Category Archives: I’m pretty PO’ed

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I’m a tax payer too.

I shouldn’t have to write this because quite frankly, it’s truly no one’s business what goes on in my life behind closed doors. I have always been a private person.

Always.

I feel that we live in a day and age where there is no such thing as boundaries anymore. I get hate mail from random strangers because they don’t care for the images I post on my Facebook photography page. I get messages from strange men who are trying to stalk my friends. I get friend requests from people I have never heard of and pile of Instagram followers who are only following me in the hopes that I will follow them back or buy their wraps, nail stickers, sex toys or followers.

No thank you. 

I put myself out there in some ways because it’s good business sense. I’m working on cultivating my brand and getting my name out there while completing my studies. Which for all intents and purposes would technically mean: I’m self employed. I’m also a student.

Which was born and bred out of necessity. After I lost my job in 2014, I foolishly assumed that I would get another one in no time at all. I was a Chef, getting another job is super easy.

Until it wasn’t.

I hadn’t worked in an actual full blown restaurant in over a decade. The last five years of my career spent in a private daycare. People like to assume that was an easy, ‘cushy’ job. Sometimes it was, more often than not, not so much. My CV game was on point. The first 40 CV’s I sent out, not a peep. Which is odd, given the sheer amount of restaurant jobs in this city. So I adjusted my CV and used the acronym for my previous employer instead. Figured I was still being honest and it would at the very least, get my foot in the door.

Which worked, for a little while. Until I got to the interview. 

It was almost comical to see the looks on their faces when they asked what was ‘insert acronym here’. It’s mind blowing that people automatically assume that I make copious amount of KD and call it a day. No really, someone asked me that. Or there was the ‘ your CV looks great, but we’re afraid you’re over qualified’. OK well then why, oh why DID YOU CALL ME FOR AN INTERVIEW?!? Did they not bother to actually read my CV? Bus tickets cost money and my savings were starting to dwindle quickly.

So I revamped my CV once again. Except this time I left a lot of things out. Anything I felt that would imply that I was over qualified was gone. It did not however disguise the fact that I hadn’t worked as a line cook in forever (some things you can’t hide). So I went on countless interviews, all of which went swimmingly until the fact that I hadn’t worked on a line in forever came up. I had four opportunities before me, only four people out of the 100+ CV’s I sent out were willing to take a chance on me. Restaurant one was a hole, I didn’t measure up to their expectations and they sure as hell didn’t measure up to mine. I draw the line at leaving raw potatoes in the fry cutter so that there’s mold and fruit flies. Teamed up with the fact that they left raw meat out on the counter over night.

OVERNIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY!  Who does that?!? Needless to say, that didn’t work out. Which is kind of a shame because the staff was really nice. Even if I didn’t feel safe eating there… At least I tried. At the very least, I was still in school, working towards my dream and goals of becoming a professional photographer. I got offered another job at some random poutine place but when I showed up for the job, the owner never did. Which was fine because I wasn’t too keen on working there anyway -but- a job is a job. Then I found a job that was ideal for me, my skill level and the executive chef was totally cool about my not being in a formal restaurant in forever. The job was mine for the taking, it paid well and I was excited until I found out it would take me TWO HOURS to get there since it was in the Dix30.

Well fuck.  

So I upped the ante with my courses at school, started hustling my photography services and contemplated re-opening my then defunct Etsy store. Still looked for a job of course. However that became more complicated because of school. The downside of being in the hospitality industry? There’s not a lot of flexibility to be had. Preference will always be given to someone who has a completely open schedule. I get that though, scheduling people can be a giant pain in the ass. Been there, done that.

Also, while this was all happening, my father was dying. So that was fun. Still kept looking for work here and there, was enrolled in university full time and fighting with Emploi Quebec to get employment insurance while dealing with my ex employer. Couldn’t find a suitable job that would accommodate my schedule/didn’t require me to speak French, wasn’t eligible for welfare because I lived with my boyfriend and he made ‘too much money’ (which is comical) and I hadn’t been out of work long enough to be eligible for any of Quebec’s social programs. Thank god for savings, the monthly solidarity tax credit and credit cards. Not the most ideal way to live but I would rather cut out my own liver than borrow money from anyone. Especially family…

Yet somehow we made due, on our own. 

I kept fighting my battles with the government, won my lawsuit, my father passed away, I kept hustling and I was finally eligible for some help. Which was about freaking time. Lord knows I’ve paid my share of taxes, employment insurance and contributed to society. I don’t like handouts or charity and somehow the universe provided. I got a handful of freelance jobs, revamped my Etsy game and looked into going to school full time. Quebec has an amazing amount of social programs for people who are ‘low income’ and want to go back to school. I was deemed eligible but between the holidays and having to juggle things between my agent to get approval from Emploi Quebec and the school, they were full for January. So I looked for other things to do in the meantime and registered at a different school starting at the end of March for French. You can’t begin to imagine how pissed I was to discover that RTC had opened up a new class that starts on the same day as my French studies.

Fuck.  

So I had to choose. Did I drop out of the French program that I paid for out of pocket and enroll in the other program or did I take the French program that I needed to take anyway and hope that RTC opened up another program in June. So I opted to stay in the French program because I need to take it regardless. Given that the past year has been difficult dealing with my dad’s death and my anxiety and depression on top of trying to plan our wedding, I figured it would help me get back into the groove of things at a reasonable pace.

Which bring me to my ultimate frustration: People commenting on where my income comes from. Ever since I got engaged, I have been having to deal with a pretty undesirable litany of comments in regards to money. I am well aware that weddings are costly, yet some people, several in fact felt compelled to point that out. Oh my, how are you going to pay for that? We don’t want you to go into debt because we can’t bail you out (see above about my wanting to cut out my own liver…). But you don’t have a job. (um actually, I do, I work freelance). Oh you make money selling crafts? Really? Oh must be nice to sit around all day and do nothing (wrong). Oh I wish I had her life, sitting around taking pictures and making crafts all day (not as easy as it sounds). So what do you do all day, watch TV? (yes, that’s exactly it). You can’t possibly make enough money to live (we do OK thanks) and I could at least respect what you do if I knew that you were trying (to find an actual job) and the list goes on.

Quite frankly, I am tired of it. I haven’t said a word about it because why bother? Until Sunday, when after hearing three different comments about my income or lack thereof, I finally snapped. Where does anyone get off on commenting on *MY* personal life? Since when did it become your business? Do you think you were the first person to say something about this? Newsflash, you’re not. I could have/should have handled it better, i’m not going to make excuses for letting my temper get the best of me. Sometimes I’m an asshole. I own my mistakes and can freely admit when i’m wrong. However, it doesn’t disregard the fact that it’s no one’s business. Quite frankly, far too many people have chosen to make it their business. I have had enough.

I get being frustrated by the amount of people who take advantage of the system. I honestly don’t know how those people function, it’s not as if welfare gives you a lot of money. Even the stipend that they give you for going to school isn’t enough for one person to live on, on their own. The system is a lot more complicated than you would think. Trust me, I worked my way through it in sheer desperation. Had it not been for the fact that I have other talents that lay elsewhere, I would have ended up in the metro shaking a cup and begging for change.

I still might.    

Just to let you know, I pay taxes on the money I bring in. So before you make assumptions or feel the need to comment on things that really shouldn’t matter to you, know the facts.

Now you do. After all, knowing is half the battle. 

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You’re not invited.

It’s been brought to my attention that you would be hurt if I didn’t invite you to my wedding.

Hurt?!? Really?!?

Fuck you!
You should have thought about that before you shit on me for the last time. You are delusional if you think that I can just walk away from this and ‘forgive and forget’.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how ANY of this works as a matter of fact. I will NOT, under any circumstances, reward bad behaviour.

Perhaps you ‘forgot’ about the following incidents that have plagued me since last July.
I haven’t forgotten, and here’s a reminder for you.

-July 2014 you took the liberty of talking shit about me to several of my friends; behind my back when I came home to Ontario last summer.
Oh, you thought that I didn’t know?
I have VERY loyal friends who felt that I had the right to know what people were saying about me behind my back. You have a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon and you stop at nothing to try and make me look bad.

You are petty and jealous. You won’t succeed in making me look bad; you however are doing a fine job of making yourself look bad, along with jealous, petty, bitter and conniving. You just can’t help yourself.

You damaged several relationships with your petty bullshit. Thankfully I was able to restore most of them because people can see through you. That was uncalled for regardless.

In spite of it all, with the holidays coming up and knowing that it was most likely going to be my father’s last Christmas, I decided to be the bigger person and let it go. Even just for the holidays. So I did. It was one of the best Christmases I have had in a while and thankfully you managed to keep that toxic mouth of yours shut so that you didn’t ruin the holiday for the rest of us.

Let’s fast forward to February of this year. My father passes away and some piece of shit robs my childhood home and steals pretty much every damn thing.

ONCE AGAIN you take it to Facebook to spew forth your stupid petty bullshit.
I took you off my friends list; I couldn’t deal with you and your shit any longer.
You however took it a step further and blocked me. This is fine by me because now I don’t need to see –or- hear anymore of your toxic lies.

ojcj8

May rolls around, it’s the weekend of my father’s memorial service. I arrived in Ontario on the Friday and there you were, furiously texting away on your phone. I seen you take a picture of me, one that I did not authorize, followed up by more furious texting. So it’s pretty obvious that you were once again, talking shit about me. Don’t try and deny that, I’m not deaf; in fact my hearing is just fine. If you’re going to try and sneak a picture of me, perhaps you should turn the sound off your damn phone.

My aunt drives you home, where you couldn’t resist yet another opportunity to talk shit about me. Which of course is brought to MY attention because fuck you.
My aunt took it upon herself to fill me in on how you lied to her about how I had been talking shit about you on Facebook, which is your MO, NOT mine. I am not that tacky thank you.
No need to get into specifics but the reality of the situation is this, after I was given the opportunity to explain MY side of the story to my aunt, even she said and I quote:” What is wrong with her?” Not ME. She was talking about YOU.

The next day, the day that I was honoring my father at his memorial service, you once again tried to steal the show and be the center of attention by being a bitter and vicious bitch.

You foolishly shoot your mouth off about me AT MY FATHERS FUNERAL to my family and friends and once again try and play the victim as you always do and expect me to NOT find out about it?!?

Are you brain dead?

And yet after alllllll that (and there is SO much more) you have the audacity to tell my mom that you would be hurt if you weren’t invited to my wedding?

You don’t get to pretend that everything is OK because YOU decided that it was because it’s not. Not even remotely close.
Learn how to deal with your fucking anger; no one is willing to indulge your sorry ass anymore. You aren’t adult enough, nor capable enough to deal with anger.

Lovely example you’re setting for your children by ignoring the problem for months and months and then all of a sudden out of no where you loose your shit several months later, scream and yell at people and then when YOU have your say, you think it’s over.

NO MORE.

Everyone keeps telling me to be the bigger person (once again) and let it go. This isn’t fucking frozen! 

I can’t trust you, and yet you want me to invite you to one of the most important days of my life?

I don’t fucking think so.

I even found a perfect song for you. (NSFW) or this one seems to be pretty accurate as well.

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I committed career suicide.

Apparently.

I’ll admit it, I’ve gotten really spoiled the past few years with a nice cushy culinary job.

I earned it. 

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the culinary industry is very egocentric and God help your sorry ass if you have a vagina and are *gasp* better at something than some guy on your line.  It’s also very, very sexist.  Growing up and pursuing this particular art form was nothing short of a hellish nightmare.  I was constantly told that I would never make it as a Chef.

Except I did.  I even wrote my own damn cook book too.  Because I am AWESOME. 

I have spent the last 4.5 years in a upscale, private daycare.  On June 13th 2014 I was unceremoniously fired for reasons I can not currently discuss in a public forum.

So I did what any self respecting Chef would do.  Dusted off my CV (which is a work of art) and hit the ground running looking for work.  There is no shortage of restaurants in this lovely city and generally at any point I found myself without a job I always found one within a week or two.  Usually within in a few days.  When you work in a restaurant, jobs as a line cook are plentiful.  As are other higher ranked opportunities (such as Chef de partie, sous chef and so forth).

That is until you work in a daycare for almost five years…

That right there?  That’s what you call career suicide.

I have lost count of how many CV’s I have sent out.  I have, to be fair gotten my fair share of call backs as well.  Which is great until you show up for the interview and they compliment you on how ballin your CV is, but then when it gets to your qualifications and experience, it’s like they never read the fucking thing!?!  It’s pretty clear that I haven’t worked on a line in almost five years and I’m straight up about that too.

Oh and I can’t forget the times that I have been either scheduled for a job trial and/or an interview only to show up and be told that the position has been filled.  Because clearly calling me as a courtesy is too taxing for you.

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So I finally caught a break.

Or so I thought. 

I accepted a job at a not to be disclosed location and all of a sudden I became the most popular person ever!  My phone was going INSANE with interviews and job offers.  I have one place BEGGING me to come there.  Except I had committed to one and I told the others that I would get back to them.

Well the really nice, high paying sous chef job required me to be more bilingual than I am and that made me sad because I couldn’t accept it in the end.  Another job trial was in a production kitchen but the kitchen manager was a giant douche bag and I knew the minute I laid eyes on him, it wasn’t going to work out.  I was right.  Which was fine actually because holy shit listening to CJAD all day and cutting vegetables? zzzzzzzzzzz  Yeah I would have done it for now because well bills and stuff.  I could go on and on but needless to say, it just wasn’t working out.  It’s basically been what’s stated above, lather, rinse, repeat.
I need a few days to settle in somewhere and get organized.  The first few shifts for me are always clumsy and awkward but you team that up with not being in that environment for so long?

You’re fucked.

Metaphorically it’s like this: It’s like an old friend you’ve known for years and years and all of a sudden you don’t talk for 4.5 years.  Then you get reunited.  Which is great, it’s familiar but a lot has changed too.  So you need to spend time playing catch up with this person.

Except no one can afford to give you that time, or you’re not French speaking enough or lacking your papers or a car and the list goes on and on.

So I took the last option I had handed to me, they’re really nice people, gorgeous restaurant and then as we were setting up to open I noticed that there was 4 different types of meat on the counter.  I put my hand on them thinking that they had just been pulled out of the fridge.  Nope.

THEY WERE ROOM TEMPERATURE! RAW MEAT, LEFT OUT ON THE COUNTER, OVERNIGHT IN JULY.

Oh hell no.

So.  So much for that place.  Back to the grind I go, more interviews, more of the oh, you’ve been out of restaurants for a while.  Yeah this isn’t going to work out (Again, read my f’ing CV jackass).

Yet I didn’t give up, that is until yesterday.  I had a training shift schedule at a place that I thought would be a good re-introduction back into a line.  I was flat out honest about where I stood, how long it had been since I had worked on a line and blah blah blah.  He didn’t care, thanked me for being honest and I thought OK cool it’ll do for now.   I was asked to be there at 5pm and I waited and I waited until 5:30 and that’s when I left.  Because if you can’t be bothered to be there on time or at least make the effort to call me or your restaurant, that says a lot of things about you and they’re not nice.

I had one last interview today.  It was more of the same, but I got points for being honest.  No real loss there, the place is an hour away.  *Note to self, no more jobs in the mile end.

So that being said, i’m moving onto to other things I’ve had in the works for a few weeks.  Just need to finalize some details first.

 

 

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Canada post is Le Suck!

Dear Canada Post,

You are a huge ass, fucking douchebaggery filled, ball sucking, ass monkey.

I bought a new Camera, it’s pretty fucking sweet as a matter of fact.  So I being the good awesome, fucking exceptional friend that I am…  I told my buddy fucker that I would send him my old one.  As is, free of charge.  It’s kind of crappy from being dropped too many times and the automatic flash don’t work for shit but it still takes awesome pictures when it it’s not being douchy decides to co-operate.  I even included my grossly over-priced XD memory card (cost me $40.00 for 1GB bah!) because my shiny new camera actually takes regular memory cards (it’s about damn time Olympus!) and a mini tripod in case he wants to make some home porn be in the picture properly using the self timer function.  You know instead of standing in a mirror like a fucking douche.

So on Saturday (the 16th of October) I dutifully and lovingly packed up my camera, using fragile tape and everything and headed off to the post office.

Package for Fucker

Yeah you see what I did there?  His real name is Adam, I call him Fucker.  It’s a term of endearment.  Really.  I love the guy~  See look:

Adam & I, Old Port Montreal Sept 2010

I even sent it EXPRESS because I’m awesome like that.  So I texted Fucker to tell him that I mailed out his package and said goodies and it should be there by Tuesday/Wed latest.  Well you can imagine my surprise when I got home from work this afternoon and I get a notification slip from you douche-bags saying I have a parcel and could I please hand over $9.41 (cash only of course) to pick this up.  Seeing as I have NO ID at the moment and have ALL my packages sent to work because I live there, happen to be around when delivery men show up therefore ensuring that I get my package.

So I hop onto Canada douchebaggery post.com with the tracking number to have some sort of a clue whom this might be from.  Well Lo and fucking behold it’s a package from Fucker!  Who lives in Kitchener, that’s how I knew.  Except according to this which transcribes to: YOUR PACKAGE WAS SENT BITCH and the tracking I so dutifully took a screen shot of:

Douchy confirmation BS!

According to that, it was successfully delivered!  Except that’s NOT. TRUE. FUCKERS.

So essentially let me break this down:  Apparently one of your tight ass postal workers doesn’t appreciate my calling MY friend Fucker and thought it was a personal affront to you?  No you see if that was a random attack on one of you postal workers I would have done something like this instead:

This would have been grounds for a complaint, but I DIDN'T do that...

But you see, I didn’t.  Basically your just trying to ass rape me for money.  Do I look like a fucking ATM to you?

apparently i'm a bank machine

I don’t fucking think SO!  You know what really kills me though you douchebag ass monkeys?  It cost me $8.54 to mail it.  Yet to have it sent back to me it’s $9.41?  Please tell me how THAT works out?  So I had to shell out money to send it there, and because your carrier/delivery person has some deep seated fucking issues and needs therapy, I have to pay $9.41 to have it sent back to me and then pay you AGAIN (yes that would be three fucking times!) so that my poor friend fucker can have a digital camera to capture precious memories such as him dancing around in his underwear his adorable children?

I sent you a really snarky e-mail.  I anticipate your reply, and possibly someone pissing in my mail box.  Which would be quite the feat.  I’m looking forward to calling up the Ombudsman and nailing your asses to the wall for your fucking douchbaggery.

Just thought I would let you know.  I’m good like that.

Love,

Steph