Jobs and The Jackass

It’s been a strange past couple of weeks.

As you know, I’ve been spending them working my new job which I will finally reveal on this here blog at this here moment: Kmart. Yes, in an attempt to get myself back on track, I accepted the temporary position that they offered knowing it would last from 4-6 weeks. But what I didn’t expect was to be turning my my less-than-two-week notice today.

Just last week I received an e-mail from a staffing company. They were apparently in need of qualified individuals that could proofread (*raises hand*) in several languages (*raises other hand*) for a client’s project slated to last until the end of the year or possibly spill over into 2011. Deciding this was a risk worth taking, I took a day off from Kmart–the same store where Tom Hanks was filming Larry Crowne–to go down there for an interview.

The result? Tomorrow will be my last day at Kmart and I will be starting my new job on Monday. Yes, it’s a little bit of a drive from Long Beach to Irvine but for $4 more an hour, I think it will be worth it in the end. And it gets me out or retail which wasn’t entirely bad this time around, just something I thought I’d never, ever subject myself to ever again.

Oh and to top it all off, I got a call from Central Casting on my first day of work at Kmart. They wanted to know if I was available to work on The Middle that same week, but I had to turn them down since I had already made a commitment to this job.

So I basically went from having the plague to being somewhat wanted. And it feels good, damnit!

Okay, so that covers the job aspect of this post. So what’s with the Jackass portion? Allow me to explain.

My lovely neighbor, jokingly referred to as “The Jackass” around these parts, has taken to the habit of rolling his trashcans out at 3 am lately. I really don’t have a problem with that if he were quiet about it but he is anything but clandestine when he does it. It’s damn annoying and it’s hard to get back to sleep for another 2 hours when my alarm goes off.

Despite being instructed by the police during the alleged dog-poisoning incident to ignore these people, last week I decided I’d calmly ask The Jackass if he wouldn’t mind taking his trashcans out at a decent hour of the day. After all, he leaves for work at 3 am and is home all night. There’s plenty of time to get it done.

Apparently, he had a problem with this.

“For all the problems you guys caused us…” is about all he could get out before I simply told him, “Okay, have it your way” and walked back into the house. You yell at guy and he gets pissed; you calmly ask him and he gets pissed. Problems we caused them? Let’s not get into that right now.

At any rate, I decided to send an e-mail to my local representative at the Noise Abatement Department and ask what, if anything, could possibly be done about this. She replied with a few suggestions that I didn’t act upon (since I think it’s silly to have the police take time from their schedule to tell this guy to stop). Regardless, something strange happened within a few days of that e-mail.

He took his trash out at 6 pm. Not only that, he didn’t leave the empty cans in front of is house for the entire week as he tends to do on occasion. I’m sort of starting to believe in the Invisible Space Wizard if this dude came to his senses and actually reconsidered what I asked him to do. If so, it would definitely be a first around here.

Oh and by the way, they have another dog. Jeez…

So yeah, these few weeks have been a little odd for me but despite it all, I think I’ll take them.

Strange days indeed…