Sorry for the silence. Today I was distracted from most of my usual unemployment pursuits.
I did no housecleaning, although I did run the dishwasher. I made chili. I'm going to go make cornbread here in a few minutes.
I checked the job sites and was unimpressed with the selection.
I spent a lot of time trying to get caught up on the online sites I used to love reading on a daily basis. I didn't get through even half of them, but it's a start, yes?
I think I was tired. Physically, I mean. I've done a lot of manual labor in the past few days, not to mention the tons of furniture and whatnot I shifted around while trying to make Bernie's new office habitable.
Today, finally, I was UNemployed. I did almost nothing, and did it all very slowly.
She's still IM'ing me to ask questions, but today's questions haven't been dumb ones, so I'm not aggravated. (Except that she wants step-by-step instructions for coding html. Which I can't provide. If Bernie didn't make basic html part of the job requirements, that's their problem.)
Mostly, I feel very lazy.
Would you think less of me if I were a professional money-launderer?
The company offering to pay me 5K a month to work part-time from home emailed in response to my resume to say that I'm just perfect for them. Sight-unseen, without even a phone call. There's minimal training, via email, and they'll pay me $3,600/month to start.
All I have to do is to accept payments from people I don't know, put them in my personal bank account, skim my bit off the top, and then transfer the money to a different account when asked so to do. They gave e-bay as an example but never claimed all or even any of the money was coming from e-bay transactions.
Tempting, no? I don't think they could put me in jail, either. I'd clearly have no idea of anything Naughty and no provable connection with the same.
I skim 8% off the top in addition to the salary, which is (I assume) where the $5k salary comes in.
I ask you. What legitimate company pays $5k a month for someone to handle, doing the math, $17,500 worth of business? None. I used to handle $500,000+ worth of business for one company. I didn't even make 10% of that, but I'm expected to believe this bunch wants to pay me 27% or 28%?
They sent a contract but it and the email I received were clearly not written by a native English speaker. You can get to their website (where they claim to be a bank-US, France, Netherlands, Ukraine--and isn't that an interesting combination?)) via direct link ("Welcome to Finincal Web Site!" it says), but Google never heard of them. They have pictures of their "team" (five fairly whitebread faces) and a Pennsylvania address.
People buy stuff, you see. Individuals buy yachts. Businesses do deals with other businesses. All of these folks need their money held in escrow from time to time. And this "bank" finds my checking account a more satisfactory form of escrow than, oh, I don't know, an escrow account.
You tell me. CIA front? Clumsy terr*rist organization? Mob money-laundering ploy?
Another company responded with an offer to set me up in my own business as a virtual office assistant.
They're going to provide me with everything I need to start my own business being an admin assistant from home and they assure me that all of the tasks I'm routinely expected to do as a full-time employee can be charged for separately when I'm a free-lancer. Which is probably true, but I left that rung of the employment ladder behind fifteen years ago and am not eager to return to it.
Admittedly I've answered a couple of ads more because they were weird and intriguing than because I was interested in the world they were offering, but this job-hunting process is turning out to be a lot more entertaining than I'd anticipated.
So, I finished the kitchen (except for the floor) and the bathroom (mostly) and vacuumed the living room and I can't go to Goodwill because I haven't showered yet and I'm icky.
As I look around the living room, I see that those two shelves full of tiny knick-knacks (I'm not a very knick-knacky person, but we all accumulate a few things as we go through life) are just filthy. They were on my To Do list for today but I don't care any more.
The mood is over
You know why? Because I went to strip the quilt off the bed so I could finally wash it and when I looked at the laundry basket in the closet, it's half-full again and I'm going to need to do laundry again tomorrow.
I did seven loads just a couple of days ago.
House cleaning? Is a cheat and a lie. There's no such thing as "clean." There are only rooms and articles of clothing in varying stages of decay. Entropy rules all.
The rest of my Lady of Leisure time is going to be devoted to job-hunting, practicing drawing, and the occasional stint of dusting when the filth starts to pile up.
It's snowing harder again now. Another good reason to put off going to Goodwill. Because I'm sulking at the insistent return of winter to my world.
I ate some yogurt and some cheese. Tonight I really have to go to the grocery store. (I'm thinking, it's winter again, right? Chili!)
So, what else is new?
I met up with a couple of friends last night for dinner and chatting. They're part of the local Stitch and Bitch group. I'm not a member, but I go along to see the two of them once a month or so.
This time we met at The Market at Larimer Square.
Larimer Square is a shopping/dining/see-and-be-seen part of downtown Denver. Just off the 16th Street Mall and close to LoDo (Lower Downtown), it used to have a reputation for being where the Monied went to shop. I hadn't been to the area in years and was surprised by how, well, trendy it seems to have become.
And popular, even on a Wednesday evening. I had to circle the blocks forever to find a parking space (no easy task in an area of pedestrian walking malls and one-way streets. Finally, and in defiance of my Unemployed state, I gave up on finding a meter (two hours for 50 cents) and had to pay a parking lot ($12!) for space.
The Market was like finding a little slice of funky LoDo right in the middle of swanky Larimer Square. The Market turned out to be a little grocery store/coffee bar/pastry shop/restaurant combination with some very good food.
Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, a man who took it upon himself to advise us about the menu as we stood at the counter and agonized over our choices, I ordered the spinach stuffed boneless breast of chicken. Tasty, indeed. The stuffing was thick and flavorful, the chicken moist without being undercooked.
Portions were ample. In fact, some dishes were incredibly generous. Ruth had them package up her leftover pasta dish to take home with her and she had enough left for one or maybe two more meals.
I pretty much finished my dish, but had I not passed on the dinner salad, I don't know if I could have managed it.
I was tempted to try the desserts, which included some amazing-looking cheesecake (served in giant slices, as I saw when two youngsters received their strawberry drenched orders) but I was mindful of one friend's diet and my own extra five pounds, so I passed.
I'm going back to The Market, some day soon, though. I didn't have nearly enough time to browse the pastry cabinet or drool over the candies or look at the strange and wonderful specialty packaged food offerings or sample the cappuccino and/or hot chocolate.
The meatloaf has to be worth a try. The BBQ beef brisket smelled fabulous. They have an extensive sandwich menu and I'd like to sample almost everything on it. The pastries and desserts...if they're half as good as they look, they must be fabulous.
Any restaurant that offers a dessert called "Chocolate Oblivion" is worth a second trip.
Okay, who ordered the winter wonderland of snow for today? There's 6" of snow out there and it's still coming down. Because it's been so warm, it's melting as fast as it hits the streets, but still. I am doing Spring Cleaning. I can hardly get in the mood for Spring Cleaning if it looks like December outside my window.
Here are a couple of views from the balcony.
It's totally harshing my Spring Cleaning Vibe.
Oh, well. The fun "heavy, physical labor" part of the job is over anyhow. Nothing left but the actual cleaning, and that's year-round anyhow.
For those of you wondering if I've forgotten the "un" part of my UNemployment, no, I have not. I'm checking the job sites daily. So far without exciting results.
I found a job with my title (Account Executive) that looked fine except that it was offering 25% less than Bernie paid me, and he was already paying me 20% less than I'm accustomed to making.
Another job advertised under the category (it's sort of a catch-all title) was actually someone looking for a salesperson willing to make endless cold calls. I can do that, but it's hardly a skill and it's not really how I want to spend my days.
Another position offered $5k/month for part-time work. Yeah, like I'm going to believe that. They list it as salary but anything "part-time" in that salary range is going to be a sales position and largely dependent on commissions. No one pays you $5k month part-time to work from home. Sounds scammy to me.
Still. I applied for three or four openings. We'll see what happens.
The part-time writing jobs still look like more fun but no way I can live on $300/week.
Silly or not, though, I applied for a blogging gig. Part-time, of course. Spare time stuff. Blog where you've been in Denver. Restaurants, events, etc. Doesn't have a salary of course, just pay-by-hits on the ads, but it could be fun and obviously I'm In The Mood for blogging again these days. If they take a chance on me and I rake in $5/month or something, it's not the money, it's the fun of doing it that I'll focus on. (Again I regret not having any "writing samples" to show beyond the political blog, but whatever.)
In Old Work news, She IM'd me this morning. She has been making changes to a survey, the one I did some of the coding on for Her because She was afraid. She wanted to send me the updates. I've written back, reasonably politely, to remind Her that yes, I did the logic statements for Her but I didn't volunteer to do all of the text edits.
I don't mean to be cold, but She has to learn to do it herself.
While I have more and more doubts about Her ability to do the job (and certainly She won't be doing everything I did), She's what Bernie's got at the moment and She can learn the way I did. A bit of training, then being dumped into it headfirst and left to sink or swim.
I'm not abandoning her and I'm more than willing to answer any questions She has, but my agreement with Bernie did not cover me actually doing Her work. Just additional training time as needed.
And now I've avoided the truth for long enough.
It's time to clean something.
The water problem corrected itself by the time I finished blogging about it. Now I could/should start cleaning.
Instead, I'm staring around my bedroom (how is it possible to spend three days cleaning out one room) in awe at the wreckage. I reassembled it yesterday evening so I could sleep on the bed, but today's efforts have created twice the chaos.
A bit later....
I have achieved shelves! I have achieved five shelves! Of varying sizes, yes, but all empty!
In the process, I dusted (Yes. Again. The R.C. was right. Having the place all opened up yesterday while I kicked up a lot of dust didn't mean the dust blew out the windows. It meant it settled on every surface again.) and cleaned baseboards as they were available.
Now I'm torn between running to the storage unit to recover some of the books I've had to leave in limbo and running to the bookstore to buy new books. (This is why The Great Clean-Out is an annual event.)
Much later....
Yesterday I rearranged books. Today I rearranged actual furniture as well. Now, the bedroom is done. Tidy, dusted, organized, and spacious.
At least, it's done if you don't look inside the closet. There's one pile o'stuff I just couldn't decide what to do with, so I shoved it into the chest that lives in the closet and told myself I'd worry about it another day. (Thus sowing the seeds of next year's Great Clean-Out.)
Now all I have to do is to make four trips to my car to load up all the stuff destined for Goodwill and that part of my Lady of Leisure To Do list is complete.
The bedroom. The room that I considered and laughingly assigned a mental two hours for when I was figuring what it would take to make this place actually tidy again.
Two minutes later....
I went to wash my hands and now I'm thinking, my god how did the bathroom get into such a filthy state?
This is a small apartment. Surely there has to come a point at which I declare it clean?
Maybe after I clean the bathroom and the kitchen, oil the woodwork, vacuum the living room (again), dust the living room (again) plant those Forget-Me-Not seeds the R.C. got at work yesterday, find a place for that planter to live, and figure out what do with the that one empty-and-yet-untidy empty shelf in the living room?
Then I'll have time to deal with the pile of Important Papers on the table in the bedroom and the pile of Important Papers on the table by my chair in the living room. (It will be nice to have a sit-down task.)
I think I'm changing my mind about the Joy of Leisure. I need to get a job so I can rest.
Also, I need food. My cupboard is relatively bare. There's some tuna salad in the refrigerator but I can't remember how long it's been there. Anyone know how long tuna salad will last in the refrigerator? I'm not sure my usual, "if it's not growing fungus, it's edible" refrigerator theory is really applicable to fish-based products. As near as I can figure, it's been ten or twelve days or so, so I put it in the trash. Just in case.
Fortunately I have both bread and cheese. If one has bread and cheese, one has a toasted cheese sandwich in their future, and that's a happy thought. (Mammoth Cave Aged Cheddar, courtesy, except not really because we paid for it, of Whole Foods. Mmmm.)
(That kitchen is just disgusting. Why doesn't someone clean it?)
A couple more ruthless passes across a couple of bookshelves and I think the Great Clean-Out is done.
Now starts the Great Clean-UP, except--not.
Being at home all day has its interesting moments. Yesterday it was the lawn service with their BRRRRR machines, making the day hideous for hours as those of us Enjoying Leisure were attempting to open all of our doors and windows and let the fresh, spring air in.
Today, we seem to lack one essential component that today's To Do list requires. Water.
Can't clean without water.
Can't quit and take a shower. No water.
Can't sit back and relax for a while with a second pot of coffee. No water.
Can't stop ignoring that last load of laundry and get it finished. No water.
Can't just give up and go somewhere else. I've been cleaning for the past 90 minutes and I need a shower.
I finally got some "leisure" in my Days of Leisure and I'm too filthy to do anything but stand still in the middle of the floor.
11:00 and I've done none of my Leisure-Time projects. I finished up the last of the work I brought home to do for Her, though, so that's something. I "owed" Bernie 10 hours when I left last Friday. Now it's down to seven. :D I look upon it as working off my debt to society.
I've got two loads of laundry in and two more to do when those are done. (This will be the first time I've had to wash that hand-made quilt my mother and her sisters sent me. I'm crossing my fingers that those burgundy panels are color-fast.)
Yesterday I got all side-tracked on tidying instead of cleaning. I'm still there today. Working on my second box of books for Goodwill at the moment.
(She's IMing me. She's been IMing me all morning. She couldn't remember the password for the mail system that was written down right in front of Her and when I gave it to Her a second time, She logged in, didn't instantly see a flashing message explaining Her problem, declared it beyond Her capabilities, and called the on-call tech support guy. Bernie's going to love getting the bill for that.) (Now, Bernie has questions about another project and wants me to call him.) (And, yes, al of this is going down on my sheet against the time I "owe" Bernie.)
Third load of laundry in. Second box of books full. Starting on a third box.
I'm at the point where I honestly can't tell if I'm eliminating the mess in my bedroom or just moving it from one place to another?
I'm moving the books around (which is where the "mess gone, or just moved?" question comes in) to try and make those left-over-from-my-poverty-stricken-youth black plastic bookcases look less nasty. I should just replace them with the better quality black steel ones I found. (Not as utilitarian as they sound.). The metal ones hold twice the books in less space. But I'm unemployed and not spending extra money right now, right?
I've made a gross mess in my bedroom (she said with a certain morbid satisfaction). I can't even walk in there. Boxes o'stuff for Goodwill, a giant trash bag, that last load of laundry on the floor. What on earth possessed me to start a week-long project at a time when I could logically offer only a day or two of part-time effort?
Sping! I'm spring-cleaning!
I can't believe it's after 1:00 and I'm still working on bookshelves.
Give until it hurts. That's what they say, right?
I'm willing to suffer a few pangs, but not actual pain. I might not read all of Dickens every year, but that's no reason not to keep those books. Ditto for Tey, Bradbury, LeCarré, Trollope, Williams (Charles), Crispin, Doyle (and other gaslight-era detective novelists), Twain, Sayer, Smith (E.E. "Doc"), etc.
And then there's the stuff in storage. 20 years of Heinlein, Asimov, all my favorite "children's" books (including a rare copy of a rare Baum book), and who knows what else?
And yet, the bookshelves are still loaded.
It would seem clear that I have been insufficiently ruthless.
Back to the bedroom....
I have three loads of laundry in now and I need to reload my laundry card before I can do any more. Looking over the piles in my bedroom floor, I'm guessing three more loads. Who knew I was such a dirty person? (Seriously. Doing everything at once, rugs, comforter, towels, sheets, and clothes, makes a lot of laundry).
Sigh. I've started the Great Tidy-Up of '07. Cleaning out the stuff I've allowed to accumulate on table-tops over the last month, smug in the knowledge that soon I would have time to deal with it all.
Bottom line? Books. More books will have to go. I have six bookcases in my bedroom, an over-the-door bookshelf on the bedroom door, two rows of books lining the 10' linen/storage shelf in the bedroom closet, and three boxes of books stored in the floor of the closet. I have no idea how many books I have in storage, but a conservative guess is 6-8 large cartons. Although it will wring the very lifeblood from my heart, it's time to clear some of them out.
Some will wring less than others.
Those Gemmell books I talked about recently. I can Goodwill those without a qualm.
The Robin Hobbs books I just finished a few days ago. Nine books I read. About 7,200 pages. And then the ending was just stupid. I'm tempted to write a warning note inside the flap of the first one, but not everyone reads critically.
You take a chance when you trust an author--if they're writing a long series, you fasten plot points and things that seem to point to major character development in your mind as you go and trust that they'll make sense of it all, that the author is going somewhere with it all in the end. With the Hobbs books, it's not that I didn't care for where she went with it. It's that I discovered on the last page that she hadn't been going anywhere in particular. I can't believe I wasted two weeks of my life on that. (Also? If you spend 2000+ pages writing a love story between two characters? Having them wave bye-bye and go off to their separate ways with barely an angsty qualm? Will annoy your readers. If you're going to separate them and they're not going to care that much, don't bother with the love story. I don't require a love story in the books I read, but if you include one and make it the centerpiece of 2000 pages of writing, it had better matter.)
(If I buy make-up from my local Walgreens drugstore and I don't like it? I can return it for a refund. Why can't I return a book that turns out to be stupid and get a refund?)
A handful of airport books can go. (The kind of stuff you buy in airports when you're desperate for something more to read after they announced the third hour-long delay of your flight. That sort of thing. I carry a lot of books with me when I travel, but it takes a lot of books to give me enough to read for five or six consecutive hours.)
Books I read and enjoyed but would likely never read again. Cook's Tour, for example. The Way of All Flesh for another. Many books are readable, but they're not all re-readable.
Sigh. I'd allotted myself one day to do my cleaning and tidying. Tomorrow I need to get onto the job-hunting trail. Looks like I'll be spending the intervals between reading ads and responding to them in the actual cleaning I didn't get to today.
I just checked my work email, as I agreed with Bernie I'd keep doing this week, only to find that She has gone in and changed the layout and suchlike. I sent Her a polite email essentially saying, "keep yer mitts to yerself." It bounced. I tried again. Bounced. Now I gotta decide whether or not to call her and warn that she needs to clean out the spam account.
Decisions, decisions....
Ohmigod. She just IM'd me. She can't get Word to open a txt file She created with one of their proprietary software programs.
30 seconds of troubleshooting and I find that She just changed the document extension and assumed that's all she needed to do. The brain. Boggles.
Her resume claimed extensive familiarity with the standard office software programs they use, including the Microsoft suite and QuickBooks. She lied.
Last week, She had me show Her how to create an invoice in QB three times (you click the button that says, "invoice") and now She doesn't know what file extensions mean?
Then She wanted to know how to get to the relevant folder on Her hard drive. That you could change directories in the "file open" dialogue box seems to have surprised Her.
She was saying She couldn't get into this or that program today because She forgot Her notebook with the passwords She'd written down. I had to remind Her that I left Her three indexed notebooks with URLs, passwords, user names, and everything necessary.
Bernie? You hired an idiot.
Pursuant (such a great word) to both that and the job hunting process, I ego-surfed myself today. It's a thing I've heard that others do frequently but not something I normally think to do for myself.
Glancing at the job sites this morning, it occurred to me that I might find part-time work writing for someone online, a thing I could do from (gulp) Missouri if I had to. I could take the laptop and get myself some kind of dial-up account. (So primitive.)
Granted, I lack most of the qualifications of a writer, never having published and not being able to provide a Serious Body of Work to prove my bona fides but most internet sites aren't looking for weighty prose, they're looking for readability and I think I could achieve that with some advance thought and attention. (Also? I'm not finding anything attractive to me in the "regular" job categories.) (Not that I'm looking exactly, since I promised myself a couple of days off, but....)
Anyhow. I ego-surfed myself and of course Peevish came up all over the place. (All three times I've ego surfed myself, I pop up right at the top of Google's hitlist. (People complain about how hard it is to get noticed on the internet and I don't understand that. I've never been able to stay below the radar.) That's about all I have online to show my "writing experience" and I'm not sure a personal blog I abandoned is really the ideal demo to offer but whatever..
I guess can live with anyone who Googles to find my writing experience finding that blog. If that happened, it might just be wise for me to be grateful that anyone considered my job application that seriously. It's not like I have to worry about them reading every post and finding the times when I went grossly over the top or posted without benefit of proofreading. (Okay, I worry a little.) I can also live with the idea that a potential employer who turns out to be a right-winger or a fundamentalist passing on hiring me.
I'm boring when I'm unemployed, aren't I? I warned you.
Here I am. Free! It's an odd feeling but kind of a nice one.
*does a little dance*
I've already heard from Her, via email this morning. She asked for my IM address because she'd left it at home this morning and wanted it in case She needed me. Since I not only wrote it down for Her on a sticky note on Friday, pasting it to the side of the computer monitor, but went ahead and plugged it into Her "co-workers" buddy list, I'm guessing She lied when I asked Her if She needed a quick how-to on using IMs and She said, "No."
I have/had plans for this little interval of unemployment. Beyond finding a job, I mean. I had plans to take a couple of days off before I even started the job search. There are Things I Wanted To Do.
Like massive amounts of laundry. I want to wash everything I own and have it all clean, all at once.
And cleaning. I want to scrub right into the corners of this place. It's spring-cleaning time and my fingers are itching to be at it.
And throwing out. Both my room and the storage unit are littered with boxes full of things I don't care about and would never look at again. I need to dig those out and get rid of them. Spring cleaning! Everything (unwanted) must go!
And sleeping. I have got to stop being so careless with my meds. I've had killer insomnia for the last week.
I'm not getting all of today's To Do list done because I'm distracted. Worrying about my mother. Based on an email I got from the L-i-K-S today, I may have to forego my plans to become re-employed as quickly as possible (thereby salvaging my retirement savings plan and not digging myself into a financial hole it will take me five years to dig back out of) in favor of spending most of my carefully hoarded funds to fly to Missouri and spend a couple of weeks with my mother.
Okay. Time to be "productive" for a while.
11:25 a.m.
We're very haughty today.
We clearly feel that We have entirely mastered the entirety of the complexities of this position and that We are no longer in need of instruction.
We've gone so far as to wave Our Hand and dismiss my warning that coding logic jumps in a program is a lot easier to learn with me standing here explaining it to Us than it's going to be on Our own. (You don't know logic statements. You've said as much. Nothing about the sample logic statements I showed You did not make Your eyes bug out. You are going to be so sorry.)
When I came in this morning, She had taken my desk chair for Her own use at the training computer, reset the monitor on my computer to the, "yes, I am legally blind" setting, and changed the display settings to a neon-purple “large font” selection.
Not to be repetitive, but when She was asked if She could physically do this job, I’m thinking Bernie was entitled to know that She can’t see to read a computer monitor. (This woman is my age. What’s Her problem?)
And She scattered Her lunch dishes around the desktop. (Why did She have Her lunch out at 9:00 this morning? Why did She feel the top of the desk was the right place to store Her food until lunch time?) (Why did She even bring a lunch when Bernie said he was getting in lunch for us today?)
I get that She's tired of having me here. I get that She can't wait for me to leave so She can feel She’s in charge and free to do “work” instead of “training.” I do not get precisely how She thinks She is going to do the multitudes of tasks I’ve mentioned but have not yet gotten Her to sit and let me discuss. It’s possible She believes She is talented enough, or psychic enough, to figure these out on Her own, but…. Well, not my problem.
I get, and I giggle to think, that we now have two major control freaks sitting in this office and that I will be out of here before they start butting heads.
2:12 p.m.
She was sorry. When it came time to code the logic in the easy software program, She left Her chair and refused even to watch me do it. Granted, we did tell Her that PoodleBoy was an expert and could assist Her with coding jumps, but from what She has said, I’m thinking that She took that to mean that She can just send him any program that requires a jump and have him do it.
That ain’t gonna fly. Bernie isn’t going to pay for an outside contractor to do something that we have step-by-step instructions for doing. And he’s certainly not going to pay for it on every survey. (Maybe I’m being unfair. I took logic in college, and also programming in BASIC in the 70s. Maybe I underestimate how freaky it all looks to someone who has never done it?) (And yet, we have step by step instructions. Basically you type the exact code you are given, with your only edit being to replace “xx” with a two-digit screen number. It doesn’t get a lot simpler than that.)
And that was the easy software program. It was DOS-based. Now She’s working on the complicated software program. I tried to give Her an introduction to this one earlier in the week, but She said Bernie told Her She wouldn’t need to use it, so it was all I could do to keep Her listening to me for ten minutes as I did the briefest of overviews. And, yes, She’s paying for that, too, because Bernie always has a lot of big plans that don’t pan out and today She’s having to build a program in that software.
Also? The logic jumps in this one are coded completely differently than the ones in the other program. evilgrin
Actually, my standard whining aside, I’m in a pretty darned good mood today. It’s my LAST DAY! And I’m all full up with nice Chinese food. And it’s Friday. (My last Friday Here!) And the storm forecast for today has mutated from being a potentially lethal spring snowstorm to the threat of scattered rain showers and a high of 57 degrees.
5:00 p.m.
Free at last!
I went to bed earlier, slept longer, ran into less traffic on the commute, and--she's still driving me bonkers today.
We have a survey job She needs to code into two different software programs today and tomorrow. She was looking through the manual and practicing on old surveys and I told Her that was, yes, the best way to figure it all out. And Bernie told Her that he'd have the "live" survey to Her in 30 minutes.
What did She do? Stopped and spent 20 minutes wiping down tables, stacking things on the floor, and generally moving stuff around because She has an idea that She'd like the server machines in a different location next week.
Sigh. She interrupts when we're talking to Her, so determined to contribute to the conversation that you can tell She's been scouring Her brain for something to say instead of listening.
Whatever.
I talked to Bernie about Her. I warned him that I think She'll be able to learn the work (but not to expect too much too fast--remember, it took me three months to get comfortable in the job) but that he was going to have to watch for Her living Her personal life on company time.
The person who works my job is on their own a lot of the time. Even now that we're in Boulder, Bernie doesn't seem to feel obligated to be in the office five days a week or eight hours a day. He really needs someone who can be trusted to keep getting the work done when he's not watching them.
He's gonna miss me when I'm gone.
So tired....
Okay, if She works out around Here, I'll be a bit surprised.
Not that She'd agree. No, after a whopping 7 hours of training, spread over two days, She feels She's got a good handle on everything.
She must feel that way, otherwise why would She have made or taken five personal calls today, most of them while I was in the middle of a sentence trying to teach her about something?
Otherwise, why, when I was trying to tell Her something that I assured Her was going to be personally important to Her, did She decide that making a call to a friend to see if She'd accepted a new position, was more important? If you don't send Bernie your timesheet every other Wednesday, you will not get paid every other Friday. She felt that not only Her phone call, but a discussion about how small the calendar was displaying on the monitor were more important than understanding how the payroll & timesheet process work. Her (paycheck) loss.
Maybe it's just me? I know my work style doesn't match everyone's. Many people enjoy spending a significant percentage of their work days exchanging personal anecdotes and family stories. I've never been one of those people.
Also, I was assuming that with a maximum of 20 hours for training ahead of us, we'd both prefer to focus on the training and not bother to play Getting To Know You since we won't be meeting again after this week, but She shows a marked tendency to drift toward personal chit-chat in preference to doing actual work. At the drop of a hint, She's wandering off into stories about Her spouse's shoulder surgery or Her horses or Her part-time job or anything but what She's ostensibly being paid to think about, which is learning this job.
Without in any way meaning to disparage the pets/children/spouses of those of you who possess those accoutrements, I must say that my interest in the p/c/s of near-strangers is non-existent. I am not making this 80-mile round-trip journey every day to listen to Her chat about Her hobbies or hubby.
Today did contain one little giggle, though.
When Bernie called to discuss a couple of database issues, She took Her lunch and went to the other room. Later She explained that She didn't need to be in on those discussions. Bernie has assured Her that She doesn't need to worry about the databases since they won't be an issue after this week. I disabused Her of that notion promptly.
She--did not look pleased.
I--do not care. You can't just take the parts of a job you think will be easy or uncomplicated. Also, what kind of fool thinks they don't have to be involved in something important enough to have been allocated three training sessions in three days?
At that point, I made a point of mentioning to her that Bernie had complained about a bad phone connection and that he was going to call me back. It's anybody's guess as to why she felt that was the appropriate moment for her to tie up the phone setting up an address book, choosing a new ring, and exploring the other features. If he did try to call me back, I probably won't know about it until tomorrow.
Sigh. After I arrived this morning, it took me forever to stop Her chatting with Bernie and filling out insurance paperwork and fussing over how the fax was set and wondering why the printer made so much noise when printing and a dozen other minor nothings she kept bringing up.
I know She has to be tired of "being trained." She's not half as tired of it as I am of listening to myself repeat all of this stuff to Her, but I'd hoped She was smart enough to stay with it, understanding that no employer pays someone to spend a week training you if they don't think you're going to need trained.
In the end (thanks in no small part to Bernie feeling needy today) I'd be surprised to learn that we spent as much as an hour training.
The one thing I most wanted to do, an introduction call with Her to our largest client, got lost in the shuffle, which is going to offend the client who was waiting for our call and cause Her problems when she starts working with them later.
Okay, honestly, I think it got lost in the rising tide of my indignation. About the third time I was in the middle of explaining something and I looked up to see her dialing a call or walking out of the room with her phone pressed to her ear.... Well, I'll admit, I spent a fair amount of the day wondering whyinthehell I had bothered to show up today.
Two more days.... Two more days....
Whoosh. Training someone for hours a day takes it out of you.
I thought I had a plan and I was organized and ready for this but the reality is never as clean as you hoped it would be. (Also, a training plan has to change depending upon the skills and abilities of the person you hire....)
She's doing reasonably well so far. I've thrown a lot of information at Her in the last couple of days and She's struggling, but so far, so good.
She's got a sort of ADD thing going. In the middle of a sentence, She'll interrupt me to ask what some half-erased word on the white board is. I assume these are the moments when Her brain starts to overload. I'm sorry, but I can't really schedule long or frequent breaks for someone training only 3 or 4 hours a day. We're already breaking for 30 minutes for lunch (promptly at 12:00) every day.
She's borderline hypoglycemic so She can't have lunch late. Which is fine, we all have issues. And She needs a snack, mid-morning, which is also cool except for the weirdness of looking over at someone and seeing them going down on a large-salted pretzel stick. (But I tell myself I have a perverse imagination and from Her perspective, She's just snacking.) And, as She mentioned today, She has some kind of foot or bone or something ailment (I wasn't really listening) that's going to make it very difficult for Her to work the Conferences, which require being able and willing to haul ass around a huge conference hall, almost nonstop for ten or twelve hours.
In short, when She said She was physically able to do this job, I'm not sure She understood what the job was, but four (3-1/2!) more days and it's not my problem. She was the only one willing to take the job.
It's 1:30 now. I'm assuming She will need to be leaving in the next half-hour since She's working out her notice at Her part-time job.
I'm determined to have a better 'tude this week. Today, I managed pretty well.
My back is tired again. My own fault. Bernie warned me that that white board was too heavy for me to lift and hold while he drilled it to the wall, but from my perspective, it wasn't that much heavier than the network back-up batter thingy he wanted to prop under it. Sigh. He was right and I was wrong.
Anyhow. 3-1/2 hours today training Her, the shortest day we have scheduled for this week. She seems to be picking things up well, which is good. We did software today--all of those proprietary software programs the company uses, the online UPS account, the bookkeeping software (which She already knows, thank goodness), the mapping software, etc.
Tomorrow, clients. At 9:30 again, but it was my idea. It wasn't that hard to get there by 9:30 today (for some weird reason traffic was abnormally light) and it occurred to me that the more hours I actually put in this week, the fewer I'll "owe" Bernie after my last day.
Also I have a sekrit fantasy that I get Her up to speed by Friday and I don't have to go in. At this point, I'd trade that last day's pay for an early parole.
In addition, today's joys included office tidying (the aforementioned whiteboard installation, re-storing the things Bernie tidied away and moved on Saturday since he put things where he found a space to hold them and not in any rational order) and sneaking around trying to get in touch with the clients who owe us checks. Bernie doesn't want Her to know anything about the problem we've been having. (Because, you know, late payments will never happen again, so She doesn't need to know what our policy is or who to contact. Sheesh.)
He has a belief that it's necessary to hide from Her that our main client is behind on payments. Since the clients sent the checks but the stupid post office isn't forwarding our mail, I don't see why this has to be a Dark Secret, but whatever.
He asked me twice today what my training schedule was going to be. I consider it a triumph that I didn't answer, not once, "Precisely what I said it was going to be in the detailed email I sent you on Friday."
He's also trying to get me to do a lot of other tasks this week, when She isn't around. Call me crazy, but I think it's the person who's going to be there next week who needs to know who the phone service is through, what the property manager's address is, how the phone/fax combination is supposed to be set up, etc. Part of what she is going to have to do is nursemaid Bernie* so the sooner she gets used to it the better. I'm working with her when she's in the office to get these things done. Bernie's twitchy about it but I don't really care. He'll be grateful in a month when he's not faced with her saying, "I don't know. Anne did that before I worked here." (Also? She's new and all gung-ho. Let her deal with the petty aggravations. I've done my time.)
I consider that 90% of my job this week is training Her. Aside from that, I have no objection to spending an hour doing other things if I determine they're not necessary for her to be involved in, but I keep firmly in mind that what's he's mostly doing is trying to "get his money's worth" out of me this week, and that's really not something I'm particularly interested in being involved in.
It's a mistake to blog at 10:30 at night. I'm too tired to be cheerful.... And our internet access is being weird. This worries me. We've had a cable modem for years and never had any problems before.
_____________________
* Seriously. Nursemaiding. Today I had to refuse several times to place a call to the payroll company to make a change in our account for him. They don't talk to me. I am not on the list of "approved" people on the account. Only Bernie is on the account. I cannot make any changes. Only Bernie can make changes. He spent four times as long and four times as much energy coming out and trying to 'delegate' the call to me as it would have taken to just pick up the phone and call them. I had to tell him that three times before it sunk in.
Today's daily update contains...nothing of importance. I was working from home, so Bernie had few opportunities to annoy me.
He did take advantage of two such opportunities, though.
(1) He called and demanded three or four things he knew I couldn't do unless I was at the office, and then got pissy when I pointed that fact out to him. Although he was in the office and none of these things were beyond his abilities, he chose to do none of them himself.
(2) And then we had a conference call with his new-hire (he had to hire the only woman who would take the job, although he didn't really think she was suitable. I told you this, right? That none of the well-qualified candidates he liked would take the job for the money he was offering.) In it, he announced that her time isn't really her own next week since she's doing part-time work, and he offered to her that I'd come in at 9:00 every day next week to train her.
10:00 to 4:00, you jackass. That's what you offered. That's what we agreed.
Five more work days. I wonder if I can make it?
Posted by AnneZook at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)Well, drat.
I was supposed to meet a friend after work last night, but I completely forgot. I was so exhausted from fighting with the chaosmonster that I went home and just collapsed. Luckily for me, this morning said friend admitted that she'd blown me off as well. She sent me an IM yesterday, saying she wouldn't be there, but I didn't get it.
So, I'm back in Boulder today. Today was my first day of enjoying a Bad Weather Commute. What was a misty rain in Denver turned into rain, mixed with snow, in Boulder. Not much snow, fortunately.
The office looks marginally more like an office. At least half the network is up and running. I've sent Bernie emails about the things he still needs to do (without volunteering to do any of them myself) like upgrade our email account to allow for adding more names and notify all of the clients about our new phone number (we had to change it again yesterday) and fax number, hire a new database guy to replace Scooby, etc., etc., etc.
Sigh. I'm tired, I have a raging headache, and I didn't sleep well last night. I don't want to be here.
The R.C. said last night that when actually going to the office every day took an act of will, you've stayed too long. I've been at this point with jobs and bosses before, but never after just a year. I can't decide if my tolerance has just dropped dramatically in recent years (quite possible) or if Bernie really is that much more of a lunatic than previous employers? (Or maybe it's because it's just the two of us...so it's lunacy undiluted.)
He's already called me twice today. He was headed for a meeting in Denver and called to see if I'd come into the office at 9:30, the way he told the network guy I would yesterday (in clear defiance of our 10-4 agreement) and once after to talk about our abortive attempt to get our mail forwarded (long story, but the tagline is, "not gonna happen") and how we're going to have to call everyone we actually want mail from and make sure they have our new mailing address.
#1 - I didn't arrive until 9:50. As I tried to explain to Bernie, leaving my own home at any time before 9:00 is just a waste because I lose so much time to traffic trying to get through downtown Denver. I can leave home at 9:15 and arrive at the office by 10:00. Today I left home at 8:30 and arrived at the office at 9:50. A complete waste of time and gas.
#2 - Tom Thumb, the network guy did not come scampering down here when I arrived and called him. As he suggested previously, he has a full-time job and can only do stuff for Bernie when he has a few minutes free. There is no point in Bernie being determined to make "appointments" for the guy to come and do Bernie's stuff. Tom Thumb isn't able to do that and he's not going to risk his full-time employment for the joys of doing an hour's worth of work a week for Bernie.
I'm doing bookkeeping at the moment. Reconciling payments received, generating invoices, sending emails to clients whose checks got lost in the Great Mail NonForwarding Debacle Of '07, trying to figure out who we should have received bills from and didn't, etc.
Since Bernie's in Denver this morning, there's been no drama yet.
11:52 a.m. Well, yet another commute to Boulder safely under my belt. One of those inexplicable highway slowdowns delayed me for 15 minutes this morning. You know the kind I mean--traffic slows and then stops and inches forward at a crawl and then starts moving freely again and no one can figure out what the cause was.
Arriving this morning I discovered two things:
(1) The last shelving unit that Bernie was supposed to bring in last Thursday so that we could finish unpacking boxes is not here. He's bitching about the boxes still sitting around but I don't know what he expects me to do about it.
(2) The network is not set up and the T1 is not hooked up. In spite of me telling him when we spoke at 11:20 yesterday to call the man and confirm he would be here at 1:00 yesterday, Bernie did not call him.
He was in a snit because he wanted me to call. I pointed out that he was the one in the office. I didn't have the number, which was written down on the pad next to my computer, and it was up to him to schedule when he wanted someone to come in. All of that just made him more irritated. I? Am not a secretary.
The idea of me calling Boulder to ask some guy when he was available and then hanging up to call Bernie and give him the time just so he could tell me that wasn't convenient and to make it 30 minutes later and then hanging up and calling the guy back and making it 30 minutes later only to have Bernie call me again five minutes after that and tell me to call the guy again and ask him to call Bernie and confirm when he was headed over? Does not amuse me.
Bernie eventually called the dispatcher at 1:00 and by the time she tracked the man down, he didn't show up until 4:30. Bernie seemed to want points because he was here until 7:30 last night but from where I sit, it's his company. If anyone should be here until 7:30, it's the guy who owns the place, makes the most money, and brags that it's fifteen minutes from where he lives.
I suspect he did what he always does--called five companies and then signed with the cheapest one. You get what you pay for.
(1:17 p.m. - Just overheard Bernie talking to the new network free-lancer. Bernie was actually here until 6:45 last night. Why does he lie about stupid things?)
Later....
So, we had another little trauma about paying me. He's still determined that he's not going to pay me full-time between now and the time I leave because from his perspective, I'm not working full-time and if I am working full-time, I'm not doing things he wants to pay me to do, so why should he pay me?
So he wants to not pay me for this Friday because he doesn't see I have work I can do from home and he wants to pay me hourly for the hours I'm actually in the office next week unless I agree to be here for five days from 8:30 - 5:00 each day, in which case he'll pay me full-time, and no more working from home because while he had to concede that the work I was doing needed to be done, it's not work he wanted to pay anyone to do.
And, oh, by the way, how about I schedule to come in for a full day on Saturday, two weeks after my last day, and do a follow-up training (because he's just sure that I care as much as he does about the future of this company?) and while we're discussing training why doesn't he hire two people and I can train them both next week and he'll just keep the one that works out best at the end of the week.
An hour later I put the finishing touches to an email that essentially said that since he felt it was unfair to have to keep paying someone who wasn't going to be working for him any more in the future, I was happy to help him take care of the problem by leaving. Today.
Then I hit send and went about my work, which included interviewing a potential replacement while Bernie ran some errands.
Sigh. The thing about being passive-aggressive is that it's difficult (at least for me) to stay aggressive, or mad. I'm really more passive-snippy-passive. By the time he got back to the office, I'd calmed down (having vented all of my anger into the email) and before he could read it, I told him I'd sent it.
Then we had a nice little conversation. Much was discussed, but the bottom line is that I will fulfill my commitment to work until 3/23 and he will pass no remarks about how sad it is that he has to actually pay me.
Also he apologized and admitted that his wife has been ragging on him for two months about what a jackass he's being at home and he knows he's been wrong. He also admitted that he's been taking all of his frustrations out on me because I'm the only person around. And he's sorry.
So. Nine days left (okay, 8-1/2)
Before I leave the computer to work with pen and paper here in a few minutes, an update!
Bernie's only wigged out a couple of times today.
First, at the news (which I swear I told him before, but maybe not) that our bulk email provider is worthless and that if he's signing up new clients with thousands of names on their newsletter lists and complicated needs in terms of feedback and forms, he needs to drop this "cheapest-thing-he-could-find" service and get a real, full-featured provider.
The other time was, as near as I could tell, just on general principles.
He called and asked me if Buehler was out of the country or something. Since I haven't worked for Buehler since 11/05, even though he still shared an office with us, I'm not privy to his schedule. This news did not make Bernie happy (although naturally I didn't say it that rudely) but he was made marginally less tense by the revelation that Buehler called me a couple of hours ago to get a password for a computer. It appears that Buehler isn't returning Bernie's calls any more.
Then Bernie wanted Sassy's personal contact information. I don't know how to contact Sassy, she who was once Buehler's assistant but who moved on to a new job last fall. Bernie was actually pretty rude about that and I'm all, what?
She lives in New York, okay? She worked remotely from New York after she left Denver a month after I signed on to this circle of insanity (with Alvin and the Chipmunk, remember?) four years ago. We weren't close personal friends or anything. Since he's in the office, with access to his saved personal email and all of the contact files, I don't understand why he doesn't just look for that information in the files.
I keep having fantasy mental arguments with him, ones where he crosses the line just enough to justify me walking about today and leaving him with this mess. It's a bit distracting.
I'm also having imaginary conversations with him where I tell him, item by item, why I'm really leaving. That it's not the commute to Boulder, it's him.
I won't really say any of these mean things to him because, (a) I never burn bridges that way, and, (b) my disagreement is with who he seems to be, based on how he acts towards me and how I perceive his actions towards the clients and it's purely my perception. The fact that I agree 90% with what his last two employees (Tweenybopper and DiamondGirl) complained about in him doesn't make me right. It's not really who he is. 80% of the time he has no idea of how his words and his behavior sound to other people and it's not my place, flawed as I am, to be handing out rules and regulations for other people's behavior.
I'm going to hang onto that knowledge for the next eight days. :)
Bernie called. Not only does he want me to come up three days again this week, but he's afraid he's paying me to do "busywork" on those days I'm working from home.
He thinks that he might need me later, so he'd rather not pay me to do busywork now.
His idea? He should not have to pay me for the days I don't drive to Boulder this week but I should hold myself in readiness to work a couple of days after my last day and if I do, he will pay me then.
Isn't that nice? He's telling me he needs me too desperately to let me go, but that he doesn't feel I'm valuable enough that he should actually employ me.
"Busywork," for those of you wondering, is the stuff I do cleaning out the spam filter, rebooting the network servers in St. Louis, filing, trying to start and stop providers of various services as they go in and out of favor with him, getting the mail, answering the phones, cleaning the databases, answering questions from suppliers, etc. In other words, the stuff that has to be done to keep the place going but that he doesn't care about because he can't bill anyone for it.
So I told him no, I do not have flexibility on my end date and that no, I have decided that I am not available to do contract work for him after I leave.
You know what? There is no graceful way to say, "No, I will not keep working for you because I do not like you and I don't like you trying to get out of paying me today while you're telling me you want me to be available to you later when you feel you need me and you feel like paying me.
Also, he's in the middle of fighting with Scooby, the Database Boy about the hours Scooby is billing us for (far fewer than Scooby's spent on these projects, I'm sure) and I'm reminded of how last fall whenever DiamondGirl would submit a bill for the free-lance work she was doing for him, he'd call her and make her take hours off.
The R.C. was right. Two weeks was too much notice to give this guy, for my personal sanity. He needed two weeks because this month's invoicing hasn't been done and the new person will need trained on everything, but it was too much. I should never have agreed to stay on after the first of March.
I have not damaged my back but I certainly think I've worn it out in the last couple of weeks and yes, maybe I should have eased off of hauling things around but if I didn't set up the copier/fax machine and then fish out the printer and put it on the table where the network is supposedly going to be installed, then no one else would have done it and we'd never be able to print.
Hello. Boulder again.
Today, in theory, the internet and fax connections will be set up. I'm taking it on faith (a dangerous precedent) that the company Bernie arranged with to come and do whatever magic needed to be done to the phone lines in the building actually showed up and did it this morning. They assured me they didn't need access to the suite until 1:00, so I didn't try to get here at 7 a.m. for the set-up portion of the process.
Brooding.
Scooby the Database Boy is mad at me because of the huffy email I sent him on Friday. And also, one assumes, because of the huffy email Bernie sent him on Saturday. I wish, I honestly do wish I could figure out which one of them is crazier in this set-up, but I can't. I believe that Bernie believes in the numbers he has in his head and that he believes he's laid out his requirements clearly, in spite of the fact that I know that sometimes he believes imaginary things and only thinks he's saying what he means to say. I believe that Scooby believes he's worked hard, done a good job, and provided what we asked for, in spite of the fact that I've been told, more than once, that he was previously let go for incompetence.
The only thing I know is that what we need and what we got ain't the same thing.
No, I know one more thing. For some reason Scooby spent the weekend sending back to us the files we sent to him to create the Cago database. One presumes that Bernie told him to and I have a ghastly feeling that Bernie is going to want me to fill this week's slack time by going back and retracing our steps for the last four months to figure out whether or not the database we have is the database we should have. And I know that if he asks me to do that, I'll tell him that's my last day of employment.
When someone is paying you, they have a right to decide how you spend your time. However, when they want you to spend your time in ways you find ridiculous and/or menial, or cleaning up yet another of their messes, or doing things you're entirely unqualified to do, or some combination of those, you always have the option to pick up your hat and leave. The stuff I spend 70% of my time doing around matches neither my original job description nor my skill set.
Also, I realized on the drive up here today that having to drive to Boulder for a day of work is only 10% as stressful when I know that Bernie won't be in the office at this end. So, you know, it wasn't the commute that did me in. It was the crazy-factor.
Also, I had to top up my gas tank this morning. Hmph.
Sometimes I find myself wondering. Will you be glad when I'm working for a sane person, or will you find the blog boring?
Only, not so much today, because we have (bad) pictures! More digital fun!
Sadly, my carelessness in not selecting photogenic yarns, not to mention my complete lack of photographic knowledge (beyond "point-and-shoot") means few of these pictures are actually that interesting to look at.
It's not easy to see, but this is the crochet pattern I discovered a few weeks ago and that I'm using most often at the moment.
A light blue scarf and a close-up of the pattern (and I have no idea why the blue turned almost-neon in that picture.)
A cherry-and-white scarf and a close-up of the pattern, one I think came out well.
And, as I've droned on about at length, I've done some knitting recently.
A medium blue scarf was my first attempt at making fringe.
Here's that brown-and-white "dirty" yarn scarf. The color doesn't look right, but the place where the color seems to be blurring at the bottom of the first picture is the spot where the yarn unexpectedly variegated into a solid cream for a few rows. The yarn itself was much prettier skeined than worked.
That impossible-to-work pastel yarn and a close-up that gives you a better sense of the colors, although neither captures the weird and lumpy texture of the yarn
Let me assure you that the rows are as even as it was possible to make them. The places where they look uneven is due to lumps in the yarn. It's actually some kind of coarse, white yarn with a variegated pastel ribbon-and-thread combination string textured into the fiber of the yarn. I should have looked at it a lost more closely before I bought it.
That funky gray-and-black yarn didn't photograph well (believe it or not, that was a color picture when I started) although I promise you the scarf is light as a feather and soft as down.
Neither does the prettiest yarn I've worked with, the variegated blue-to-lavender yarn. That's disappointing to me. This really was a rich, soft yarn to use in a scarf, but maybe the colors were too subtle for this little camera. While blurry, this gives you a slightly better idea of the colors (Its too light and the purples still don't show, but whatever….)
Posted by AnneZook at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)Let's add "weird gadgets" to the pantheon of things that amuse me. This isn't news to anyone who knows me well, but just in case anyone else is keeping score….
Thanks to a recent pitch by a young man working an 'event''for D.A.R.E., I'm now the proud possessor of a miniature digital camera. Let us be clear. I'm a firm believer in "you get what you pay for" and even as I forked over $20 for this 2" x 3" toy, I had little, if any, expectation that it would function as advertised. But D.A.R.E. is a worthy cause and the little camera was so cute and pink I just couldn't resist.
Imagine my delight, then, when I got the little cutie home, put in a battery, read the instructions, and started getting actual digital pictures out of it! Color me so impressed.
Sadly, I'm not actually a decent photographer, digital or otherwise, nor am I at all accomplished in using software to actually fix up photo problems. The camera does the job with great accuracy. Me, not so much.
Today is bright and sunny.
Note the absence of huge piles of dirty snow. There are still a few heaps and ridges of snow around, largely in spots that were either protected from last night's rain or that were too dense to be melted by a couple of hours of cool rain.
It doesn't show well but in this picture, that white stuff beyond the parked truck is snow. That spot catches a bit of sun during the day (as you can see) but it faces north and north-facing slopes don't melt off very fast in Colorado in the winter.
Bookcases were the next thing that struck my eye. Mostly because other people's bookcases always fascinate me.
So, pictures of various bookshelves around here.
As always, being sure you have the camera straight is really a problem for me.
As you can tell by the poor lighting, most of our bookcases don't live next to windows with much natural light. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get most of them to photograph. Only these few shelves came out even remotely visible before I got bored of the project. (It's odd. This apartment isn't that dark. It may be that there was too muchnatural light coming in at the wrong angles or something. I'm no photographer.)
I couldn't get things focused. There's no "focus" on this camera, so I guess I need to figure out how far away from things I'm supposed to be. The "view-finder" is a plastic square that doesn't precisely point at what you're photographing. Unlike more expensive cameras, you can't really check out the shot while it's on the camera. You have to come to the computer and upload the files to see what you've taken. It's all going to take practice.
There's just no end to the things I can find to do to avoid job-hunting, is there?
Well, I gave notice, anyhow.
Although I hate to do that to someone while they're traveling, I sent Bernie an email telling him this arrangement isn't working out, isn't leaving me any time or energy to search for a new job, and that he has my official two-weeks notice. My last day will be 3/23.
Am I crazy? Should I have tried harder to gather the energy to job-hunt in the evenings?
Should I have the conversation I so badly want to have with him about how a major factor in my decision to just leave is my frustration with his policy of ignoring the actual work that needs to be done around there, of bidding jobs based on how much he thinks clients will pay and not how long it will take us to do them, and of pililng more and more stuff on his one employee under the theory that anyone he's giving a paycheck to regularly should just shut up and be grateful?
Or should I take the High Road and assume that the company's eventual failure (guaranteed unless he changes how he does things) is not my problem?
Hmmm?
Posted by AnneZook at 04:00 PM | Comments (3)I think this is one of those seminal moments when you really understand that you're not a kid any more. This 80-mile round-trip commute to Boulder, even just three days a week, is wearing me out.
I'm working from home today but I was so exhausted that I actually rolled out of bed only five minutes before I was scheduled to start work. (Fortunately, "working from home" means getting the computers(s) and phone turned on by 8:30, so it's not a major issue.)
Yesterday's 9-hour day didn't amuse me, either. Bernie and I had a deal that he'd only expect six hours work on the days I drive to Boulder. It was purely my own generosity (and my disinclination to listen to him bitch about it all) that made me volunteer to work from home for two hours every morning, for a total of seven on commute days. But, having done that, I don't expect to be kept in the Boulder office for seven hours after I arrive.
Nor do I expect to be expected to spend three hours in hard, manual labor every day I'm in Boulder, but I knew that was part of moving, so I'm not really bitching about having had to do it. I'm just bitching about not being young enough to do hard, manual labor without consequences any more.
There are other drawbacks. I had to gas up my car Wednesday! I just gassed it up last week. I'm accustomed to gassing up my car every 16 days or so, not every week. On the news last night, they said the price of gas is going back up. It's already back over $3 in places.
And highway driving, especially coming back to Denver, driving westerly into the setting sun, is making replacing my windshield (especially after this week's drive, when two more rocks added their share of damage to the glass) an ever-more urgent matter, which is going to cost money. (I carry a $500 deductible, so these smaller repairs are my problem.)
Not to mention the fact that if I'm going to keep making this commute, I need to put the car into the shop and get a tune-up and have it checked over really thoroughly. I suspect that I need shocks, among other things. I don't know what those cost, but they sound expensive, you know?
I'm dancing on the edge of dishonesty since I haven't yet notified my insurance agent that the discount I get for driving less than 10 miles each way to work every day no longer applies. I think I'm going to have to tell him next week. I wonder how much my premium will increase?
To be honest, I'm not sure I can afford to let Bernie keep paying me until the end of the month.
Still. Be strong, Anne! So what if you only make enough to cover rent/bills and fix the car up? The car needs fixed up anyhow and at least you'll get the bills paid. You can go 30 days without any extra money. You'll have rent money, food money, utility/credit card money, and car insurance (one hopes--how much will it increase?) money. Many people would consider themselves wealthy with all of that. As long as the car doesn't cost more than $700 or so to fix up, you'll survive.
Quite easily, in fact, so stop whining.
Okay, so Bernie wanted to plug the breaking-things peripheral into my computer and I objected but then I let him but then it didn't work and then he said, "maybe you have to install the software to make it work" and I said, "did it come with software" and he said "yes" so I said "yes you have to install the software."
And I thought, "just how stupid is it possible to be, anyhow? But I didn't say it out loud.
Also he is mad because the computer diagnostic program doesn't seem to have worked any magic on his laptop and because I didn't see any error/diagnostic messages related to his problem.
Even though he gave me a pile of things to do today in his absence (in addition to actually creating an office out of this mess) calling me four times on his drive home to give me new things he'd thought of and didn't want to do himself, he seems annoyed that I didn't sit there and watch his computer for an hour to make sure--well, there's no telling what he thought I'd be able to do as I sat there watching a diagnostic I didn't understand try to make sense of a problem I wasn't clear about, but he clearly feels that had someone been sitting there watching the diagnostic program end and shut itself off, the results would have been different.
I'm here. Bernie's here.
Bernie's leaving.
He seems to have shorted out the USB ports on his laptop. Also the cable he uses to connect to the internet. So he's going to go work from home. I can't believe I made an 80-mile round-trip drive to work with him today because he desperately needed us both to be in the office but now he's not going to be here.
All of which is fine because I have a lot to do and I could use the time, but he also just called the computer warranty support line again about his laptop and he's telling them he just got back to town this morning and that the laptop that I got repaired for him on Friday was not repaired properly.
In other words, he broke it yesterday and he's lying to get tech support because the thing he broke it with was a third-party peripheral.
Every time I start to weaken, to think maybe I could do this drive two or three times a week if necessary, he does something insane or immoral that reminds me of why I really, really, really don't want to.
Money and madness, that's what I need to remember. He won't pay the money the job is worth and he's a lunatic.
No, wait....
He's going to go get a different laptop and come back to work. But the internet cable is out, so what good with that do? No idea. But his idea is that he can use my desk and internet connection to work. When I pointed out that I need the internet to check my mail, he said, "what do you need mail for?"
I can't just stand up and leave now because he's crazy. Tomorrow is payday. I need to hold onto that thought.
He's been a lot crazier than this. Frequently. Why, today, is the sound of him sitting in there cursing the telephone help line and the computer and the carpet and everything else getting to me so badly? (Also, why is the sound of him lying to warranty support about his "secretary" handling the repair issue wrong pissing me off so badly? Is it being referred to as his "secretary" or the statement that I messed it up?)
I know he's sick. Being sick makes me cranky, too.
He says the reason he's sick is because of the stress around the move. I said, "we really haven't had it that bad" and he said, "I did. It's been a nightmare."
And I'm thinking--for you had it bad?
You looked at three places and signed a lease for the cheapest one. You made a trip to Verizon (two weeks after you told me it was "done" and we're still waiting on phone service today). You called an internet connection company four days after we'd already moved, and then wasted a lot of energy complaining because they couldn't hook everything up that day.
Yes, you also placed a Craigslist ad to hire some freelancers to come and do the actual moving, but let's both remember, you tried very hard to get me to let you pass all of the responses to me so that I'd have to actually call everyone and do the screening and hiring.
And, yes, let's be completely fair, you hauled ten carloads of stuff to your own house to store temporarily, but that was your decision and for another $100 you could have had the mover guys do all of that the day of the move.
I spent six weeks sorting, packing, throwing out (10 times I filled that dumpster), getting services stopped, getting phone numbers released for transfer, sending move notices to clients, notifying the post office of our change of address, and organizing and labeling about 20 boxes so that we'd be able to find things before the move was complete.
Once we got in to the new office, I helped move desks and filing cabinets, hauled boxes from one place to another, and rearranged everything three times while you measured what would fit where.
Now, while you've gone to "work from home" today, it's my responsibility to check your laptop every two minutes to make sure the diagnostic it's running keeps running, to get everything back into the filing cabinets, arrange the computers for the network guy (you rescheduled him for next week and I have not yet been able to get you to understand that yes, you need a network connection to print on network printers), call the internet/fax provider to actually get us service, and figure out what to do with the five boxes full of absolute trash you packratted into the moving truck while I wasn't looking.
(Four portable printers so old you can't buy printer cartridges for them any more, even if they worked, which they don't. Fifty hanging folders full of stuff from clients the parent company worked with in the mid-90s. A heavy-duty comb-binder and approximately 500 combs of assorted sizes for the four, twenty-page reports we comb-bind in a year. Two of those blasted rack servers that he swore he'd store at his own house until his good friend and ebay expert buddy got them sold. And entire box full of flyers for a product even the parent company gave up on trying to sell ten years ago.)
I'm at a loss about precisely how this was such a "nightmare" for you. I can only assume that it's because I spoke to you rudely a couple of times. Sorry about that.
On the plus side. Power tools! Bernie has a heavy-duty battery-operated screwdriver that I got to play with yesterday. :D I love power tools.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:27 PM | Comments (1)Here I am. In Boulder. Where's Bernie?
We were both supposed to be in this office today but I'm here and he isn't. And he hasn't sent an email or left me a voicemail or any of those things either, so I have no idea where he is.
We're supposed to move out of the temporary space and into our "real" office today. I can see he started moving stuff yesterday, but he didn't leave me a key to the new space, so I can't finish that up.
He wanted to have a big meeting about talking me into committing to stay until the end of the month, but I can't do that alone. Even if I were inclined to do it, a thing I'm of two minds about. A couple more paychecks would come in very handy. But working for him is going to get expensive. Two rocks smacked my windshield during today's commute. Now I need a new windshield. Fortunately, that ominous squeaking noise from underneath the car turned out to be the wheeled luggage carrier I'd forgotten that I left in the back seat, but I'm paranoid about every sound the car makes.
Sigh. Until we get the network connected, I can't do the bookkeeping or clean out my old email files or any of the other routine tasks that I normally use to fill slack time.
I got up early again today, worked from home for an hour (not much to do, I admit) and then drove in. Now it's 10:40. The whole point of moving the office to Boulder was so that he wouldn't have to commute and so he could work out of his office instead of his home. So why isn't he here?
I gave up and put an hour down on my timecard for waiting for him to show up.
Now, I'm just sitting here. Waiting. (And eating Thin Mints, actually. Mmmm, Girl Scout Cookie Time!)
I guess I could call him and ask whereintheheck he is.
Okay, he just called. He thought I was going to call him and tell him when I started driving up to Boulder. Where he got that idea is anyone's guess. He and I certainly never discussed any such thing. He didn't mention anything about why he didn't come to work this morning regardless of whether or not he thought I was here, but that doesn't surprise me. He used to make a point of not being in the office if I wasn't there. I'd like to pretend it's because he didn't think "work" happened without me but the truth is I think he was afraid something would happen and he wouldn't be able to deal with it.
The new office is a cute, little place, I have to admit. It's a step up from the ratty building we were in before and I'm a little sorry I won't get to stay and play.
Well, here I am, in Boulder.
This morning I rolled out of bed around 7:30 or a bit later, immediately booted up both of my (personal) computers and fired up my (personal) cell phone along with the work cell phone that has the wrong number that no one is going to call.
Half a cup of coffee later, I'm wading through Monday morning emails and voicemails and thinking that this is a fairly good solution to the days I have to drive to Boulder---I'll start working an hour early and do what I can from home while I let the rush hour traffic subside, then save an easy 30-40 minutes on the commute. Bernie doesn't have to wig out because he thinks he's not getting the time he pays me for and I don't have a nervous breakdown fighting my way through 40 miles of wall-to-wall traffic.
And then I run across this little gem of an email from Bernie:
The databases seem a never ending cycle with no finish. We do need to get them finished for sure but every email I check seems to go around in circles.For example the latest exchange about YYY's. I can't even imagine what Scooby's bill is going to look like...way out of budget.
Not your fault but very frustrating to me to think we were almost done and then see how far away we were/are.
So, I give you other stuff that we are actually getting paid to do so I can continue to actually charge people for work that we complete and therefore I can continue to pay you.
I don’t even know where to start with that.
Should I start by repeating that it's not my job to bring in paying clients, it's his job?
Should I start by reminding us all that when he was trying to convince me to commute to Boulder, he said that he had new contracts signed and that, even without those, he had enough money in the bank to carry the company until June?
Should I start by repeating that he's been charging the clients for maintaining these databases for years and I am not responsible for the fact that they didn't actually exist during that time?
Should I start by saying, again, that the way these databases were created when he finally realized he was going to have them was a grotesque mockery of how any sane person would have approached the task?
Or should I just mention the purely obvious--that I'm going to tell him the next time we meet that if he doesn't feel he can afford to pay me for doing the work that needs to be done, whether it's "billable" or not, then he can stop paying me at any moment and that will be okay with me.
I like broccoli. Quite a bit, actually. However, since I'm working from home today, I'm shoveling down lunch in a most unhealthy and unladylike fashion while I work and I very nearly did myself in with a lump of broccoli a minute ago.
After yesterday's commute to Boulder (not such a nightmare, as long as you keep firmly in mind that you won't be doing it often), I'm more than ever convinced that I have got to get serious about job-hunting.
Bernie did ask me if, now that I'd done the commute once (although not in rush hour traffic), I didn't feel I'd be willing to do it regularly. The question really took me by surprise since I was sure my refusal to stay was well-established by now.
And then, after blithely announcing that he wasn't going to get tense about whether or not I worked a full 8-hour day on the days I had to commute to Boulder, Bernie got all pissy with me yesterday when, with no network and no internet access at the new office, I decided to leave at 3:00, as he went into his 1-hour conference call, to come home and check my (work) email.
Was it my fault he was 30 minutes late in coming to meet me and he thus lost time he felt he was entitled to from me? Was it my fault he'd spent an hour on the phone with Dell tech support while I stared at the walls? Was it my fault he scheduled an hour-long conference call on the only day he and I would both be in the Denver office?
Was it my fault that he ran around making a lot of noise about how he was getting the new office set up and then showed up yesterday with brand-new, not-yet-activated phones (neither of which will have the number we gave out to the clients as our new phone number, BTW), to show me the temporary space we'd have to cram into for at least six days until the actual new office was available, and that the temporary space had no phones, no network, and no internet access?
He seemed to think so.
He also seemed to feel that as long as I was sitting there, he was getting his money's worth of my time, but my tolerance for doing absolutely nothing is pretty limited. Especially when being forced to share a very small office space with a grasshopper-brained employer dividing his time between cursing his laptop (dead motherboard) and bitching about a nonexistent network.
(I am still unable to convince him that a network is a thing and that nothing outside of creating some kind of actual connection between machines will enable them to converse with one another. I sweartogod I had trouble making him understand why, just because both machines were in the same room, they couldn't talk to each other without a connection and that, NO, a network was not something I could cobble together from the myriad parts and pieces and miscellaneous cables laying around.)
(Also? Our "network files" were split between two servers in the old office (don't ask) and since TechBoy took one of those home with him on Tuesday when he accidentally took the network down, I wouldn't have been able to recreate the network even if I'd known how.)
On the way home last night I heard from TechBoy and made a detour to pick up the AWOL network server, so when I go to the office again on Monday, I can take it with me. And no, I will not be making any attempt, no matter how feeble, to network the machines.
Bernie actually had the nerve to call me when I was driving home last night to say that we needed to find me some work to do from home since "you're still on company time, you know."
As I paid for a new tank of gas to replace what I'd burned driving to his new office (and hauling 300 lbs of office "stuff" that I had to unload when I got there) and sat in a Best Buy parking lot for 40 minutes, waiting for TechBoy to show up and pass the server box back to me, then got up this morning and fired up both of my personal computers and then called the most important clients on my personal cell phone to give them my personal phone number in case they need to contact us before he gets the phone situation straightened out, I stewed about that crack.
Aside from his use and abuse of my personal resources, as usual I already had a full day of work that needed to be done today and, as usually happens, he was completely oblivious to the fact. I tried to explain that to him when he called me at 6:00 last night (my personal time), but he was too full of a project he'd created for me to work on so that I wouldn't be getting away with getting paid for doing nothing to listen to me.
I'm preparing an email for him to explain that setting up shared public files, recreating contact lists, and notifying clients that I lied to them about what our phone number will all take time. Also to remind him that I had 6 hours worth of database review scheduled for today and that I have decided just not to do it since he clearly no longer feels the databases are of any importance or he'd remember them.
I can't believe it's 1:00 already. I haven't gotten through a fraction of my work yet. I've been working and working all morning but everything takes longer when you don't have everything at your desk and your fingertips. I have to use both home computers because one has internet access which I need and the other has Excel which I need and then I needed a table for the papers I'm working on the for the Dell man to work on (Bernie scheduled for him to come to my apartment today to replace the motherboard on the laptop, which I had to bring home with me) so I have the computer desk with the PC and a little table with the laptop and a folding table with all the papers on it and I'm dashing back and forth between the three of them.
Working from home shouldn't be this stressful. Okay, partly it's my own fault for not getting my (personal) wireless network back up and running so that I could more conveniently use my (personal) laptop to work on company business. And partly it's residual stress from the move, I'm sure.
And partly it's because The Time Has Come when I can no longer ignore the necessity of hitting the job sites five or six times a week.
Is it really petty of me to be smirking because everyone Bernie interviews and wants to hire is telling him they want more money for the job than he's offering?
Is it mean of me to laugh every time he tells me, very indignantly, that one of them wants the same amount I told him he'd have to give me to make me even consider staying?
Yeah, I've been blogless for a couple of days. That's part of the drawback of forming the bad habit of blogging from the office during the day. So that, for instance, if they're moving your office and they 'accidentally' take down your network 24 hours before they're supposed to, you can't do your regular updates.
And if you've found yourself schlepping a lot of boxes and whatnot, you come home exhausted in the evenings and collapse into a chair, with no energy to blog.
It might have made a couple of interesting blog entries, the trials, tribulations, and missteps of the last couple of days, but it's over now....
Today will mark my first 40-mile journey north to the new office. I'm very excited about it, as you can imagine. Not the least because we had a gross snowstorm yesterday that, while it didn't do much in the way of accumulation, staying at 6" or less, dropped a lot of water (read: ice) everywhere. Both Bernie and the morning traffic reports insist that the roads are fine today, though.
It's fairly typical that it snowed on the day of the move, though, don't you think?
It didn't do me and Bernie that much damage, 90% of our stuff got moved on Tuesday, but naturally King Procrastinator, Buehler, got nailed since he'd scheduled both the movers & truck to take the stuff he was keeping to the new office and the junk guys to haul everything else away, for back-to-back visits on Wednesday.
Half of the 10% of stuff that Bernie and I didn't get moved on Tuesday is currently weighing down my car. (He moved the rest yesterday.)
Probably the only reason I'm glad to be going to Boulder today is the knowledge that I'll be able to dump all of that stuff off, instead of having to haul it around with me for a week. I need the space in my car. The Christmas stuff has never been left sitting around for this long before and I'm determined to get it all hauled back into storage this weekend. We're not supposed to have any more bad weather and I'm sick to death of looking at the (admittedly small) stack of boxes in the corner of the living room. Quick, before another major storm blows through, I want to get it out of my sight.
Other than that, I'm afraid I have nothing interesting to report.