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“Is this smokin’ hot Puerto Rican girl giving me a BMW?”

This was the thought running through my head as my none-to-pleasant Everything Bagel with Veggie Cream Cheese and Small Coffee halitosis filled the interior of the black 5 series that this cutie from Enterprise Rent A Car picked me up from the Body Shop in. “No, she’s just taking me to the rental office.”

I had just dropped my loyal Toyota Matrix off to be repaired from the rear-ending I received a couple of weeks ago from a bewildered college graduate. The bagel was purchased for me by my beautiful girlfriend Kim… whom I love.

I only assumed this girl was Puerto Rican because she looked Latino and mentioned that she was from Florida when she was telling me about how windshields are covered 100% in Florida if you have collision insurance. I had just finished telling her how Kim and I had been having some bad luck recently with our cars. I made her laugh a couple of times, which wasn’t intentional but I’ve tended to get animated when I relate our recent unfortunate series of windshield breakage, bumper smashing, and radiator problems. I made great effort to say “my GIRLFRIEND and I got our first insurance policy.”

I am not sure that I am allowed to say that PR Girl was hot. I am told that it is an unspoken rule of married and psuedo-married couples that it is ok to confess that you think someone else is attractive and it’s even ok to brag about some random person flirting with you, but it is not ok– REPEAT, NOT OK– to say that she was hot AND she was flirting with you. This signifies mutual interest which is threatening, and that is understandable. Furthermore, you cannot tell your significant other that someone you interact with on a regular basis is attractive OR that they flirt with you. You cannot mention that you have hot coworkers. Ever. If you have hot coworkers who flirt with you, you might as well get the phone book ready, because you are either calling a divorce lawyer or an employment agency in the near future.

Nevertheless, when I am 60 years old and trying to remember this story I want to look back on this blog so I can remind myself that I was once in a 5 series BMW with a hot Puerto Rican girl in pinstripe slacks and a low-cut blouse. I don’t think it makes me a bad person to want that. I think I will owe it to myself after 30+ years of monogamy to Kim, and, also this chick wasn’t flirting with me, so, fuck it. She was hot. Yeah, I said it.

Anyway, we get to the Enterprise building and she starts the paperwork. Nothing interesting happens at first, I give her my license, my credit card (”for authorization purposes”) and zone out a little while she’s typing away. Everyone else in the office looks like they’ve been working here their whole lives. They’re tired and miserable and I couldn’t really see why. PR Girl is not only pretty but she’s smiling, happy, and having a good time at her job, as far as I can tell. She stuck out like a sore thumb.

All of the sudden, a huge, dumpy, sunburned white woman with stringy blonde hair, khaki shorts and a giant purse starts yelling at a young Enterprise employee.

“NO I AM NOT DRIVING A KOBALT!! I AM A BMW CUSTOMER! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO BETTER THAN THIS!!!”

The kid helping her was rattled. Totally shaken up. He mumbled and stuttered the names of a few other cars, “Altima, Sentra, …” he trailed off when he realized she was shaking her head and shouting a mantra of “no no no no no no no NO NO NO!” and she dropped her face in her hands and exhaled like her children were being shot in the streets.

The manager, who was a big fella with a pink tie jumped in to play damage control for the poor newbie, he named a few more cars and she was still dissatisfied. I think he might have even asked her “What kind of car do you want?”

“There is a Ford Xscape out front!” she demanded. She was a totally unreasonable bitch. We all know the type.

“The bumper is being painted as we speak. That’s what those workers out there have been doing all morning.” He was totally professional but kind of sticking it to her at the same time. There was mobile body shop crew in the parking lot, and they’d been there the whole time. Just after I commented to myself how stupid this lady was for not seeing their giant utility van, I admitted that I also hadn’t noticed it until it was pointed out to me.

During this exchange I scanned my eyes across the room and every employee was petrified with the same is-this-really-happening glare. PR Girl forced a smile at me and started to name off some of the available cars that I could rent.

“We have a Chevrolet Kobalt, a –” I couldn’t help myself.

“I’ll take the KOBALT!” I shouted as loud as anyone who knows me has heard me shout. The whole office got quiet. The manager pretended I didn’t say it. Behind him a man sitting at his desk fixed his eyes on me, smiling, I gave him a nod. I had a shit-eating grin across my face. He smiled bigger. PR Girl was now forcing a straight face. Hysterical Lady suddenly clammed up and started to reasonably consider her options and the poor guy that was helping her took her outside to look at another car.

This little stunt was really along the lines of something I would have pulled on a daily basis in my college years. Why is it that the unreasonable and horrible customers are always the loudest and most disturbing customers? BMW doesn’t have anything to do with her rental car. If it was a warranty issue she’d get a BMW rental through the dealer. She was a spoiled rich lady who thought her car was a passport to preferential treatment status everywhere she went.  Maybe it is, maybe driving a Beamer does make life better, I’ll never know since this was my first day ever inside of one, but you don’t see me throwing a fit because I didn’t get a Toyota to replace my Toyota. I think the last time I threw a fit on par with the one this lady was throwing was when my mom took my security blankets away so she could wash them.

I was three.

So PR Girl thanks me after the lady exits in the door and looks at her list again. She asks me what I normally drive. At first I thought she was making sure I wasn’t just sticking myself with a car that was considerably beneath what I am used to, but then I noticed something else happening:

“A Matrix? Those are so NICE!” she say. Her eyes widening. Let’s be honest, I drive a soccer mom car. She drives rental BMWs at her job. I got the Matrix because it was good on gas and I can fit all of my music gear in the back. It’s not a “nice” car. It’s just very practical.

“Oh you’re a musician?” she says, eyes widening again, and I am now picking up on something that I am not so sure is actually happening. The awkwardness is growing.

“Yeah I play the bass,” I say.

“Wow. That’s a talent.”

Yep, she was flirting with me. Because “that’s a talent” is a bullshit thing to tell someone you are renting a car to. Nevertheless, it’s always flattering to have a pretty girl bullshit you in a positive way. Ok, so she was flirting with me and, ok, I just broke the unspoken rule by admitting that someone is attractive and flirting with me by writing it in this blog. It’s a good thing I have no intentions of working at Enterprise Rent A Car.

She went on to talk about some guy in the office who goes to see live music all of the time and I zoned in and out of this short conversation because I don’t like talking about local music. We did the usual walk-around inspection on the car and she thanked me again for my little stunt and told me that Hysterical Lady’s Victim, was, in fact, only recently employed. Poor bastard.

I got in my bad ass, black Chevrolet Kobalt and drove to work.

The day went downhill from there.

This is one of several posts I made about the technical college I attended from 2005 to 2007. This one got ome of my friends who work there into a little trouble. Even though the damage is done and I feel that what I said was warranted but I have decided to remove the name of the college to distance myself from this kind of writing. This isn’t how I want people to find me in a Google search.

Today I received my diploma from unnamed technical school in the mail. My name was spelled correctly, they put the right degree on the paper, my transcript was included, and I never had to call and remind them to send any of it to me (which I was expecting to do at some point).

My experience at unnamed technical school has finally come to a close. As such, I expect this post to be my final installment discussing my time spent at unnamed technical school. To say that I didn’t like going to unnamed technical school would be an understatement. I wasn’t comfortable there as a student, a lot of times I was restless and miserable and would take much needed breaks just to get out of the classrooms for 2 minutes. In fact, I hated attending unnamed technical school as a student and it goes without saying that I also greatly disliked my job as a workstudy in the campus IT shop. Basically, I collected a paycheck from a place I hated, which meant I was always at least a little conflicted about publicly voicing my opinions about the school on this site. I voiced them anyway, because my complaints were based entirely on my experiences as a student– a dissatisfied customer– and no portion of the Federal money unnamed technical school was drafting my paycheck out with would ever break even against the Federal money I took out in loans in order to attend. Also, I needed to vent my feelings for my own sake. (Thanks to everyone who tolerated or was entertained those rants).

In spite of my frustrations– maybe even because of them– I learned extremely valuable lessons about the IT field as a workstudy in the MIS shop. Mostly these lessons consisted of how not to do things and how not to communicate with and treat those that work below you. But, in the immortal words of that other famous idiot: “Thats all I have to say about that.” This isn’t really what I want to talk about.

My last few months at unnamed technical school were some of the most emotionally and spiritually draining experiences I have ever had. That sounds dramatic, but, honestly, I felt weighed down every time I walked down that wooden boardwalk to the student entrance of the school. I felt like I was slowly being transformed into someone I hated. I had a black cloud with a blue unnamed technical school logo on it floating around over my head and a matching chip on my shoulder. I was irritable (more than usual), angry (yes, more than usual) and I was flying off the handle at everyone around me (a little more often than normal). I was not someone I would want to be around, and I knew it. Were it not for some of the really great people that I befriended while attending class and working at unnamed technical school , the encouragement and tolerance of my loved ones, and the general lack of any other sensible avenue in my life at the time I probably would have dropped out. unnamed technical school was not worth my time or money.

This summer I started an “internship” at a development and construction company in Virginia Beach. It’s only technically an internship for me because I fulfilled my internship requirements for school while I was working in the MIS shop. (So it’s basically a Summer job). While working at unnamed commercial development company I have experienced an entirely different way of doing things in the IT field: a more positive atmosphere that looks for the best solutions to problems, praises a team effort above all else without pointing fingers when something goes wrong, no yelling, barking, or curmudgeonly behavior and responsibilities were evenly spread to the members of that team. Even though I am not a full-time employee, I have been treated as though I am just as valuable as the rest of the IT department and given access to everything I need to do my job. This, again, is not really what I want to talk about.

But, coming out of curriculum where the common gauge of success is getting a job where you answer phones with a headset on and talk people through the process of “installing their internets,” I really didn’t expect such a positive experience to be waiting for me when I graduated. At this time, I haven’t been offered me a real position, but it’s a stepping stone in the direction I want to go in with one of the best companies in Hampton Roads. It’s not heaven on earth or anything, but its head and shoulders above what I was expecting for someone of my level of experience (that is, not very much). Unnamed technical school really didn’t qualify me for this job, common sense qualified me for this job, but I got the job through their career center. I took the job by drudging in the MIS shop where I learned to do things totally ass-backwards and realizing that I didn’t want to do things this way, no matter how much money I could make doing it. The first question I was asked the day of my interview with unnamed commercial development company was “Do you know what RIS is and have you ever pushed software through Group Policy?” To which my inner voice (an elderly black gentleman) replied: “Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! The shepherd has led me out of the desert!!”

By the way, RIS stands for Remote Installation Service. You see, at the Virginia Beach Campus of unnamed technical school, they install all of the the software by hand for the entire campus, even though they have classes teaching the students how to do it in this automated way. But this is also not something I really want to talk about. No, I mean it this time. The point is that I am coming out of my funk, and I can look back on this whole experience in a better light. I can laugh at it. I may not have always received the education I believed I was paying for, but I learned valuable lessons nonetheless.

I also came to a valuable conclusion, looking back this whole experience, a lesson that I voiced to Kim at dinner last night: “You know,” I said. “if I could somehow be excused from at least half of my student loans, I’d probably never step foot in another IT shop again.” Even though Kim rolled her eyes at me, she knew I was right. I could walk away from this stuff any day and it would suit me just fine. I am a geek, but I don’t love computers. I like computers. I like Linux. I like Cisco devices. I like having blogs and using the web and doing little projects here and there, but, when it’s all said and done, this is a job. I enjoy working in this field more than a lot of other jobs I have had, but I just don’t have the passion for it like many of my friends do. If I could get a job teaching bass privately and have benefits and a vacation package, I’d do that in a heartbeat. If I could do even part of that just playing in bands. Done. I’d never look back.

That isn’t likely to happen, though. Not for me. Music is my passion but I don’t expect that it will ever be my job again. My financial situation demands that I have more than just sporadic payments from bass students. I’m 28. I’m approaching the close of the “making it” window, and I am about 60 pounds overweight. As a private teacher I could never afford to take a break from teaching. As an IT Professional I have a chance of taking care of myself, possibly a family, and the possibility of doing music as something I love. So, adios, unnamed technical school. Thanks and, also, no thanks. I learned a lot from you, and a large portion of it was unintentional, but I, unlike so many of your dropouts, persevered and got more out of you than I could have hoped for.