This Has Been a Weirdly Weird Week

I don’t intend on always writing about myself but this blog is partially “therapy” for me. Monday I woke up with a cold. I haven’t had a cold or flu in 3 years. I was pretty bummed to have a runny nose and scratchy throat. I didn’t have a fever. My immediate thought was okay I need to feel okay enough to power through the long work day. After a bit, I realized the right thing to do would be to contact my client to let her know in case she doesn’t want to risk me spreading an illness to anyone.

She decided it’d be best for me to stay home. I offered to do some work from home. I did a few things for that job from home but there wasn’t much to do. I haven’t had this job very long so I figured I only accrued like 2 hours of sick pay but it turns out I have a full day’s worth of available sick pay, hallelujah! I forced myself to rest as much as I could that day. When I tried to do some cleaning tasks I got so tired and hot that I quit and rested. I haven’t taken a sick day in years. I cannot remember the last time I took a day off from being sick.

So Then Comes Tuesday

I forced myself to go to the gym (I was still fatigued but no longer had a runny nose and just a barely scratchy throat). I was scheduled to work one job around noon but at the last minute found out I didn’t need to go in until about 2:30. I had fasted that morning and around 12:30 I loaded up my blender with my smoothie ingredients and then boom, power went out. I assumed it was just my house but quickly discovered it was the whole neighborhood.

I am fine without electricity but not when I needed my smoothie. I do 2 per day so I need me some electricity. Also, my dog is extremely sensitive to the heat and it was in the 90s that day. I decided to go to Marshalls so she could be in some AC. The power was estimated to be restored by 2:30. 2:30 rolls around and still no power.

Electricity Gods

The estimation changed to 11:45 pm. This was mostly stressful because of my dog. If she gets too hot she could actually die. Luckily thank the heavens I have a neighbor who let my dog stay in their house that stays much cooler than mine without AC. I was stressing about potentially no AC the following day because it was my long day of working 10 hours so finding Luna a place to stay for that long if needed would be difficult. Thank the electricity Gods that the power came back on at 6:45 PM! I swear I have been expressing gratitude to the “universe” for electricity every day since then!

Thursday Work Hours Confusion

I heard from someone who runs the company from the recruiting agency that hired me, they had questions about some hours that I claimed from last month. I’m not going to get into all the details because it’s a little complicated and frankly I am tired and have a headache right now…

(Proceeds To Get Into The Details)

It caused me to question my own sanity a little bit. The client I work for said I’d get paid 2 hours for giving their daughter a ride to this specific location since it was a long drive. On the days I gave 2 of these separate rides, in my mind that would mean I get paid 4 hours. 2 hours for each time I gave the ride. I have a text conversation where she offered to pay 2 hours for 1 ride. So wouldn’t 2 of these rides mean 4 hours even if they’re given on the same day?

They were arguing that it was a 2 hour total-minimum. I have never heard of such a thing in my entire life. Total-Minimum, what? Luckily I talked to a couple people in my life about it and they agreed that my “logic” sounded correct to them. I was thinking ok…does math work differently for other people then or what?

I was anxious to discuss it with the client Friday morning (I prefer to have difficult convos in person because it’s easy to mistranslate things via text). We discussed it and she seemed super pissed. The first thing she said to me when I walked in was in a very angry aggressive tone, “did you read the email?!” I said, “no”, she seemed like she couldn’t believe it and said, “the email from Tuesday!?” as if it was so long ago that I had committed some sort of heinous crime by not reading an email. I said, “no…” and opened the email. It was her asking about those hours I claimed. (BTW the email was from Wednesday night, I don’t work for her Wednesday nights or Thursdays at all so there was no reason for me to check my work email on my days off from that job).

I explained my side of things with the hours and showed her how many hours it took to give those rides. Long story long, she kept wanting to argue about extraneous things. She repeatedly said things like, “those are 2 different things, why are you telling me 2 different things?!” I told her that I was telling her what she said and texted to me. I said, “you told me both of those things…” She kind of stopped arguing when she realized she had told me 2 different things. So I asked her how many hours we should count and we came to the agreement that 3 instead of 4 seemed fair. I am so over this job that I was fine with that.

Minimum

During this Friday morning convo she mentioned a 1 hour minimum… I said I have never heard of such a thing. (I absolutely would never agree to a 1 hour minimum, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard [I definitely didn’t say this out loud]). I think she made up the 1 hour minimum thing because she was mad that I wouldn’t make up the hours that I missed on Monday for being sick. I legitimately do not have time in my schedule any time soon. And the way she treats me, why would I work for her any more than I have to.

Also she said that I should have been keeping track of my hours in our shared spreadsheet that she is supposed to review. I knew I had gotten a little behind on it so I said, oh yes I have gotten a little behind on that. Later on, I looked at the spreadsheet and lo and behold I did keep track of all of those hours on there, she just didn’t look at it! This is the kind of BS I run into with her. She thinks I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing, occasionally I think maybe it slipped my mind, and then I go to check it and I had in fact done what I was supposed to be doing!

It’s just the worst combination of personalities I have ever experienced. I have my faults, good Lord I do, but sometimes your faults plus someone else’s faults are a toxic gaseous mixture that only causes problems when mixed together.