spoiled chinese girl

I suppose I should start from somewhat of the beginning.

The printing industry has been sucking for most of the summer.  According to published reports, it has sucked longer, and harder than ever before.  Summers are usually a slow time for the print industry, but this seemed to border on absoloute insanity.  The “summer-slowdown” started earlier, lasted longer, and fell harder than any other year in remembered history.  Many of those questioned said it was the worst in “the past 10 years” if I recall correctly.

Well, seeing as how my, now former, boss is one to jump onto bandwagons later than most, finally decided to cut back hours of everyone who worked there.  One of the two pressmen was temporarly laid off, and both myself and my office coworkers were cut from 40+ hours a week to 28 hours per week, if we were lucky.  Stupidity at it’s finiest really.  How does one truly expect that sales will go up, if customer service is dropping to record lows?

Alas, it was ineveditable that one of us in the office had to go, and it seemed rather anti-climactic that it ended up being me.  I received a voice mail explaining that an e-mail had been sent to me, which explains that I had been laid off indefinitely due to lack of work.  Called my office co-worker immediately afterwards for her to be just as shocked and appalled about the news as I was, seeing as how she was in the office the Friday this occured.

But who am I to judge?  When a company reacts as slowly as this one does, it’s common sense.

I’m just glad I had an excuse to jump ship when I could, as opposed to standing with it sinking all around me.

And have to stand in line with the unwashed masses at the unemployment office once my ROE comes in. But when/if I get my first unemployment cheque, who wants to help me scatter car parts on my front lawn?

P.S. I had always thought the story of my former-boss's firing-via-e-mail to be tactless… but, all I got was a voicemail!

Alright, a few weeks ago one of the girls at a company we work for asked me for a whole bunch of pricing.  So I got it all for her as soon as I could.  And she comes back asking about turn-around times, so I explain to her what would be faster due to printing on a stock/standard item vs. printing on a custom made item.  So she says that she’s convinced her customer to go with a stock item, and that we will receive the order and file the following Monday.

Nothing Monday.  Nothing Tuesday.  Wednesday I ring up to see what’s up, and get a note saying that they are just finalizing the items to be printed and once the files are ready I’ll get everything.  Nothing Thursday. Nothing Friday.

The next Monday comes along, and all of a sudden I have an e-mail from another person at the same company.  Telling me that he’s got a price that’s $300 less than what I quoted, and if I was interested in matching it.

Matching WHAT?  I was told a week ago that I already had this job in the bag!  I tell him this, obviously pissed off that someone would promise me something and have me wait just to be told at the last minute that someone else is suddenly under-cutting the price I provided.

I’m just grumpy.  I have no problem being told my pricing is high, or too high, or “you must be crazy” since these are the guidelines set by my boss, which makes it not me being crazy but her.  But… ARRGH.

We got the job in the end.  But I just am not thrilled with the idea the girl probably said “This is the best price I got!” And the guy then went out and said “Okay this is the best price we got.  Beat it so I can take it back to them!”

Bastardos.  All of them.

So last night was the second night where I went to yoga class before cleaning the studio.

It was fantastic.

Last time I went, it was one of the co-owners, the female of the married couple, Thea who taught.  Last night was the other half, Todd who closed out the night.

His teaching style is so different, and completely off the wall.  Really, for someone who owns a Moksha yoga studio he definitely does not make you feel like you’re doing Moksha, or any particularly structured form of yoga. 

It’s a nice change, even for someone who goes as little as I do, and it keeps things interesting.  I usually have to take breaks in class now because I’ve gotten quite out of shape, but in this class I really had no idea when I could, or should, because every next move was something that challenged me, and at the same time was something I knew I could push towards.

And before I knew it, I had basically done the entire class right alongside everyone else.

I look forward to more classes!