Free at last, free at last!
Aug. 29th, 2008 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteAh, I'm finally back in Northridge, CA, a.k.a. my home for the past four years (or so). And hopefully I'll soon be back in my "real" home of San Francisco, CA, but first I'm trying to work out some online courses through CSUN, so I'm still covered by my health insurance, still keeping busy, and still getting financial aid. :P
In leaving Disney, I found out that I don't ever want to work for a mega-corporation. Maybe it's Disney's sheer size that made it so impersonal-- despite the few friendly faces that I saw every now and again, I felt treated like a tool, a number-- a non-person, more or less. I don't want that from any job I take on in the future.
I also found out that, rather than the housing owing me $636, I owe them $113, because August has 5 weeks in it, and though we pay at the end of the month, it's a weekly fee of $159. It's horribly unfair that I should have to pay so close to the 5-week total, since I left early (2 days only, but still), but moreso because I went almost 2 straight weeks without work. How do they expect me to pay for those two weeks when I was living in the housing, working my tail off, spending what I did have to go up to Northridge to get new doctor's notes, call Kaiser back and forth, etc.? It's not like I was messing around-- I did my best to get more specific, legible notes, but then they decided that something that had been on the FIRST note (about not bending and twisting) was impossible to accommodate, because apparently working in stores involves bending and twisting, no questions asked. It's a bunch of hooey, because I saw people from Transitional Duty in stores all the time-- I couldn't have been the only person with back and leg issues.
Oh, I should state for the record: being part of the Disney College Program has driven me further into debt than I have ever been in my life. In order to make rent on time, I've maxed out my only two credit cards, and while they don't exactly have astronomical credit limits ($1500 and $2000, respectively), that's still a lot of money. I lived in Japan -one of the most expensive countries to live in the world- for 6 months and managed to accidentally run up a $900 phone bill, but I still didn't come back as in debt as I am from 3 months of working for Disney. And it's not that I'm a crazy spender, either; I rarely went out, got the $1.99 lunch as often as possible (and made my lunch on days when I couldn't get it), and only ONCE "splurged" on a necessary computer repair. Even then, Disney sucked me dry of money, motivation, creativity, and very nearly my happiness and general well-being. For a company that claims to own the "happiest place on Earth" and places safety as its first "key," they didn't seem to practice what they preached.
Supposedly I could have stayed on-- or at least waited until 11/30 for the first doctor's note to "expire," since disability had yet to kick in and indicate my sciatica as a permanent condition, not a work-related injury. But that's ridiculous-- miss 3 months of work and classes, not have a place to live, and then come back right to what I'd grown to dislike so much, because I was in pain every day and every night, and my leads and managers refused to help me without a note, and then did more of the same even when I DID get a note? No. Why would I go back to that?
The housing is more of what I'm glad to be free of, though-- the idiotic, immature people in housing setting off fire alarms for fun, the constant construction, the stupid rules, the disgusting lack of a decent recycling program (supposedly that's the City of Anaheim's fault, but why isn't it the property manager's responsibility to contact the Dept. of Waste Management or whatever to make sure we have the bins in place?), etc. Plus, the housing coordinators that frankly didn't seem to care about us as people, just as statistics.
One of them was downright rude to me, and I wish I'd come up with more comebacks to let her know just how much I hated her. I told my former roommate Michelle (we ended up ironing out all our differences before I left, which felt great; I never like leaving a place on a bad note) that I was done being "anyone's bitch," and said housing coordinator said "Hey, there's no need to talk like that in here." *eyeroll* I wish I'd come up with the comeback at the time, "Yes, there is a need, it's my need, after putting up with all the B.S. I have from you and yours in this housing and in this company. I'm sick of being treated like a tool, I'm leaving, and I don't have to listen to you anymore." Plus, when another housing coordinator asked Michelle to leave the room even though she knows EVERYTHING I'd been through, I wanted to say "Okay, then she (the other housing coordinator whom I hate) has to leave to, because I don't want her knowing my personal stuff, and even if she already does and is part of this program or the housing, I just don't want her in here. If you can say that about someone I want present, then I should be able to say that about people you want present." But alas, I didn't, further allowing myself to be treated like Disney's bitch. But now it's all over with....
YATTA!
I got back here to Northridge late last night, slept in most of the morning, and then left to mail some stuff, enjoy some decent Chinese food, and then get some 2% milk at Vons. Sure, the fact that there's not as good a public transportation system here in Northridge bites, but it's just more incentive to walk (and buy some good walking shoes! Today I wore my strappy black kitten heels... that was a mistake) and learn to ride my bike. I'm already enrolled in 6 units worth of online classes; all I need are 2 more 3-unit classes to be full time. Hopefully then I can go back up to S.F. to be with my friends and family, and maybe even find some inspiration for all my projects. In the meantime, I've got a lot of room cleaning to do, and since it is technically the first week of school, some discussions to jump in on and PowerPoint lectures to read....
Wish me luck! :)
In leaving Disney, I found out that I don't ever want to work for a mega-corporation. Maybe it's Disney's sheer size that made it so impersonal-- despite the few friendly faces that I saw every now and again, I felt treated like a tool, a number-- a non-person, more or less. I don't want that from any job I take on in the future.
I also found out that, rather than the housing owing me $636, I owe them $113, because August has 5 weeks in it, and though we pay at the end of the month, it's a weekly fee of $159. It's horribly unfair that I should have to pay so close to the 5-week total, since I left early (2 days only, but still), but moreso because I went almost 2 straight weeks without work. How do they expect me to pay for those two weeks when I was living in the housing, working my tail off, spending what I did have to go up to Northridge to get new doctor's notes, call Kaiser back and forth, etc.? It's not like I was messing around-- I did my best to get more specific, legible notes, but then they decided that something that had been on the FIRST note (about not bending and twisting) was impossible to accommodate, because apparently working in stores involves bending and twisting, no questions asked. It's a bunch of hooey, because I saw people from Transitional Duty in stores all the time-- I couldn't have been the only person with back and leg issues.
Oh, I should state for the record: being part of the Disney College Program has driven me further into debt than I have ever been in my life. In order to make rent on time, I've maxed out my only two credit cards, and while they don't exactly have astronomical credit limits ($1500 and $2000, respectively), that's still a lot of money. I lived in Japan -one of the most expensive countries to live in the world- for 6 months and managed to accidentally run up a $900 phone bill, but I still didn't come back as in debt as I am from 3 months of working for Disney. And it's not that I'm a crazy spender, either; I rarely went out, got the $1.99 lunch as often as possible (and made my lunch on days when I couldn't get it), and only ONCE "splurged" on a necessary computer repair. Even then, Disney sucked me dry of money, motivation, creativity, and very nearly my happiness and general well-being. For a company that claims to own the "happiest place on Earth" and places safety as its first "key," they didn't seem to practice what they preached.
Supposedly I could have stayed on-- or at least waited until 11/30 for the first doctor's note to "expire," since disability had yet to kick in and indicate my sciatica as a permanent condition, not a work-related injury. But that's ridiculous-- miss 3 months of work and classes, not have a place to live, and then come back right to what I'd grown to dislike so much, because I was in pain every day and every night, and my leads and managers refused to help me without a note, and then did more of the same even when I DID get a note? No. Why would I go back to that?
The housing is more of what I'm glad to be free of, though-- the idiotic, immature people in housing setting off fire alarms for fun, the constant construction, the stupid rules, the disgusting lack of a decent recycling program (supposedly that's the City of Anaheim's fault, but why isn't it the property manager's responsibility to contact the Dept. of Waste Management or whatever to make sure we have the bins in place?), etc. Plus, the housing coordinators that frankly didn't seem to care about us as people, just as statistics.
One of them was downright rude to me, and I wish I'd come up with more comebacks to let her know just how much I hated her. I told my former roommate Michelle (we ended up ironing out all our differences before I left, which felt great; I never like leaving a place on a bad note) that I was done being "anyone's bitch," and said housing coordinator said "Hey, there's no need to talk like that in here." *eyeroll* I wish I'd come up with the comeback at the time, "Yes, there is a need, it's my need, after putting up with all the B.S. I have from you and yours in this housing and in this company. I'm sick of being treated like a tool, I'm leaving, and I don't have to listen to you anymore." Plus, when another housing coordinator asked Michelle to leave the room even though she knows EVERYTHING I'd been through, I wanted to say "Okay, then she (the other housing coordinator whom I hate) has to leave to, because I don't want her knowing my personal stuff, and even if she already does and is part of this program or the housing, I just don't want her in here. If you can say that about someone I want present, then I should be able to say that about people you want present." But alas, I didn't, further allowing myself to be treated like Disney's bitch. But now it's all over with....
YATTA!
I got back here to Northridge late last night, slept in most of the morning, and then left to mail some stuff, enjoy some decent Chinese food, and then get some 2% milk at Vons. Sure, the fact that there's not as good a public transportation system here in Northridge bites, but it's just more incentive to walk (and buy some good walking shoes! Today I wore my strappy black kitten heels... that was a mistake) and learn to ride my bike. I'm already enrolled in 6 units worth of online classes; all I need are 2 more 3-unit classes to be full time. Hopefully then I can go back up to S.F. to be with my friends and family, and maybe even find some inspiration for all my projects. In the meantime, I've got a lot of room cleaning to do, and since it is technically the first week of school, some discussions to jump in on and PowerPoint lectures to read....
Wish me luck! :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-30 08:28 am (UTC)Oddly, my brother and sister-in-law lived in Northridge for a while -- she was there during the big earthquake in the mid-80s and he had moved back here for the summer at the time working split shifts in a restaurant. We saw the news on the Today show, woke him up ("ah, we always have earthquakes out there..."), convinced him this one was bad ("no, I don't need to call, we always have earthquakes -- wadda-ya-mean I should get up?) and found out she was okay though a good chunk of town wasn't. When we finally pried him out of bed and down to watch the news he recognized various buildings he'd driven past on the way to his previous job that were now in pieces.
Corporations suck to work for. The pay is there and the benefits are there, but there's no heart. Contrast that with the job I had in a small frame shop / gallery which was paying slightly better than minimum, with no sick leave, no insurance, no vacation, but when I was pregnant and got stuck on a week of bed rest the boss and his wife showed up at the door unexpectedly with four sacks of groceries. In small business they bother to know you, worry about you, and occasionally take care of you. Corporations just see you as a number on a piece of paper...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-30 01:44 pm (UTC)Urgh... too bad about the money. Hope that works out.
And good luck with your classes!