. Not that I've never seen it before, but I honestly felt that I saw the very best of black people today. I really felt that the ceiling on how high we can rise has officially been removed. Hell, its really been blown off. And now the sky's the limit.

So with that being said, I want to make an announcement. To support our current President, and honor both him, and my own black heritage, I will no longer be using the N-word. Yes I said it, I will no longer be using it. I just feel that we should officially move up into a higher status in the world. And words like that only bind us to our unflattering past. I mean, in today's day and age you're 1,245,632 times more likely to be called the N-word by someone black as you are someone white. (Nothing scientific in my numbers, just my own personal estimate). That's a serious problem. I know that we've come up with clever acronyms and explained that using the words just reduces its power, but let's be honest everyone, as long as we're using it, it still has the same power that it held before. The only difference is that we use it now to disparage each other. And I can no longer condone myself partaking of the continued use of the word. Please don't mistake me, I don't judge anyone else who may continue using it. And I don't want to appear holier than thou, I am not. I am making a personal choice, and I just want to broadcast it to the people who, whether they agree or disagree, read my many different musings. For a further understanding of why I've made this choice, listen to "The Experience" by my man Cee-lo of the Goodie Mob.



So that's it people. A quick recap of what I found interesting about this glorious day. I pray that President Obama finds success during his term in office. And may we all grow from this experience.


-DrizaDre-

Update: Though I know I said I wasn't going to use the word, a conversation I had with my brother pulled it out of me. I know its gonna be hard, but since my man took office, I've only used it once. Once in the first 12 hours is not a bad start for me. There will be an ongoing tally in the top right hand of our blog. So check back for an update. Hopefully, I can stay at 1.

Off Da Hooky!!

Many of you are off of work today in observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Unfortunately, I'm not as lucky as some of you. My job doesn't give me the option to have this day off, so I'm here still slaving. And yeah I'm kinda hating on y'all on the low. LoL. However, I do plan on calling in sick tomorrow.

Yes we all know that tomorrow is the day we've been waiting for since November 4th. Yes the inauguration of our nation's first black President Barack Obama will take place tomorrow. Some of you lucky individuals will have the opportunity to attend the historic event in person. I will not be in attendance, so for those of you that do attend, I look forward to hearing all about it. So you're probably wondering why am I calling off then?

Well the reason I plan on calling off is because I have a job interview tomorrow. Now I won't front things at my job are on very thin ice, and at times I feel like I weigh 500 pounds. For this and many other reasons I have been trying to find a new job. So, as ecstatic as I was when I got that call back after my phone interview to interview in person, I was still reluctant. The reason being that the only date they had available for this interview is tomorrow. Yep the same day as the inauguration. Just in case you're still wondering what's the big deal I'll break it down even further.

I'm the ONLY black person in my office now. Tomorrow is the inauguration for our first black President. Therefore, I feel like regardless of what excuse I use to call off, in their minds they'll be thinking "bullshit, this nigga is just calling off because of the inauguration." Well that is false I will actually miss the majority, if not all of the inauguration due to the scheduled time of the interview. But it's cool I got my DVR set to record. As much as I'd like to watch live, unless Barack is going to hook me up with a job I'm going to have to check out the DVR version of the inauguration. LoL.

But this whole calling off tomorrow got me to thinking about excuses and reasons used to call off from work. I don't call off too often, but the times I have I'm sure I've used some type of excuse that they just had to accept as truth. For instance, my brother and I took a road trip to St. Louis, Mo. back in November to watch the Chicago Bears play against the St. Louis Rams. After drinking during tailgating and during the game, we knew we weren't driving back home to Chicago. Which meant I would have to call off work on Monday morning. Well since I was quite intoxicated it was nothing for me to wake up early that morning and in my best sick voice call off. I mean technically I was sick right? Plus sick voice and hang over voice pretty much sound the same so no one could tell the difference.

Funny thing about that story is when I came back to work that Tuesday a co-worker of mines asks me "Did you go to the game Sunday?" I immediately said no. Then she goes "oh okay I just asked because I went and someone told me you may have been going." Dammit I forgot I told one person in advance I may be attending the game. Also, I remembered my brother saying he was on the Jumbo Tron and he was excited about it. So I'm thinking to myself I hope she didn't see me on the screen as well. Luckily, this is someone that I'm cool with so she wouldn't snitch on me. I hope. But I just found it funny.

Now as a general rule I try not to call off with excuses that involve any type of emergency for fear they may come true. For instance, I've never really used the whole "my son is sick or had an accident" excuse. Only because I would feel horrible if something were to happen to him or if he got sick after me saying so. However, I won't hesitate to claim I'm sick or something that has to do with me.

So to be honest I have no clue what excuse I will be using tomorrow when I call off. I may just freestyle it as the phone rings and come off the cuff. I'm good like that. LoL. But I tried to find some info online that would be informative but this is all I got. "The top three reasons healthy employees call out sick, something 35% of workers admit to are personal errands, appointments, catching up on sleep, and simply relaxing, according to hiring managers surveyed by CareerBuilder.com. They had some bizarre excuses used by some employees, but they were simply stupid excuses that would never fly or even be believed by the stupidest of managers. For instance "I was sprayed by a skunk, I was spit on by a venomous snake, or a hit man was looking for me."

Needless to say I won't be using any of those dumb excuses. However, I'm curious to know what excuses you guys would suggest for me to use? Also, what are your most outrageous and or frequently used excuses to call off from work? (That worked of course). Hopefully, the whole interview on inauguration day will have some significance and I'll land this job. Wish me luck y'all. Below is a funny clip about black people calling off from work by D.L. Hughley. Classic Material. The part I'm referring runs from about the 1:00 to 1:45 minute mark.

**** UPDATE ****
For those of you that may be wondering what excuse did I come up with to call off today here it is. I left a voice mail saying this. "Hi _(Manager)_ I'm calling because I just dropped my son off at Pre-School and on my way to work they called me and said I had to come back and pick him back up because a bunch of kids were sick. My son was just sick last week so I don't want him to be exposed. My son's mom and grandparents are out of town so I'm the only one available to watch him. I will try to see if I can find a sitter and come in later I will let you know."

I called later. "I was unable to find anyone to watch my son so I will just be in tomorrow morning any questions or suggestions you can call me at #...."

The interview went very well. Hopefully, I'll have some good news come next week. But we'll see tomorrow the reaction I get for me having called off today.

Thanks for everyone's advice.

--C-Recks--