Finally he got a job!

Tired Mom

Member
Trying not to get excited but difficult child finally got a job! Today he had an interview and they told him they would let him know on Monday but he just texted us that they called him and they want him to start tomorrow. Its not perfect its only 20 hours per week but they said potentially it could become full time.
Baby steps forward. It took 3 months but today he took a baby step.

My husband is convinced that he is going to lose his job this year. His co-workers have had to move around the world to find employment in his field one to Sweden and one in China. Perfect Child is a freshman and adamant that he wants to graduate from his current high school. I work at a University and we have been thinking that perfect child will use my free tuition option for him. I have been picturing dear husband moving away and me dealing with difficult child and perfect child all by myself for the next 7 plus years. The thought is beyond stressful. I pray that difficult child finds a way to stay where he is. The job is a step in the right direction.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
That's encouraging that he got a job. I do hope it will work out well for him.
As for the rest, your husband's job, it's good to be prepared but don't dwell too much on it. It's possible that it may happen, thus good to have an idea what to do but it hasn't happened so you don't want to lend to much worry to it.
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Good news about your son's job! As far as your husband's job, could he start looking elsewhere as a preemptive stike?
 

Tired Mom

Member
Thanks Tanya and Kathy for the support. Yes my husband has started putting feelers out. When we moved out East for my husbands job it was a group of 27 people. It is now down to just him. They keep outsourcing more and more of his work. He has survived so many rounds of layoffs but from what he is telling me now I can tell that he really doesn't believe he will survive the next round. Unless he is vey lucky it is likely that he will take a large pay cut and move into much worse working conditions for his next job so it hard to want to leave before they lay him off. If difficult child didn't have legal issues it might have been a good thing for difficult child to move somewhere else with my husband but difficult child has one more year of PTI.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
It's always good when difficult child gets a job. I hope he learns how to be a valued employee and this boosts his self esteem and gives him reason to stay on the right path.

I'm sorry about your husband's job future. That has to be stressful for both of you. I hope he finds something soon, it must be extremely difficult when you work in a specialized field. Are there any head hunting firms that deal in his field?
 

Tired Mom

Member
Hi Nancy - It was nice difficult child called last when he was walking home from work to tell us about his job and he was in a really good mood. He seemed excited to be able to tell his counselor about the job next week. He has had 2 jobs where I know he was happy and his supervisors both had a lot of praise for him. The third job was with his roommate's fathers construction company and I don't anything about that job since that was the job where he walked out of our house so that he could do drugs.

For my difficult child the biggest challenge is the social skills required to get a job. I saw the job posting of the job he got and it was perfect for him because I think the hours would work for very few people and he wouldn't have much competition.
 

stressedmama

Active Member
Great news for your Difficult Child! I'm very sorry about your husband's job. The head hunting things sounds like a good idea. Is this a possibility?
 

Tired Mom

Member
Hi stressed Mama - My husband did talk to a head hunter the other day. The head hunter had independently contacted my husband about a job he had but it really was to low of a level for my husband but my husband asked him to keep him in mind. For today he still has a job and he's keeping his eyes open.

Of course when it rains it pours. An issue came up today at my job that really is the fault of several people but everybody is trying to protect themselves and I can tell that some people think there best bet would be to blame me. I am worried because I think it might be used as an excuse to fire me. It is a long story but our former director and current director are sworn enemies and the current director makes crazy comments that we are protecting our old boss and you can tell that he doesn't trust and me and the one other employee who didn't leave when he took over. If I didn't witness myself I wouldn't believe how crazy my work environment is. It is widely known at the University how abusive our current director is but because he is one of top 3 people at the University in bringing in grant money he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. There have been lawsuits for abuse that University has paid off. I have been in a meeting with President of University financial advisor and without me saying anything about our environment the person started telling me that they knew what a terrible work environment I was in and that I should get a tape recorder to protect myself. About 4 weeks ago my direct boss was ready to go Human resources with me and another employee and demand that we be moved. She talked to our director and he changed a little so she didn't have us act on it. Sigh it feels like everything is sort of swirling out of control. Must take each day one day at a time. Really it would be good to leave my current job but with difficult child issues and now my husbands worries about his job the timing is really bad.

On a positive note yesterday difficult child and his counselor called and of course she was thrilled that he finally found a job. It also came up that the owner of the halfway house wants to make difficult child the house manager when the current one leaves. I want to be happy for him about that since it means half price rent but depending on what the responsibilities of the house manager are I would think it would be difficult for difficult child because of his social skills. difficult child really needs as much money as he can make and it was a little troubling that the job posting had said that the hours would be 11:30 to 2:30 buy he was already home at 2:20. difficult child is happy in his halfway house and yesterday indicated he would like to stay there as long as possible. The longest he can continue with the center he goes to for counseling is May but the counselor said the half way house is separate from the center. He is in pre trial intervention program with one more year and if he isn't going to the counseling I don't if they will allow him to stay in the half way house out of state. I think we may need to touch base with difficult child's attorney.
 

stressedmama

Active Member
Oh Tired Mom. The hits just keep on coming. I am so sorry. The last thing you need on top of all the other stuff is to feel your job is in jeopardy too.

I know exactly how you feel. My H and I work together. The current GM is running this place into the ground and seems to be trying to run H and out rather than relying on our experience and expertise (we are literally the top 2 producers in the company). Without us, the place would have shut down a long time ago. Our daughter worked with us but they never really wanted her here (too much of our family-too much power?) They fired her last month and she is actually speaking to a JAG lawyer about it as they really did not follow the law when she left for and came back from deployment. That's another whole story.

H and I make good money working for this company and I know they are trying to figure out how to replace me with someone with a much lower salary. They've already cut my pay once as revenue was so down. Now they are trying to cut H's pay.

I know exactly what you're saying about having a crazy boss. Her brother and sister in law own the company but they live 1500 miles away and have "retired" and said very frankly, they don't care. They just don't give a crap and would rather sell the biz than try to fix the problem. It astounds me that they put so many years, blood, sweat and tears into this company and are now ready to watch it go under....no one is going to want to buy it in it's current state. And if they did, they would fire everyone (they've done it with other agencies recently)

I digress. Just wanting you to know you are not alone. Keep your chin up. Control what you can. Hope for the best on the rest of it. And make sure you look out for YOU.

Hugs for your hurting heart.
 

Tired Mom

Member
Stressed mam - thanks for the support. Sorry that you are in a difficult work situation as well. I didn't sleep the night that the incident at work happened. I don't know if it was the right thing but when my direct supervisor started making comments that morning that made it obvious that she was going to throw me under the bus to protect herself I proactively went to the other manger talked her through all the people that were responsible for what happened which was 5 people including myself. I laid out the solution to make sure it never happened again. I think helped myself at least temporarily. I was sort of eavesdropping and heard the director talking about the situation with this manager and he said something about sabotage. Sigh which is what he has accused the other person who stayed of doing. Sabotage is the farthest from what we do.

Back to my son Friday around 7 we received a text from my son that he is going to call around 10. I automatically get worried since he never calls on his own unless he needs something. Luckily there wasn't a problem. He just wanted to talk about his job. It turned out that even though the job was advertised as a 20 hour position they have already had him work 40 hours in the first week. Friday he worked a 11 hour day. The job is shiny and new right now and he was in such a good mood. So often it is hard get my son to talk but it was such a gift hearing him talk about everything Friday.
 

stressedmama

Active Member
I'm so happy for you the call went well on Friday...and he's getting 40 hours! WOW! Great start!!

And for what it's worth, I'm proud of you for standing up for yourself with the job situation...WAY TO GO!!
 
It's sad how we get excited for something so "normal". I wish my son had a job. He is couch surfing with friends - he didn't want to abide by our rules. He is 21 and if you count all the time he has worked, it hasn't hardly added to a year of his life. So terrible. Of course, he was in college for some of that time. When I look at where he could be in May of this year, it is so sad. In May, he could be graduating from college if he wouldn't have gotten into drugs and quit going to class. He could have graduated with an extra $15,000 to $20,000 because of the way his full-ride scholarships worked too. I need to look on the positive side. My husband could most likely get him a job at the place he works (which would be a really good job) but he isn't ready to pass the drug test. :(
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
Wow tiredmom your work situation sounds like it could erupt in some bad publicity and lawsuits at some point. Just from what you have said we have had similar situations here at a couple of our universities. I've seen situations like this where I worked also and do often the best employees get hurt . I hope you can protect yourself and get out of that dept before anything happens.

I'm thrilled your son seems to like his job. They obviously are happy with him if they are working him more hours than originally planned.
 

Tired Mom

Member
Can I just say I hate the stress that difficult child brings to our lives. Monday around 4:20 pm difficult child called with counselor. It came up that difficult child hadn't called parole officer yet for February. Monday was the last day in February that difficult child would be going to counselor in February and I was pretty sure that parole officer would be gone for the day at 4:30. difficult child texted later that he left a message with parole officer. I asked him if he could try to call again the next day to talk to her in person to make sure she received the message. When difficult child left for rehab parole officer said she didn't receive the voice mail messages we left. difficult child has not texted us since I sent him the text asking him to contact parole officer again. I am guessing he did not bother to try to call her again. He doesn't like making any type of phone calls and his parole officer is abrasive so I am guessing calling her is the last thing he wants to do.

The other thing that came up in Monday is that he wants to come back home in the Fall and go back school. I was more worried about trying to make sure he called the parole officer that we didn't talk to much about it. In the past we would have happily paid for him to go to school. (If he had tried in high school he could have got free tuition at University I work at.) Now I have hard time seeing anything good of him coming back here and going back to the community college he had attended. When we picking up his clothes from his apartment after his overdose his roommate was telling us how he was going back to this same school part time. I am almost certain they would hook up again.

Ok the final thing is to help with difficult child with his job search we set up a gmail account for difficult child. In addition to the text I sent him I sent him an e-mail. I went ahead and looked in the gmail account to see if he read my e-mail which he hadn't. difficult child hasn't used this e-mail account for anything besides e-mailing resumes so I didn't feel to bad about looking in this account. I know shouldn't have looked but I did. I clicked around and realized I could see the history of videos on you tube he is watching. Unfortunately I can see that he has started watching videos about something called saliva which apparently is a legal physadellic (sp?).
It is so disappointing to see this. It reminds me so much of the time when he lived at home and I came home and saw on home computer that he had watched a video about combining red bull and alcohol and then later that night it was very obvious that was what he had done that day.

I am trying to prepare myself mentally that he most likely will screw up his PTI and that there is nothing I can do about it. I am preparing myself that we most likely will have to pay the $15,000 bond that he is out on. I am preparing myself for all of the ugly things that come with substance abuse.

I am telling myself I need to work on myself. There are so many things I can improve about me. I need to find a job in a non abusive environment. I need to exercise more. I need to improve my diet. There is nothing that I can do to save him. It hurts so much.
 

in a daze

Well-Known Member
The herb is salvia. My son was into it at one time.

Not much to add. Get some support for yourself like a therapist, or a support group.

Hugs and best wishes to you as you go through this challenging time with your difficult child.
 
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