One More Adventure in Joblessness

I thought I would take the opportunity of this beautiful lazy Sunday morning (love 1:00 church!) to fill you all in on how the job search is going, since many of you have asked me and given me very warm wishes and encouragement.

Basically, I have sent my resume out to every position that looks even remotely close to what I do, and I have heard back from three spots already. I have also had two preliminary interviews. One of them was really good, and the other was, well terrible. Let me explain. . . no, no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

The first interview I had was the terrible one. It was at a residential treatment facility for teens in Wheat Ridge. From talking to the director, Dr. P on the phone it was clear that he was opinionated and offensive, and that he lacked even the basic social grace of not being a jerk to strangers. For instance, he stated on the phone, before he even knew anything about me, that he was taking applications from "social workers, retards and Republicans." Now, I dunno if that sort of thing is supposed to be funny, but I didn't think it was funny at all. I gave him a courtesy laugh, because I was trying to get in his good graces, but that was the first very bad sign.

So then I show up for the interview two days later. I was on time, by which I mean I was 15 minutes early. I was given some paperwork to fill out, which I did. It was a lot of paperwork and took me nearly 45 minutes to finish. When I was done, Dr. P had still not arrived for our appointment. So I wandered around the waiting room, looking at the paintings and books. For 30 more minutes. In the end, my interview did not start for a full hour and a half later than the scheduled time. Second very bad sign. I took that as evidence that this guy is clearly ego-centric and inconsiderate, feeling entitled to other peoples' time and having no respect for their schedules.

So he finally comes in with two of the other therapists who would have been my colleagues if I had hired on there. He starts asking questions, but it was not like a usual interview in which the interviewer actually wants to learn things about the interviewee. No, it was more like an inquisition. I made a statement on one of the forms he gave me that I prefer to be transparent with my clients about what is going on, and what I am thinking. He asked me what I meant by that, then cut me off three words into my answer to tell me that transparency is wrong, and then rambled for ten minutes telling me why I was wrong, and what he thinks transparency should be. He did that sort of thing often: cutting me off during my answer. Third very bad sign.

The last straw was the worst one, and it was this: the guy was a world class jerk. If I ever meet someone who is as big an unprovoked jerk as Dr. P, I will give that man an award. He was so brusk, so off-putting, so offensive in the interview that I can only imagine what he is like to people he is familiar with. He swore all over the place, and not just in common places. He was vulgar, rude and thoughtless in his comments. He claimed to be "culturally sensitive" and asked me all sorts of aggressive questions about my ability to work well with other cultures. The whole time I am thinking to myself "Buddy, you are a complete tool, and the most insensitive guy I have ever met." And then, after a particularly vulgar tirade, he asked me if I have thick skin. I told him, "You haven't even phased me yet."

Then he says, and this is a direct quote (my apologies to the sensitive) "Don't be so narcisistic. I get a hard-on from jerking people around, and you haven't even taken a wrinkle out of my dick." And that was pretty much the end of the interview. Go out with a bang, eh? 

And this guy claims to be able to be sensitive enough to help people with their problems? I doubt seriously if he can even see them past his own swollen ego. Fourth and final very bad sign. So thanks Dr. P, for replacing the pedophile principal of my old elementary school as the biggest jerk I know. 

A Rant to Clear my Mind

So I have a lot of junk rattling around in my noggin' lately, especially since I was forced to leave my job on Friday. The mixture of being frustrated/angry and having a lot of time to think is not a good one for me. It drags on my native optimism.

So, ironic as it may seem, I am ranting now to cheer myself up. Nothing adds a little extra silver lining to my own emotional thunderheads like complaining about someone else's mistakes or foolishness.

It seems like I have beat the economic bail-out into the ground lately, and I am personally tired of talking politics, so lets move on to greener pastures and talk about something I am equally passionate/disgruntled about but rarely rant about: psychotherapy.

Specifically, it bothers me to no end that therapists so seldom seem to practice what they study. I mean, generally, we tend to be good in relationships, and are great in clinical settings. But so often, those relationship/communication skills and understanding of the human psyche fall to complete crap outside of those clinical environments. Get us out of our offices and away from our couches, and we are just as instinctual and irrational as the general population.

I see therapists do crap of this sort all of the time. They make poor, thoughtless decisions, act on shallow and irrational emotions, and systematically avoid the very things that would bring greater productivity and happiness into their lives. In short - they are disordered.

The worst is when a group of several trained therapists fall prey to these negative behaviors themselves, and no one has the presence of mind to pull them out of the Group-Think funk. Even though they really ought to know better, they simply go along with the prevailing idea, not stopping to challenge the validity of it in the first place.

So, decisions are made poorly, and the consequences are terrible, and it is all avoidable from the outset. And even though therapists actually do know better, they don't use that knowledge except when asked to use it by clients. Because we lack the same introspective talent that so many of our clients lack. We don't have that native gift that some people have to question themselves and their own conclusions. We are therapists, so we believe that our opinions and conclusions are always right, and we don't second guess ourselves. More is the pity.

See, and even though I wanted to not rant about losing my job, I just managed to rant about it passive-aggressively. No different than anyone else, even though I do know better. It seems to still be true that knowing is not doing. 

The Newest Unwanted Adventure

I know it is an impersonal way to give everyone this news, but I just didn't feel like repeating the story a dozen times on the phone.

As of yesterday I no longer work for LDS Family Services. I no longer work for anyone, for that matter.

I wish I could tell you why it happened, but I honestly don't really know. I thought things were humming along nicely when I came in to work on Friday, but then my boss came in and told me that I was being let go. He cited that my paperwork had fallen behind, but couldn't give me more than two incorrect claims of arrears paperwork. So it remains a mystery. What I know for sure is that the company is restructuring, and I fear that I may have been an easy target to get rid of before the changes hit, so that there are less people in the office to move around. Of course, that is speculation, but a lot of evidence seems to point in that direction.

As one might expect, I am angry and feel betrayed. I mean, what I am accused of doing with my paperwork is nowhere near as bad as the mess that I had to clean up after the guy I replaced. He didn't have a single file that was not missing important documents. You know what happened to that guy? He got promoted. Where is the justice there?

So yeah, I am bitter. Maybe ranting against my newly-former employer is bad form, but I think they deserve it. My boss feels that he went to bat for me, but I don't see how all of the positive work and hours of overtime I have put into that job can count for virtually nothing, while a few unfiled documents can torpedo me without so much as me being given a heads-up about the problems before hand.

I mean, in the last two months, I have placed adopted children with 7 families, worked almost every other weekend, and come home later than 8 at least once a week. In fact, the day before I got fired, I was working until 10:30 pm. I thought I was doing a good job. Maybe I was just working too hard, and hence didn't have enough time to fill out all of my paperwork in a timely enough fashion. Who knows?

What I do know is that I expected better of an LDS organization. I would have at least expected them to work with me to resolve their concerns, rather than keep a super-secret collection of complaints against me without giving me the knowledge needed to change things. I am sure that the folks involved feel that they were fair. That is precisely the problem: their system is broken, so they can do tremendously hurtful and unfair things behind closed doors, pat themselves collectively on the back, and feel justified in terminating an employee for spurious reasons without even letting that employee face his accusers and present his own arguments.

I had precisely two hours to clear out my office and leave. My boss was told to watch me the whole time. I can only assume they were worried that I would steal a stapler or format the hard-drive. I mean, being fired was hard, but being watched like a criminal was insulting. What a joke. I have a Temple recommend, and have never stolen anything or acted in malice towards anyone. I think it just shows that they knew their actions were unjust. If they felt it was done right, then they should have had no grounds for fearing that I would do something irrational or spiteful. My boss watching me like I was a sex offender in a preschool is just evidence to me that he knew what was happening was not right, and he expected me to follow suit.

Well, I didn't, and I wouldn't have. But I now know more about LDS Family Services than I previously did. And hopefully, they know more about me now than they previously did. This blog entry is the extent of the venting I will do. I bear no malice for them, but I will always know that I was not treated fairly. I was set up to fail, so I failed. If that is what they wanted me to do, I only wish they would have had the honor and courage to tell me to my face.

So I am back in the job market, during the worst economy of my life. Hoo-friggin'-ray.

As a side note, my wife is the awesomest woman alive. When she found out, you know what her response was? "Should I put back this stuff I just bought at Costco?" No blaming, no anger, just awesome patience, level-headedness and supportiveness. With Dana at my side, I could be a homeless beggar and still have more wealth than LDS Family services (or anyone, for that matter) could ever give me.

The Next Frontier

I have come to a conclusion: I can't keep up this blog. At least, not in the way that I have been keeping it up. I have way too many random thoughts, and I type way too slow to keep up with my thinking. On the other hand, I can talk plenty fast enough to keep up with my rambling cognitions.

That leads me to a simple truth: I need to change this blog to something more like a vlog. I need to use a medium that will allow me to be both expressive and also not require me to hit [backspace] 500 times per entry. I am still working out the kinks, trying to find a way to do this that will be more aesthetically pleasing than just watching me yack for a few minutes. I will figure it out, though.

So stay tuned. Big things are about to start hap'nin round here.