I have a part-time job, in addition to my full-time one. In my pt job I work as an "assistant" for a woman who has her own business. It's actually the mom of a friend that I no longer hang out with, and I've been working for her for 13+ years now. She's an expert witness and I do spreadsheets for her, and billing, and reports. Mostly she prepares the reports, which are intended to be court documents, and I format them, spell check, grammar check, etc. I make sure they're professional and accurate, to the best of my ability.
She's sometimes a beast to work for, and I generally put up with it, but lately I've about had it.
Some examples;
She fights with her daughter a lot (the one I was friends with, who introduced us) and one time I was trying to call my boss to get some clarification on some work she had sent me, and about 3x in a row she screamed at me over the phone and hung up on me. She thought I was her daughter. I don't know why - I called her cell and my name and number should have come up and made it clear who it was. I wondered what would happen if an attorney called her at that moment, would she scream and hang up on that person too? Wouldn't that do wonders for her reputation?
Another time she went out of town, she had me come to her house while she was gone to do some work (this is before I got set up to work remotely and had to go to her house each time). She gave me the garage door opener to get in, and we talked about her paying me for hours. She left me a blank check, and told me after I worked that last day to fill it in and then let her now how much it was for. At that time she was paying me weekly. I worked 3 hours or something, calculated the time for the week, wrote out the check and left her a photocopy. When she got back she was so angry with me, told me I didn't have the right to do that, that I should have checked with her first, blah blah blah. I was livid. I felt like I was being accused of stealing from her, when all I'd done was what she asked. I told her this, and I asked her; Why did you leave me a signed, blank check then? She had no explanation. It was humiliating and infuriating and I let it go. Because the work is easy, it's not a lot of hours, the hours are flexible and the money is good.
I mentioned how she used to pay me weekly? Since I started working remotely I've frequently gone months without being paid. And I do her billing, so one time I must have entered payments in Quickbooks for amounts totaling over $15,000. I'm not joking. And yet my bill for like $700 for 2 mths of work was still not paid. I only entered record of the payments, these were checks already deposited, and yet my measly $700 was well past due.
Recently we were scheduled to work Tuesday/Thursday of the next week. She apparently emailed me on Sunday and asked if I could work Monday instead. I didn't check my email over the weekend so I never saw this. I have a toddler and a life, and we happened to have a busy weekend. She then proceeded to email me work on Monday, even though she had not heard from me about working that day. Sometime Monday afternoon she called me, I couldn't answer so she got my voicemail and when I listened to it, I was surprised; She was worried that it was 3 pm and she hadn't heard from me and hadn't gotten any work back yet. She wanted to know, didn't I get her email from Sunday? No, I hadn't. I emailed her back, because I was busy with my FT job and couldn't call. I let her know I had not gotten her email, that I couldn't work that day, so sorry. I also suggest that if she needs to change something that she call me to confirm if she doesn't hear from me, because I don't always check email if I'm not working. She calls me later that night, 5:30 or so, again wondering why I haven't sent her any work. I tell her I'm sorry, that I emailed her and let her know I couldn't work, and that I never got her email Sunday about changing the day. She's totally upset and I again suggest that she call me next time. She asks me if I couldn't just be sure to check email on Sundays. What? I'm not On Call for you lady, and I don't work on Sunday. If you have something urgent, YOU contact ME. That's how it works! You don't just email and then get mad at me for not seeing it.
It'd almost be funny except this is the 2nd time she's done this to me. She emailed me about something else that was "urgent" and apparently I failed her by not checking my email. I got an earful and I told her - if it's urgent you should CALL ME. Don't rely on email! Who does that? It's not professional and it's certainly not my fault if you don't.
Now the latest; she asked me to print an invoice for her, and she also asked me to print some records. This was Tuesday. I went on her computer through a remote connection and printed 1 file, then she said she was ok. The issue was she got a new printer and her default was still set to the old one, so I just selected the new one from the drop-down and there you go. She emailed me and said she was able to print "everything" and was all set. I thought this meant the invoice too.
Yesterday I find out she still needs the invoice. I meant to go on and print it for her but the day got away from me. That is my fault, I take responsibility for that. But today I get an email reprimand saying I totally messed her up by not printing that; that she couldn't buy a plane ticket because she didn't have the invoice and therefore wasn't able to pick up a check.
OK - here's the thing. Yes, it's my fault I forgot to print it for you yesterday. However; if it was URGENT - there's that word again - WHY for crying out loud did you not call me? One phone call and I would have said, Oops, I forgot, so sorry, let me get that for you right now! Problems all avoided! And really, you can't buy a plane ticket without that money? You can't afford, with the $10-15,000 or so in payments you get every month, to purchase a plane ticket and get the money the next day?
I will take some of that blame as I did forget, but I will not take all of it. It's her business, if she needs something and it's so damn important, she needs to follow-up and take care of it. That's on her.
I make good money but it's starting to feel like it's not enough. I'm thinking it's a good time to increase my hourly rate. Somehow though, I feel like she may not agree. I'll give it another week. Then hit her up. I put up with a lot of crap that most people would not put up with, including not being paid on time, or being paid but asked to "hold" the check for a few days, or a week. I also constantly rearrange my schedule so we can work. I try to get work done during the day but if I'm too busy, I wind up working until 9pm at night for her. When she has urgent issues and does manage to call me, I will accommodate her. I will do stuff last minute. I will stop what I'm doing and go on my computer and help her with whatever it is she needs right that second.
I'd just like to be treated professionally. I don't think it's too much to ask.
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