Unfailing Unfairness

So my husband was laid off yesterday. Yep. No warning or anything. That was it. Shall I break it down a bit?

My husband has been working for this company for over a year. He was so talented with what he can do; they opened a whole video department with him as the head. He was bringing in business himself and wowing his bosses like crazy. He was being paid CRAP because the company was just starting out, but for months he was promised a raise come his yearly review. It was a long wait, but we were optimistic that we would get that raise and everything would be okay when we had to begin paying off Evan's school loans. For a year, Evan has not received any PTO or any overtime. And they made him work A LOT of overtime. 15 hour days. Those are always fun. This past weekend with the start of the Phoenix Film Festival, for which Evan did the logo/opening to every screening being shown there, he was there ALL weekend. Thursday night, after having worked all day at his office, he was sent to North Scottsdale for the Festival from 4:30 - 10:30PM, came home, went to bed, got up the next morning for work at the office, went to Scottsdale, came home Friday night about midnight. Saturday, got up at 8AM, shot another gig at 10AM for some BBQ thing, went to the Festival, and came home at 10:30PM. Went back on Sunday and worked at the Festival from 10AM-5PM. All. For. FREE. You betcha. He went in Monday morning to work, worked all day, and was brought in by his boss and his sister and told that there was no more work for him. They couldn't afford the pittance salary to keep him on staff. Evan asked if they could just keep him on for a week or two to give him time to find a new job. NOPE. Is he getting payment for all the overtime this weekend alone? NOPE. Is he getting reimbursed for the gas we spent getting him to North Scottsdale from Gilbert for the past four days? NOPE. You know what he's getting? A recommendation letter. No warning, completely caught off guard, not even allowed to finish out this week. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. NADA.

This post is a little all over the place, so sorry about that, but you can tell it's mostly cuz I'm upset. There's no harder worker than Evan. He's one of those talented, dedicated workers that could go so far and yet keeps getting screwed over by everyone. It makes my heart hurt. But anyway, I thought I would share and get it out of my system. You can see how amazing Evan is on his website: evansprague.com. Hope everyone else's luck holds in this crappy economy. It always sucks when you get to be a statistic on the news......

Death of a Crockpot

Being angry at Mondays is a good thing. It's like some sort of voodoo karma thing that bites you in the butt if you happen to be in a good mood on a Monday. And there I was yesterday, happy as can be, on my way home from work looking forward to some scrumptious chicken cacciatore I had made that morning in my crock-pot. My mood was so fine that I failed to notice my dog slink under the table as soon as I came through the door, my thoughts wholly centered on the fact that I have class on Monday nights and I get home long enough to eat really quick before diving out the door for the next three hours at COM100 so using my crock-pot on Mondays and Tuesdays works quite well. As I put down my purse and started to turn towards the stove to start boiling some water, that's when I saw it; this horrible thing. Shattered glass everywhere, the remains of my crock-pot flung about in disarray, tomato sauce all over the counters and floor, and the horrid lack of chicken cacciatore. I quietly let my dog out into the back, who escaped outside with a sigh of relief, and I turned back to the mess. I could physically feel the seconds counting down to when I had to rush back out the door again. Let's just say that for the rest of the time I was at home, I was pretty angry, and Molly was scared for her life. My crock-pot had been a wedding gift and I just wanted to sit down and have a good cry. Dratted dog! But anyway, I thought I would share my little movie with you all. Someday I will have a movie on how exactly she gets on the counters and knocks stuff off, so there's that to look forward to.