Skilled nursing facility west bloomfield mi
Ninth Doctor
2023.06.03 16:46 Proletlariet Ninth Doctor
Respect the Doctor
"You know what they call me in the ancient legends on the Dalek home world? The Oncoming Storm. You might have removed all your emotions, but I reckon right down deep in your DNA there’s one little spark left... and that’s fear. Doesn’t it just burn when you face me?"🎵
At the conclusion of the Time War, the withered and wartorn Doctor started his life anew. Though he reclaimed his name after it was disowned by his War incarnation, he tried to distance himself from his past as the last remaining Time Lord in existence. He continued fighting injustice throughout time and space with steely determination while also remaining detached and brooding over his trauma. This incarnation may not have been among the longest in the totality of the Doctor's regeneration cycle, but marked a crucial period in the Doctor's life.
Make sure to check out the Tenth Doctor's thread because he uses the same versions of the sonic screwdriver and TARDIS as his predecessor.
Sources
Hover over a feat to view its source.- Doctor Who (2005) series 1= E#
- The Day of the Doctor = 50th
Intelligence & Skill
Technological Aptitude- Realizes that something is up with Platform One when the reported issues are not accurate.
- Deactivates the Adherents of the Repeated Meme by ripping off one of their arms and pulling out a wire.
- Correctly deduces that Cassandra used a teleportation feed to escape, quickly finds its hidden location and reverses it to teleport her back to face justice.
- Upgrades Rose's phone so she can call across time and space. Additionally, this phone could receive signals from inside a bunker and required no special input to pinpoint which specific time she wished to call.
- Understands the technology behind the Slitheen's skin suits shortly after learning about them for the first time.
- Hacks into the Navy with Mickey's help to launch a missile at 10 Downing Street.
- Shows a stubborn human how to play an alien musical instrument.
- Searches through a box full of alien weapons, sorting out which are broken and which are functional from a quick inspection.
- Works the security of a secret facility during a crisis.
- Understands how a data-sharing brain implant works while observing it in action for the first time.
- Knows the name, century of origin and manufacturer of Jack's sonic blaster.
- Identifies the type of spaceship Jack stole and the nanogenes found in another stolen vessel.
- Uses the nanogenes to end the Empty Child plague then sets the vehicle that released them to self-destruct.
- Discovers and understands the device Blon intends to use to escape Earth.
- Locates Rose in the Game Station using its difficult-to-crack computer system.
- Uses the Game Station's technology to build a delta wave transmitter to stop the Daleks, despite knowing full well it would destroy the Earth in the process. Even though the Doctor completes the machine in a matter of hours opposed to the days he estimated it would take, he refused to use it out of principle.
- Exposes Cassandra as the true culprit behind Platform One's sabotage, even when she used robot drones as a scapegoat.
- Quickly identifies the "ghosts" as gaseous beings and understands how they can possess human corpses.
- Can tell that an "alien" is actually a mutated pig.
- Deduces that an alien spaceship crash was faked for a greater malicious purpose.
- Exposes 10 Downing Street's alien expert meeting as a trap.
- Figures out the Raxacoricofallapatorians' weakness by narrowing down what they know about them so far.
- Deduces what the Slitheen's end goal is.
- Discovers a conspiracy behind Satelite Five from minor details about its culture and later concludes its true purpose.
- Can tell that Nancy has lost a loved one due to her motherly nature towards the local urchins.
- Deduces the origin of the Empty Child plague and reveals that Nancy is the mother of the child in question, thereby bringing an end to the plague.
- Sees through Blon's attempt at distracting him and poisoning his drink.
- Escapes the Big Brother house by intentonally getting himself evicted and calling their bluff at the risk of disintegration.
- Improvises a way to charm different aliens.
- Takes charge of a group of soldiers holding him at gunpoint.
- Buys time by threatening to weaponize a wine bottle in an impractical way.
- Sends away a group of gas mask zombies by exploiting their child-like mentality.
- Fools Rose into going inside the TARDIS so he can send her home and out of harm's way.
- Uses a champagne bottle to expose Auton Mickey and aggravate it.
- Saves Rose and Harriet Jones from a pair of Slitheens by spraying them with a fire extinquisher.
- Counters Blon's poisonous breath with breath freshener.
- Understands the Nestene Consciousness' roars and shrieks when trying to negotiate with it (the TARDIS translation circuit doesn't seem to be at play because Rose doesn't appear to understand it).
- Can exit and enter rooms very stealthily.
- Pickpockets Jack's sonic blaster and replaces it with a banana.
- Claims he can speak five billion languages.
- His knowledge of history is not always on point.
Physical Attributes
Biology- Can survive fatal injuries or — in War's case — the toll of old age and exhaustion by regenerating his body into a renewed and radically different form. This incarnation met his end when he absorbed the energy of the Time Vortex.
- Has a much longer lifespan than humans. He is allegedly 900 years old by the time he meets Rose.
- Has two hearts.
- The DNA of a time traveler is potent enough that it rejuvenates a crippled Dalek into working condition with a touch. Though we only see this happen with Rose, it's safe to assume the same would apply to the Doctor.
- Pulls off Auton Mickey's head with his bare hands.
- Flips an Auton over his shoulder.
- Rips the arm off the lead drone of the Adherents of the Repeated Meme.
- Kicks a locked door open.
- Easily dispatches a human guard.
- Can be restrained by at least two Autons or reanimated humans.
- Catches a strike from one of the Adherents of the Repeated Meme.
- Makes it across a catwalk to pull a switch before the sun's rays can disintegrate Rose. While he is initially helped by slowing down the giant rotating fans in his way, this help expires by the last fan so he manages to cross it moving at rapid speeds through deep concentration
- Saves Rose from being devoured by a Reaper.
- Catches Blon's poison dart while glancing at a menu.
- Resists being strangled by a detached Auton arm. This exact arm was strong enough to slice open a steel pipe in a single swipe.
- Doesn't seem bothered by the excess amounts of gas filling up the room.
- Not only withstands an electric shock fatal to humans, but places the device discharging the electricity onto one of the alien perpetrators.
- Claims he can feel the Earth rotate, though is possibly just being overdramatic.
- Senses the Gelth moving through the walls of a mortuary.
- Tails an elusive girl through smell.
- Claims he can see the past, present and future simultaneously which is too overwhelming for a human mind.
TARDIS
The TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) is the Doctor's mode of transport as well as his home. By traveling through the Time Vortex, it can materialize to any point in space and time. Though this model is rather old and semi-functioning, it's still a very powerful object in its own right. Oh, and it's also bigger on the inside.Space Travel & Mobility
- Lands in a secret, highly-secure facility 53 floors underground.
- Lands inside Jack's warship so he can escape its destruction.
- Saves Rose from a hostage situation on the Dalek mothership by materializing around her into the safety of the TARDIS. However, this also brings a Dalek inside that is quickly disposed of.
- Intends to go to Naples in 1860 but ends up in Cardiff in 1869.
- Travels 100 years in the future, then 10,000 and finally 5,000,000,000 years.
- Rose claims she can go on countless journeys and arrive back in 10 seconds, but didn't either because the TARDIS malfunctioned or she just forget.
- Along with twelve of his past and future incarnations, he uses the TARDIS to freeze Gallifrey in time and seal it in a pocket dimension.
- Certain points in time are in flux, meaning somebody's existence in the future does not always ensure that undesirable outcomes will not happen.
- Means to take Rose home 12 hours after her departure, but messes up and takes her 12 months after she left.
- Takes Rose back to witness her father's death, then takes her back again thereby creating two sets of the Doctor and Rose in the same place in time. When Rose prevents her father's demise, the original pair disappear. This violation of time brings upon the Reapers to devour anyone in sight and turns the TARDIS into an empty shell. All of this is reversed when Rose's father follows out his death and lets himself get run over by the same car which had been forced into a perpetual loop by Rose's actions. Though the timeline is restored, miner changes from its first iteration remain.
- Chases a spacecraft to Earth and ends up weeks behind it when they land.
- The Doctor's heroic deeds at one point in time have negatives consequences that he encounters first hand when he ends up in the same place 100 years later.
- The Doctor can't just use the TARDIS to go back in time to avert the current problem.
- Tries to locate the Nestene Consciousness by connecting Auton Mickey's decapitated head to the console.
- Marks the flight path of a spaceship from 12 hours ago.
- Gets taken off course by a mysterious signal.
- The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan allegedly couldn't get through the TARDIS Door.
- Can fly into the heart of a plasma storm without getting critically damaged.
- Implies that the TARDIS could withstand the explosion of Jack's warship with the doors open or not, comparing it to a draft.
- The Chamelion Circuit allows the TARDIS to change its exterior to blend in with whatever time or place it lands. Because it malfunctioned in the 1960's, the TARDIS has been stuck in the form of a police box ever since.
- The TARDIS is protected by a forcefield capable of withstanding missiles from the Dalek mothership and direct blasts from Dalek rayguns.
- Remotely sends Rose home to keep her out of harm's way and to keep it out of the hands of those who would misuse it.
- Before using a recovery vehicle, Mickey fails to pry open the TARDIS console using a chain hooked to his car.
- The Daleks kidnapped the Doctor and his companions from within the TARDIS using a transmat beam. This beam had to be particularly powerful since a regular one wouldn't be able to breach the TARDIS.
- The power of the Cardiff Rift forces the Heart of the TARDIS open. When Blon Slitheen looks into it, it connects with her telepathically and reverts her back into an egg so she can live a new, crimeless life.
- After snapping open the console using a recovery vehicle, Rose absorbs the power of the Time Vortex through the Heart of the TARDIS. She then mentally sends the TARDIS back to the future where the Doctor is, having become the legendary Bad Wolf. Rose uses this power to destroy the entire Dalek empire, revive Jack Harkness (and consequently make him immortal) and scatter the words "Bad Wolf" throughout time to form a self-sustaining paradox. However, such power is too much for her mind and body so the Doctor transfers it into his before returning it to the TARDIS.
- Because it's an old model, the Doctor has to sometimes hit the console with a hammer to get things going.
- Plays music.
- Has a scanner capable of viewing the TARDIS' surroundings and local television channels.
- Has a working phone, yet the phone located on the outside is typically non-functional and just for show.
- Plays a holographic message the Doctor prepared for Rose in times of emergency.
- The TARDIS translation circuit allows the Doctor and his companions to understand and speak the local language of wherever they visit.
- Contains a wardrobe full of clothes to help blend in with different time periods.
- The TARDIS key glows when it's about to materialize nearby. It could also summon the TARDIS remotely, even during a temporal disturbance.
- Cancels the Slitheen's galactic advertisement signal.
- Needs to refuel. A few days standing by the Cardiff Rift will do the job.
- Was used by Blon's extrapolator to open up the Rift which could potentially destroy the world.
- Reveals that the disintegrator ray used at the Game Station was actually a transmat beam.
Sonic Screwdriver
The sonic screwdriver is the Doctor's multi-purpose handheld tool. It's mostly used for opening or unlocking doors, but can fulfill a myriad of other functions.Locks
- Locks a metal door that holds back Auton Mickey for a while.
- Removes a circuit panel.
- Frees the Doctor from futuristic restraints.
- Opens the backstage door to a nightclub.
- Opens a padlock.
- Locks a doorway to keep out a group of gas mask zombies for a few hours.
- Opens handcuffs.
- Can't break Rose out of a jammed door from the future.
- Can't break out of a steel bunker.
- Can't unlock a door with a deadlock seal or smash through exoglass unless an outside force allows it.
- Ends up in Rose' flat while following a signal for Autons.
- Discovers that the gas mask zombies have identical symptoms by scanning them.
- Gets multiple energy readings from scanning the Game Station.
- Disables an elevator.
- Renders an Auton arm inanimate by cutting off the signal controlling it.
- Hacks into a digital keypad.
- Keeps Platform One's sun filter up even when the system actively fights to make it descend.
- Controls an elevator.
- Hacks into a futuristic ATM to give Adam some digital money in unlimited amounts.
- Hacks into Satelite Five's mainframe.
- Destroys Adam's home phone.
- Transfers the power from a common battery into the TARDIS key.
- Intercepts Blon's teleporter, causing her to keep teleporting in his direction.
- Damages a security camera.
- Activates the TARDIS from the outside.
- Removes the bolts on a cat flap.
- Attempts to loosen concrete bars by sending a resonation pattern through them.
- Reconnects severed barbed wire.
Other Equipment
- Carries around a piece of psychic paper that telepathically projects his thoughts into the minds of those who read it, allowing him inflitrate spaces or pose as figures of importance or authority. He has used it to pass himself off as an invited guest to Platform One's Earth destruction party, a member of management at Satelite Five and a member of the Ministry of Astronauts.
- Destroys a department store housing Autons using a homemade explosive.
- Kills the Nestene Consciousness with a vial of anti-plastic.
- Hands Mickey a disc containing a computer virus that would erase all mention of the Doctor on the internet.
- Spies on a building with high-tech binoculars.
- Supervises Blon during her last meal using special armbands from Jack which strike her with 10,000 volts if she goes further than 10 feet away from him.
- Unlike other incarnations, he is more willing to use firearms in desperate situations but may just equip it as an intimidation tactic.
Miscellanous
- Witnessed the Kennedy assassination, the eruption of Krakatoa, the fall of Troy, and World War V. He also pushed boxes for the Boston Tea Party and was on the Titanic when it sunk but not before warning a family not to go.
- MILF magnet.
- Oop North.
- Considered something of a celebrity.
- Santa?
- Makes Daleks back away in fear.
"Fantastic"
2023.06.03 15:38 obeliskposture Short story about bad times & bad jobs
I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.
submitted by obeliskposture to stupidpol [link] [comments]
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.
2023.06.03 15:09 seannestor This Week in Toledo 6/3/23
 | submitted by seannestor to toledo [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/vqfgv168ys3b1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe5f891d22cac511f70d30faa8cea6cf5199341b • On Monday, Bitwise Industries - the Fresno, California-based tech training company that has been renovating the former Jefferson Center downtown at 1300 Jefferson Ave. - furloughed its entire staff of 900 employees citing cash flow issues. A $33 million lawsuit has been filed against the company by its financial partners, who cite that they were misled and that contracts were breached. • On Tuesday, Toledo City Council voted 9-3 to approve a $180,000 contract with Louisville-based Cities United to develop a crime-reduction plan. Council members Hobbs, Moline, and Sarantou cast dissenting votes. • Also on Tuesday, City of Toledo Safety Director Brian Byrd announced he will be retiring on September 1. He has worked for the City since 1988. • On Wednesday, ProMedica announced that it plans to close the Goerlich Memory Center and a skilled nursing facility in Sylvania by August 31 as part of ongoing cost-cutting measures related to its dire financial position. The Goerlich Memory Center has been open since 1994. • On Thursday, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA) launched its TARTA Summer Blast Pass, which allows young people aged 6 through 19 to make use of TARTA services at no cost through August 31. For more information, visit https://tarta.com/blast/ • Also beginning Thursday, ratepayers are likely to see a hike of up to 47% on their electric bills due to rising energy costs influenced by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. For those interested in changing their energy supplier, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) operates a website comparing all available energy providers at http://www.energychoiceohio.gov/ • The Ohio Department of Transportation has reintroduced plans to expand I-475 between Douglas Road and US-23. Several residents are concerned as the project will involve acquiring and demolishing homes as early as 2026. • The Ohio Controlling Board has earmarked $2,000,000 for cleanup in the Maumee River as well as $750,000 to Unison Behavioral Health Group to purchase a 16-bed residential treatment facility for those with severe and persistent mental illness. • On Saturday (June 3) from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., the City of Toledo is sponsoring a free disposal day at the Hoffman Road Landfill (3962 Hoffman Rd.) Lucas county residents can drop off bulk solid waste at no cost during this time. For more information, visit https://toledo.oh.gov/landfill • Also on Saturday (June 3) at 10 a.m. in the Old West End, the King Wamba Parade will kick off the 50th Annual Old West End Festival. For more information about the festival and the various events and activities taking place within it, visit http://www.toledooldwestend.com/festival • In further Saturday (June 3) events, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. the City of Toledo will host another public meeting at St. Martin de Porres Community Center (1119 Bancroft St.) for stakeholders to plan future development at the Swayne Field Shopping Center at Monroe Street and Detroit Avenue. • The East Toledo Family Center will host a Storybook Festival on Saturday (June 3) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.,. at Waite High School (301 Morrison Dr.). The entirely free event will include activities, raffles, a meet and greet with Spiderman, music, and prizes to promote literacy for children. • The Multicultural Twilight Market will take place on Saturday (June 3) from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Toledo Farmer's Market (525 Market St.). Shops operated by women, immigrants, and people of color will be present. There is no cost to attend. • Next Wednesday (June 7) at 12 p.m., the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library will launch its free Summer Music Series with a performance by Kerry Patrick Clark & Robbie Clark on the north lawn of the Main Branch Library (325 N. Michigan St.). Concerts will continue every Wednesday at 12 p.m. through August 8. • Also next Wednesday (June 7) from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., City of Toledo District 1 Councilman John Hobbs will host a public town hall meeting at the Eleanor Kahle Senior Center (1315 Hillcrest Ave.). For more information, call 419-245-1611. • Next Thursday (June 8) from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., the 18th annual Lunch at Levis series will kick off at Levis Square Park (St. Clair St. and Madison Ave.) in downtown Toledo with a free concert by Kyle White. Each Thursday through September 21, free music, food trucks, and activities will be present at the park. • You can receive This Week in Toledo via e-mail by subscribing at https://toledo.substack.com/subscribe. You can also receive updates on Facebook by liking the official page at https://www.facebook.com/thisweekintoledo. News sources: The Blade, 13ABC |
2023.06.03 12:47 sanjibdas1298 Jiaganj College of Engineering & Technology: Empowering Future Innovators
Introduction:
Jiaganj College of Engineering & Technology (JCET) is a premier educational institution situated in the serene town of Jiaganj in West Bengal, India. Renowned for its commitment to academic excellence and fostering innovation, JCET has emerged as a leading center for technical education in the region. This article explores the key aspects of JCET, including its academic programs, state-of-the-art facilities, distinguished faculty, and the unique opportunities it offers to students.
submitted by sanjibdas1298 to u/sanjibdas1298 [link] [comments]
Jiaganj College of Engineering & Technology (JCET) is a premier educational institution situated in the serene town of Jiaganj in West Bengal, India. Renowned for its commitment to academic excellence and fostering innovation, JCET has emerged as a leading center for technical education in the region. This article explores the key aspects of JCET, including its academic programs, state-of-the-art facilities, distinguished faculty, and the unique opportunities it offers to students.
- Academic Programs: JCET offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs, equipping students with the necessary skills to thrive in the ever-evolving technological landscape. The college offers undergraduate programs in engineering disciplines such as Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. Additionally, JCET also offers postgraduate programs in specialized fields, empowering students to delve deeper into their areas of interest.
- State-of-the-art Facilities: Recognizing the importance of providing students with a conducive learning environment, JCET boasts state-of-the-art facilities. The college has well-equipped laboratories, modern classrooms, and a comprehensive library with an extensive collection of books, journals, and digital resources. These resources ensure that students have access to the latest information and can engage in hands-on learning experiences.
- Distinguished Faculty: JCET takes pride in its highly qualified and experienced faculty members who are dedicated to imparting quality education. The faculty comprises accomplished academicians and industry professionals who bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the classrooms. Their guidance and mentorship not only facilitate academic learning but also nurture the overall development of students.
- Industry Collaborations and Internship Opportunities: JCET recognizes the importance of bridging the gap between academia and industry. The college has established collaborations with leading companies and organizations, facilitating industry exposure and internship opportunities for students. These partnerships enable students to gain practical experience, apply their theoretical knowledge, and develop valuable industry connections.
- Research and Innovation: JCET encourages research and innovation among its students and faculty members. The college promotes a culture of curiosity and creativity, fostering an environment conducive to cutting-edge research. Through various research initiatives and projects, students have the opportunity to explore emerging technologies, contribute to the advancement of knowledge, and address real-world challenges.
- Extracurricular Activities: At JCET, holistic development is given equal importance alongside academic excellence. The college offers a wide range of extracurricular activities, including cultural events, sports competitions, and technical fests. These activities not only provide a platform for students to showcase their talents but also enhance their leadership skills, teamwork abilities, and overall personality development.
2023.06.03 02:14 Good_Astronomer_679 LPNs and PICCs
I am an LPN in Indiana. I’ve only been an LPN since January and I work long term care through a staffing agency. I did go staff for three months at a facility and hated it. I only go to two facilities through my agency ones I’m familiar with from when I was a cna and med tech for 11 years and had really great nurses who showed me a lot. I get told I am competent as a new nurse. However I have a burning question I haven’t been able to find the answer to. So the one facility I go to I work the rehab/skilled hall a lot. There is a resident that gets IV ATB through a power PICC. I was trained and even remember in nursing school when we went over iv therapy in lab that I was never told about checking for blood return. I was told at the staff job I worked at that the LPNs could not draw blood from a picc that was the RNs job I remember this from being a cna at a different place and an LPN I worked with said she had to wait for the day shift nurse who was an RN to draw a peak and trough so she could run it to the hospital on the way home. So I know drawing blood is a no go for me with a picc line so logically I’m thinking a LPN cannot check for blood return on a picc line. Story is this resident with the picc two RNs before me were saying they had a little resistance when flushing the line l. The RN right before me said she had no issues flushing the line for the afternoon iv I had no problem for the night time iv So I’m giving report to the next nurse who is a RN I tell her the last two nurses before me had a little resistance flushing but I had no problem she asked if I got blood return I was like I was never told to check blood return she said well the line probably isn’t patent then. But I’m thinking if it flushed and the iv ran via pump with no problems then the line is patent.
Long story short I’m asking if an LPN can check for blood return on a PICC line even though we are not to draw blood from a picc in Indiana?
submitted by Good_Astronomer_679 to nursing [link] [comments]
Long story short I’m asking if an LPN can check for blood return on a PICC line even though we are not to draw blood from a picc in Indiana?
2023.06.03 01:27 Throwitawaynoww110 [MA] Getting off “not rehireable” list?
I’ve been job searching with some potential leads. There is a prominent hospital (Hospital A) I used to work with for 6 years. While there, I went to school for nursing and attained my first RN job internally. Unfortunately, I did not make it through orientation as a new grad due to clinical performance (not being able to keep up, prioritizing tasks, etc). It was the typical new grad rigors and stressors. I was terminated and rehired at another facility where I continued to work on strengthening my skills. I built a very competitive 10 year resume at another top institution (Hospital B). I have just started applying to hospital A again but find that my application is reviewed and not selected, an HR recruiter calls me but doesn’t pass me forward, or in my most recent case, was passed to the hiring manager, asked to come in and observe for a few hours and then stonewalled once I expressed interest. It leads me to think I’m marked as not rehireable and some recruiters are missing it at first.
If this is the case, how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
submitted by Throwitawaynoww110 to AskHR [link] [comments]
If this is the case, how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
2023.06.03 01:23 Throwitawaynoww110 How to get off “not rehireable” list?
I’ve been job searching with some potential leads. There is a prominent hospital (Hospital A) I used to work with for 6 years. While there, I went to school for nursing and attained my first RN job internally. Unfortunately, I did not make it through orientation as a new grad due to clinical performance (not being able to keep up, prioritizing tasks, etc). It was the typical new grad rigors and stressors. I was terminated and rehired at another facility where I continued to work on strengthening my skills. I built a very competitive 10 year resume at another top institution (Hospital B). I have just started applying to hospital A again but find that my application is reviewed and not selected, an HR recruiter calls me but doesn’t pass me forward, or in my most recent case, was passed to the hiring manager, asked to come in and observe for a few hours and then stonewalled once I expressed interest. It leads me to think I’m marked as not rehireable and some recruiters are missing it at first.
If this is the case,how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
submitted by Throwitawaynoww110 to careerguidance [link] [comments]
If this is the case,how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
2023.06.03 01:07 Throwitawaynoww110 Potential “not rehireable” status
I’ve been job searching with some potential leads. There is a prominent hospital (Hospital A) I used to work with for 6 years. While there, I went to school for nursing and attained my first RN job internally. Unfortunately, I did not make it through orientation as a new grad due to clinical performance (not being able to keep up, prioritizing tasks, etc). It was the typical new grad rigors and stressors. I was terminated and rehired at another facility where I continued to work on strengthening my skills. I built a very competitive 10 year resume at another top institution (Hospital B). I have just started applying to hospital A again but find that my application is reviewed and not selected, an HR recruiter calls me but doesn’t pass me forward, or in my most recent case, was passed to the hiring manager, asked to come in and observe for a few hours and then stonewalled once I expressed interest. It leads me to think I’m marked as not rehireable and some recruiters are missing it at first.
If this is the case,how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
submitted by Throwitawaynoww110 to careeradvice [link] [comments]
If this is the case,how should I word my email to the director of HR to discuss my situation? Any suggestions for a professional approach? Anyone with experience getting this off their file?
Thank you
2023.06.03 00:58 ToastTurtle Transcript from the May 31st, 2023, Q3 Webinar Update for those who like to read rather than watch.
Reliq Health Technologies Inc. (RHT:TSXV) (OTCPK:RQHTF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call May 31, 2023 12:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Lisa Crossley - Chief Executive Officer
Lisa Crossley
Thank you for joining us. Today is May 31, 2023. Its 12 noon Eastern Time and 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time. This is Reliq Health Technologies’ Corporate Update. I am Lisa Crossley, the CEO. And, this will be an overview of our Q3 financials as well as outlook forward.
Please review the forward-looking statements disclaimer at your leisure and interpret any remarks from today's presentation in that context. For today's webinar, I'm going to provide a brief overview of the Q3 fiscal year 2023 financials, for the period ending March 31, 2023. I'll provide an outlook for the remainder of the calendar year, and then go through some very quick shareholder FAQs and the upcoming webinar dates subsequent to this one.
Overall, what I except to cover during this webinar is fairly brief. As you all know, we made some substantive changes to our business model beginning in January of this year, and the quarter that we're reporting on here, which was two months ago, it ended was really the quarter where we first started to implement those changes. So, not a lot of the progress that we made is reflected in these financials, but will certainly be reflected in future financials.
Let's jump into the Q3 results. So, the highlights for the quarter ending March 31, were an increase in revenue of over 88% to roughly $4.7 million. We also increased our revenue from the higher margin software and services sales by 69% to about $1.8 million. You will definitely see much more significant increases in software sales going forward. This quarter, we were a little bit hampered by the hardware orders that we'll talk about a little more in a little more detail in subsequent slides, but because we had some large hardware orders that were deferred, the software revenues associated with those hardware orders, were also deferred.
As I've disclosed before. And, but you will certainly begin to see much more significant growth on the software side over the rest of this year and beyond. This was our first profitable quarter, and I think that definitely does reflect some of the changes that we've made to the business model. We had a net gain of $731,000 and our adjusted EBITDA has improved by over 2000% relative to the same period last year, and that's primarily just adjusting for non-cash expenses. They're very small, non-recurring expenses in that adjustment.
During the last three months, we certainly made some significant progress on the business development front. We continue to expand the skilled nursing facility space, adding over a 120 new skilled nursing facilities over the last five months, actually, the quarter ending March 31 and subsequent. And we also signed new contracts with some very significant large healthcare organizations, one of which was a large U.S. Healthcare System that operates over 1,200 care centers across seven U.S. states, including the skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, hospice agencies, and primary care clinics. And they have over 10 million patient encounters a year across their network, and they and the other large clients we've signed, do very extensive due diligence before they select a company to be their partner for remote patient monitoring, behavioral health integration, chronic care management, transitional care management, etcetera.
So, it is really a testament to our unique value proposition in this space and to the future potential for this Company. We’ve also signed a new contract with a large U.S. Health Plan that operates accountable care organizations in five U.S. states with over 3,000 doctors and more than a million patients, and this client, in particular, it's our first health plan, but they are also subsidiary of one of the nation's largest providers of hospital and healthcare services, who is also a Fortune 500 company.
So, we really are getting into some of the blue chip clients. And I think it's important to remember that with these very large clients, they like to start out with a phase deployment, I’ve talked about that a lot over the years, and that's very typical in healthcare for healthcare software deployments that they will start small rollout to a specific geography or a specific type of facility or even to a subset of patients from a given facility, and then expand from there.
So, the initial deployments that we've announced with these large clients are relatively small compared to their patient population overall, but they are the first step in phase deployments. So as we have more details, more established implementation plans with these larger clients, we’ll be able to provide updates, but certainly our expectation is that we will see significant growth from these new clients beyond the initial phase. So, what we've announced today is really effectively the tip of the iceberg.
The outlook for the remainder of the year and beyond, as you all know, historically, the Company has been very focused on new business development and capturing market share that real estate grab that we talk about. But as of the beginning of this year, we really expanded our focus to include real significant efforts towards improving profitability and cash flows. I think you can see the improvement in profitability very clearly in these financials.
The cash flows are going to come as collections pickup and certainly so are the topline revenues associated with improved adherence, but I'll discuss that a little bit further in subsequent slides.
As we've disclosed on previous webinars, the Company has $15 million in contracted hardware sales. So we've received orders from clients for $15 million worth of hardware, and we've started shipping the hardware, which is the point at which we can recognize revenue, but the majority of the orders are expected to be fulfilled by the end of the fiscal year. So we'd started shipping in the quarter ending March 31, but the bulk of that revenue will land in the current quarter, which ends June 30.
As you know, hardware sold on 12 month to 24 month payment plans, so we've had some of the initial scheduled payments for the hardware that's already been shipped come in, but we'll see those payments ramp up significantly in the second half of the calendar year, once we've been able to ship all of that hardware in the current fiscal year. And then all of those hardware orders will translate to subsequent software revenue. So, it is a very meaningful order for the Company not just in terms of the hardware revenue, but in terms of the software and services revenue that will follow behind.
Since January 1, Company has been very focused on improving patient adherence by taking over adherence management from clients. And I want to address this particular topic in some detail, because I think there's an expectation in some quarters that when we say we're taking over managing adherence, that we flip a switch and that happens overnight. And that's certainly not the case. We made some good progress in Q1 getting percentage of our patient’s population or client population moved over to Reliq handling the adherence management. But even once we get those patients, it does take a month or two, but most three for us to get those patients on-boarded and, well they're already on-boarded, but comfortable with us managing the adherence and actually start to improve.
So, we do see dramatic improvements in adherence in these patients, once we've taken over managing that piece from their clinicians, but it's not an instantaneous or overnight change. So you aren't going to see much of an impact on topline revenues in the quarter ending March 31, that our results of improving the adherence. You will start to see the impact of the improvements in adherence management in the quarter ending June 30, but where you'll really start to see the significant increases, and the impact on revenues will be in the second half of the year.
So, certainly, it'll be a much more significant impact. It'll have much more significant impact on the quarter that will report or that is ending June 30, but it will continue to improve beyond that. So, the average adherence is expected to exceed 70% by the end of the calendar year.
Adherence levels interestingly appear to be consistently higher with the patients from the larger healthcare organizations than from the individual physician practices. So historically, we have had a customer base that was primarily individual physician practices and home health agencies beginning late last year 2022, we started to acquire more and more of these larger healthcare clients, skilled nursing facilities, accountable care organizations, and other health plans, etcetera. And we find with those groups that they have resources, for example, with the skilled nursing facility, where they will have these patients trained in using the system before they even are discharged, which really helps with adherence levels, but also their performance metrics are so well aligned with what we do as a business that we see more, I'll call it motivation from the larger clients to really work with patients and to commit whatever is necessary in order to ensure that their patient population is adherent.
It's a little bit different from the way that the individual physician practices in the home health agencies approach, RPM and CCM. So, that's to our benefit because going forward, we expect that the majority of our clients will be these larger health care organizations, certainly the majority of patients that we have on our platform will come from the large clients. So, that's going to make it easier for us to improve adherence levels even beyond the 70% level as we move into 2024 and beyond.
Collections, again, I want to emphasize it's something that we put a lot of effort into and that is improving dramatically, but we really didn't start to see the impact of our efforts, the account manager's efforts, until March. So, there's not a lot of collections that are reflected in the financials ending March 31, but you will certainly see a significant impact of our efforts in accelerating collections in the quarter ending June 30. And by the time we get to the end of June, we should have all of our clients caught up on all of their receivable, all of our receivables, their payables. And then going forward, we will be able to keep all of our clients on a regular payment schedule so that they, we don't have that same issue where we have these aging receivables.
Remind everyone that there will always be a portion of our receivables that will relate to hardware that's on 12 month to 24 month payment plans. So, there will always be a fairly large receivable number on our books, but there will be essentially no stale receivables, and/or these very aging receivables that we see around the software and services revenue where clients have needed a little bit of nagging in order pay. And because we are going to be receiving or collecting or have started to collect all of the receivables that are expected by the end of June. We will be in a much better cash position going forward, for the second half of the year and beyond.
Just some very brief shareholder FAQs, we have been getting a lot of questions about Accountable Care Organizations, with ACOs. These are groups of physicians and sometimes other healthcare providers, who aren't necessarily located in the same facility or even in the same city, but they've effectively banded together on a back office basis, to form Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved entity that is compensated based on value.
Now for CMS, value means patients have better health outcomes, and therefore lower health care costs. So, CMS financially incents the ACOs to reduce health care costs by using a shared savings model. So, the ACO members will receive a portion of the cost savings that they achieve for patients. And the best way to reduce costs for these patients is by reducing hospitalizations. That's really where the bulk of the costs for the chronic disease patients come from, these exacerbations that translate to a hospital stay.
Our platform, iUGO Care platform has been proven to reduce hospitalizations and the associated health care costs by over 80%. So, our solutions are perfectly aligned with the ACO's performance metrics, as they are also very well aligned with skilled nursing facilities and many of these other large healthcare organizations.
So, we expect that we will start to see increasing traction with the ACOs now that we've landed our first really very large and multistate ACO. This is not raised. This next point has a question, but it is something that we are asked consistently. So I just want to repeat that we don't expect to need to raise capital or take on debt to fund operations. And we expect to initiate a share buyback program later this year. So, soon as we have sufficient free cash flow, we will pull the trigger on that, because obviously we want to initiate the share buyback at a compelling price point for the Company.
Upcoming webinar, so as I've said repeatedly, I think there will be a lot more meaningful data that will demonstrate the improvements in adherence and collections, but when we close out the quarter that ends June 30, now obviously that's our fiscal yearend. So, we will be issuing the Annual Audited Financials or filing them in October of this year, but we will hold an interim webinar on well, in the middle of July, the exact date will be determined in June, and we'll announce that date in probably early July.
And at that point, I think we'll be able to get a lot more granular with our reporting and sharing the various metrics with all of you, so that it's easier to build your models. I know it's been a bit frustrating, but the Company has been very focused on making the necessary changes, so that the business model going forward really supports and not just the really strong revenue growth, but profitability and strong cash flows.
So, we've needed do that work, and I think we'll be at a point where we have all of the clients moved over to us managing adherence and that will allow us, I think, going forward to provide more details in our reporting [interim] (ph), probably help some of you construct the models that you, I know, like to work on.
And so as I say, we are filing the Annual Audited Financials in October, we'll do this interim progress update webinar in July, but we'll also do a second update webinar in early September, and again exact date is to be determined, but that will provide another touch point between now and when we do file the Annual Audited Financials, so that we can share the meaningful progress that we'll be able to show from here going forward and without having to wait months, and months, and months to file that those Annual Audited Statements.
Thank you very much for joining us. We greatly appreciate your time. The webinar will be available on our website later today, as soon as we are able to get it up which is sometimes in our control and sometimes not depending on the webinar provider, but we will get that up as soon as we can.
So, again, thank you very much for joining us.
Link to the webinar: https://www.reliqhealth.com/investors/#single/0
submitted by ToastTurtle to ReliqhealthStock [link] [comments]
Company Participants
Lisa Crossley - Chief Executive Officer
Lisa Crossley
Thank you for joining us. Today is May 31, 2023. Its 12 noon Eastern Time and 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time. This is Reliq Health Technologies’ Corporate Update. I am Lisa Crossley, the CEO. And, this will be an overview of our Q3 financials as well as outlook forward.
Please review the forward-looking statements disclaimer at your leisure and interpret any remarks from today's presentation in that context. For today's webinar, I'm going to provide a brief overview of the Q3 fiscal year 2023 financials, for the period ending March 31, 2023. I'll provide an outlook for the remainder of the calendar year, and then go through some very quick shareholder FAQs and the upcoming webinar dates subsequent to this one.
Overall, what I except to cover during this webinar is fairly brief. As you all know, we made some substantive changes to our business model beginning in January of this year, and the quarter that we're reporting on here, which was two months ago, it ended was really the quarter where we first started to implement those changes. So, not a lot of the progress that we made is reflected in these financials, but will certainly be reflected in future financials.
Let's jump into the Q3 results. So, the highlights for the quarter ending March 31, were an increase in revenue of over 88% to roughly $4.7 million. We also increased our revenue from the higher margin software and services sales by 69% to about $1.8 million. You will definitely see much more significant increases in software sales going forward. This quarter, we were a little bit hampered by the hardware orders that we'll talk about a little more in a little more detail in subsequent slides, but because we had some large hardware orders that were deferred, the software revenues associated with those hardware orders, were also deferred.
As I've disclosed before. And, but you will certainly begin to see much more significant growth on the software side over the rest of this year and beyond. This was our first profitable quarter, and I think that definitely does reflect some of the changes that we've made to the business model. We had a net gain of $731,000 and our adjusted EBITDA has improved by over 2000% relative to the same period last year, and that's primarily just adjusting for non-cash expenses. They're very small, non-recurring expenses in that adjustment.
During the last three months, we certainly made some significant progress on the business development front. We continue to expand the skilled nursing facility space, adding over a 120 new skilled nursing facilities over the last five months, actually, the quarter ending March 31 and subsequent. And we also signed new contracts with some very significant large healthcare organizations, one of which was a large U.S. Healthcare System that operates over 1,200 care centers across seven U.S. states, including the skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, hospice agencies, and primary care clinics. And they have over 10 million patient encounters a year across their network, and they and the other large clients we've signed, do very extensive due diligence before they select a company to be their partner for remote patient monitoring, behavioral health integration, chronic care management, transitional care management, etcetera.
So, it is really a testament to our unique value proposition in this space and to the future potential for this Company. We’ve also signed a new contract with a large U.S. Health Plan that operates accountable care organizations in five U.S. states with over 3,000 doctors and more than a million patients, and this client, in particular, it's our first health plan, but they are also subsidiary of one of the nation's largest providers of hospital and healthcare services, who is also a Fortune 500 company.
So, we really are getting into some of the blue chip clients. And I think it's important to remember that with these very large clients, they like to start out with a phase deployment, I’ve talked about that a lot over the years, and that's very typical in healthcare for healthcare software deployments that they will start small rollout to a specific geography or a specific type of facility or even to a subset of patients from a given facility, and then expand from there.
So, the initial deployments that we've announced with these large clients are relatively small compared to their patient population overall, but they are the first step in phase deployments. So as we have more details, more established implementation plans with these larger clients, we’ll be able to provide updates, but certainly our expectation is that we will see significant growth from these new clients beyond the initial phase. So, what we've announced today is really effectively the tip of the iceberg.
The outlook for the remainder of the year and beyond, as you all know, historically, the Company has been very focused on new business development and capturing market share that real estate grab that we talk about. But as of the beginning of this year, we really expanded our focus to include real significant efforts towards improving profitability and cash flows. I think you can see the improvement in profitability very clearly in these financials.
The cash flows are going to come as collections pickup and certainly so are the topline revenues associated with improved adherence, but I'll discuss that a little bit further in subsequent slides.
As we've disclosed on previous webinars, the Company has $15 million in contracted hardware sales. So we've received orders from clients for $15 million worth of hardware, and we've started shipping the hardware, which is the point at which we can recognize revenue, but the majority of the orders are expected to be fulfilled by the end of the fiscal year. So we'd started shipping in the quarter ending March 31, but the bulk of that revenue will land in the current quarter, which ends June 30.
As you know, hardware sold on 12 month to 24 month payment plans, so we've had some of the initial scheduled payments for the hardware that's already been shipped come in, but we'll see those payments ramp up significantly in the second half of the calendar year, once we've been able to ship all of that hardware in the current fiscal year. And then all of those hardware orders will translate to subsequent software revenue. So, it is a very meaningful order for the Company not just in terms of the hardware revenue, but in terms of the software and services revenue that will follow behind.
Since January 1, Company has been very focused on improving patient adherence by taking over adherence management from clients. And I want to address this particular topic in some detail, because I think there's an expectation in some quarters that when we say we're taking over managing adherence, that we flip a switch and that happens overnight. And that's certainly not the case. We made some good progress in Q1 getting percentage of our patient’s population or client population moved over to Reliq handling the adherence management. But even once we get those patients, it does take a month or two, but most three for us to get those patients on-boarded and, well they're already on-boarded, but comfortable with us managing the adherence and actually start to improve.
So, we do see dramatic improvements in adherence in these patients, once we've taken over managing that piece from their clinicians, but it's not an instantaneous or overnight change. So you aren't going to see much of an impact on topline revenues in the quarter ending March 31, that our results of improving the adherence. You will start to see the impact of the improvements in adherence management in the quarter ending June 30, but where you'll really start to see the significant increases, and the impact on revenues will be in the second half of the year.
So, certainly, it'll be a much more significant impact. It'll have much more significant impact on the quarter that will report or that is ending June 30, but it will continue to improve beyond that. So, the average adherence is expected to exceed 70% by the end of the calendar year.
Adherence levels interestingly appear to be consistently higher with the patients from the larger healthcare organizations than from the individual physician practices. So historically, we have had a customer base that was primarily individual physician practices and home health agencies beginning late last year 2022, we started to acquire more and more of these larger healthcare clients, skilled nursing facilities, accountable care organizations, and other health plans, etcetera. And we find with those groups that they have resources, for example, with the skilled nursing facility, where they will have these patients trained in using the system before they even are discharged, which really helps with adherence levels, but also their performance metrics are so well aligned with what we do as a business that we see more, I'll call it motivation from the larger clients to really work with patients and to commit whatever is necessary in order to ensure that their patient population is adherent.
It's a little bit different from the way that the individual physician practices in the home health agencies approach, RPM and CCM. So, that's to our benefit because going forward, we expect that the majority of our clients will be these larger health care organizations, certainly the majority of patients that we have on our platform will come from the large clients. So, that's going to make it easier for us to improve adherence levels even beyond the 70% level as we move into 2024 and beyond.
Collections, again, I want to emphasize it's something that we put a lot of effort into and that is improving dramatically, but we really didn't start to see the impact of our efforts, the account manager's efforts, until March. So, there's not a lot of collections that are reflected in the financials ending March 31, but you will certainly see a significant impact of our efforts in accelerating collections in the quarter ending June 30. And by the time we get to the end of June, we should have all of our clients caught up on all of their receivable, all of our receivables, their payables. And then going forward, we will be able to keep all of our clients on a regular payment schedule so that they, we don't have that same issue where we have these aging receivables.
Remind everyone that there will always be a portion of our receivables that will relate to hardware that's on 12 month to 24 month payment plans. So, there will always be a fairly large receivable number on our books, but there will be essentially no stale receivables, and/or these very aging receivables that we see around the software and services revenue where clients have needed a little bit of nagging in order pay. And because we are going to be receiving or collecting or have started to collect all of the receivables that are expected by the end of June. We will be in a much better cash position going forward, for the second half of the year and beyond.
Just some very brief shareholder FAQs, we have been getting a lot of questions about Accountable Care Organizations, with ACOs. These are groups of physicians and sometimes other healthcare providers, who aren't necessarily located in the same facility or even in the same city, but they've effectively banded together on a back office basis, to form Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved entity that is compensated based on value.
Now for CMS, value means patients have better health outcomes, and therefore lower health care costs. So, CMS financially incents the ACOs to reduce health care costs by using a shared savings model. So, the ACO members will receive a portion of the cost savings that they achieve for patients. And the best way to reduce costs for these patients is by reducing hospitalizations. That's really where the bulk of the costs for the chronic disease patients come from, these exacerbations that translate to a hospital stay.
Our platform, iUGO Care platform has been proven to reduce hospitalizations and the associated health care costs by over 80%. So, our solutions are perfectly aligned with the ACO's performance metrics, as they are also very well aligned with skilled nursing facilities and many of these other large healthcare organizations.
So, we expect that we will start to see increasing traction with the ACOs now that we've landed our first really very large and multistate ACO. This is not raised. This next point has a question, but it is something that we are asked consistently. So I just want to repeat that we don't expect to need to raise capital or take on debt to fund operations. And we expect to initiate a share buyback program later this year. So, soon as we have sufficient free cash flow, we will pull the trigger on that, because obviously we want to initiate the share buyback at a compelling price point for the Company.
Upcoming webinar, so as I've said repeatedly, I think there will be a lot more meaningful data that will demonstrate the improvements in adherence and collections, but when we close out the quarter that ends June 30, now obviously that's our fiscal yearend. So, we will be issuing the Annual Audited Financials or filing them in October of this year, but we will hold an interim webinar on well, in the middle of July, the exact date will be determined in June, and we'll announce that date in probably early July.
And at that point, I think we'll be able to get a lot more granular with our reporting and sharing the various metrics with all of you, so that it's easier to build your models. I know it's been a bit frustrating, but the Company has been very focused on making the necessary changes, so that the business model going forward really supports and not just the really strong revenue growth, but profitability and strong cash flows.
So, we've needed do that work, and I think we'll be at a point where we have all of the clients moved over to us managing adherence and that will allow us, I think, going forward to provide more details in our reporting [interim] (ph), probably help some of you construct the models that you, I know, like to work on.
And so as I say, we are filing the Annual Audited Financials in October, we'll do this interim progress update webinar in July, but we'll also do a second update webinar in early September, and again exact date is to be determined, but that will provide another touch point between now and when we do file the Annual Audited Financials, so that we can share the meaningful progress that we'll be able to show from here going forward and without having to wait months, and months, and months to file that those Annual Audited Statements.
Thank you very much for joining us. We greatly appreciate your time. The webinar will be available on our website later today, as soon as we are able to get it up which is sometimes in our control and sometimes not depending on the webinar provider, but we will get that up as soon as we can.
So, again, thank you very much for joining us.
Link to the webinar: https://www.reliqhealth.com/investors/#single/0
2023.06.03 00:47 hotredsam2 CA 20M - what counts as working over 40 hours a week for overtime.
Recently I received a paycheck from a skilled nursing facility I work at. I’m a CNA and one week during this paycheck I worked 3 16 hour shifts and then 1 8 hour shift. California Law states that any hours over 40 hours per week must be time and a half, but when I talked to my HPayroll they said that only the first 8 hours of each shift count towards the 40 hours because it’s a regular pay and after 8 is time and a half and double time, but when I looked online I couldn’t find anywhere that said the 40 hours have to all be regular time. I’ve talked to all of my coworkers and even some other people, and none of them know the official law that relates this this specific scenario. Does anyone know whether or not I should have gotten overtime pay for the 4th day of work that week?
submitted by hotredsam2 to legaladvice [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 21:27 Spiritual-Tip How to navigate a Wernicke encephalopathy / Korsakoff diagnosis
I’m new to this community and could really use some support with this heavy load that has fallen in our lap. My husband (31) and I (27) recently learned my FIL (50s) is and has been a severe alcoholic for the last couple decades. He’s single and lives alone in a different state, has maintained a high caliber job and kept the appearance of being “with it” until last month. He became unreachable when his children tried to call him, his phone went straight to voicemail and they knew something was up. Finally, several days later one of his kids heard from him and they were immediately scared of his mental state. He claimed to have been traveling all over the place, upon other confabulations, which were totally removed from reality and unlike him. My husband flew to his home and found him nearly in a coma and weighing in around 110lbs- malnourished. Hubs got FIL to hospital and he was given IVs and they ran a few other tests. This hospital was a nightmare - they sent him home same day and recommended he simply take vitamin B supplements at home. Husband takes him home for several days, gets his insurance lined up for rehab, talks all the symptoms through with admissions which they cleared and gets him checked into the detox facility.
Evening on day one of detox rolls around and my husband gets a call from the detox staff explaining his symptoms are too much for what they can provide and he needs emergency medical treatment. Detox transports him to a hospital where he’s given inpatient care for several weeks and they are able to provide the wernike- encephalopathy diagnosis. He’s given thiamine, IVs, and eats 3 meals a day. He maxs out what insurance will cover for alcohol detox and is transferred to skilled nursing facility for mobility care. He remains at nursing home for several weeks and his energy and mobility start to come back. He got in with a neurologist who gave the impression that the condition is recoverable with the prescribed supplements and high dose thiamine. My husband has been by his side through all of this, taking him to appointments, visiting him every single day and reminding him of where he is and why, and overseeing his care.
Now he’s been discharged home we are wondering what is next. We have a life of our own in a different state, with jobs we need to work, family to grow, we’re trying to buy a home and have tabled everything to address this emergency. We are just getting started in our married life - FIL has done well for himself but we need to ensure all of his assets are secured and accounted for. Attorney has been retained for that.
I guess I’m looking for resources and to learn from your experiences, if anyone has been through this. I feel like we’re too young to be full time caretakers for a parent but here we are in this predicament. Are there treatment facilities that specifically work to address wernikes for severe alcoholics? Has anyone seen the condition through and memory retained? Realistically are we looking at a few month recovery or is this going to be a long term condition that family will need to accommodate?
Appreciate any help and support that you can provide
submitted by Spiritual-Tip to AlAnon [link] [comments]
Evening on day one of detox rolls around and my husband gets a call from the detox staff explaining his symptoms are too much for what they can provide and he needs emergency medical treatment. Detox transports him to a hospital where he’s given inpatient care for several weeks and they are able to provide the wernike- encephalopathy diagnosis. He’s given thiamine, IVs, and eats 3 meals a day. He maxs out what insurance will cover for alcohol detox and is transferred to skilled nursing facility for mobility care. He remains at nursing home for several weeks and his energy and mobility start to come back. He got in with a neurologist who gave the impression that the condition is recoverable with the prescribed supplements and high dose thiamine. My husband has been by his side through all of this, taking him to appointments, visiting him every single day and reminding him of where he is and why, and overseeing his care.
Now he’s been discharged home we are wondering what is next. We have a life of our own in a different state, with jobs we need to work, family to grow, we’re trying to buy a home and have tabled everything to address this emergency. We are just getting started in our married life - FIL has done well for himself but we need to ensure all of his assets are secured and accounted for. Attorney has been retained for that.
I guess I’m looking for resources and to learn from your experiences, if anyone has been through this. I feel like we’re too young to be full time caretakers for a parent but here we are in this predicament. Are there treatment facilities that specifically work to address wernikes for severe alcoholics? Has anyone seen the condition through and memory retained? Realistically are we looking at a few month recovery or is this going to be a long term condition that family will need to accommodate?
Appreciate any help and support that you can provide
2023.06.02 20:05 My_Own_Bi_lyfe Should I Ditch the Restaurant?
New Job Alert! Hello all! I currently work as a line cook at night and have only been doing so for a month. Prior to accepting the offer, I was in the middle of getting hired by a skilled nursing center as a full-time, 40-hour dietary tech. By accepting the diet tech job, I will moving up in life. My hours are 4-8 (Sunday) and 4-9 (Thursday-Saturday). Should I keep both jobs and eventually drop the restaurant job or simply drop the cook job? I enjoy being a cook but I also like working in the dietary department of healthcare facilities. Any advice is needed. For context, the restaurant hasn’t been busy and have told me not to come in a few times already (the entire restaurant by the way). Both pay the same per hour and I believe I can do both. Schedule wise, there are zero conflicts.
submitted by My_Own_Bi_lyfe to careerguidance [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 17:49 No_Competition4897 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in UT Hiring Now!
2023.06.02 16:43 Nursingislife1997 New lpn nurse
Hello. Does anybody working in skilled nursing facility that used myunity EHR???
submitted by Nursingislife1997 to nursing [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 16:41 Hazys Here is your Friday update of the best job listings for today.
- Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $17.00 - Licensed Practical Nurse - LPN - Skilled Nursing Facility - Sr. CRM Technical Analyst / QA DevOps - Box Truck Driver - Seasonal Customer Service Representative - Irvine Spectrum Center - assistant store manager - north phoenix - Yard Associate - Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $18.75 - Business Development Manager - Medical Technician (DHMT) (MA) (Sandy Springs, GA) See more details and apply here: =>https://workfromhomejobsads.jobsjab.com/search
submitted by Hazys to NYCjobs [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 15:12 fisherE41 Thursday, June 1st Jobs Update
Here is your Thursday update of the best job listings for today.
submitted by fisherE41 to jobbit [link] [comments]
- Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $17.00
- Licensed Practical Nurse - LPN - Skilled Nursing Facility
- Sr. CRM Technical Analyst / QA DevOps
- Box Truck Driver
- Seasonal Customer Service Representative - Irvine Spectrum Center
- assistant store manager - north phoenix
- Yard Associate
- Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $18.75
- Business Development Manager
- Medical Technician (DHMT) (MA) (Sandy Springs, GA)
2023.06.02 13:09 Skinclinicindelhi People's Skins are Degenerating as a Result of Way of Living
The natural vitality, shine, and warmth of the skin are all attempts to be diminished by ageing, dirt, tension, and the millennial lifestyle. Infections, traumas, and diseases all have an effect. But science and technology are quickly catching up to eliminate and undo these impacts. In addition to reducing the effects of ageing, we can now treat a variety of skin problems, rectify deformities or flaws, and take action against imbalanced characteristics. All of this is made possible via Plastic Surgery in Delhi. The moment is now to invest in yourself because of technological advancements and the decreasing cost of facial plastic surgery in Delhi.
Cosmetic and plastic surgery at SCULPT INDIA
According to some, cosmetic procedures are a blend of science and artistry. This mixture is enhanced by perfection at SCULPT India—from the highly qualified and trained medical staff to the cutting-edge technology, SCULPT India has established the benchmark for cosmetic surgery in Delhi and expanded the vision with a cutting-edge Cosmetic Clinic in Guwahati. The highly regarded surgeon at SCULPT India, Dr Vivek Kumar, performs plastic surgery with precision and refinement to reverse and cure disfigurements and faults. His standing and accomplishments have earned SCULPT the most sought-after facility for plastic surgery in Delhi; currently, high-quality medical services and plastic surgery are being offered in the Cosmetic Clinic in Chandigarh.
The Highly skilled Team of SCULPT India
Place your trust in the professionals at SCULPT India, where we guarantee to cheer you up when you look in the mirror if you want to maintain, improve, or protect your beauty.
The top Cosmetic Surgery in Delhi is SCULPT India. It assists each client to choose the best solution to their difficulties while accommodating their varied requirements and preferences. Its outstanding medical staff is the foundation of SCULPT's success as the premier cosmetic clinic in India. Our renowned dermatologist, skilled surgeon, attentive nursing staff, and cutting-edge technology have built a solid reputation for expertise.
Source : https://sculpt-clinic-chandigarh.blogspot.com/2022/07/peoples-skins-are-degenerating-as.html
submitted by Skinclinicindelhi to u/Skinclinicindelhi [link] [comments]
Cosmetic and plastic surgery at SCULPT INDIA
According to some, cosmetic procedures are a blend of science and artistry. This mixture is enhanced by perfection at SCULPT India—from the highly qualified and trained medical staff to the cutting-edge technology, SCULPT India has established the benchmark for cosmetic surgery in Delhi and expanded the vision with a cutting-edge Cosmetic Clinic in Guwahati. The highly regarded surgeon at SCULPT India, Dr Vivek Kumar, performs plastic surgery with precision and refinement to reverse and cure disfigurements and faults. His standing and accomplishments have earned SCULPT the most sought-after facility for plastic surgery in Delhi; currently, high-quality medical services and plastic surgery are being offered in the Cosmetic Clinic in Chandigarh.
The Highly skilled Team of SCULPT India
Place your trust in the professionals at SCULPT India, where we guarantee to cheer you up when you look in the mirror if you want to maintain, improve, or protect your beauty.
The top Cosmetic Surgery in Delhi is SCULPT India. It assists each client to choose the best solution to their difficulties while accommodating their varied requirements and preferences. Its outstanding medical staff is the foundation of SCULPT's success as the premier cosmetic clinic in India. Our renowned dermatologist, skilled surgeon, attentive nursing staff, and cutting-edge technology have built a solid reputation for expertise.
Source : https://sculpt-clinic-chandigarh.blogspot.com/2022/07/peoples-skins-are-degenerating-as.html
2023.06.02 13:01 Hazys Here is your Thursday update of the best job listings for today.
- Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $17.00 - Licensed Practical Nurse - LPN - Skilled Nursing Facility - Sr. CRM Technical Analyst / QA DevOps - Box Truck Driver - Seasonal Customer Service Representative - Irvine Spectrum Center - assistant store manager - north phoenix - Yard Associate - Amazon Warehouse Worker - Earn Up To $18.75 - Business Development Manager - Medical Technician (DHMT) (MA) (Sandy Springs, GA) See more details and apply here: =>https://workfromhomejobsads.jobsjab.com/search
submitted by Hazys to NYCjobs [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 08:19 sheetal4058 Telepsychiatry market Size Worth USD 64.5 Billion by 2031: IMIR Market Research Pvt ltd.
Telepsychiatry Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (In-home Solutions, Forensic Solutions, Routine Solutions, Crisis Solutions), By End-use (ommunity Mental Health Centers, Specialty Care Settings, Skilled Nursing Facilities, Homecare, Others), By Age Group (Adult, Pediatric and Adolescent, Geriatric), Global Economy Insights, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2023 - 2031
submitted by sheetal4058 to u/sheetal4058 [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 08:17 Pitiful-Tale-3739 Emergency Hospital in Sonipat
The Haryana Multispeciality Hospital in Sonipat has emerged as a beacon of hope for residents seeking a top-notch Emergency Hospital in Sonipat. With a dedicated team of skilled doctors nurses and support staff, this facility ensures that each patient receives timely and comprehensive care. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology and state-of-the-art medical equipment the Haryana Multispeciality Hospital offers a wide range of specialized services including trauma care cardiac emergencies pediatric care and more. The hospital's efficient triage system and round-the-clock availability ensure that critical cases receive prompt attention. With its commitment to patient-centered care, Haryana Multispeciality Hospital has gained the trust and confidence of the local community. Be it minor ailments or life-threatening conditions this hospital stands as a pillar of medical excellence in Sonipat.
submitted by Pitiful-Tale-3739 to u/Pitiful-Tale-3739 [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 07:56 almarwanmachinery A Throwback to Al Marwan's Contribution to Dubai Sanitization During the Pandemic
 | submitted by almarwanmachinery to u/almarwanmachinery [link] [comments] Al Marwan's haulers featuring steam cleaning machines during the Dubai sanitization Al Marwan collaborated with Dubai Municipality during its 11-day disinfection campaign to clean and sterilize the streets and roads of the emirate by offering the use of its heavy machinery to aid in the Dubai sanitation initiative, which was being conducted in collaboration with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and covered 95+ roads. Steam Cleaning in Action: The campaign began from Al Rigga street covering 95+ streets Al Marwan's Machinery in Times of Need We provided large water tankers and haulers to help clean and sanitize the city. For around two months, our trucks roamed the roads of Dubai, carrying a harmless disinfectant solution to clean streets and public facilities. The company, among other volunteering firms, received an appreciation award from Dubai Municipality honoring the voluntary efforts made by them for the betterment of the community. Skilled Operators Harness the Power of Steam at Al Marwan workshop In addition, we collaborated with the Clean Up the World initiative in Dubai. This initiative is a global campaign that aims to mobilize communities to clean up, fix up, and conserve the environment. To boost sustainability and protect the environment, the company has participated in several Clean Up the World campaigns in Dubai from 2011 to 2018, contributing to the clean-up efforts of parks, beaches, and other public areas. Such contributions have included the use of heavy machinery such as bulldozers and excavators, which have helped to remove large amounts of waste and debris quickly and efficiently. By participating in such initiatives, Al Marwan is helping to create a cleaner and healthier environment for the community to live in. If you're looking for any support on your next project, don't hesitate to reach out to Al Marwan. Our team is here to help, and you can find more information about us on our website at almarwan.com. |
2023.06.02 07:28 Herb_girl21 Moving to TX
Hi all. I'm a psych nurse currently in NY at an acute unit attached to a hospital. Typically get a lot of aggressive and physically violent pts. Our ratio is 1:20 with one lpn and 2 techs (when all goes well). I'm moving to West TX near Odessa. Anybody have any insight on psych nursing in TX ? Also looking for perspective on psych facilities or units in the area.
submitted by Herb_girl21 to psychnursing [link] [comments]