Sorry to my 2 followers - I missed a few days. I know, you were heartbroken and devastated over my lapse. I'll try not to let it happen again.
Thanks for following me, btw. It's so nice of you. :)
Tonight I am frustrated, once again, with my part-time boss. She owns her own business and I only work for her about 6 hours a week, on average. She pays me more per hour than I make at my full-time job, and she's generally very flexible about my hours. Plus, I work from home most of the time, so it's pretty cool all around.
She's 70 years old this year, and maybe she's beginning to show her age because lately, she's been making me a bit crazy. And what really gets me is I am SO flexible for her (and yes, she returns the favor) but then when I'm not, when I can't change my life around to suit her, she gets all butt hurt.
For example; Christmas. She's leaving to go out-of-state to visit her daughter. There's some report that we can't finish on 12/23 because the other expert hasn't sent in his report yet, and she needs his to finalize hers. (she's an expert witness, btw) It's nearly 9:00 at night, she's leaving the next day on a plane, I've got the day off and plan to finish my wrapping and shopping, and we figure - there's no way the attorney is going to be working on 12/24 and it's not our fault the other witness doesn't have his report in, so finalizing the report will have to wait until she's back from her vacation on 1/3.
She lets the attorney know, apparently he flips his lid and insists he needs the report by 1/1. She plans to be in a hotel with her grandkids so can't work on 12/31 or 1/1, and asks if I can check her email and work on 12/26. The day after Christmas. It's also my nephew's birthday and John and I have a hockey game that night. So I tell her, No, I'm sorry- I can work any other day after that but not on 12/26. Well she gets all frustrated and butt hurt. I get irritated because I very rarely, if ever, tell her No and don't appreciate her getting all huffy and mad about it. As if I don't have the right to have the day after Christmas off!
Another time, we're sitting in her office going over her calendar. This was actually before Christmas, I remember, because we were talking about 12/21, which is the Winter Solstice. I celebrate the Solstice, and I was hoping John and I could do our gifts that night, put up our little tree, etc. I tell her I can work early in the day but need to start at 5:00 and be done by 7:00, then finish up on Tuesday if necessary. That doesn't quite work for her so she asks if she can fax me the work Sunday so that I can start on it then and have it all done by Monday night. I say- Certainly! She's going to be traveling so she faxes me Sunday morning and we agree she'll call Monday.
I actually end up sick that weekend with the nasty 48-hour flu bug I caught from John, sweating/chills, vomiting, the other end leaking too... ugh. But I pull myself off the couch that night and get the work done, because I don't want to get stuck working late Monday.
We're supposed to work at 5:00. She doesn't call. 5:35.. still no call, so I try calling her. She's at the airport, she says she'll be home by 7:00 and we can start work then. I say - Uh, no. We're supposed to be Done by 7:00, we were supposed to start at 5:00. She says no, she faxed me the work Sunday to work on that night. I was like - No, you faxed me the work Sunday to do on Sunday - so that I could get a head start and we could be done by 7:00, because it was 12/21 and that's a holiday for me. She was all flustered and again, totally made me feel guilty. Her favorite line - Well you just do what you gotta do, Amy.
Ha! I was so irritated. We sat there and discussed the schedule. I don't know how it changed in her head or what happened, but I know the error wasn't mine.
Today. Yes, this brings us to today. She sends me all this work, including something from another expert that I normally do separately (and I've told them I can't do both of their work on the same night, I just don't have enough time) and wants it all done. Doesn't happen. Not a big deal because I do have some time tomorrow and I'll wrap it up. But then! When we did the calendar for this month, we were not working this coming Tuesday because she's going to be traveling. But she sends me this email and asks me to check her email on Tuesday, just as if we were going to work, and to work on these 2 reports because she needs them for Thursday.
Well guess what! I have out-of-town guests coming tomorrow night and they're staying for a week, and I took Mon/Tues/Wed off of work next week to spend time with them. And I'm not freaking working on Tuesday! She never asked me, before this email tonight, to work on Tuesday so I never mentioned my guests. It wasn't necessary, we weren't going to be working anyhow. I just know this is going to be an issue. I truly do. And I'm already defensive because I know she's going to put it on me like it's my fault I didn't somehow glean from her mind via ESP that she'd want me to work, even though I'm not scheduled.
Ok, I'm totally complaining. I feel it even as I type it. Am I lame? It's hard to explain it, but it's like she gets this attitude when I can't make my schedule mesh with hers. And the reason that's so irritating is because 99% of the time I DO make my schedule mesh. I rearrange things for her, I cancel things, I give up my lunch hour, etc. I do what I can to make sure I can work when she needs me to, but sometimes I just can't. And by can't, I guess I mean won't. There's a point when I just feel that her work isn't the priority at that time. In this case, spending time with my family is the priority. Had I known she would want me to work - well I would have maybe tried to work something out with her but I didn't know.
So frustrating. Ok. I think I'm all bitched out for now.
Amy
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