Chapter One

The job fair was a complete bust. The local newspaper touted it with a
half-page ad and listed about fifty companies that would show. But only about
five showed in actuality. It was held in a dying mall. There was a telemarking
company, an Army recruiter, a local blood bank, a local community college
looking for more students so they could "improve their careers" (by
taking classes and then going to one of these job fairs, no doubt), and a local
employment agency who had no jobs at the present time but they would keep
her resume on file. Sandi had already served two years in the Army. Sandi
had seen a lovely lady there also. Tall, thin, long platinum blonde hair,
wearing a dark suit and high heels. Sandi could hardly wait until she turned
around to see her face. And then she did turn, and Sandi saw why she was there:
Her face was a mass of wrinkles. Crowsfeet, laugh lines, sagging jawline,
furrowed brow. And she had slapped on tons of pancake makeup in order to try to
look younger. SAndi smiled ruefully. Kicked out by your husband and also probably
your boss for a newer model, no doubt, she thought. Like trading in an old car
for a new one. Once, when Sandi's car needed an oil change, she had 
brought it to the dealership and there she had seen an handsome, fit army officer
 in uniform, his chest covered in medals.
He had a frumpy looking wife and five kids and his old car was a wreck. It was
an ancient, rusted-out smoking diesel. But he had been loyal to it and
evidently was going to try to keep it running as long as possible. Just like
his marriage.  The day Sandi was at the job fair, Tom
was under his 20 year-old truck. It was a Toyota, and had been assembled in
Japan, according to the VIN number. So far it had needed two alternators and
several batteries, several changes of spark plugs. It had the original engine
and the rings had gotten worn, but Tom just put thicker oil in the engine to
maintain a decent compression. Right now he was lubing the drive shaft
underneath and checking the fluid levels in the transfer
case and differential. It had been rear-ended five times but the repair shop
had said that the frame was still straight. 
Some of the rear-ends were comical.
Like the dude behind him at the Burger King who was in a right royal hurry to
pull up to the window. Tom had yelled out behind him: "Wait your
turn!" Or the time at the stop light when the old lady in her GTO had
jammed the front of her fender under his. He bailed out and walked back and
looked in her window. Well dressed, obviously just coming from church. "I
 thought you were going to go through the yellow light," she
said. He smiled. "Put it into reverse," he said, and she did, and her
fender was free of his bumper. He got into his truck and drove away. Tom was a
creature of habit. Same-o truck. Same-o clothes. Same-o taste in food. He
would probably make a husband a wife could rely on. Unlike the two
husbands Sandi had had. There was husband number one, the former catholic choir
boy who had dumped her after seven years for his big bosomed blonde secretary
that he had personally hired. No doubt they were now having many spiritual
experiences together. And he had opened a personal bank account and transferred
all the funds from his and Sandi's joint bank account into that one. Desitute,
Sandi went into the Army. She was one hundred fifty pounds when she went in.
She lost a lot of weight in boot camp, and began to look fit. Another enlisted
man began courting her. They married, she got pregnant, and got a medical
discharge. But unfortunately, the little girl was born with cerebral palsy. The
military took care of a lot of the medical expenses, but it still was a great
financial drain. The husband claimed he had no money because he was paying
alimony to his first wife. At that point Sandi had no job, just staying home to
take care of her daughter, living off of a sargeant's salary. The husband
booked it. Then the little girl died. So now Sandi was forty something, one
hundred pounds overweight, penniless and alone. In the army she had been a mess
specialist, so she tried that line of work as a civilian. 
The diswashing nightmare:
The interviewer had asked Sandi if she could pick up a ten pound pot. No
problem, she had replied. The interviewer had led her on that this was the
worst that could happen at a typical day at work. Or maybe he just didn't know.
It turned out to be more than one ten pound pot. This was a saturday at
Kingsmill where they serve a meal called the Queen Elizabeth. It is a eight-
course dinner and there are hundreds of people at the affair. Sandi began this
labor of Hercules at twelve noon and worked non-stop until twelve midnight,
twelve hours with not even a bathroom break. The waiters dressed in their tuxes
would stack the dirty dishes on metal shelves on a great mobile wall ten feet
high and two stacks deep and wheel it in to her. She would reach over and pull off
the stacks, hose the food off with a gooseneck faucet, and set the dishes on
their side in a rack. The rack was set on a a moving conveyer belt that went
into a steaming machine and the dishes came out clean and sterilized at the
other end where sandi would take them out of the rack and carry stacks of
plates over to the line cooks, ready for the next plating. Thing is, the
waiters just kept wheeling in walls of dirty dishes. They must have wheeled in
twenty racks in all. It was clearly a job for a well-muscled young man, not a
middle-aged lady. What probably happened in the cooking world is that a young
man would start out as a dishwasher, then move onto prep, then line, then
saucier, then sous chef, and then head chef whereupon he would probably open his
own restaurant. Sandi was way out of place here. She staggered home that night,
thoroughly exhausted. She should've have fallen asleep immediately when she got
home, except that she was so exhausted, she felt she was going to die from a
heart attack at any second. Afraid of dying, she forced herself to stay awake.
Around four am she finally and mercifully passed out. In the morning, her
fingers were so swollen that she couldn't even bend them. She never went back.
A little while later a friend of hers told her of a job at a big restaurant. He
was in production there and he said that they were terribly understaffed. He
told her to show up monday morning at 10am when the restaurant opened and to
ask for Sally. So Sandi got all dressed up and using a map found the place
alright, arriving there early and she sat for some hours in the empty parking
lot working on her makeup until they opened. She had nothing better to do. She
went in and filled out an application. It asked who referred her and she put
down her friend's name. The people up front indeed knew her friend and thought
he was a hard worker but they said Sally wasn't in and told Sandi to come back
in two days. So Sandi came back in two days and Sally was there. The people up
front called for Sally. Sandi waited up front for an hour and then she thought
she'd go for a little walk around the restaurant and there was Sally with a
friend, smoking a cigarette. It seemed that Sally had forgotten all about her.
Sally led her into the back of the restaurant and asked her some questions.
Sally laughed about her friend who had referred her. It seemed she liked him,
too. Then another lady asked Sandi some questions about her army days as a mess
specialist. And then they gave her a 100 question test. It even had math on it
and it wasn't easy because the math was about progressions. You know, for
example, in this series 1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, what is the next number? Then they
said they'd call her. Two weeks went by. She called them and got Sally. Sally
merely said: We said we'd call you. That's how these things work. And that was
all she said. So Sandi thought she'd walk into another restaurant and apply for
a job. She spent an hour filling out the application and they said they had no
position in production. Then Sandi went to another restaurant and filled out an
application. The general manager came to talk to her and said definately they
needed someone in production...they were so short-staffed that he had been
drafted to chop vegetables all morning and he was sick of it and never wanted
to do it again. He said to Sandi: Your timing is perfect. Then the culinary
manager came out and interviewed her. He said that one more manager needed to
interview her, could she come back tomorrow when he was available? So she said
yes. She came back the next day and met with this third manager who told her
that he was sorry that she had made the trip for nothing, that they were fully
staffed in production. But they did have one position available: dishwasher.
Sandi agreed to the job. She felt it might get her foot in the door. Be first
pick when a production job came available. The manager said that the culinary
manager would call her back to set something up. As Sandi left, a strong young
man was filling out a job application. Guess what job he was applying for.
Sandi's heart sank. And of course, they never called Sandi back for the
dishwashing job.

The Nursing job:
 Once, Sandi had once worked in a nursing home.  In a nursing
home, there is no hope, no joy, no honor. The residents forget to eat, they stand in 
the hallways and relieve themselves, they fight you when you want to change their
clothing, they'll wander outside and into traffic if the doors aren't locked. Sometimes,
they are so helpless that they can't even roll over in bed. You have to turn them
every two hours or they develop bed sores. They'll hand you a slip of paper with 
their family's phone number on it, asking you to call the number and there will be 
8 digits on the paper. They'll ask you to take them to the 7th floor when the building
only has six floors. 
Sandi was an LPN and had graduated at the top of her class with a gpa of 3.7. Her
classmates who had scored lower went on to work in plush doctor's offices and the
orthopedic and neurological departments of top-flight hospitals. They went on to
research clinics, home health care and the offices of personal injury lawyers. Why
did Sandi, academicallly brilliant, get the bottom of the barrel- a nursing home?
Because she was old and fat.
Ms. Turner had a bed sore that was so deep, one could put their fist into it. As Sandi
cleaned it out with a weak bleach solution, the woman moaned over and over: 
"Jesus! Help me, Jesus!" It was like a broken record. Sandi looked up. 
"Yes, why don't you help her, Jesus?" she said. 
Sandi had brought all the patient's breakfast and then when lunch came around,
and Sandi brought the lunch tray, she saw that Ms. Perry had not touched one bite
of breakfast. Where are the nurse's aides? She thought. They were supposed to feed the 
patients. Four hours with no food or drink. Ms. Perry! Sandi yelled in the lady's ear.
"Eat!" The lady merely rolled her eyes. Sandi picked up a spoonful of lunch and held it
to the lady's mouth. The lady opened her mouth and Sandi scooped the cereal in. But the
lady did not swallow it. "Swallow!" Sandi yelled. The lady did not. Sandi massaged her
throat and the lady swallowed the food. Sandi saw what had happened. The nurse's aide
had tried to feed the lady, the lady had refused, and the nurse's aide had given up
and wandered off and not reported the problem to anyone. She didn't care that the lady 
just lay there and starve to death. Sandi was frantic to get the lady to swallow. If
the lady refused to swallow, she would have to have a tube put into her stomach and
 be fed liquid nourishment. It was a terrible fate. Sandi continued to massage the 
lady's throat toget her to swallow her lunch. It took such a long time. The following 
morning, when Sandi came back into to work, Ms. Perry was gone. Moved to the floor where
 all the patients had gastric tubes. No one wanted to take the time to feed them naturally. 

Another lady was grossly overweight and cataracts
made her blind. She also was hard of hearing. All she seemed to do was lay in bed
and eat and soil herself. Sandi had just finished changing her large diaper when the
 woman said: "uhhh!"  and Sandi heard the sounds of bowels being emptied into the diaper she 
had just put on the woman. Sandi could not stay there all day, constantly changing the
woman. The nurse's aides typically were nowhere to be found. She knew where they were- downstairs
in the break room. They knew they could stay down there as long as they liked. Sandi
could not leave the floor because a supervisor had to be on the floor at all times.
In case of fire, because the doors were locked. So the food service brought the food 
trays and Sandi handed them out when the nurse's aides should have been doing that.
And Sandi tried to feed the more oblivious patients, when the nurse's aides should have
been doing that. And she was dressing and changing the patient's linen, when, guess what-
the nurses's aides should have been doing that. All these aides' duties took time 
away from Sandi administering medications, which was the LPN' job. As a result of all
this work, Sandi never got to take a break herself, even to go to the bathroom. And the
other LPN's were little help. After working 8 straight hours, the supervisor would come
to Sandi and ask her to work another 8 hours- the LPN scheduled had called in sick. So
here was Sandi working 16 hours straight with no food or drink. But she did manage a 
bathroom break between the two eight hour shifts. And as for the LPN calling in sick...
yeah, she's sick all right, Sandi thought. Sick of her job. 
When Sandi finally got home, she sat down wearily in her easy chair, put on 
her headphones and turned on her CD to listen to the Russian ballet The Stone Flower.
Sandi had wanted to be a ballerina since she was six but her mother had prevented it,
saying that it was indecent for a girl to show her legs like that. Perhaps her mother
had only wanted the money for herself in order to buy more booze instead of dance 
lessons. Her non-working mother had been constantly drunk. Eyes bloodshot, skin sallow,
speech thick and slurred as she staggered around the house.
First Coda. There was her cavalier, six feet tall, strawberry blonde hair, muscular
arms and chest. A six pack on his midriff. He leaps and spins across the stage. He does
a Chinese split so high in the air that you can see the heads of the dancers behind him
on the stage. He pulls out a sword, a scimitar, and swings it over his head...and he
leaps again into the air, bending his back so that the tip of his scimitar touches his
heels. The audience's applause is thunderous and someone yells out: "Bravo!" Then it is
Sandi's turn. She spins across the stage in a gorgeous black tutu covered in gems. She
does a Russian split as she sails across the stage. She does 32 fouettes. Once again,
the applause is thunderous. The cavalier goes to her side and throws her into the air. 
She twists and turns as she falls. He catches her horizontally, and as she spins in his
arms, the gems and sequins on the front of her costume come off and spray into the 
orchestra pit like a glittering shower. But she is still falling in the famous routine
called the fish dive. She trusts her cavalier to stop her downward descent, and throws
her arms behind her as her head rockets straight for the floor. He stops her downward
descent, her chin only inches from striking the floor boards. When he is certain that 
she has stopped falling and is safe,  he himself throws up his 
arms into the air, a triumphant look upon his face. The audience is on its feet, clapping
and stomping and yelling bravissimo. The pair bow graciously to the standing ovation.
The stage manager approaches, his arms full of dozens of red roses. He hands them to
Sandi. She plucks out a single red rose and hands it to her cavalier. He accepts it, his
hand over his heart. The orchestra, all in black tuxes, stand up to take a bow. 
The phone rang. Sandi pulled off her head phones to answer it. It was the nursing
supervisor. Evidently the nurse scheduled to work on weekends said she couldn't 
come in tomorrow...some family emergency. Sandi knew 
the truth- there was a rock concert tomorrow and Sandi knew this nurse was a big 
fan of the group, and was playing hookey just to see them. Of course Sandi would come
in tomorrow, on her scheduled day off.  In medicine, they never really let you go home.
There was the time Sandi was a home health nurse. The lady had Lou Gehrig’s disease, 
and Sandi was the LPN hired to stay with the lady all day long, to take care of her 
every need. How the lady caught it was a mystery. She had been perfectly healthy,
 a retired English schoolteacher, going with her husband on a trip to Europe. 
After the trip, she began to come down with the symptoms. When Sandi was hired to 
help her, she had progressed to the point where she could no longer walk, sit up by
 herself, hold up her own head and she could no longer swallow or speak. She sat in 
a wheel chair with a table in front and used a padded clip board to rest her chin 
upon to hold up her head.  She gripped both sides of the table in order to remain 
sitting upright without keeling over. There was a tube inserted into her stomach in
 order to gravity feed liquid goo to her.  Sandi sat by her most of the time. When the
 lady wanted something, she would get a wild look in her eyes. Then the questioning began.
 Sandi would ask: “Are you hungry?” The lady would slowly and almost imperceptible shake her
 head no. “Do you itch?” Slight nod. “Is it your head?” Shake of head no. “Is it your neck?”
 Shake of head no. Is it your chest or back? Shake of head no. Is it your arms? Shake of 
head yes. Is it your right arm? Shake of head yes. Is it your right hand? Shake of head yes.
 Sandi would reach over and massage the lady’s right hand. The lady could not write anything,
 so this is how she communicated to Sandi, with slight nods of her head. There is no known
 cure for this disease. The disease progresses until the patient is lying flat on their 
backs, unable to sit up or cough, drowning in their own saliva. The husband would come in
 at times and look at the pair and shake his head and then go out again. Sometimes he would
 ask Sandi to do the laundry, wash the dishes and dust the furniture. Personal slave.
 Sandi was there for a week, and then the employment agency pulled her to tend to a client
 who was worse off than this lady. An Aids victim in advanced stages, laying in his back 
in bed with IV’s, never to leave.  Covered in sores. Cockroaches running everywhere.  
Sandi tried to find a clean place to sit and so sat by the medical waste bucket. 
Old IV tubing hung out of it, probably covered with the HIV virus, and cockroaches 
in streams crawled in and out of it for a free meal. Sandi watches a parade of 
cockroaches march past her to the kitchen. The patient asked for a glass of water 
and Sandi stepped over the smart little parade of bugs to go the kitchen. Of course 
there were more cockroaches in the kitchen, and Sandi tried to wash the ones in the 
sink down the drain but when she turned the water off, they climbed right back up out
 of the drain again and resumed what they had been doing.
 Don’t let people tell you there aren’t jobs in America. 
Durn immigrants want to take all these plum jobs away from us who were born here.
I'd give my eye teeth just to be drooled on. 
 

The Substitute Teacher jobs.
 Before Sandi became a nurse, she was a substitute teacher.
They say there is a teacher shortage. The folks who say that never looked at the
number of people there are on the substitute teacher rolls. When Sandi went in for 
her orientation, the auditorium was full of people. And this orientation is given every
month. One day, the principal of a nearby high school called Sandi in for an interview.
They needed a high school biology teacher for two months. The regular teacher was 
taking a break for some sort of cancer treatment. The pay was miserable- way less than
a regular teacher gets. It was on the substitute scale, just above minimum wage. But 
Sandi took it. And the kids loved her. And they did whatever she wanted them to do.
But perhaps she was so popular with the kids, the other teachers gave her the cold 
shoulder. She had a computer, and pulled down files from the internet, and she would
go to a copier service and have them put onto transparencies. And she brought in movies
and episodes she had recorded on tape from the Discovery Channel. She had a crossword
program on her computer that could, if you put in biology words, generate huge 
crossword puzzles, of the quality that you see in the newspaper. The classes lasted
an hour and a half, and after an hour of doing fill in the blanks and cross word puzzles
and transparency lectures, she would show a movie for the last half hour of the class.
For the slime mold lecture, she brought in the movie The Blob. Gross! yelled the class
as the man was sucked down the kitchen drain. For the insect lecture, she brought in
a Discovery Channel program about bee sex. Reportedly, the kids in the lunch room
were copying the pose the male bee makes. She passed around color transparancies
of shark attack victims. Then there was the Beaver fever lecture.
Whenever the kids came into the classroom and saw that they would be having Sandi once
again for the day, they would high-five each other. You hear about substitute teacher
nightmares, but the high school here was near several military bases. Maybe the kids
were adequately disciplined at home by military parents. Or perhaps they, like 
their parents, were just genetically predisposed to behave themselves. 
Then Sandi was hired by a high schoolvery far away from any military base, 
in a very white, upperclass neighborhood. But 
it was likely that the rich folks here sent their kids away to boarding schools and that
these were the children of the service employees, you know, the children of auto mechanics
and such.  And the kids were wild indians. It was only later
that Sandi found out that this high school had a suspension rate of 700 kids a year.
Some high schools weren't even that big. One teacher told her that it was his opinion
that the only reason the kids showed up for class was to deal drugs. All the posters 
she put on the walls were torn down. The fish tank had a book thrown in it, so that
the glue on the binding dissolved in the water and killed the fish. But not before the
kids took out the goldfish and smashed them with their texts. One large fossil shark's 
tooth being passed around the class some kid decided to throw at a classmate and it
ended up being chipped. These kids did nothing she requested of them. When she asked
them to open up their texts, they refused. And everyone always neeeded to go to the
bathroom. The girls claimed they were having their period. She never heard this excuse
once in the two months she had been at the other school. When a student was excused to
go to the bathroom, she would see him standing outside, handing out little plastic bags 
with white powder to strange students. When she put up a chart with little gold stars
in order to motivate them, they peeled off the stars and stuck them by their own name
when she wasn't looking. The other teachers counseled her to be sure to lock up her
grade book, as they would likely steal it and alter it. One kid was court-ordered to
stay in school. One of the teachers, a big guy, offered to take any male students she
 had who were misbehaving behind the school and whale on them. Sandi was horrified by this.
  One girl, obviously pregnant, staggered around in class. What is the matter,
she asked the girl. The other girls told her: she is not eating. She is hoping that if
she starves herself enough, the baby will abort. Once Sandi saw a girl reading a letter
while she was trying to lecture and she came over. It turned out that the letter
 was from the girl's father. He was in prison and writing to her. Totally surprised, 
Sandi turned around and went back to the podium,
without saying a word. But Sandi tried to stick it out. The students there saw that
she was well-meaning and so they didn't try to hurt her physically. But they paid
 no attention to her and turned in no class assignments. Once a student did not come in
and Sandi called his home. "I guess he decided to take the day off," his mother joked.
After one month there, the lady vice principal
came into the room and sat down to listen to Sandi's lecture. Then after about ten
minutes, she got up and left, without saying a word. The next day, Sandi was 
called into the vice principal's office and there was the principal who said that
they could not use her services any more. He said that the vice principal had sat
in on her lecture and that Sandi's voice was so small that she could not be heard in
the back of the room. Sandi knew this was baloney. When SAndi had
been in  high school chorus, the teacher had called her the foghorn and put her 
in the back because she was drowning out all the other singers. Also, other people
 had said to Sandi, "Are you hard of hearing, dear? There is no need to shout." 
And indeed, when Sandi met her replacement, the truth was
found out. The teacher told her than she and the vice principal were old friends
and that the vice principal had wanted her there in that job to begin with a long 
time ago so that they could socialize more, but that the teacher had kept turning her down. But
circumstances changed, and now the teacher was available. After Sandi was canned, she
met one of the students from the school some months later in the Hallmark store
in the mall. Seems that the teacher had had a degree in Special Ed but that had not
 been enough to save her. Tormented by the students, she had begun to scream and weep 
openly and fled the classroom, never to return. She had
actually abandoned her students, which is against the law.

The Theme Park Artist job
Sandi was a pretty good artist. And a nearby theme park was recruiting artists to
do portraits and caricatures of the park visitors. She put in an application in October,
and they called her in February. What was she doing all that time? Looking for a job.
Anyhow, they called her up and asked herto show at a nearby library. When she arrived, 
there were lots of kids. Artist wannabes.
They asked her to draw a portrait of one of the park employees in under five minutes as they
stood behind her, watching. Then they critiqued her work. Then they sent her over to a 
park employee who asked her what her position was on employee thievery, etc. They called her
in two weeks, and asked her to show up at the park, rear entrance. They would then 
escort her in for more training at the actual park stand. After some weeks of this, the 
park opened for business and Sandi found herself scheduled every day, all day, drawing
portraits inside the park. It would have been okay except for a very large problem.
 It was strictly commission work. And her immediate supervisor was a fellow artist who
was competing with Sandi for business. Add to the problem that Sandi was better-looking
and more talented than her supervisor. So more people came to Sandi to get their portrait
done and the supervisor began to see her business slipping away. The supervisor began to
pick on Sandi, the obvious object to get her to quit or just to get her rattled. While 
Sandi was drawing the hulking girl would come over and critique her work mercilessly.
And then she began to go through Sandi's art supplies and take them and 
hide them from her, saying that the extra pencils and pastels slowed Sandi down. 
The paying client would have a purple T-shirt on and Sandi would look for her purple
 pastel and it would be gone. The client refused to buy the picture, saying that it
 was her school colors.Sandi asked the big girl about her purple pastel, and the girl
 merely smirked and said: all those colors just slow you down. Use the blue. 
The customer will understand. Once she did a portrait of a girl of color and
 the girl liked it so much that she bought a frame for it. After the girl left
 with her purchase, the hulk came over. You made her skin too light. And 
why didn't you sell her the more expensive frame? So it went with every client. Instead
of trying to get her own clients, the girl merely stood and heckled Sandi. Another 
problem was that the park visitors usually sat down for portraits near the end of the
day, after they had ridden all the rides so there was a rush of business in the 
evening. If Sandi was not doing at least five portraits an hour around noontime, 
the hulk would send her home, so that she could be alone for the evening rush and have all the clients.
 In this way the hulk made hundreds of dollars a day and Sandi barely scraped by
 on thirty dollars a day. Once a park photographer asked Sandi how business was. 
She was astonished that Sandi worked on commission only. Sandi wondered if she 
should try to get a job as park photographer. The last straw was when Sandi was
 written up for erasing. Rattled, she had made a boo boo on a portrait- the 
nose was too big. She sought to erase it, and the hulk saw. Sandi
had never been written up before. As the head supervisor chewed her out, Sandi felt
that her heartburn and ulcer was returning. She quit that night. 

The Law Office from Hell:
Sandi, like all unemployed and unhappily employed look in the want ads of the
 local newspaper. So she would look at some job prospects that
reasonably fit her qualifications and send them resumes with cover 
letters. She'd read the Sunday paper on sunday morn, prepare the resumes
Sunday afternoon and then drive out to the open-24 hours Kinkos to fax them 
out Sunday night. And then she would sit down and wait for the phone calls 
that never came. When they didn't call Monday, she would say: Obviously they
 are just pulling the weekend faxes out of the machine and haven't sorted them 
yet. When they didn't call Tuesday, she would say: Obviously the people in charge
 haven't gotten to that level of their in-basket yet. On Wednesday,
when they didn't call, she would say: They must be conferring with other 
in-charge people who they are going to call in for an interview. On Thursday,
 when they didn't call, she would say: There must be more qualified people who
 they have called first to come in for an interview. On Friday, when they didn't
 call, Sandi would say: It's obvious that that fax was a waste of time. So she 
decided to go to her local Employment office, but that was a bigger 
waste of time than the newspaper ads. She went to the Employment office three
 times, and each time they gave her 5 leads. Something turned out
seriously wrong with each lead. One lead would be too old and already filled.
 Two of the leads would be head hunter agencies. One lead would be a guy who 
wasn't really interested in hiring anyone, he just saw this as a way of bringing 
foot traffic into his store. One lead would be no job, but the people there 
projected that they might have a job in the future, so they just wanted to have 
a pool of backups, just in case. Sandi tried posting her resume Online, but that
 got so many quacks and Spam in response. So Sandi tried mass mailing. That actually
 generated a sizeable response. There were a lot of people out there who were 
thinking of hiring but didn't want to pay $40 for a newspaper ad. One lawyer called:
 I got this letter in the mail, and I was wondering why you sent it...another 
lawyer called: I appreciate your interest, but acutally, we are downsizing...and 
then about a month later, Sandi got a phone call from a lady lawyer: I got this 
letter in the mail about a month ago...are you still available? Sandi got the phone
 call on her cell phone while she was driving and the lawyer wanted to see her in
 one hour. I don't have nice clothes on or anything, Sandi replied. Sandi had these
 fabulous linen suits for special occasions, each with its own pair of matching shoes.
 The lady laughed. We're sort of informal, here. Come on in, the way you are. So Sandi
 did a U-turn and headed for the little town that the lady said she had her office. It
 took her about 45 minutes to get there.   The lawyer's office was one of ten offices 
inside a large colonial house. It looked very quaint. Once inside the lawyer's office,
 Sandi saw that indeed, they were informal. The office looked like crap. There were silly
 stickers covering the back of the door, so that it looked like somebody's refrigerator.
 The beige paint on the walls was dirty. The blinds were dusty. There was a hole in the
 wall where the door knob had banged in. None of the furniture matched. A folded piece
 of paper under one leg of a desk kept it from rocking.  The worn wall to wall had cheap 
scatter rugs placed over the bare spaces. The computer on the secretaries desk was a 
kiddie computer operating on Wordperfect and it was placed in an impossible position. 
Sandi would find, upon using it, that it kept crashing all of the time. The keyboard
 had sticking letters. None of the pictures on the wall matched as to frames or subject
 matter, the frames were cheap plastic and bowed, and one was beginning to show signs of 
paper mold. Needless to say, they were all hanging crookedly, too. The filing system was 
a nightmare. The lady put all of her family disputes in one filing system, all of her 
court-ordered cases in another filing system, all of her criminal cases in another filing 
system, and she had a filing system for inactive cases and a filing system for closed cases.
 She also had files standing upright on the side of her large desk, files scattered across 
her desk, and files scattered behind her. The lady lawyer was huge. She was clinically obese.
 Hair wacked off, bottle-thick glasses and fiftish. And as Sandi was to find out eventually, 
probably suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. The only other employee was part-time 
in the morning, and a young girl who served as a receptionist, answering the phone and taking 
messages. The lawyer only needed her in the morning because she was in court in the morning. 
There evidently was a full-time secretary that had given notice that Sandi was replacing, but
 she was busing using up all of her leave and that was why she was not there right now. Sandi
 was hired on the spot. It was a friday, and Sandi was to start Monday morning. Her pay was
 to be $8.50 an hour. Supposedly, there were benefits, too, like medical, dental, sick leave
 and annual leave. Sandi was ecstatic. But she saw that obtaining and keeping clients would
 be a problem with the way the office looked, and so she gently asked the lady if she could
 maybe bring in flowers, candy, maybe rearrange the items on the desk...the lady said sure. 
Sandi got the key to the office, and then came in that very Saturday and began to fix up her
 new home. She washed the walls to get off the fingerprints. She took the blinds home and put
 them in her bathtub. She brought in a new keyboard for the computer. After all, she didn't want
 to be slowed down while typing. Being able to type fast is essential for a legal secretary. 
Some legal secretaries can type 120 wpm. Sandi could do 70 and was trying to get her speed up
 even faster. She took out the stupid rolled up piece of paper under the desk leg that everyone 
could see and put in a small coaster. She patched up the hole in the wall and screwed in a door
 stop for the door. Sandi rearranged the items on her desk so that she could move
faster. She pulled out all of the clutter in the drawers next to her desk and arranged them 
alphabetically. The rolodex was a nightmare, and she fixed it. There was nothing she could do 
about all the stupid stickers on the door- the lady lawyer evidently had an attachment to all
 the places she had visited and wanted to post the souvenir stickers there.  When she was done,
 the lady who ran the Baptist Outreach Office down the hall came into her office and gasped. 
This looks like a real lawyer's office! She declared. Sandi had more plans for the office- like
 painting all of the furniture dark brown so that it would all match- and eventually painting 
the walls a nice pastel green (so it would cover all the dings Sandi had patched over, like the 
former hole behind the door knob) , washing the windows, etc., etc., but she didn't want to to do 
too much at once, because she thought the  lady lawyer might get upset. She brought in a little 
cappuchino machine,  not only for her and the lady lawyer but for  the clients, as well. 
Monday morning, Sandi came in to work at 7:30 am with her hair up, wearing her maroon linen suit
 with maroon heels and maroon lipstick and sat herself down to work. At 9:30, the previous secretary
 waltzed in wearing blue jeans. She looked twentyish. Sandi examined her incredibly long fingernails,
 and wondered how in earth did the girl ever type anything. It turned out that they used to start at
 8, but the secretary found that an imposition,so they extended it to 8:30, and then extended it to 
9 am. Evidently, by coming in at 9:30, the secretary still found it to be an imposition.  Sandi did 
not want to deal with the old secretary. The old secretary plopped herself down in the 
professional-looking chair Sandi had selected from a back room and glared at all of the changes. 
She rummaged through the drawer. Where are the tax forms? She fumed. Under T, replied Sandi. 
Ms. --- says that I'm to orient you to the office. She says she's coming at at 10. Sandi looked
 over at a black wall and thought it the perfect place for a check-out board. The old secretary 
was exceedingly surly, and Sandi wondered why.  Sandi gently asked some questions, and found out
 that even though the girl refused to say why she was quitting, she did find out that the girl 
had no job to go to. Very strange, thought Sandi. Well, y'know, they are hiring over at Such and 
Such right now. Sandi had herself gone for an interview, (obtained from a mass mailing) but they
 had asked her a very strange bunch of questions, such as: Would you mind working for someone very
 much younger than yourself? And they had turned her down. Indeed, this girl would apply for the 
job eventually, and get it, something that Sandi would find out when she would meet the girl in 
about a month later in the lobby of a Chinese restaurant. (The girl would be sitting in the lobby,
 waiting for  a take-out order, and tell Sandi that she was making $20 an hour at her new job. A 
happy ending for that gal.) The lady lawyer came in from court at 10:15 and nodded at the two girls.
 Sandi tried to smile, but felt embarrassed as hell. "So, how is Sandi doing in the orientation?"
 She asked the old secretary. "Slow, but we're getting there," lied the old secretary. "Uh- can I 
see you in your office for a minute?" She asked. The fat lady lawyer nodded, and the old secretary
 went in and shut the door leaving Sandi in the outer office (that she had fixed up over the weekend)
 to try and strain to hear the conversation that was going on. No need. The converstation in the 
lawyer's office soon turned into a screaming match.  The lawyer's door flew open and the old secretary 
stormed out and took position very close to Sandi. Sandi looked down and pretended to work. It wasn't
 very clear what the dispute was about, but Sandi did catch the the old secretary had hired "two 
lawyers"  already, to sue Sandi's present employer for some sort of Discrimination. Their screaming
 at each other got louder, and Sandi saw that the door to the hallway was open, and that the lady 
from the Baptist Outreach office was sticking her head out of her door to see what was the matter.
 Sandi died. Word of this would get out. This would kill business. And in killing business, it would 
prevent Sandi from getting raises. I can't believe this is happening to me, Sandi thought. She had 
such plans for the office. She had fantazied that her making the office more professional would impress
 clients who would spread the word. She had fantazied that so many clients would come, that the lady 
lawyer would have to hire associates and partners. Then they would have to expand and so maybe move to
 an office building downtown. They would take on not dippy little family disputes, divorces and court 
appointees, like the lady lawyer had now, but big corporate accounts and personal injury cases. Sandi 
could see herself in a couple of years pulling up to her private parking spot- or maybe it was valet
 parking- in her lamborghini, and taking the plush elevator with the piped in music to the penthouse 
suite with an incredble view of the city, maybe a Thai restaurant in the basement, as head secretary 
with several secretaries working underneath her...getting in the company jet for France to deal with
 some foreign corporation...The Baptist lady, having heard enough,  came to the door and waving at Sandi,
 mercifully shut the open door to the hallway. Sandy hoped the Baptist lady would be discrete and say 
nothing. Sandi wondered if this sort of situation had ever happened before. The screaming match was
 reaching a crescendo and Sandi's ears were beginning to hurt. Still she pretended not to notice. 
Finally, the lady lawyer screamed: "Get out! Get out now! Give me the keys to the office!" The old 
secretary pulled them off of her key ring and slammed them onto the desk where Sandi was sitting 
(the desk Sandi had dusted with Pledge over the weekend) and stormed out the back door with all the
 dumb stickers on it. Sandi breathed a great sigh of relief. The lady lawyer went back into her office.
 Eventually, she would want Sandi to type an affidavit on what she had seen and heard for submission 
to the EEO, which is where the old secretary had gone to, and not to "two civil rights lawyers".  
Sandi just could not understand the situation. The old secretary had worked there for four years. 
What the hell had happened? So Sandi, averse to lying, but in order to please her new employer wrote
 an affidavit, and of course, made the old secretary look like the villian in the situation. But 
Sandi didn't feel badly about doing this after she found out that she had linked her up with a $20
 hour job. The days passed uneventfully, Sandi learning more and more about the job by herself, 
and doing more and more little things to make the office more appealing-looking. But when the 
part-time receptionist wasn't there and Sandi was able to do her job easily, the lady lawyer 
called up the part-time receptionist and told her not to bother to come back. Now she saw that 
she had a secretary-Sandi- who could do the work of two people.  Christmas came, and the lady lawyer
 invited Sandi out to lunch with her lawyer friends and there she presented Sandi with a Christmas 
bonus of $50 and told her that Sandi alone had saved her from being forced to file for bankruptcy. 
Her arrival had saved her just in time. Because, it seemed, she had been paying the receptionist 
$8.50 and the old secretary $16.50 an hour. (Sandi found out this in the Chinese restaurant lobby,
 talking with the old secretary).  And hilariously, the lady lawyer had not yet been brought 
into the 21st century. For instance, she did not know how to read or send email. When Sandi showed
 her how, she saw that the lady's box had been full for months. It turned out that the computer
 ran slowly because not only was it an old model not capbable of being upgraded,  there were tons
 of old files on it that had never been deleted. Sandi took off the old files and put them onto 
floppies, as the computer was too ancient to burn CD's.  And then, Sandi concieved of the idea 
of building a website for her. She knew HTML and knew how to buy a domain name and frame forward
 the website to the domain name. And she knew anyone with an email adddress can get a free website.
 So she researched domain names that hadn't been taken and found a good one and suggested it to 
the boss. The boss agreed, and bought it. Sandi set to building the website, and brought in her
 digital camera to take pictures and upload them to the website. When she was done, there was a 
GIF image of a greek building on the left, and the scales of justice on the right, and underneath
 was a Google map showing their location and their hours. Then came digital images of the outside
 of the building, and good shots of the inside. And a description of recent wins, greatly gilded. 
 On a roll, Sandi went and had bumper stickers printed with their website name on it and put one
 on the back of her car. When someone called up and offered to create and maintain a website for 
their business for $100 a month, Sandi just laughed and hung up the phone.  And she showed her boss
 how to maintain the website by herself. When the copier repairman came in, Sandi asked questions
 and the repairman showed her how she could save money by doing some of the repairs herself. Sandi
 showed these tricks to the boss, showing her how she could avoid calling in the repairman. Someone
 had said that you should be indispensible to your boss, and Sandi agreed. But she would eventually
 find that that term can have another meaning. If you streamline the job so much that eventually 
even the boss, alone, can do it...
The boss had given Sandi a little speech about how even though they were a little, humble office,
 they did so because they wanted to be able to hold their heads up high, and not lower themselves
 to the dirty tricks that other offices engaged in...Sandi would find out what a line of crap this 
was when she overheard one day her boss over the phone  giving one of her criminal clients advice 
on how to beat the piss test. Now, this being a regional office in a hick town, their court system
 was not yet on the internet. More urban court systems will put their docket up on their webpage,
 so that you can go there and verify your court dates. In this small town, the only way to verify 
court dates was to call the court up on the phone which was a nightmare, as they could put you on
 hold for hours. Sandi had three phone lines, and one day, just to see, she called up the court on 
one line, was put on hold, and then called up the court on line number two. Line number two was 
answered in twenty minutes. Line number one, the first phone call, was answered in two hours. With
 the musak interupted every so often with the dumb recording: Your call is important to us. Please 
stay on the line and your phone call will be answered in the order in which it was received... Sandi,
 so that she could continue working, put the call on speakerphone so that she could hear when someone
 picked up but she sometimes missed an opportunity when someone called in on line three, and she 
had to drop everything and tend to that phone call. Now, there was a date that was recorded in the
 court log by the old secretary or maybe the former receptionist that was one day off. Sandi was
 never able to call to confirm it. She found out about it when the baliff called. Where is 
Counselor --- he wanted to know.  Her clients she was representing were there, the opposing 
counsel and his clients were there, the subpoened witness were all there the judge was there, 
where was Sandi's boss? Sandi lied to the baliff that her boss was on her way, and hung up. She got
 on the phone and called her boss's cell phone. But her boss, as usual, had turned her cell phone 
off. She hadn't even bothered to put on the buzzer, probably not knowing how. She probably thought
 that reading the cell phone instructions was beneath her. Sandi looked at the sign-in board that
 she had put up the week before, and had managed to entice the boss to write on. The lady lawyer 
had scrawled something about a school board meeting. A delivery boy, who worked for a contractor 
and picked up mail from area law offices and delivered them to court was there. She pointed to the
 board. "What school board could she be at do you know?" The delivery boy named a likely one. Sandi
 looked in the phone book, found a number, and called. It turned out that she had called the correct
 school board and she reached the receptionist at the front desk. "They're in a meeting now," replied
 the receptionist. "It's an emergency, said Sandi." Send someone in to the meeting to  tell her to 
turn on her cell phone and call the office right now." The lady agreed. Now the phone rang, and it was
 the judge himself on the phone.  He was as stern as anything, as you can imagine. "Yes, your Honor. 
No, your Honor," said Sandi. "My boss has called me from her cell phone," Sandi lied. "She says that 
she is stuck in traffic and will be at your courthouse within ten minutes." His Honor, temporarily 
placated, hung up. The lady lawyer called. "What is the matter?" She demanded. "Ma'am, the entry in the
 log is incorrect. You are due in court right now. I have told the judge that you are on your way." 
"But I don't have the file with me!" She exclaimed. Sandi looked up at the delivery boy. "Can you bring
 the file to her?"  Sandi asked. He nodded. "He's bringing the file to you. He will meet you in front of
 the chambers. " She hung up and went and found the file within one minute. Now the opposing counsel 
called. "Where is Attorney ----?" He asked, saucily. "She's been stuck in traffic, and has called the
 judge concerning her delay, and His Honor has said he will wait for her, and you had better be prepared
 for His Honor to hear your case, because we are going to kick your butt off!" Replied Sandi and hung
 up. As the delivery boy went out the door with the file, he said: "You're lucky. I happen to know that
 the School board office is practically across the street from the Court buildings." The judge called
 again. "Counselor ---still has not showed. I'm of a mind to just continue the case." "Oh, no, your 
Honor. My boss has just called and said that she has arrived at the courthouse," lied Sandi. "Well, hm,
 I'll wait five more minutes, then." So, the delivery boy arrived at the courthouse, he passed the 
file off to Sandi's boss, she opened it as she walked down the aisle and the case began. The delivery
 boy called Sandi that he had successfully passed off the file to her boss and that she was now in 
court and court was in session. Sandi grasped the sides of her desk to steady herself, her palms 
sweaty. She felt the tension and the stress fall away from her. Her breathing returned to normal 
and she smiled. It turned out that not only did her boss win a big settlement, but she was the one
 who had made the mistaken entry in the log book as to the date she was supposed to be in court. 
It was then that Sandi suspected that her boss was beginning to suffer from memory loss, one of
 the first symptoms of the dementia of Alzheimer's. (Of course, Sandi was just as old as her boss,
 but Sandi has such an active mind that recently, and at 2am and thoroughly sleepy, she took an 
online IQ test, scored 136, was told that she scored in the top 1% of the US Population- and so 
Sandi is a long way from developing dementia.) Well, Sandi had saved the day. She had saved her 
boss's bacon, as they say. Their client was happy with the big settlement, the other lawyer 
indeed had his ass kicked, and it made Sandi's law firm look like it was a top contender. Word
 would now go out and clients would start to pour in. What did Sandi's boss do in order to reward
 her supercharged employee? Did she take her out for a steak dinner with all the trimmings? Did 
she offer a promotion? No. She came back and screamed at her. "How dare you lie to a judge!" she 
fumed. Sandi was stunned and speechless. "Lie to the judge! Lie to the judge!" Was all the lady
 lawyer could say. No mention of what alternative action that Sandi should have taken. And there 
was no other action. Other than losing the case, or having it continued due to a No Show...due to
 a goofy lawyer not knowing where they are supposed to be.  Major blows to a law firm. Sandi was 
fighting not only to save this doofus lawyer from bankruptcy and disgrace, she was fighting  to 
save her own job as well. Sandi tried to understand the lawyer taking it out on her. Maybe she 
was just letting off steam. Or maybe, this was the paranoia of Alzheimer's beginning. It would 
get worse. One day, some weeks after, a lady came in an plopped one hundred dollars in front of
 Sandi. The boss was not there. I need a contract drawn up, she said. And I have a rough draft 
written out already. She laid some scrawled papers next to the money. So many of her boss's 
client's checks bounced, and here was cash on the barrel. But Sandy had never drawn up a contract.
 But she wasn't about to tell the lady that. She thought what she might do, was to type up the mess
 in a recognizable format on her computer, and then transfer the file to her boss's computer and
 then let her boss, who knew Contract law, polish it up. Luckily, the lady suggested this first, 
and Sandi nodded. She didn't want the responsiblilty of taking on a case that her boss had not yet
 approved of. Sandi tried calling her boss on her cell phone, but as usual, it was turned off.  
The lady said: "I'll be back later on today to talk to your boss." She was selling her restaurant,
 and wanted certain items not to convey. Sandi waited until she was out the door, and then she took
 the money, filed it away and commenced to type. Sandi had nothing else to do at that moment, and 
she felt that she should not waste time she was being paid for in doing nothing. She was done with
 the "contract" by the time her boss came through the door, and she showed her boss the money, the
 scrawled papers and what she had been doing for the past half hour. Her boss's reaction was to 
scream at her. "How dare you accept a client without my permission!" she fumed. She fumed at Sandi
 for hours. Then she took the floppy with Sandi's typing on it, put it into her own computer, and
 altered and fixed things into a legal contract. The lady came in, was pleased with what she saw,
 and paid Sandi's boss more money and left with several copies of her Contract. Some days later 
when Sandi went further than required, again, and labelled some court exhibits and then made 
photocopies of them- one for the judge, one for opposing counsel...Sandi's boss told her that 
she could no longer tolerate "her mistakes" any more and ordered her to leave. Sandi failed to
 see how she had ever made any mistakes (except maybe accepting this job) and without a word, 
got her stuff and elegantly walked out the door. She said nothing, not one word, because she felt
 she would not give the crazy old lady the satisfaction of being able to scream some more, which 
evidently was something she liked to do. The crazy boss was probably satisfied with the idea that
 Sandi would not be given a good recommendation, as so could not get a good job after this. But 
Sandi had no intenion of mentioning this job of eight months on her resume... Sandi
 went back to the Law Office from Hell to collect her last paycheck, and saw the real reason she 
had been let go. It was a young stud muffin, answering the phone.  He had probably been eyeballed
 by the old crone lawyer for weeks, if not months...maybe he had been mowing her lawn or sweeping
 out her stables or waxing her boat...Sandi applied for Unemployment online, and the online 
questionnaire asked why she had been terminated. "For saving my boss from bankruptcy." Sandi wrote. 
The Virginia government turned down Sandi's request for Unemployment. Three months after this, 
Sandi saw the stud muffin bagging groceries at the local supermarket during the day. 
And then she saw a For Lease sign in front of the law office. 
"We certainly hitched our wagon to a star." She said to herself.
Sandi had a passing interest in crafts, and she thought she would try to enter the 
 Newport News Fall festival. It's a big shindig in October...they even have an Indian 
tribe show up and do authentic Indian dance... and there is a Civil War reinactment
....so she went to the city hall to get an application, but it turned out that she 
went to the wrong city hall and to the wrong floor. The floor she got off of was the 
Human Resources floor. She walked into the glass doors and asked if they had any 
applications and the lady gave her a job application. Sandi stared at it. Seems that
 there was a need for a legal secretary over at Local Probation. Sandi took the typing
 test- it required a typing speed of 40 wpm which Sandi easily surpassed and the lady 
sent her over to Ms. Black for an interview and got the job. The job where she would meet Tom.
 Sandi never did make it to the Newport News Fall Festival.