Within seconds after informing my first boss out of college that I was moving on he called me a thief. What we were supposed to talk about at that time was my raise in pay. He wanted me to tell him what I thought he should give me for a raise after getting a software application released for a prominent metroplex museum of science and history. He was pleased with my work and wanted to reward me for the dedication and quality of it all and for my professionalism working with the clients at the museum. It was a strange thing to do, but he had pulled some sexual harassment shit on a woman working on documentation for the application and had still not installed a back fire exit for those of us working at the end of the hall in the building. So I stood without a word upon being called a thief, gathered my coat from my crappy little office space, said goodbye to his business partner (his wife) and left the premises to go out for a nice dinner and drink in celebration of my future prospects.
I spent the next couple of days over the weekend moving into a new apartment in a complex just constructed which was close to the location of my new job situated between two halves of the metroplex. It was an easy move and left the remainder of two weeks I had intended to continue working at my former job after giving notice of my departure free. The weird-o boss didn't want me around so I took a twelve-day vacation to go canoeing and biking in the Colorado Rockies. I had a fine time, returning home without injuries or even having tipped over in the canoe paddling some pretty tricky rivers nestled between high, wide mountains.
Upon returning, I spent some leftover cash on oil paints, brushes, a pallete, linseed oil, turpentine and canvases to try my hand at painting during evenings after work. The area wasn't as friendly for bicycling as the University of Dallas campus was but it was okay as long as I was careful to watch out for morons behind wheels and I managed to never have any close calls or accidents biking neighborhood streets there mornings before going to work.
The office building wasn't grand but it was new, bright, open and I could look out the big front windows from my desk anytime I wanted to. The people I worked with were all friendly and my boss was a good fellow, bringing a keg to the office every Friday for employees to enjoy at the end of the workweek. And it wasn't a mini-keg he brought. I wasn't much of a beer drinker and even though my apartment was close by, I didn't want to risk a DUI incident so I would drink one beer, shoot the shit with colleagues for a couple of hours then go home.
About a year later, the little startup company was bought out and reorganization began immediately with the firing of my boss after moving us all to a new location in a shabby strip mall a few miles away. Then instead of letting me develop software the new boss had me running errands like fetching a new hard drive for someone's desktop computer. So I moved again to keep my dwelling space as close to the office as possible (I hate wasting valuable time and effort commuting in cities) and began searching for a new job, this time looking for a position writing software for a large corporation which I figured would provide much more stability in my professional life than mom and pop incs and startups ever would be able to.
A few months later I landed a job with a global powerhouse in the petroleum services industry and submitted my resignation letter to my jinky boss who made no effort to retain me as an employee. I worked out my two weeks after giving notice doing a lot of gopher crap and a little bit of software development then packed up again and moved to a mobile home situated near the office of my new job where within seconds I was working with some of the latest computer hardware and software of the day and learning lots of cool, new stuff.
