Announcement!

I've got news.  It's somewhat big.  You might want to make sure you are seated for this.

I got a job.  Yes, that's right.  A job that does not involve being a parent to small children, although I am still doing that full-time too.  A job that pays money.  Not a lot, but its a start.  Each dollar I make is more than I made before, right?

Here's the specifics:  I work part-time when Sam is in school.  It's about 10 hours per week. It's for a "mostly" retired gentleman who needs help with secretarial, clerical, errand-type stuff.  The hourly pay is ridiculously low (I actually pay a babysitter a good $6 more an hour than what I am getting), but it is filling up some of the time I have when both kids are in school.  I've made it explicitly clear that when there is no school, a Federal holiday, a Jewish holiday that closes the preschool or any kind of inclement weather that keeps the school being opened, I am not able to work.  Furthermore, if the kids are sick and not in school, I can't work.  Basically, if Ian or Sam is at home with me, than I am not working.  Since flexibility in having this kind of schedule is the most important thing, I really can't be demanding when it comes to the hourly wage.

So the guy I work for is a real piece of work.  He is 75 years old and a hot mess.  Calling him unorganized is an insult to a word that clearly is spelled the same way each time.  The first hour each time we meet is spent going over these lists he keeps.  Literally, we spend an hour discussing the "top priority", "#1", "#2,", "#3" items on everything that needs to be done.  These lists are scattered about on 5 to 10 different legal pads.  All written in his chicken-scrawl handwriting.   After working for him for 2 days this past week, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. He has a very hard time keeping anyone in this position for very long.  I can totally understand why.  My head is spinning from having even 3 hours of contact with him.

2. A lot of what he wants done is busy work -- for example, call and find out what how many miles he has on United; Call Tom and ask him how to get the # of missed calls off his phone display, Look up some of his old girlfriends, post an ad on Craigslist for an exercise buddy, etc.  I am never given enough information to make these tasks easy, like an account number for his United Miles or a user name/password for sites he wants me to get account info off of.  And when you ask him for his social security #, he will give you the last 4 digits, 3 different ways.  Boy, does that make you sound professional and legit to the company representative on the other end of the phone. 

3. There is a LOT of duplication.  Oy!  Everywhere you turn is more and more of the same papers he had someone copy for him.  For example, he is going to Vegas this coming week for some business thing and he has his electronic confirmation from United printed out 10 times in the same folder.  Each confirmation page has different various notes written on it.

4. There are never any #1 or #2 priorities.  Everything is either Top Priority or a #3. 

5.  He only wants to know what I wasn't able to get to, not what I did get to.  So basically he screws himself out any kind of update on the stuff I did do.   This bugs me to no end!  I need to let him know how the Top Priority stuff turned out.  And if I don't last in this job, he'll just ask the next person to do the same stuff over again.

6. He wears hearing aids in both ears.  However, he doesn't like keeping the hearing aids in.  When he keeps saying "What?" to me, I raise my voice to compensate for his lack of hearing.  On Wednesday, I was pretty much yelling at him and he asked me if I was hard of hearing.  Oh my!

I am not sure this is the right job for me.  Is it normal to have on the tip of my tongue, at any given moment, "I'm sorry, I don't think this is working out."?  I keep trying to view it as a challenge, but really, who needs this kind of headache day in and day out?  I am now starting to wish for Jewish holidays.  hahahaha!

The main thing that keeps me going back is Jeff.  It's hard to explain, but even though the money coming in is not enough to even cover what we spend in gas each month, the idea that I am even trying is worth so much more to him.  So I will stick it out and do my best.

After reading what I just wrote, I am now wondering if this guy might be suffering from a form of dementia.  hmmm. Stay tuned. This is going to be interesting.  :)