Yesterday when I was at work, one of my coworkers got a call. When he hung up, he said, "Lucas, go outside. Some people are fucking with your car." I thought at first that they were playing a joke on me, so I wasn't expecting anything more than a prank. But when I went outside, there were 4 or 5 teenagers standing around my car wiping it off with rags.

I asked them what happened as I was approaching the car, and they explained that they were a christian youth group on a mission project painting someone's fence with a sprayer, and they didn't realize there was a parking lot behind the fence, so my car ended up getting sprayed.

I was completely horrified, distraught, and speechless when I saw how much paint there was on my brand new car! There were brown specs all over the hood, front bumper and windshield, as well as parts of the side of the car. And it had been baking there in the heat for who knows how long, because they didn't bother to try to find out who the car belonged to.

I didn't know what to do about it, so I called my insurance agency and the dealership, and neither of them were very helpful, so I called a body shop. The body shop told me to make sure to get it out of the heat and to try running it through a car wash. The car was did absolutely nothing; it still looked like someone had had explosive diarrhea all over it. So when I went back to talk to the guy in charge of the youth group, he said he had some sort of solvent that would take the paint off. I asked him if it would also take the car's paint off, to which he responded, "I don't think so." How confident he sounded with his solution! I definitely didn't want them causing any more damage to the car.

Anyway, I went to the body shop as fast as possible, and they had some solvents that were able to remove the paint without removing the car's paint. The problem was it would take a very long time to remove since it had been baked on. They estimated it would take half a day and a couple hundred dollars (which my insurance wouldn't even cover), so they recommended I do it on my own and they told me what chemicals to use and to make sure to get my car in a cool place. They were very helpful. So I brought my car down to my dad's shop and parked it in his garage so it could cool off, and one of his workers ended up having just the chemical we needed, so my sister, one of her coworkers and I spent about 3 hours scrubbing the paint off. It's barely noticeable now, except unfortunately there are some scratches. Putting scratches in it was unavoidable, because we had to apply some pressure to remove the paint, and there wasn't any material with small enough fibers that could remove the paint without making some scratches. Once it's buffed off though, it should look nearly as good as knew, except for the parts we couldn't really get to, like the grill.

I'm always so cautious about where I park my car, but I guess no matter where it's parked, something's bound to damage it!

So, do I send the youth group coordinator a bill for the time I missed at work having to deal with the problem and the cost to get the paint buffed? All in all this will cost me about $200, and I don't exactly have much extra money to be spending nowadays.

So, today is the one month anniversary of starting my new job. This meant my wage was supposed to go up by $2.50 an hour, which would be an extra $400 a month. This was the agreement when I was hired. The lead programmer has told me twice that I'm doing great and he's definitely going to tell the boss to give me the raise. Well, today I reminded my boss that I was supposed to be getting a raise, but he changed his mind. He said it had nothing to do with my performance and that I'd been doing really well, but in his words, "there's something on our end we need to get straightened out and it'll probably be another pay period before I can get a raise." Uhm, what's that supposed to mean?

This isn't the first time that something fishy has gone on there payment-wise. They asked me to work overtime a few weeks ago, and then they tried to put my additional hours onto the next pay period instead so I wouldn't get paid for overtime. I'm pretty sure that's illegal. At least in Kansas it would be, but I work in Missouri, so I don't know what their overtime laws are. I'm guessing they're similar to Kansas's though.

Anyway, I'm looking for another job now. Apparently accepting the first position I was offered wasn't such a good plan.