Canti's Adventures
Canti
=/= smalltimehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9K18CGEeiI&feature=related
Ok so here's the deal. My lease is up at the end of this month, my roommate is moving out, I want to move to Springfield, Mo. to start school. I've tried everything I can think of (craigslist, roomster, facebook) to find someone with a room available or someone who needs a roommate willing to look for an apartment and so far that's not getting me anywhere. I can't really afford to get a 1 room place by myself. I have 15 days before I don't know what will happen. Does anyone have suggestions on how to go about finding roommates?
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Good luck in your search sir!
http://springfield.craigslist.org/roo/3079467101.html
Feel better then.
Sucks mate, hopefully round two goes about better.
In celebration of this turn of events......
Thanks again to Wags for all the help she's given me during this search.
A week after losing my job at Subway I got a call from Wal-Mart for a cashier position at a Neighborhood Market (basically just a grocery store with Wal-Mart's name slapped on it) that would be opening mid-October 2012. I started training at an existing store in late September and helped setup my store in early October. Since we opened I have been pretty happy with my job (aside from a few hilariously irrational customers) since management has been willing to work around my school schedule and my main CSM (first level support manager) has proven to be the first supervisor outside my time at Boy Scout Camp who I believe is a person I can actually trust. I have taken 7 classes at MSU and managed to earn a B in 3 of them during my first semester and am expecting a C grade in 3 others and an incomplete in 1 during the second semester. I'm really not happy with what I expect to be the results of the second semester but as I think about it I feel like I simply tried to balance too much at once with full time classes and close to full time work, that's not really a failure so much as learning my limits. The incomplete grade comes from my class in computational programming in physics (Matlab) which is taught by the head of the science department at MSU, Dr. C. To put it simply (as I put it to him) if I continued to work on my final project in an attempt to complete it on time I stood a good chance of wrecking myself in 3 other classes by not studying for their the finals and probably still wouldn't have a working program finished by due date. The reply I got from him seemed to understand that I was minimizing damage by not completing what his class needed but it also said and I quote,
"Zac I understand but I won't just let you quit. My absence is not really fair so I will give you an I(ncomplete) for now. We will work out the terms when I get back."
Personally I find this comment quite humorous since there is no quitting at this point. I have invested a good majority of the last 3 years of my life toward this and to simply go, "OH WELL LOLOLOLOL FUCK IT." Is not an option anymore.
On top of all that the most exciting possibility I have dealt with all year is an email I received from Dr. C. a few weeks ago which simply said, "Zac, Do you want to do some work around here this summer? I can kick in $2,000."
Currently he is doing paid research for NASA studying the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system. I CAN NOT tell you how excited I would be to do work related to this even for free. If they want to pay me at the same time that's FUCKING AWESOME. I can't wait to discuss this possibility with him.
Time for the yearly update I think.
Two years ago next month I moved to Springfield Missouri to begin the core classes for my bachelors of science in physics at Missouri State University. Since then I have completed 13 courses toward my degree and am nearly done with the 14th which, hilariously, is the class I had recently received an incomplete grade at the time of my last post a year ago. I have until June 6th to finish the final project and receive a grade or it defaults to an F. I spent 6 hours this morning at the science department working on it with occasional advice from the instructor. Tomorrow morning I go back in until it's finished or I have to go to work. If I don't finish it tomorrow this routine will continue until I do. I will finish this project.
The research job I got at the science department last summer didn't turn out to be quite what I was expecting but I learned a lot from it and gained some good experience. While the work I was doing is some really interesting stuff with the potential to revolutionize technology it's still a very new field of study and is highly experimental. For me personally this is a problem because I'm the kind of person who needs to see some kind of progress or impact from my efforts and most of the time the results we were getting from experiments were less than impressive. Most weeks would consist of running experiments every day and doing a lot of waiting which at the end of the week would result in learning nothing more than, "We need to try something else." Interesting but also very tedious and unrewarding. The good things from this are the fact that I now realize that experimental research is likely not my thing but I do have some experience in it and that's not something a lot of people can say. Furthermore I was able to give a presentation on my work at the University of Arkansas last October which was neat. Since that presentation I haven't been in the lab much due to other obligations with work and classes but I expect to spend some time this summer catching up with the rest of the team to see what kind of progress has been made in my absence.
A week after I moved to Springfield I got a job interview at Subway and was hired as a "sandwich artist". That job didn't last long due to reasons
mentioneddrawn in the above comments and at this moment I am more than happy with that because the job interview I got one week after being fired from Subway has lead to the best job (outside of Boy Scout Summer Camp) that I've ever had. In September 2012 I was hired as a cashier at a Wal*Mart Neighborhood Market that would open in October. Since 3 weeks before my store opened I have thrown everything I have into doing the best job I can. I literally helped put that store together and spent about the first 7 months as just a cashier working part-time while taking classes. After several months as a cashier I began to realize my ability and work ethic were between somewhat to significantly greater than any other cashier we had and the store management, specifically my direct supervisors (Customer Service Managers, CSMs), had noticed this as well. As a result my store manager came to me one day and asked me if I was interested in working some days in my current job as a cashier and other days as a grocery associate (unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and whatever else is needed at the moment). The hours were about the same as what I had been working and I could only gain experience and become more useful by accepting so I did. As a result I became the main person to call on anytime the front end of the store needs help or there is some project that needs done on the sales floor right that minute.I was happy with just that until about last December when I realized that another cashier (Keri) who was hired in November was basically being trained to be a CSM because one of ours was leaving for another job. At that point I decided I wanted to have more responsibility and let management know I was interested in the job also. We were both interviewed and Keri ended up getting the job which I wasn't happy about but I had worked with her long enough that I had respect for her and I knew she could do the job equally as well I could. I still wanted to move into that job but my best chance of getting it at that point would be to transfer to a bigger store which I didn't want to do because I like mine and the people I work with. One of my other supervisors told me it would be smart to hold off on asking for a transfer because she was trying to move back to her old store which would open the job again. I took her advice in hopes that she would get what she wanted and I would be considered again to fill her job.
Now here's where things get stupid, a new cashier was hired two weeks before Keri and I were interviewed for the CSM job. 3 weeks after he was hired and 1 week after I was turned down for the job I walk in one day to work grocery and see that he's been given CSM authorities as a cashier and is running the front end of the store. I was LIVID. As it turns out regional management was there that day to inspect the store and we were between store managers. The temporary store manager had no idea this guy had been hired so recently and gave him authority simply because the CSM on duty was on lunch break and they needed someone to cover things for an hour to help impress regional. I talked to the temp manager the same day and he approved me as a backup CSM and told me he would get me training so that I would be ready next time the job came up. The supervisor who told me not to transfer got what she wanted and both me and this other guy were interviewed to fill her job. They picked him, also my backup CSM abilities were revoked.
I was instead offered a full-time position on the sales floor which I believe is what they wanted me doing in the first place and is the main reason I was declined, not that he was the better person for the job but that they felt I would be more useful in another job. I had a long talk with two of the assistant managers about all of this and basically told them I would consider it but I was not happy with the decision at all because it left me no choice but to leave the store if I chose to pursue the job I want. They seemed honestly surprised by my reaction and I think one of them (the one I have worked my ass off for and knows what I am willing and capable of doing) convinced the other assistant and our newly appointed store manager that loosing me would be a bad thing for the store because the next day I was called to the office by the new store manager. She hadn't worked with me very long and she basically wanted to get to know me and what I've done for the store as well as understand where I was coming from with what she had heard from the assistants. I explained to her how this whole thing had developed over several months and how much I want to do more for the store I have worked so hard for all this time and I would likely not be able to now. She told me she would look into some things and see what she could do but wouldn't promise me anything. That was two weeks ago.
Yesterday I was called to the office to meet with the store manager and the assistant who interviewed me the second time. During this meeting I was told that where we have had an opening and closing CSM each day we would soon be having a mid-shift CSM who overlaps with the morning and evening shifts. My job code was changed, my supervisor authorities we reinstated, and I got a dollar raise. I am officially a customer service manager for Wal*Mart Neighborhood Market 3062.
Furthermore I will also be working one day a week dealing with inventory control by checking in deliveries as well as processing broken, expired, and stolen merchandise which I'm told is a hugely important job as far as minimizing profit loss for our store. I will also be working another day on the sales floor stocking, changing displays, and organizing overstock which will actually be a small step up from what I've already been doing as a grocery associate.
In short, I'm going to be doing the job I want to do at the store I care about and also gaining experience in two other important positions at the same time. I am actually happier about the way things are going now than if I had been chosen for CSM in the first place and been locked into that job every day. As things look right now I'm going to have a lot of responsibility and experience in positions all over the store which will put me in a unique position that is very unusual for lower level management.
More good news to come.