Amongst the unemployed...*smiles*.....Souldrifter

Some of you may have been following my year long quest for the unemployment line but just in case you haven't got a clue about what I'm talking about, I'll brief you. (assuming you care, even if you don't and are bored, it's a pretty good story.)

I worked as the office manager for a small electrical contracting company. I was responsible for the bookkeeping, paying bills, payroll, ect. ect. I did this for 3 years. I worked for a father and son company. Things started going really bad exactly a year ago. Business slacked off. Money was tight. The father and son both pilfered money from the company so much so that bills couldn't be paid. We lost our supplier. The IRS came after us. The father and son had a falling out and the son quit the company. It was nasty for a while.

I tried to quit the first time about 6 months ago on the advise of a CPA, a Lawyer and the IRS representative. It looked like I was going to be held partially responsible for the debts of this company. I was considered an officer of this company. I found it difficult to quit because, at the time, I was the sole provider of my family and making very, VERY good money. Sometimes I had to wait to get paid but I had no choice.

Then my husband got a job a couple of months later and we moved almost 2 hours away from there. I quit my job again but the boss talked me into staying a couple more months until he was done with this out of town job he was doing. He made it worth my while. I cut back my work schedual and was making more money than ever. I was also spending up to 5 hours a couple of days a week driving. When he was done with the out of town job, I quit again, but he talked me into staying until he could form a new company. He needed me to do all the paper work and organization of the office. Once again, he made it worth my while. He has always been very appreciative and trusting of me and overly dependant of me, in my opinion. Sometimes it was uncomfortable, sometimes unnecessary.

It took longer than I expected to get this new company going but finally at the end of December, it was done. My obligations to both companys were nothing now. I was free. The boss still tried to keep me there but I was done. It has been 3 long years of stress and worry against his irresponsible management of his personal finances, causing the failure of his company. (did I mention this is his 4th attempt at a new company? Two of them already bankrupt) I hear from a reliable source that his weekly bar tab is more than his pay check. ALthough I have never seen him drink in the 3 years I've known him. I have known him to take thousands of dollars from the company for his trip to Vegas when I couldn't pay his insurance. I paid his wifes car loan payments, his mortgage, his home power bills and cable, his sons college payments, his christmas partys and gifts for his family, landscaping for his home, his familys cell phones, dinner partys at various restaurants for his family and even flowers sent to his girlfriend..yes, I said girlfriend, not his wife. All of this while I struggled to pay company bills and took phone calls from creditors yelling at me. All this while I begged suppliers not to cut us off and lowered myself to asking for advances from those who owed us so that I could keep the company going. But enough about that. *smiles*

One day in late December the boss came into my office a little more demanding than I liked. Apparently he had forgotten that I had to get up at 4:00 am and drive 2 1/2 hours to get there in the middle of a NY winter just to hold his hand because he's an idiot that can't answer his own phone. All the loyalty I had felt for this man who apprecaited me and paid me very well went out the window and I quit. I did manage to leave on good terms. He told me I would always have a job there. That was almost two weeks ago and he's only called me 6 times since. I had to go in one day to show him how to run the computer programs we use. I'm just now starting to feel unemployed and it feels good. My blood presure is down to almost normal now. I feel a peace I haven't felt in 3 years. This is great.

So I'm looking for employment now. I think I'm going to go back into the real estate biz. No more contractors for me. No more accounting/bookkeeping. That stuff is for the birds. Maybe I'll just be a lady of leasure for a while. *smiles*

I sleep later, play harder and my family is actually getting a decent meal once in a while.

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