The state of the me

Because it's all about me (well, sort of, it's my blog, and I write about things of interest to me, and that's reflective of me; and I write about me, and what I do).

Money. I am still short of it, though I am not presently desperate. I made the trek to Oakland yesterday and got an advance against my GI Bill payments. It's a gamble. I am taking money now, against money owed. I have a statement from Muskogee telling me what I am entitled to, so I had information to base the decision on (someone objected to my referring to the GI Bill as extracting my pound of flesh; well it is. I made an offer [my time, service and self] they made a promise [educational benefits: they saw fit to increase the offer, but it was still part of the deal], and I, by God, am going to collect. As a Sergeant Major said, 16 years ago; if the Army offers something, take it; because they will never give back as much as they get, but I digress).

From converations with the GI Bill folks (the helpline is pretty well managed; not too much phone tree nonsense, and the people on the other end seem both knoweledgable about the program, and able to get at personal details with ease), I can expect my checks to start arriving not later than Nov. So I took 1 1/2 months worth of stipend, and trust that the worst I have to deal with is a couple of weeks of short rations.

Which, by virtue of good timing, and predeliction, I should be able to survive.

I, you see, have seasonal work. I landed a part-time job at Sur le Table CG spotted an ad for kitchen assistants, and I applied. It turns out I was fortunate. The Assistant Job isn't really what I needed (no matter how interesting it might be), because it doesn't guarantee more than 16 hours a month. But my app was reviewed by the sales side of the house, which needs people for the Nov/Dec period. As one might imagine, Thanksgiving is a big sales time for the chain.

I've long said all I needed was an interview. I got it.

It was a good interview. I had a few moments of, "Oh my god, what if blow this", because one is selling oneself at an interview, and going overboard is not the best thing, but underselling is worse.

Once the questions started, all worries were removed. I understand questions. I can follow leads, engage in attentive listening, and use my strengths. By the time we sorted out what job I was interviewing for we had a decent working relationship. By the time we got to the meat of the interview, I was comfortable with the level of me I was putting forward.

That's the me side of the interview. On the store side, it was one of the best set of specific questions I've seen in a long time. Really.

I'd say the real interview (apart from the attempts to see if the subject and the prospective employer can get on; which I was tolerable sure of from the three visits I'd made to the store in advance; one to buy some glassware with CG, one to get something I needed/get a better feel for this store (I've been in a number of Sur le Table, and always been favorably disposed to them as a store. The things they sell are of good quality; in a good range of prices, from inexpensive to top of the line. None of it looking shoddy) was three questions.

Which, in my professional capacity as one who teaches people to ask questions, were good questions.

1: If I gave you a $500 gift certificate to this store, what would you get?

Great question. It gets at a bunch of things. How well does the subject know what the store sells? Both diversity of product, and price. It also, in a place like this, shows the interests of the subject (I said, "A Shun filet knife; mid-range, a Le Crueset Casserole, some Bodum Thermal glasseware; because they are cool, and I like them, a mortar and pestle, a cutting board, a peel and some hot mitts).

2: "Ok, looking at this stuff, if I say you can only have one things, which do you take?"

No brainer, "The Shun knife".

To which the response was a knowing nod of the head, and I added, "If I couldn't take the knife it would be the casserole, because all the other things can be worked around, but if I need a specific knife, or pot, and I don't have it, I'm out of luck."

That was probably the riskiest thing I did in the interview; it was volunteering, and it was, slightly, breaking up the flow. I was, by this point, just following leads, and it seemed worth explaining. I don't think that the knife was less expensive than the pot actually made a difference.

This question is really good; because of the first question. That first one tested a whole lot of things. If it stood alone the sense of how well the store, the prices; and in this case the ways in which people (the customers, in a grand sense) use kitchens and value things, isn't as obvious.

3: "If a customer came in, looking to buy this knife, how would you sel it to them?"

Brilliant. It gets at the attitudes of the subject on sales, without leading them. I am sure Sur le Table, just as a car dealer, has a philosophy of sales/customer service. I am also sure each store has it's own subculture on how to do it. Getting a feel for how well a prospective employee fits inside that mold is tricky. A question like this one puts them in the position of explaining how they would sell something.

I got lucky. Knives are a tricky sale. The least expensive line (and very good knives they are, I bought a Shun utility knife in the "Classic" line) costs about $80 for the knife I mentioned. The "Elite" is about $225. There are more differences than just the steel, the handles aren't the same either.

So talking about how to sell them (which involves, the first question, "what do you want to do with it", and then the second step; letting them handle it, and other knives of similiar purpose, and then asking what they want to spend. Because I don't want someone to feel oversold. If they think I pushed a knife on them which was too pricey, they will either bring it back, or be annoyed with me; and the store, when they use it), was a good way to show what I know about sales (which I learned a lot about working in a used bookstore for four years), and about one of the more complicated subjects in a kitchen supply (about the only other thing I can think of, off the top of my head, which in the same level of specialised knowledge/complexity is coffee equipment, esp. when one gets to the various types of espresso makers; I am informed about what one desires them to do, I can't tell you which one is really better than another).

So that was my Thursday. Things which didn't hurt me; my asking wage. I figured Kitchen Assistant was in the "skilled labor" set of things, and asked for 12. I was offered 8, and that's fine. I don't think I'd have balked at State Minimum. No, I have no problem with seasonal work at State Minimum. I don't know that I'd have taken that for the Kitchen Assistant job, but they weren't offering that, so it's not an issue.

I go in this afternoon to fill out the I-99 paperwork, and start into the rotation. It's, oddly enough, not enough work to qualify me for food stamps, but with the tide-me-over from the VA, and the income from the job, I would probably be above the threshold anyway.

This is going to be a slightly posty morning.

For all that my last post said the spectre of searching the gutter for pennies was no longer looming in the near distance, money is still tight.

The holidays are coming.

I have a printer, and I have lots of images, which can be printed up.

You can also order cards

But, for those in the market for immediate gratification, I retrieved, from Los Angeles, the mounted prints I offered up in my Moving Sale

The Reserve Component gets screwed, again.

Yesterday I got my, "Certificate of Eligibility" for the GI Bill.

No surprise I am eligible. I did 416 days of Active Duty since 11 Sep 2001, and so I am entitled to 60 percent of the full benefit. So far so good. It's what they said they were going to give me, and it's what they delivered. Mostly.

The deal, as explained was, 60 percent of the cost of tuition at the most expensive school in the state you live, and 60 percent of $1,000, per school year, for books, and 60 percent of the Basic Allowance for Housing for an E5; living in the zip-code of the school being attended (so if I live in SF, and go to Cal State East Bay, I don't get SF BAH, I get Oakland; I can see that).

Which means, mmy tuition for a community college, ought to be covered? It's a whole lot less than the 1,700 my certificate says I am eligble for.

Nope. Seems the way the GI Bill was written, I am only entitled to 60 percent of my tuition covered; up to a maximum of 60 percent of the cost of attending a UC.

So I owe my school 40 percent of my tuition; even though the full cost is less than a quarter of what I could be collecting.

The reason this screws the Reserves is that; with the exception of those people who were in the service on 11 Sep 2001, and left the service before 11 Sep 2004, the only people this is biting is National Guard, and Reserve (Army/Marines/Navy/Air Force).

It's bullshit. Why? Because a reservist who spends 14 months deployed is in a lot tougher spot than a someone who spent 36 months stateside in the Active Army. Yes, it is that stark a difference.

If you are in an M-Day (i.e. reserve) slot, you are away from home when you get deployed. I know units who spent 12 months at Dugway Proving Grounds. They had all the financial hardships of not being able to maintain a business, lost money from pay differentials, time away from home/family (and some couldn't afford the money to arrange for visits, to the only thing which made it better than Afghanistan, or Iraq, was the sense of dread every time the news came on wasn't quite the same for the families).

But no. The reserves are second class. The money is budgeted, but it's not all going to be spent. A lot of people are doing just what I did; figuring out where to go based on the idea they could eliminate, or at least reduce, the amount of the gap between what was owed to them, and what the school cost.

I'd love to be at a UC studying Geology. Hah. I'm luckier than many. I am single. I have no dependents, no mortgage. I didn't have to file bankruptcy when my business folded because I was deployed. I am also a returning student. That's a big hurdle. Go look to see what money is available for grants and scholarships. The vast majority are limited to high-school students.

So making up the couple of thousand bucks required to cover the 60 percent gap, harder. I was looking at CalState schools because they are just as good (with the usual caveats of looking at the school) as the UC, when it comes to education (though not the reputation), and I was expecting to be able to cover pretty much everything, by way of tuition, from the GI Bill.

I earned it. I spent 416 days away from home. I had people trying to kill me. I did long hours, in uncomfortable surroundings. I have a permanent condition as a result. I know guys who lost businesses, homes, marriages.

And to save a few bucks some penny-pinching politician decided to screw us over?

The best part... they are patting themselves on the back, and getting all sort of praise for this, because the screwing over is quiet. It's lost in the fine print. I am able to go back to school because of this. So they can point to all the good it does; and who is to gainsay them?

But they're being cheap. It's pulling a Tommy on us, and it sucks.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!