A Tale of Two Jobs, or How My Job Ended Due To Idiocy.

Since September of 2007, I've been one of two tech support agents for a company called Mad Dog Multimedia. MDMM didn't hire directly for their stuff, they hired logistics companies to do the dirty work, and so I was contracted through a temp agency to one of these companies (which will remain anonymous).

Through several months of poor business management and the inability to execute the business properly, we suffered through dozens of angry pissed off customers, threatened legal actions, and just a lot of general unpleasantries. Yet we persevered, trying to make things right...

Read more after the jump...

The logistics company I was contracted to had done all they could within the realm of business decisions, and largely put ourselves at risk of massive business losses. Plainly put, we didn't get paid.

Well, a few months back or so, we were told that the decision to keep MDMM on as a customer would be made on or before April 15th--Tax Day. The reasoning behind this is apparently hoping that a large cash infusion would boost MDMM and allow business to resume as close to normal as possible. Such an influx of cash never happened.

April 10th (Friday) came, and no word had been heard from Mike Dendo, owner and CEO of MDMM. Okay, we thought, we still have a few days. April 14th (Monday) came, and no word as well. April 15th comes, and my supervisors had an executive meeting that was happening that same day. Texts/emails/calls were anxiously awaited, and more than half my shift had transpired before any word. Some time after lunch, I'm called down off the phones for a meeting.

We get the message that call center operations were to cease immediately, and no new email requests were to be honored, but to finish our pending conversations with customers. Okay, we thought, we don't have to talk on the phone to pissed off customers--awesome! We'd pretty much had it. We were stressed beyond reason, but yet we were hoping to get a last-minute call from Dendo saying "Guys, we have money! Let's get this rolling!" No such luck.

So, as of April 16th, we left the call center, save for a few pending conversations going on, and my coworker resumed his normal warehouse duties, and I roamed the warehouse looking for stuff to do. I have never worked in a warehouse, so I got stuck doing the cleaning work that no one else wanted to do... Dust on pallets months old... Luckily, on the 16th, I had an interview for Apple's iPhone support. That day after the interview, I was called back and offered the position.

I submitted my paperwork, got everything sent to them, they filed the background check, and all was well. I was leaving MDMM/warehouse on the 18th (Friday), and I had a job lined up to start on May 5th, giving me a nice two week vacation of sorts. Not to mention I had a show with my band, Low Flyer that night!

My wife decided that she wanted me to shave the goatee off--she'd forgot what I looked without it. While doing so, I received a call from the temp agency saying that Apple was scaling back the number of people they were hiring, and that they had decided to hire people that interviewed before me--quality of applicants apparently notwithstanding. Not good. Very not good.

And so goes the story of how I got laid off from two jobs in one day. If I hadn't had a show that night, I would've been even more upset. And if the show had been canceled I would've been even MORE pissed. But at least the show wasn't canceled, and we played well.

Too bad playing in the band wasn't my real job. :/

If anyone knows of any tech jobs in the Sacramento area, please, let me know. :D