...all because I used the wrong card.

I have two bank accounts with two different banks:
One is for my primary job and to be used for major expenses (mortgage, car payments, insurance, etc.). The other is for my second job, used specifically for personal expenses (gas, cigarettes, splurges, etc.).

I went food shopping and I was running low on funds from personal expenses account since they cut hours at my second job, so I meant to use the primary account. Well.... a total brain fart of using the wrong card has cost me $30 in overdraft AND THEN a previous charge just happened to come through for a mere $3.50 which will then give me ANOTHER overdraft fee of another $30.

I'm hoping I can go to the bank and plead my case while throwing in a few streams of tears, while talking of Thanksgiving and the pressure of supporting my sister.

:D

From what I hear there's always a battle between the art department and the sales department, in publishing. Technically no one is higher up then the other, and we're supposed to be working together. The sales team bring in the ads, and we build them. If there was no sales team there are no ads. But if there is no art team, there is no ad to put in the paper.

Trouble is, no matter what industry you're in, a salesperson is a salesperson. You like them in their presence but once you walk away you can't help but feel you were sold something. Most of the time it's their personality. It's a very egotistical sort of position, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. You can't stick someone with low self-esteem to go in and sell something. It'll never happen. They'll be eaten alive.

But in my office D* is a completely different story. I love her as a person but as a co-worker she's a nightmare to work with. She's always late on deadlines, which is a major no-no in publishing... a WEEKLY publishing company. We are forever doing things last minute because of her. She's on personal calls ALL DAY. Her "meetings" are really shopping sprees at the local TJ Max. It's a running joke that whenever we can't find her we should call the TJ Max and have her paged. The boss is lucky if he gets a solid 3 hours of work out of her.

She missed a meeting with a client one time, to go to the local Greek festival. What happened? Nothing. Boss just shrugged and said it happens sometimes. My department didn't respond to an email right away and we get checked up on every 5 minutes to make sure all emails are responded to in a timely manner.

All ads have to be handed in by Tuesday at 12pm. D* has been known to go out on Tuesday mornings to a) get her hair done, b) get her car in the shop, c) shopping, or d) pick up an ad she should've picked up on Monday. Her ads get handed in by 1:30 pm if we're lucky.

I feel bad for the other sales rep, M*. The way their commission works is they have to bring in a total of let's say 5000 inches per issue. So M* and D* have to work together to keep those inches that minimum amount. If not they receive their basic salary pay. M* usually brings in over 3500 inches. D* can barely fill the gap. But when it does happen it's usually because M* so, either way D* gets paid the same as M* by doing less than half the work.

The entire company system was built to fail for everyone else... but her.

She's gotta be doing the boss.

XP

Sis has recently decided to drop out of school. Despite what people may say I actually encouraged it. Before you scream and write me off listen.

I know her well enough to guide her as to what she should be doing. I am after all her older and much wiser sister. I knew she was struggling with classes. She was bored and totally unmotivated. She was simply going through the motion of what every high school graduate is supposed to do. But what if, like her, you don't know what you want to do? Are you still supposed to go to yet another educational institute and waste 10's of thousands of dollars of your parents money while you choose from the hundreds of degrees? Which then you are supposed to learn a trade by pictures and texts, which cost another couple hundred?

If you can, I'm an advocate of taking some time off after high school. Figure out what you want to do. Go travel and study abroad if you have to. I guarantee you, if you if you stick anyone who's been going to school since they could walk, into a 4+ year institution right after they are done with public education... they WILL be burned out. The outcome is going to be much worse. They might end up kaboshing the whole secondary education altogether. Then you're stuck with a burnt out college drop out who doesn't care what he's going to end up doing.

The only thing I can do for her at this point is support her, and I honestly do. I went through it. I dropped out of college for awhile and worked for about 2 years, before going back to school, fresh and eager to learn. I'm hoping she figures out what it is she needs to do. She doesn't have a realistic grasp on the opportunities out there, and she needs to figure out what a dollar means (which is diddly squat these days). I hope that she goes off to the corporate world and either figures out that this isn't for her, or finds her niche.

And I'm confident she will. I'm convinced that she's a genius that isn't stimulated enough or isn't given enough information about what is best for her. So... this is what I say to the world: She's all yours!

I'm at job #2 right now... Been here since 7am and I closed last night, then just had to squeeze in the last 4 episodes of Greek: Chapter 1 before going to bed which means I managed to make it here with 4 hours of sleep. *head desk

As I sit here killing off my 5 hour shift I make of list of things I need to accomplish this weekend, that don't get done during my 60 hour work week. My room for example is atrocious. There's laundry everywhere. Leftover Netflix envelopes carpet my floor, along with the Nintendo Wii games that I manage to squeeze in from time to time.

During the weekdays I'm usually home for sleeping and to wind down a bit with maybe an hour or two of tv/games before collapsing into bed to start my day again. I find myself eating at home on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Which means my sister is left surviving on PB&J sandwiches or cup noodles. We both agreed she couldn't be trusted with the stove or microwave, after trying to make frozen fries which made the condo smell like smoke for a month.

The sacrifice of any social life was made from my previous social life and your typical run-of-the-mill life mistakes. Biggest one is the car. Effing car. Awhile back when my mom let her boyfriend move in without telling us, and allowed him to pretty much run the damn place, I left. To be vindictive she tells me to don't even think about taking the car that was under her name (but I was making the payments). So I had my cousin pick me up and couch crashed between her place and my uncle's for about 6 months. My employer at the time knew a car dealer and they helped me get a car despite my horrible credit rating.

Fast forward 3 years later I decide to look up when my car payments end. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that I had another 4 years to go! I won't share the price that I'm paying per month, but let's just say I should be driving a BMW instead of a Toyota Corolla.

Obvious solution is get rid of the lease. I plan to sell it privately and cross my fingers that I can get a deal to pay off the loan so I can get something else not just more affordable... but more humanly affordable. Not reaching for the stars here.

There's always a hurdle. Here's the hurdle: I hit a deer last year, and the sucker dented my passenger door to the point where I can't open the door. So my sister has had to either crawl through the window or ride in the backseat and I pretend like I'm a taxi driver, only she won't pay me.

Come January I get an extra paycheck for the month, so hopefully I can use that to pay the deductible and go through my insurance to fix the thing to get rid of it. So yet again, there goes the plan to get a new HDTV or the XBox 360. *pouts

FYI: I am aware how much of a mess my life is. But that's just scratching the surface.

I figure this is a great way to build a foundation on what conversations with my sister are like:

We happen to live in a very upper white class town. You didn't think it'd be possible in this day and age but it is. I'm forever getting leered at when I go to the local wine store.

Months ago we went to the local movie theater and as we were waiting for the movie to start I made an observation and decide to share in on this new useless fact.

Me: Leans over and whispers I just realized we're the only minorities in here.

Sis: That's because everyone else is older.

Me: WHAT?!?

Sis: *blank stare* What? You said minority and we are catching a matinee... That's not what it means does it?

Me: AHAHAHAHAHAHA! No, honey it does not.

Could not stop laughing for twenty minutes. I had to walk out for a little bit to compose myself as to not disturb the theater.

But it gets better! I was watching tv in my room couple weeks ago, when she comes storms in:

Sis: I was just talking to *Jason online and you won't believe this. He doesn't know what curry is!

Me: So? You didn't know what a minority was.

Sis: How is that worse?

Me: Um.. because YOU ARE ONE!

Sis: Yeah, I suppose that is worse. Walks away.

Oh man I love this girl.