Hey guys, I need to vent, and I need advice. Sorry this is gonna be a bit long, but I'd really appreciate it if you stick with me here and let me know your thoughts.
I'm sure some of you have already heard my crap in my other threads or in PMs, so I'll try to make the first bit of this leading up to the Greyhound incident as short as I can.
Actually, I'll spoiler most of it so you can skip it if you want.
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There've been issues between myself and my family for the past few years, mostly my parents and I not seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, but tension kept building and things just kept getting worse and worse, so back in October '13 I basically said "to hell with this" and ran off and lived with some friends for a while. I won't get into all the details but my dad was basically limiting anything and everything I was able to do, keeping me from being able to work as many hours as I needed to pay for anything (a vehicle, food, clothes, finding a place of my own, and more), and keeping me from being able to attend college, among other things. I was lucky and my friends understood my situation and told me I didn't need to contribute to rent, just help with gas and groceries every now and then and concentrate on saving my money for a car and a place of my own.
From October '13 to June 14', I went from having pretty much no money and no vehicle, to having my own car, being accepted into the college I wanted to attend (and getting enough in scholarships/financial aid to pay for it), and getting an apartment only a couple minutes away from said college.
The only thing left was to get a new job, closer to where I was now living. (I went from living with some friends and working in a General Mills plant in Murfreesboro, TN to living in Cookeville, TN to attend Tennessee Technological University, the driving time from Murfreesboro to Cookeville is about an hour and fifteen minutes.)
I applied literally everywhere I could, got quite a few interviews, and was called back to three different places:
The first was a locally owned sign/decal/carwrap shop, who emailed me and asked me to call and talk to a specific man there who would finalize everything with me as far as scheduling/availability, and when I would start (which was odd because I'd already discussed that with them a couple of times but whatever). I called as soon as I got the email, and told that the man I needed to speak to wasn't there and that they'd have him call me back. He never called back. I called them back a few times over the course of two days before I went into the store and tried to talk to them about it. They told me he wasn't there and they'd have him call me. He never called. I talked to them in person and on the phone multiple times after that before giving up.
The second was a (pretty well-paying) job as a McDonald's manager. I had the interview with them and it seemed to go pretty well, they called me a few days later and let me know I'd gotten the job, gave me all of the information about when they needed me to come in to start and what I needed to do to prepare, and then just before our phone conversation ended, let me know that while I had originally applied and interviewed to be the manager and get paid upwards of $20/hr, that position had already been filled. But they'd love to have me start working as a part-time member of the kitchen for minimum wage! This wasn't going to pay the bills, and the hours they wanted me to work conflicted with my class schedule, so I turned them down.
Third was a seasonal sale associate at Rue 21. (linked because apparently some people don't know what this place is)
It only paid slightly higher than minimum, and for the first two weeks they'd only have me working three days, but I took it until I could find something else. Literally one week after I'd started, there was a misprint in the schedule they'd given us, and while the paper schedule I'd been given said that I was not working that Wednesday, the manager thought otherwise. Had they called me a few minutes after my shift was supposed to start and ask why I wasn't there, I would've apologized profusely and been there within five minutes. Instead, they opted to call me at the end of the day when the store was closing up to let me know I'd been replaced. I have photos of the schedule that showed I wasn't supposed to be working that day, and I have logged text messages from a few days before, where I asked the manager if they'd like me to cover for someone else's shift who couldn't make it in that day, and they told me no. I tried to talk to my supervisor about it, and contacted HR about it. Nobody cared.
Fast forward a few months to November. I've had a difficult time making ends meet, but I've managed. I'm taking a full load of classes and volunteering at a locally-owned bookstore. They can't pay me because they're barely making enough money to keep their doors open, but through them I've managed to get a few jobs here and there repairing people's computers/cellphones/game consoles and teaching older people how to use the internet. Now my friend Evan comes in. I've known him for a few years. He's a big fan of Nintendo stuff, he's dabbled in modding a bit, he loves the custom systems I've put together in the past, and he's always been incredibly supportive.
He sent me a message on Facebook a couple weeks before Winter break and asked if I'd be interested in visiting him in VA for about two weeks over break and heavily concentrating on modding and selling as many systems as we could, and to work out a possible business plan to the point that I may not have to worry about finding a different job. I've talked to local gamestore owners in the past and kicked around the idea of having them sell my stuff in their stores, but nothing ever came of it. Evan was serious about this, though.
He generously offered to buy me a bus ticket, and in addition to the combined DMGs, Pockets, and NESes we already had, he bought a few more systems and new tools (My old soldering iron wasn't exactly in top shape, hahah). We ended up talking with two game stores local to the Warrenton VA area, and we also talked with a guy who owns a few Game Haven stores. We showed them our work and pitched them our ideas, they loved it, and we agreed to put together some custom systems for each of them, which they'd buy from us and sell in their stores. The Game Haven guy even gave us a couple NESes for free and asked if we could do something TMNT-themed with them. We came back to him with two ideas and mockups and he offered us upwards of $350 for each of them. For the rest of the time I was in VA, we focused on cranking out a bunch of simpler DMG mods (greyboys with backlight/prosound/new buttons and screen cover) that we could sell until we'd gotten together all of the parts we needed for the TMNT NESes and other more-complicated mods we had planned.
By the end of my time in VA, we'd sold quite a bit of stuff, and gathered just about everything we needed for the more complicated stuff we'd been planning. We agreed that I'd take most of the stuff with me back to Tennessee and keep working.
I got on the bus with my messenger bag, containing my laptop, cellphone, and 3DS. My duffel bag was loaded into the bottom of the bus. It contained all of my clothes, my good pair of shoes, Christmas presents for my family, toiletries, a bunch of Wii U stuff, two NESes, a DS lite, a GBA, two SPs, three modded DMGs I was going to be shipping out the next day, two modded DMGs and one modded pocket I was going to be delivering in person the next day, 8 or so more DMGs worth of parts and all of my tools.
I arrived in Nashville TN and waited patiently for my bag to be taken out of the bus, but it never was.
Everyone else got their luggage, but mine wasn't there.
As far as I could tell nobody else took it, and I'd kept an eye out at previous stops along the way to make sure nobody would take it, accidentally or otherwise. It was just gone.
My girlfriend arrived in her car to pick me up and take me to Murfreesboro, and she let me know that her mom and stepdad, who I'd previously let borrow my car before I left for VA (entirely different story, but we've always gotten along well, they've needed to borrow it before and I totally trust them with it), were having issues with my car. They didn't want me to know and were planning on getting it sorted out before I came back, but it took longer than they expected.
So there I was, a couple days before Christmas, with basically nothing but the contents of my messenger bag, and the clothes on my back. My girlfriend was leaving to spend Christmas with relatives, and was stuck in Murfreesboro with her mom and stepdad until I could get my car fixed or find another way to get back to my apartment in Cookeville. I stayed in Murfreesboro until just before the semester started, never found the issue with my car (the mechanic it was finally taken to suggested that I have him replace a bunch of stuff that I've already dealt with before and know for a fact wasn't the issue, and asked for $600+ for it. I only paid $800 for it to begin with. I said no) I got a ride back to Cookeville with my girlfriend and I've been struggling to have anything done by Greyhound's customer service to find my bag, and struggling to pay my bills.
I complained about Greyhound on Twitter, and they followed me the next day, but didn't respond. I called them out on it, and then they asked me to DM them and give them the details of what's been going on. I did and a couple days later they had a man from corporate in Dallas TX call me and let me know he was going to "do his best" to find my bag. I suggested checking security cameras at our stops, since we know the exact times and locations of each stop, and my bag was fairly easy enough to spot from the rest of them. He let me know he had (I doubt it), and that he saw the bag get loaded in but that was the last he saw of it. He supposedly sent out a message to all of the stations we'd stopped at and didn't get a response from half of them. I ended up personally calling each of them, along with each of the stops of a different bus that we'd come into contact with, and I even contacted gamestores and pawn shops around each of the areas we'd stopped at, in case my bag had been stolen and someone tried to resell it. So far nobody's found anything. The Greyhound corporate guy said he'd keep in touch with me to let me know anything new he'd found out, but he never called me back so I've been keeping in touch, calling once a week or so to check in (and it took him a good month or so just to get in touch with the stations we'd stopped at, which I'd already done within two days of my bag going missing), but I'm losing hope and running out of ideas.
I'm considering possibly taking Greyhound to small claims court, but I haven't done this before and I'm not 100% sure where to start. But there was over $3000 worth of stuff in that bag, a lot of which is going to be tough for me to get back, even if I wasn't incredibly poor right now. ASM PCB-mount prosound jacks, a few rare-ish games, an awesome assortment of socks from Target that they no longer sell (no, I'm not joking. They made awesome socks and I had a ton. It got to the point that I was known in some circles as "the guy with the badass socks") custom-painted one of a kind systems including the repro pink heart DMG I did a while back. I'm actually pretty worried that sometime down the road someone will try to resell the heart DMG and pass it off as the real thing.. I'm hoping if any of the customs show up online I'll be able to catch them, though.
Oh, and inside a pocket of one of the cases I was keeping my tools in, there were a ton of old handwritten letters from my girlfriend. 
I've managed to get a couple of commission orders recently, but not nearly enough to feed myself and pay my rent. Between these and trying to find a better job I've been selling the bit of games I still have around left to sell, and come Thursday, as much as I hate it, there's a guy coming to buy my digital piano from me so I'll be able to pay my rent for the upcoming month.
I had more to say but I don't remember what it was now. I've got a cold and feel like crap right now so I'm gonna go to sleep in a few minutes. Maybe I'll edit this later.
Do you guys have any suggestions as to how to deal with Greyhound or how to go about finding a better job and/or coming up with more cash faster?
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