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MrCongeniality
It's no coincidence that my account is approximately as old as the movie Miss Congeniality.
Been on Newgrounds even before 2001 on a different alias. I will be bringing some of my future film work here.

Randy @MrCongeniality

Age 36, Male

Technical Support

School of Hard Knox

Utah, USA

Joined on 6/7/01

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My First News Post since Feb. 2012 (I'm back, kind of)

Posted by MrCongeniality - April 18th, 2014


Hey all, I haven't been around for a while, so I thought I would post an update.

When I last posted, I had been making music. I was attempting to be an artist, and I was really trying to be a good one, but I thought about it all and I ended up deciding that I didn't think it music was something that I was meant to do. What I should be doing on Newgrounds probably involves music on some sort of level, but I think that I am a terrible musical composer, and I wouldn't know how to make good music if my life depended on it.

Before I abandoned doing the music thing, I had to endure some pure hell, as my move away from home was anything but successful. About five or six months later I was back at home anyways, and I basically had to start over. I was on the edge for a year straight after things fell apart, mostly due to breakup. I had really given my heart away to someone, and they abandoned me. It wasn't the most wonderful feeling, but I did learn a lesson in the end, and it was that at 24, I was still a child.

I swore to myself at some point after my return that I would grow up and change things for the better, and that I would do anything within logical and moral to survive. I know that sounds rather dramatic, but I can’t stress enough how terrible things were. I was withdrawing from multiple prescription drugs that doctors prescribed me to treat depression (all of which fucked me up too, and not on purpose), and I was by all accounts a complete mental mess.

Now I have told you where I have been, and now I’m going to tell you where I went next. I ended up going back to work for a popular fast food chain, a job that really bothered me, but I felt as though that I had no other choice for work. In the process I made really close friends, some of which that I will have for the rest of my life. I also made unpredictable enemies, and they always happened to be above me. Something tells me they were threatened by me. I felt like an ego-trip magnet.

For the next year and a half, my life almost became entirely devoted to this job, except for the 4 months that I would work for a call center along with the fast food job. The fast food job would always follow me home from work too, as certain social aspects of it were not always very enlightening or positive. Customers could be really mean, a co-worker could go AWOL without anyone expecting it, or the next thing you know you could be getting yelled at for doing something exactly the way you were trained to do it. But yet, there were also the people that made you enjoy your job a lot too, and this made quitting an incredibly difficult experience for me. That and my parents begged me until the end of the year to quit, but this job was a fucking emotional roller coaster. At some point, I realized that it ultimately had to end.

And it would end at some point, and thankfully it did soon enough, because near the end it went insane, and quite literally too. We had crazy people driving rape-vans coming into our store taking pictures of all the customers. We had a guy who threatened my general manager with a gun come and hang out in the store a lot. The next thing I know, I couldn’t do my manager duties without being freaked out at for querying on why labor was so high or how to do something. Seriously, what the fuck. This happened three days before I left with a 3 week notice. I had been a manager since June and it was the end of November by the time I had left.

I was so glad to be done with the job. Unfortunately, it was a deperate last-ditch effort to leave the job, as the solution was the same as the last time I tried to quit (this would be my second quit attempt after returning home and getting the job back).

The solution was to work at a call center, something I had done previously before the fast food job. I spent months hesitating to apply for it. When I finally grabbed my balls and applied, I received a call within 5 literal minutes of submitting the online application, and the next day I was sitting in an interview that I absolutely nailed. I would be operating three computers making three phone calls at once, pushing buttons on a keyboard interacting with the people that we called. At the end of the interview, I was told that there was a possibility of moving up in the company after three months of employment, and an IT position was available. I decided I would work my ass off the next three months to prove that I would be of worth to be on the IT team.

It’s funny how this all started, because this job started just like anything else, but it didn’t end up being like anything that I ever expected to happen. The first day of training was okay, I was new to the company and I wanted to do my job right, and I was scared that I wouldn’t adjust properly. I tried memorizing all of these keys I had to press. Four hours in the shift, I doubted myself incredibly. I worried that I couldn’t do it and I would probably end up quitting anyways, but I told myself to get over it and keep trying. Then by the sixth hour into my shift, I was nailing every quiz for button pressing that I took. I would come in the next day and nail all of the other quizs too.

On the second day before my training shift started, I was sitting out waiting in the lobby about 15 minutes before the shift started. I was the first one there if I remember correctly. A man came downstairs and got on the single computer in the lobby used for typing speed tests. I had no idea what he was doing, but I decided to strike up a conversation with him just for the hell of it. I don’t remember a lot of the conversation, but I remember talking about complex computer jargon with him. He then told me who he was, and I nearly shit my pants: He was the IT manager of the call center. He asked me if I could come in even earlier tomorrow morning before my shift, he wanted to talk to me about putting me in IT. I nearly shit my pants again. I never expected it, not for a moment.

That’s when things really started to turn around in a better direction for me, because the next day they pulled me out of the three week training course that I had been in for two days to put me in IT. And the pay was a lot better than the fast food job ever would be. For the next five and a half months, I would experience a more different roller coaster. I would discover that doing IT is way different than I expected, but I would also learn that I was able to take these curveballs brilliantly. Five and a half months in and all I have heard is praise. I can’t recall being late once. I have become indispensable. It turns out people not only like the job that I do, but they fucking love me too, and that’s what gets me up every morning.

Gone now are the days where I felt threatened by being good at my job. On my first performance review, my boss said that I am meeting every expectation, but he really wants to see me exceed more expectations. I decided that it was time to really apply myself more than ever, not just for the money, but to become empowered with knowledge, and the eventual opportunity to know how to do things masterfully. This job is like learning to play a complicated instrument, but each day I’m learning.

I started to think about Newgrounds today and how I haven’t been here for quite a while, and I also thought about just how complicated Newgrounds' infrastructure probably is, and how stressful it must have been to manage it in the early 2000s when everything would break quite frequently. That’s what I get to deal with everyday right now at my new job. But eventually, everything came together really nicely for Newgrounds, and hopefully so do things at my job as well.

It’s funny, I have gone from suicidal to somewhat having the ideal life, but of course it isn’t without its incredible ups and downs. I still live with my parents until I get enough money to move out, and I ended up losing two cars in a six month period very recently. The first wreck was due to the other driver failing to yield properly, and 6 months after that I lost my new car due to me failing to yield properly, and due to the other driver failing to lookout correctly. The new car was actually a used car, and I had put $2,300 into repairs in the six months owning it. That was the worst experience ever, but I finally got another new car, and one that I won’t spend thousands of dollars on the next six months repairing!

I hope you have enjoyed this little update on my life. I am suprised if you read through it all if you did, I hope it wasn’t too painful of a read. Anyways, life is calling my name and I must adjourn from my computer chair.

Until the next news post, peace out.

...And it won't take more than two years this time.


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