Self-storage woes

    For a while, I worked for a self-storage company. One of the perks was a free 10x10 self-storage unit, which I very definitely took advantage of. The company was eventually bought out by another self-storage company, and we were told that the owners had negotiated some sort of deal where they couldn't immediately charge us full rate for our 10x10s, which was pretty nice of them. For the last several years, I have been paying less than $10/month for my space and trying to keep as low a profile as possible, so that no one noticed and did anything about it. Sadly, it seems my luck recently ran out. 

    In December, I got notice that my rent would be increasing to $60/month come May. Sucks, but in light of the heavy discount I'd been enjoying, I figured I'd just suck it up. Until I get a reminder that my February rent is due - I was pretty sure I'd paid a couple months ahead, because why not? I log in to check it and NOPE! I owe almost $100. What? They'd upped my rent to $117 without (I'd thought) giving me notice. 

   Naturally, I wanted some clarification here. I'd resigned myself to $60, but almost double that felt like a gut punch. Got on the website with their oh-so-helpful chat function and, after wading through the automated responses and getting assigned a real live person, was told that they couldn't do anything, I'd need to call this number. Which, of course, closed 7 minutes ago. Thank you, very helpful.

Luck and Hard Work

      "Oh, they just got lucky, they didn't earn that."

      "That person put a lot of hard work in, they deserve it!"

Personal two cents, the truth is often somewhere in between. 

Drafts - Work training

     As the year/ decade gets closer to the end, a lot of people are doing a 10 year look-back, mostly on Facebook and with pictures, comparing where they are now to where they were in 2010. While I'm not particularly interested in how I've physically changed, I decided to look back through old drafts that I started but never posted. Here's one from when I started my current job, in 2014 (updated to current time).

     Let me preface this with the insight that I had a LOT of jobs when I was teens/20s. I worked various roles at a couple Renaissance Faires, did temping/ office work in a wide variety of fields and locations, drove a range of trucks from pickups to 18 wheelers, food service, IT, customer service... basically I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do, so I just tried everything. Most of those jobs were entry level/ low skill, so training was on-the-job if at all. Every single job, barring trucking, went like this at the beginning:

Pictures vs words

     A gentleman came in to where I work recently, and struck up a conversation while he was waiting. After a while, it turned to the fact that I used to drive tow trucks, which means I try to drive more safely, having seen the results of reckless (i.e., wrecked) diving. That, of course, set off a chain reaction in my head which lasted most of the way home and ended up here.

     They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and while that may be true, I would argue that those thousand words are neither cohesive nor compelling. Consider this picture:

Looks ugly, huh? You can tell it was a pretty bad accident, and people probably got hurt. If you have enough time, you could probably tell the picture was taken in a dirt lot where other wrecked cars have been bought and stored. If you're a connoisseur of tow trucks, you might even be able to tell how it's hooked up to the truck that's dragging it. BUT. There's a huge story that you're missing out on, and that's where the human element comes in.