This is Basically What Working for The University Was Like

I couldn't take it.

I've had experience with this

Over the years, I've learned that Dilbert isn't really a comic strip. It's more of a documentary.

At the university I worked for, while it was not specifically stated, we were basically to get approval for all activity participated in outside of work. If your extracurricular activities did not meet their approval (some of these included such things as attending an unapproved church, or starting a relationship with a blacklisted individual) they began to try to force that person out. If the mistreatment didn't either get the person to change their life to meet the boss' approval, or quit, charges for firing would be trumped up.

I knew this was happening long before I got fired. I committed several serious betrayals. I took part in a case of whistleblowing, when they fired the whistleblower (since she was a student employee, and at will, they could fire her without saying why), I took her side and tried to help her. Finally I committed the ultimate betrayal. I married her.

They, of course couldn't let that stand. Seven months after I married her (and we went to some significant lengths to hide our relationship from them), they fired me.

As they went through the process of firing me, my department director had a meeting with me to "determine if there was a way I could be returned to work". It was a part of the state mandated appeal process for all classified state employees. I recorded that meeting.

When he determined that he would fire me (he's the one that made the decision anyway), he had to submit it to the university vice president. In that letter, he outright lied, and I had the recording to prove it.

I appealed further, and nearly all of the charges against me were thrown out. Only one remained. One suspicious thing however. The hearing officer delivered his decision two weeks later than he said he would. It made me wonder if there were some sort of coercion going on.

I wanted to appeal further, but that would have required at least another $5000, and I just didn't have it. Of course, since the hearing officer only had the authority to put me back to the same position, I'd pretty much decided that I didn't want to go back to work for such an abusive place.

In the end, I'm happier not working for them. Of course, I'm not through dealing with them. I've managed to collect some evidence that they are actively trying to prevent me from getting another job. I don't have enough to prove it, but some interviewers have asked me some interesting questions.

In truth, as one of my collected quotes says. "I realized recently that my personal happiness and sanity are worth far more than anything an employer can pay me, and that nothing is worth that twisting feeling you get in your gut every morning as you drag yourself out of bed and to a job you can't stand."
-- MC Langston

I'm Getting My Confidence Back. Part 2

Some time ago, I wrote that I was getting my confidence back.  It is interesting, but it's still true and, this time, I've realized something interesting.  I am a substitute teacher, and I am doing well, despite having zero training to be a teacher.  OK, the kids sometimes walk over me, but that is how it works with subs. The thing is, I don't often get called in on the carpet for anything, and I am working most every day. I maintain decent classroom discipline, and generally follow the lesson plan (when there is one).

It was noted last night that a substitute teaching job is healing me.  A job that is widely considered one of the most thankless and unfortunate jobs available, a job in which I receive daily abuse at the hands of near feral children, a job that barely pays me minimum wage, a job that has me essentially on call during school hours, a job for which I have no training, is somehow healing me.

This raises the question, if being a substitute teacher is healing me, making me feel better about myself and about the world in general, and has has erased the constant stress and anxiety about going to work, how bad was my previous job? 

I really can't say, because I was in that environment for so long and, until now, that's how jobs seemed to be.  My boss was someone I once had respect for, and who I had considered an ally.  I was wrong.  I will be very careful with whom I ally myself again.

What I can say is that I am happier now than I ever have been in any job.  I wish substitute teaching paid well enough I could make a living, however I have discovered something very interesting.  I enjoy the "difficult" classes.  I taught at an alternate school today.  The kids were problematic, but I seem to be able to make them respond.  On several other occasions I've taught regular special ED, or resource room.  It is for the slightly slower kids. Again, I've enjoyed it. Strangely though, what I enjoy most is the DLP or Developmental Learning Program. Or the program for children with severe mental deficiencies.  Some are severely autistic, some have other issues.  Some are basically infants with teenage bodies. It is very difficult work, but somehow very rewarding.   I'm thinking seriously of applying for the position.of an aide in the program.  It doesn't pay much, but it does get benefits, and I would feel good about the work.

No matter what, I'm glad I'm through with that university.

How I Became a Gun Owner

I am an enthusiastic gun owner.  I have been for  about six years.  The question becomes "Why does someone in his 30's suddenly decide to start acquiring guns?"

My journey toward gun ownership is rather inextricable from my journey toward conservatism.   For much of my life, I thought of myself as a liberal.  I wasn't really, but I hadn't come to that realization yet.  I am and was raised in a Mormon household, and hold to those beliefs.  Already, anyone familiar with traditional Mormon beliefs can see that I was far from being an actual liberal, but my parents were firm Democrats.  My father, as well as my grandfather, were railroaders, and union men.   Then I started to get some actual life experience.

When I was young, I had only a little interest in guns.  It wasn’t that I was anti-gun, but is pretty apathetic toward gun ownership.  I generally felt that some sort of gun-control was necessary to prevent insane individuals from entering into public places and shooting unarmed people.  I had no idea how this was to be done.

My first shooting experience was when I was about 7.  I was playing with the next door neighbor. He was a bit older than me, and had a BB gun.  He let me shoot it a couple of times.  I had asked my dad for one, but he didn't want to get me one.  He said that they were too dangerous, but upon reflection, I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to go to the effort it would have taken to teach me how to use it properly.  It took too much away from TV watching.  I would be left to do all of my shooting activities in the Cub and Boy Scouts for the next little while.

I next did a little shooting at a Cub Scout day camp.  My dad didn't seem to mind, which would tend to confirm my belief that he just didn't want to be bothered.  Of course, since I was young, I didn't realize that it was an excuse.

It would be a few years before I would be able to do any more shooting.  The summer I was 12, my cousin came from Kansas City for a visit.  He had gone to scout camp, and had tried for his Rifle and Shotgun merit badge and failed to get it.   He was on the competitive side (but nothing compared to his father my uncle E) we had been doing some other sporting activity.  I have always sucked at sports.  My cousin was more gifted.  He had to be.  If he weren't his father would have never have even claimed him.

We had been doing something something sports related.  I don't remember what it was, but I hadn't done it before, and I sucked at it.  My cousin made fun of me, and rather pissed me off.  I had already registered to go to scout camp, and it was coming up in a couple of weeks.  I had signed up for several merit badges, but I decided then and there that I would do whatever I could to get MY merit badge.  I had to do something better than he could.

When I went to Scout Camp, I started working on all of my Merit Badges.  Unfortunately I needed to spend so much time at the range that I could only work on a single other Merit Badge.  I managed to get Rifle and Shotgun. It took a lot of work, a lot of .22 ammo, most of my time for the whole week, and a lot of help from my Scoutmaster.

When my cousin heard that I had gotten a sports related merit badge that he couldn't get, he was somewhat annoyed, but my uncle E was livid.  He couldn't stomach that I had done something better than his spawn. 

The next year, he brought a BB gun when he came to visit, and we borrowed one from my Grandpa, and we ran around the neighborhood having fun.  We weren't exactly responsible, but nothing bad happened.  The next Christmas, I asked my Grandma for a BB gun, and I got a decent Daisy repeater air rifle.  My cousin got one like it.  By then he had moved much closer, so we saw each other more frequently.  We had great fun with our guns.

Over the next few years, I kept the squirrels out of the nut and fruit trees around the neighborhood, I did a lot of target shooting, and in general had fun.

Then I got into computers.  The BB gun went to storage, and I played with my computer.  I finished High School, and went to a year of college.  Then I went on my mission.

On my mission, I went to the Dominican Republic, and then because I got sick, I was sent to Maryland. Here was where I started my journey toward conservativism.  In the Dominican Republic, I encountered actual poverty.  Although I didn't really connect it until later, I witnessed the actual effects that the "evil American capitalists" were having on that country.  They were building factories, and paying the workers.  They were paying what we would consider slave wages, but were about five times the going wages from local employers.  Hideous I know.

Even worse, their employees weren't as productive as they could be because they were sick, so they bullied and bribed the local government into providing proper sanitation, and they provided classes in home sanitation.  They built apartments for employees and their families to live in, so they could get out of the palm frond, or even garbage huts they lived in before.  The apartments had flush toilets and running water, rather than having to use a communal latrine.  They had kitchens, rather than having to cook over charcoal purchased that day.  There was refrigeration, rather than having purchase food fresh daily.  Then they taught them how to use and maintain these things.

Of course they didn’t just give the people these things.  They gave them the opportunity to work for them.  Simply giving someone something makes them dependent, and doesn’t turn out as good of workers. They were taught to earn it for themselves, and that they could keep what they earned.

When I went to Maryland.  I met some actual liberals.  It was in Maryland that I first realized that I wasn't all that liberal, but I couldn't admit it to myself.  I met radical feminists, militant homosexuals, and the like.  I still thought of myself as a Democrat, but I realized that I was nothing like a liberal.  I still held a rather anti-capitalist attitude, and felt that I was somehow better than people motivated by money.

After I came home, I started into the local university, and received a wonderfully socialistic indoctrination.   I got involved in Linux, and the Open Source/Free Software movement.  What these are, and the difference between them is beyond the scope of this article, but perhaps one day, I’ll write a little more about that.  To keep matters short, I became deeply involved in the advocacy of Open Source or Free Software.  Some individuals in these movements have very socialistic leanings, and tend to be a little heavy handed in their advocacy.  I began to notice some of this behavior, and started to wonder.  That is not to say that the Open Source movement is socialistic.  There is also a very prominent libertarian faction, as well as a small number of conservatives.

The Clinton administration didn't help the liberal cause.  Clinton was a slime ball, and I became rather antipathetic toward politics.  I had voted for Ross Perot the first time, because I couldn't bring myself to vote Republican, and Clinton was so bad. I even considered starting the "anti-incumbent" party, which would endorse whoever wasn't the incumbent, or lacking an incumbent, whoever wasn't in the incumbent party.  In the case of a third party candidate, the endorsement would go to that candidate if he stood a chance of winning, or if a particular winner was basically a foregone conclusion.

Then came my first real realization as to some of my particular problems with liberalism.  I was doing my taxes.  I had an actual job, and although I wasn’t earning a lot, I was earning some.  I did my taxes, and didn’t understand a lot of it.  I did know how much I had paid in however.  Somehow I had gotten back three times what I put in.  That didn’t seem right.  I checked it again, very carefully.  The numbers checked out.  I found this part called “Earned Income Credit.”  Without that part, the numbers looked about right.  I asked my mother about it, and come to find out this is a feature.

I eventually mentioned it to some of the more liberal students and professors at the university.  I was told that it was a wonderful program for redistributing wealth.  I had a serious problem with that.  First, the government is stealing money from those who did earn it, and giving it to people who, like me, did not earn it.  I had a serious problem with that.

For the most part, however, I remained apathetic.  I was uninvolved in politics in general.  Then came September 11th.  That was really a turning point for me.  Evan Sayet said it better than I could.  In "How Modern Liberals Think", he gives a parable.   He tells about a guy who is always complaining about his wife. He's always talking about how terrible his wife is.  Now his friend is talking to him one day in a restaurant, and looks out the window, and sees his wife being beaten by a gang.  He says "Come on, your wife is being beaten, let's go help her".  The man says "No, whatever it is, I'm sure she deserved it."

This was my experience on 9/11.  We were attacked, thousands of Americans died in a cowardly and unprovoked attack, and the response I heard from people in the university I where I was working and going to school.  I heard how we deserved it, and the implication of how those who worked there also deserved it.  I saw the media deliberately distorting the story, and deliberately sanitizing it to make it seem less horrific than it was

That was when I truly realized that liberalism was completely bankrupt morally, ethically, and in every other way conceivable.  I began to reexamine other viewpoints that I had shared with those "people."

I had also watched a show on the History Channel about Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle.  He was a communist, and wrote The Jungle, not to showcase the need for an FDA like I was taught in school, but to show the evils of capitalism.   I had seen how badly communism had failed, but the History Channel show made it sound like a good deal.  It actually made me a bit sick.  The real telling thing was when I first tuned in.

I had been raised by union workers.  I had been taught how great unions are.  In the show, it showed a dramatization of Upton Sinclair (although I hadn't been watching long enough to know who the show was talking about) going to a  meeting.  I hadn’t figured out even what the show was, but they had speaker spouting pro-worker propaganda.  It was some of the same things I’d heard when listening to my father or grandfather talk about unions.  I was only half watching, but I figured it was a union organization meeting. When I found out it was actually a depiction a communist rally, I was somewhat disturbed that it was basically impossible to tell the difference between union propaganda, and communist propaganda.

Along about this time, I had another epiphany.  I was on my way to pick up my paycheck, and was thinking about how I had no problem paying taxes.  They weren't that much, and they did a lot of good.  When I went to pick up my check, I looked at how much my gross pay was.  I had done it before, but I had never really taken stock of just how much the government was stealing from me.  I wasn't making that much, but was having more than a third confiscated from me.  I would get some of it back in tax return, but only a small fraction of it and, of course, there is the promise of social security when I retire, but I'm starting to think that wishing on a star might be a more reliable retirement plan.

I began to become interested in my rights, and I started to read about the philosophies that this country was founded on.  I found web pages by geeks, like myself, who were not liberals, and started to read what they had to say.  I started to think about getting a gun, as it was clear to me that gun ownership was the most effective way for the populace to guard against tyranny.  The problem was that guns aren't cheap.  If someone tells you they are, either they've looked somewhere I've never been able to find, they're lying, or they have no idea what they're talking about.   Whenever I had money, it went toward more computer equipment.

By this time, I had basically become a conservative.  I was watching what the liberals said, and did.  I was watching how it worked. I was observing history, and noting that we were repeating it.  We were allowing our country to move toward a more statist stance.  I began to wonder if gun ownership and perhaps violent revolution may, one day, be necessary to restore our liberties.

Then one day, I had a minor lapse of sanity.  My mother and my aunt go to yard sales every Saturday during the summer.  I tended to lose sanity and go with them once per year.  I had my sanity lapse this day.  We were checking out yard sales, and I was becoming annoyed with myself and my mother and my aunt.  They were checking out the dumbest yard sales, and staying forever at places that had nothing.

Then we stopped at a yard sale, and I saw a semi-auto .30-06 rifle.  I wasn't particularly initiated into guns at the time, so I had no idea what kind it was (and I can't remember enough about it now to tell), or if it was in any kind of good shape.  It was only a couple of hundred dollars, I passed.  I wasn't thinking clearly because I was upset.

Later I started considering the political situation.  John Kerry was running for president, and it was looking like he had a chance.  He had gone on the record as to supporting all manner of gun-control.  I wanted to get a gun before he had a chance to screw everything up.  I was kicking myself for passing on that rifle at the yard sale.

I spoke to my father and grand-father about it.  Since I had a fair amount of money at the time, I could actually afford several guns.  We decided to make the rounds on gun stores to see what they had.  There was one problem however.  I have poor vision in my right eye, I have to shoot rifles left handed.  We needed a semi-auto, a pump action, or a left-handed bolt.  I had no idea at the time, but left-handed bolt action rifles are a bit of a rarity, and generally must be special ordered.

We hit a couple of gun shops in the area, and I didn't seen what I wanted.  Then we hit a Sports Authority.  Someone had ordered a Remington 700 BDL left handed bolt there at least a year earlier, and had never picked it up.  They were practically giddy when I wanted to buy it.  It was taking up space, and although it's an excellent firearm, a left-handed gun isn't nearly as easy to sell.

Over the next little while, I acquired several more guns.  Both pistols and rifles. I started reloading, and now reload for everything I shoot, I acquired a concealed weapons license.  I read everything I could about various types of guns, ammunition, and I acquired several books.  I began to advocate for the Second Amendment, and I joined the NRA.

I have not been able to go shooting as often as I would like, and I haven't done any reloading in over a year and a half, as life has gotten complicated, but I still love guns and shooting.  I still carry habitually when I can, and I'm saving for more training.  I've convinced my wife to get a concealed weapons license, and we're currently waiting for that to come through.

I'm Getting My Confidence Back.

This post requires some background.  As I've stated before, I worked tech support for about 15 years for a university.  As I worked, I gained a lot of confidence.  I became very good at my job.  For reasons I don't want to get into, I upset some powerful people.  I came down on the wrong side of some politics, and took part in exposing some very embarrassing and illegal actions on the part of some of my bosses.  Shortly after that, things at work got very, very bad.

Before long, they started to find a lot of problems with my work.  If anything wasn't perfect, I was called in and reprimanded.  I was reprimanded when my supervisor would find a single chair out of place in a computer lab, or a single piece of paper on the floor.  It didn't matter that I had to take care of labs all over the university campus, and it took a minimum of an hour to even walk to all of the labs.

The abuse I experienced got more and more severe, until I wanted to quit, but I had just gotten married (actually, my  choice of wife was part of their problem with me, but I don't want to get into that right now) and my quitting in the middle of a a recession with unemployment that (when counted using the same criteria) is actually higher than during the Great Depression didn't seem like a good option.  I needed the insurance, and I needed an income, and I didn't feel that I could get a job so easily.  The only way I could get by was to either keep working, or get fired and get unemployment.

I believe that they wanted to make it bad enough that I had to quit.  I was determined not to quit.  The abuse led me to having an anxiety disorder.  I went on Effexor, a drug commonly used for anxiety disorders.  It also has serious side effects, including rather severe sexual side effects that make it rather unpleasant for someone newly married.

When I was finally fired, I fought it.  I took it as far as I could, but I didn't have the money to continue on, so I was forced to abandon my fight.  The blessing however was that I could go off of the meds, and I began to feel better.

What I didn't realize however was just how much my confidence was shattered.  I knew intellectually that I was in the right, but emotionally, I often wondered if it really was my fault.  Since I was fired for incompetence, I wondered if I really was incompetent.

After six months of looking for more tech support jobs, in desperation, I took a substitute teaching job,.  Since then, I have had great success, and generally made the schools I've worked for happy with my performance.  Now I don't pretend that I know much about teaching.  I've never had any training for any kind of teaching, but considering how much training I've had, I feel very good about how I've done.

What I've seen myself do has convinced me that it wasn't me.  It was them.  My confidence is returning, and I am feeling better about myself.  Now I know that I am a competent worker, and can excel at what I try. 

The question is "Now What?"  The way I see it, I have two choices.  I, most likely, can not pursue further action against the university, as the time has run out, so I can either let the whole thing die, or pursue individual lawsuits against my former bosses individually.  It was, after all, their abuse that led to my problem, and they did conspire to fire me without actual cause.  I'm sure that there is something there, but again I would need to hire a lawyer to do it.  Now I do have a good lawyer, but he doesn't work for free, so at the moment I'm stuck.

There are some other options that don't involve the legal system, and they might work.  This particular university is getting hit again and again with charges of corruption.  So far, the local media has covered up for them, so perhaps someone else should step up, and expose all of the problems.

The local paper will occasionally report on the problems there, but they spin it.  They also have a tendency to 'accidentally' delete old stories from their archives. What I did found, however, is that the local library keeps back issues of the newspaper.  Maybe I should go there and extract all of the stories I can find, and put them in an easily accessible location.

I've not had a significant number of visitors yet, but if anyone does find this post, I would appreciate any advice.

Update:  I just ran across the term "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress".  I'll have to look into that a bit more.

Welcome to "Recovering From Tech Support"

Hello, I'm FormerTech.  I used to work tech support for a state run university in the northwestern United Staes.  For reasons I don't currently care to explain, I got out of it, and am seeking other opportunities.  I noticed many problems in our current university system, and with both the faculty and administration.  Students aren't coming out of the university educated.  They can parrot socialist-progressive propaganda, but know little about anything else.  The average university senior knows nothing of U.S. history.  I've even heard the argument that the Japanese attack on Perl Harbor was in retaliation for the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. 


If you speak out on any problems however, you must be very careful.  They can't abide opposition, and they're very vindictive when you cross them.  I've seen multiple professors fired, or forced to change departments. 

Of course the University culture wasn't the only problem. Far too many people are morons when it comes to computers.  The problem isn't that they haven't learned as much as I have, but that they refuse to apply logic and intelligence to solving their own problems.

The combination led me to seek mental health care, and put me on multiple anti-anxiety medications.  Almost as soon as I left, I was able to stop the meds, and despite not having money, I'm happier than I've been in years.