Dealing with Chaos

Work is crazy. I am only claiming the craziness that rightfully belongs to me.

I found out last week that I am only an independent contractor at one of my jobs. If I had known that, I would never have taken the job. But I am not quitting. I will use it for as much experience as I can get.

And now at least one person is saying no to the independent contractor BS. My immediate boss is out on military maneuvers for two weeks and the family that runs the place is on vacation for the next two weeks. Nobody knows what is going on and I am not in the loop. So tomorrow will be more chaos, but, whatever, I will charge them for the time I am dealing with this drama. If they don’t pay me for all the time, I am done.

In other words, there is a lot of drama, but most of it is not mine and it is not worth taking on as my own.

Then there was the refrigerator drama. “What the heck is refrigerator drama?” you may ask. Saturday evening, I heard some thumping noise and thought that the upstairs neighbors got a big dog that was thumping. Sunday, I realized the noise was my fridge. The noise would happen for hours and then mercifully stop. But the food was still cold and I didn’t want to treat the situation as an emergency. So Monday morning I called the management people. I wasn’t sure they had paid attention to my request. So I called them again in the evening. This morning, the fridge was thumping again and I was about to walk out the door to go to work when they knocked on my door and asked if I had a refrigerator problem. I said, “Can’t you hear it?” They said they would lock up when they left. They called me at work at about 1 and asked when I could empty out the fridge so they could replace it. I said two. There was chaos at work and I had to leave to empty it out. I got home at about 5 minutes to 2. I threw away almost everything except my frozen dinners. They arrived at about 2:30, removed the old one (still running and thumping),and replaced it with one from a neighboring empty apartment.

After cleaning up the mess of the kitchen, I had to go to an audiologist appointment so Michigan Rehabilitative Services will help pay for my hearing aids.

The theme of my life right now seems to be dealing with my feelings, not over-reacting, and not taking responsibility for things I have zero control over.

The solution at work is transparency. Openness and honesty are the only way people are not going to feel lied to and deceived. Anything less speaks volumes about unethical  management.