I Try Not to Feel Tremendous Anger

over what has become of my life, but then when I looked at my "huge" paycheck from a call center for the past two weeks, I am in almost a blind rage.

After 88 hours of work for two weeks, I "made"  or "took home" the giant sum of $659, which is just a little over one third of what I "took home" as a teacher bi-weekly before I was illegally sacked almost three years ago.  Remember, that's including eight hours of fucking overtime.  While I am not paying rent and utilities at my brother's house, that doesn't mean I don't have expenses.  My goddamned car is going to eat up half of that money, and the rest of it I must somehow find money to buy food (after all, I get only 16 bucks a month in  food stamps), clothing (which I need), and gas, and maybe have a little bit left over to buy a few things for "fun," like a book or a DVD.  That 's it.  If I don't work next week, I will have to be able to stretch what remains of this check and the next one clear into the middle of fucking February, when the ESD pays again, assuming I can make any money.

Oregon just taxes the living shit out of people, and it is worse when you have little money to make to begin with.  I forgot how high the income tax here is.

Thirty years ago, I worked at the same company and made something like $3.50 an hour to start, and with increases was able to make around $7 when I left at the end of 1983.  I was able to afford an apartment, pay utilities, and have enough disposable income left.  But on $9.60 an hour now (down from nearly $50,000 a year in Reno)  I can't even get a goddamned RV to live independently or even a dump of an apartment.  This shit is less than what I made on unemployment compensation from the last job.  I am so angry I can't see.  I want these assholes who killed my career held accountable for their actions.

Then I found out that because of a budget freeze, the Job Council will NOT provide a voucher for me to at least be able to get my Oregon substitute license.  The Teacher Standards and Practices Commission charges the shit out of you if you have your training from out of state:  $120.  Then I have to "disclose" what that cunt principal (I deleted the names of the schools so that I don't get sued for telling the truth) and the crook in HR did to me as a part of their "character" questions.  Remember what they want you to answer is  "alleged" "misconduct," which I didn't fucking commit, but I have to tell them anyway because Question 3 (the revised one) asks if I have ever been put on "administrative leave."  Never mind it was UNPAID leave, and it was designed solely to starve me into a piddling 10k settlement after that corrupt WEA executive director (who took a bribe working under the HR crook as "labor relations manager" while my "case" was going through the sham due process)  LIED about my UI eligibility.

These fucking sociopaths at Washoe County School District are doing better than ever, and at my expense.  Oh, sure, as I noted a few days ago, Superintendent Heath Morrison, who had nothing to do with my situation, apparently feels some pangs of guilt over having read my letter from last May, which included the pleadings in the sham civil action,.   He is parading around the district  talking about the need for a "culture of respect."  Coming from a Broadie, this notion rings somewhat hollow.  In any case, "respect," when it comes to these sociopaths, is a completely alien idea. "Bend over and take it" is their motto.

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