My weekend was stellar. Tried to buy my keyboard at Fry's. That was a laugh. Not only did the salesguy not speak English (which I have no problem with, except when your job requires you to converse with English speaking customers like myself) he naturally had no idea what I was talking about. So I'll have to buy it from one of these cheesy ergo places that only do orders over the phone. Blech.

In my former life, I worked for an unidentified mall based athletic shoe and apparel reseller. It was sort of fun but also the most draining time in my life. I would work anywhere from 50-80 hours a week, with 95% of those hours on my feet. The long standing helped me keep my weight down but the vericose veins sure didn't help me get any dates. But I digess. It was the most politic-ridden place I've ever worked (even Beyond was better than this place. And yet I stuck with it, not trusting that I was smart enough to do anything else. Towards the end, I knew that I would be leaving (at the time I thought I was moving to Ohio) so I wasn't as concerned about my longevity there and I was desperate for money. I won't go into the details, but I did some things that while not illegal, were questionable on a moral level. The extra money that I got from my shady show dealings was just barely enough to cover my moving costs so I'm still glad that it worked out. But a lot of people got fired because of the things I was doing (and inspired others to do) so I don't have a lot of fans from that life.

One of the guys who lost his job was 50, he'd been working retail for his whole life. I don't think he went to college, it just didn't occur to him. He'd been with this multi-national conglomerate for 13 years and it seemed to be the only thing he knew. Being around him made it clear to me that I needed to do more with my life than retail. When he lost his job, his first reaction was to sue the evil district manager. Feeling the guilt that my Catholic upbringing gave me so well, I told him I'd help in the lawsuit. But then I started thinking about it and realized that it would be a bad idea. So I apologized profusely but told him I couldn't help.

That was over 3 years ago and yet he won't leave me alone. Yes, I feel horrible that this man and others lost their jobs. But he knew what I was doing and didn't stop it. I've gone on to a 'real' job, earning four times what I did then. There's no reason he couldn't do the same. I've asked him to leave me alone, apologized in person, via email and over the phone but that's not enough. The man is driven to see the Evil District Manager fry. Karmically, he did fry. He got fired and his wife left him. That's enough for me, but not for the other guy.

I thought I'd blocked him from every method of communication with me but I'd left out one option. This morning I came in to see an instant message from him that said 'thanks liz, I appreciate your help.' I guess he lost his case. Duh, we did stuff that was wrong and got caught. How can you turn that into a settlement? I just want this guy to leave me alone. It scares me that he was so driven by this, that he couldn't leave it behind and move on.