(E)mail Bomb

Today is one of my days off. When I returned to work from my (unpaid, grrr) maternity leave, I was very lucky to be able to wrangle a reduced schedule out of my boss... with a reduced wage, of course. That was fine with me since it was considerably cheaper to take a 20% reduction in pay and get a 4-day work week rather than paying for daycare full-time (no part-time daycare for infants - what a scam!). E-gads, I don't know how people do it, especially if they have more than one child to put there. Anyway, with Reuben and I working opposite shifts and juggling Olivia Duty, it hasn't been a problem. On the rare day that I have to bring her to the office with me, we have fun, even if I don't get any work done, and I think she enjoys the change of scenery.

Regardless of it being my day off, I still check my work email and voicemail. With the business of new construction being worse than slow, and real, live customers being few and far between, I can't afford to miss a single opportunity to give an interested party the information they need. Which is how I learned, VIA EMAIL, that (I think) I just kind of lost my job. First of all, WTF, Jim??? Nice management skills, dropping the bomb in an email. Of course, I can't fault him too much for not leaving me a voicemail instead since my crappy accounts payable department is late paying the phone bill AGAIN, and the phone lines have been temporarily disconnected.

Anyway, Jim's Evil Email basically said that we can either close the showroom or I can work from home and collect a straight 8% commission on any sales that I bring in. Since I need a steady, reliable income and working solely on commission isn't either of those, it looks as though I will be closing my showroom. When, you ask? I don't know. I've responded to his email but he has yet to respond to me to set up a time to discuss it all over the phone. Judging by this typical response, I'll still be employed when the showroom lease comes up in September because Jim will simply never have gotten back to me about my termination.

The positive side of losing my job, if I am actually terminated soon, is that I will qualify for the No Worker Left Behind program and can return to school to finish my degree or earn a new one for free - which will put my current student loan payback on hold, which will make it less likely that my house will go into foreclosure. Now, if we could just carry out this dreaded phone conversation some time soon so that I can stop basting my guts in stomach acid and anticipation...