Sometimes my paranoia gets the best of me and I imagine my neighbors holding weekly meetings to schedule how they are going to annoy me.
These meetings would be led by the neighbor to our north, because she likes to control things and I imagine her telling the other neighbors her master's degree makes her the obvious choice to lead. These imagined weekly meetings would be to schedule noise nuisances and I picture them going something like this: Neighbor North: Now, of course I'm doing more than my share of the work by having my dogs outside barking all day, every day. So I need the rest of you to fill in time slots with your own special projects. Alcoholic Douchebag Neighbor: (taking a long swig of his MGD) I'm already planning to drive my Harley around the block multiple times this weekend. NN: Good, good. Needlessly revving the engine? ADN: Of course. Every time I pass by her house. NN: (rubbing hands together with glee) Perfect! How about you, Amy Arborgedden? AA: The kids and dogs will be outside all weekend. As you know, my youngest has only one volume. She'll be yelling as long as her little lungs will hold up. Which, I promise, is indefinitely. NN: Nice! How about you, Gray House Guy? GHG: I'll have my pet bird in his cage outside when it's not raining. NN: The one that screeches, "AFLAC!" over and over? GHG: That's the one. NN: Blue Dump Truck Neighbor, how about you, what will you be contributing to this weekend's Noise Fest? BDTN: I'll be pounding on my dump truck with a sledge hammer for no apparent reason whatsoever. NN: Oooh, delightful! How long? BDTN: All weekend. Alcoholic Douchebag Neighbor: Hey, I want to add something. NN: Of course! Highly encouraged. ADN: I'm going to mow. NN: ... Okaaaay. ADN: It's going to take me all day. I'm going to start/stop multiple times. You know how it takes most people about an hour to mow? I can stretch that shit out for hours. Days, even. NN: Oh, yes, I've noticed that if you're not on your Harley, four-wheeler, golf cart or using your leaf blower, you're typically mowing. We all admire your dedication to the cause, D-bag. ADN: (blushes humbly while taking another long swig on his MGD.) Neighbor from the SouthWest Enters, breathless: Sorry I'm late! NN: (Sniffs in annoyance) We were just about to adjourn, Southwest. SW: Sorry, I was just picking up my chainsaw from the shop. I've decided to take up chainsaw carving. I'm going to be working on a ten-foot replica of Mt. Rushmore this weekend. Everyone applauds, cheers and someone whistles between their fingers. NN: Great work everyone! Meeting adjourned.
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I'm an hourly employee, not salaried. I punch a time clock.
Yesterday I punched out for the day, had my purse and gym bag slung over my shoulder and was walking out of the office. A coworker stopped me. "Can I ask you a quick question?" "I'm off the clock, now," I replied, heading toward the hallway. "Ok, I'll walk with you." And she did. And she asked me a work-related question as I headed toward the ladies room to change for the gym. She stopped short of walking into the ladies room with me. Her question was one that almost anyone else (still on the clock) could have answered. I found this rude and inconsiderate of my time. I had told her quite clearly that I was off the clock. When I punch out for the day, my head is instantly not in the work game anymore. I was in me mode. It was MY time. Her question, my answer, took maybe 30 seconds. No big deal, right? Wrong. Those 30 seconds were unpaid. Those 30 seconds, added to the current time I had put in for the day, might have rounded my work-time up to the next quarter hour, which might have been another $6 in pay. It's not a lot to some people. But it's something to me. It might pay for another 2 gallons of gas. And I look at it this way: If I'd been at home, she wouldn't have called to ask me the question (God, I hope she doesn't resort to that!) because she knows I'm OFF WORK. Besides, it was technically illegal for me to "work off the clock" to answer her question. I once went head-to-head with the director of our department at a big major retail headquarters where I worked when he tried to tell our entire department we had to all come in to work 15 minutes early for a meeting, without overtime pay. I told him this was illegal. He was dismissive, I went to employee relations. We got paid 15 minutes of overtime. He was livid, he yelled at me during a team meeting. I cried. I was right. He was wrong. We devote a huge portion of our lives to work. Some of us may love our jobs and are happy to work off the clock. I don't hate my job. But I value my time off work. That's my time. Even the 30 seconds it takes to walk down a hallway. I don't work for free and that's the bottom line. uLast night my husband and I visited a local Italian restaurant for my birthday dinner. We'd just given our order to the server when a woman with an "I'd like to speak to the manager" haircut was seated with her daughter at a nearby table. She promptly told the hostess to get her server, immediately.
The server rushed over and the woman (who I'll call Leona) said, "We need to get somewhere right after this, so we don't have a lot of time. I need you to take our order and get it to us as soon as possible. Do you think you can do that?" Leona's tone, while not outright rude, was condescending and superior. Of course, the server said she could, took the order and Leona and her daughter were served quickly in a flurry of waitstaff attending to them. Here are some thoughts for Leona:
I enjoy going out to eat but I'll admit, the part where another human being waits on me makes me feel a little awkward. Therefore, I am very respectful and tip well. There are so many people who feel they were meant to be served; they embrace it with an inflated sense of entitlement and superiority. Those people are ugly. I work full time. It's my day job and when I'm not working, like everyone else, I must tend to everyday matters - laundry, grocery shopping, paying bills, making meals and so on.
My second job is writing. I squeeze that in whenever I can and that time is certainly at a premium. My third job is making sure other people do their jobs. No, I don't go up to people working their positions and supervise. But I do have to make sure that people aren't doing their jobs incorrectly in a way that will affect me or my family. This past Sunday we went to the grocery store and I monitored the items being scanned by the cashier. I caught her ringing up two bags of softener salt as an incorrect brand, which would have cost us $1.35 more per bag. She rang up a white onion as jicama, which costs .09 cents more. And after we unloaded our groceries into the car, we realized she rang up one pineapple as 11. ELEVEN. At $2.98 a pineapple. I had to go back into the store, spend 15 minutes waiting at guest services and then I had to show the rep behind the desk how to scan the barcode on the receipt on my phone to process my credit. The only payment I receive for this third job is saving us all the money we'd have lost on that single grocery trip. If I hadn't done this third job, we would have lost $32.50. I shudder to think how much money we've lost over the years we didn't take time to monitor our purchases as they were being scanned. Or when we didn't do a quick count of our change to make sure it was correct. People make mistakes, it's true. I know, I've made plenty of my own. But it's disheartening to know that these mistakes sometimes cost others money and time. |
About Sally FarleyI'm a typical, hardworking Midwesterner, enduring (and sometimes participating in) the passive-aggressive complexities of life in Minnesota. ArchivesLinksAsk a Manager
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