What would their mothers say?

These flowers right here are my favorite of all time. They’re plucked off an Arizona tree strangely called Texas Mountain Laurel and the flowers only bloom in spring. I love the flowers so much that I bought a tree last year and planted it in our front yard. It’s not the way they look, it’s the way they smell. If I could somehow put the scent in a jar and sell it, I’d make millions. These two little guys made the entire house smell like spring for close to a week. And then they died.

 

I got a job!

 

And then I got fired.

 

Yeah, yeah. Who doesn’t get a great job working from home, double the salary of their previous job while doing what they love and get canned after 14 days? The story of your life, right?

 

I’ll start from the beginning.

 

I came upon a freelance gig on Craigslist looking for a designer to prototype a new magazine in Arizona. I interviewed, it went great, and they called less that two hours later offering not only a job, but a salaried position with great pay. I jumped at the chance.

 

Two weeks go by, I’m working my little heart out on making this thing amazing, and they called and said “hey, let’s meet to go over some things.” So I packed up, met them at a coffee shop and the conversation went like this.

 

“Hey guys! How’s it going? Did you have a nice weekend?”

 

“Yeah, hey, we forgot to have you sign this little piece of paper.”

 

“Oh, no worries. What does it entail?”

 

“Not much, just that as our salaried employee, the work you do is ours.”

 

“Cool! I love being a salaried employee that gets paid for the work she does! Where do I sign?”

 

So I signed.

 

And then they said, “Thanks, hey, it’s not working out. You’re fired.”

 

They said that I wasn’t putting in enough hours. Strangely, though, all of my work was 95% close to completion, a week ahead of schedule and they had files of everything. So basically they got their magazine designed for a price of two weeks salary instead of a commissioned fee. And when they got what they wanted, they dropped me.

 

I was had.

 

This all happened on Monday. I’m cool with being “fired”, especially knowing that these guys were grade-A scum bags, but I’m not cool with getting so excited about everything. When I landed the job, I told friends, family, their family, neighbors, my dogs, your dogs and possibly your mom. It doesn’t feel so awesome that two weeks later I get to say, “Oh yeah, that job? Uh, it was a huge scam and I was a sucker that signed paperwork without reading it thoroughly.”

 

If I had to find a moral to this story it would be either be “people are meanies” or “don’t be so trusting, you crazy Midwestern girl.”