Thursday, April 21, 2011

Horn If You’re Honky

It’s been awhile since I’ve written, but you should be used to that by now.  Not much to report other than giant news, which I will get to later on.

First up is that dern house we own in Providence.  There are tenants living there, two on the third floor and one and a half on the first floor.  Hooray.  The second floor had some interest and I was about to approve an application, but the person got into a car accident and has some other things to attend to.  Just great.  Luckily, the tenant cover the mortgage with their rent payments, so I’m not losing money every month, which is a plus.

As for the sale of the house, that’s going slowly.  A bit of interest, and even an offer.  It was a hilarious offer, sure, but an offer nonetheless.  Two weeks ago, I got a call from John McCann, Realtor, saying that someone had made an offer.  That offer was for 120 thousand dollars.  The house is listed for 179 thousand dollars.  Needless to say, I didn’t accept it.  I countered at $169,900 and never heard back.

Oh well.

Now, some living in a US Territory, rather than a US state news.  We had been trying very hard to get a job.  I at golf courses, Amanda at hotels.  There were, and still are, plenty of jobs available in both industries here on the island.  We have applied to numerous of them.  I even had direct email information for some of the golf pros who had open positions and have had some email discussions with them.

Why are we still unemployed?  Well, the answer is either we are over-qualified for the menial jobs we applied for (housekeeper, bag room attendant, etc.), or we are too crackery.  I have reason to believe that the latter is, unfortunately, the real reason.

Under normal circumstances, people looking for jobs at hotel chains are steered to impersonal online application forms.  That is what Amanda had been doing for months.  Every job that popped up, she would spend a half an hour filling out stupid online forms, only to never hear anything about it again, aside from the initial “we have received your application” auto-reply.  Discouraging.

I filled out my share of those online applications for various golf jobs around the island, but was lucky enough to have some contact information for folks with some sway at the courses.  I heard nothing back from 75% of these people, but did hear back from two folks.  One of those folks said that he didn’t have any openings (the online info was incorrect) and the other folk said that he didn’t have any spots available for someone with my “extensive experience”. 

Buoyed by my chance to actually speak with a human (via email at least), I replied saying that I was uninterested in getting a job anything like what I had done before and would be perfectly content handing out members’ bags and driving the range-ball-picker-upper-cart-thing-with-the-cage-on-it.

I have sent two subsequent emails since then and have not heard back from this fellow.

That I exhibit A in my “Puerto Ricans are racist” case.  Here is Exhibit B:

Puerto Ricans are generally rude jerks.  I feel compelled to say something like “not all of them are”, so I will:  The vast majority of local Puerto Ricans are completely self-absorbed, ill-mannered, loud, discourteous dinks.  We have met some that are very affable and nice, but they were almost always serving us food and thus, expecting a tip thereafter.

Why are they rude jerks?  I submit that it is because I am a honky.  They are uninterested in helping me for any reason and generally act either above me or unconcerned with my well-being.   At the grocer or Walgreens, I usually get looked at by employees and patrons alike, as if I am an intruder and I should leave their litter-covered, slow moving island. 

Because of the way that locals have treated me, I think I can’t get a job here because I am white.  I feel like a black guy in Boston.

Just kidding.

I feel like a black guy in Boston before affirmative action.

Because of all of this, Amanda and I have decided, after much discussion, to move back to the continental United States.  We have a flight booked for the 8th of May and will be heading to New England for at least a little bit.  I have started to attempt landing a job in the US and, miraculously, have had a few interviews already.

I am so far being pursued by white people in Austin, Texas, Washington, DC, Seattle, Washington, and my frontrunner, for the time being, Omaha, Nebraska.  We have no idea where we will end up living, well, I guess we have some idea, but we will definitely be leaving the island of Puerto Rico.

It was a nice try I guess.  We gave it a good run and tried to make it work.  It turns out, though, that despite the best view I will likely ever have from a place that I live, and despite the super-nice beaches and ocean, that this is the second worst place that we have lived in our short, but eventful married life.

I may write another post describing why this place sucks so badly, but here’s the gist of it:  Loud, uneducated (and unconcerned with education) racists.