Let's paint the living room, work edition
I've hinted that there's been some changes at my job, and the way I've described it to BBC is that there's a hole in the roof, the basement's flooded, the kitchen's on fire, and my boss is standing there going, let's paint the living room! Like...really?
There are so many things wrong at my job. So many things. Starting with my boss, but he's not leaving anytime soon. What he likes to do is ignore things and hope they go away. Spoiler alert: They don't. They just get worse.
So, what is he ignoring?
--The back building situation. BBC has not had adequate help in seven and a half years. At least, not long-term. This summer was probably the best it's been in a long time, where he had six extra bodies back there, with three of them having been employed previously/currently and able to work with little to no supervision. Of those, he's down to one on a regular basis--my boss' son, who's basically feral, because my boss is unaware that you can't just throw someone at a job and expect him to know absolutely everything right off the bat, especially when he's 20 and as big of a blockhead as his father. Apple didn't fall far from the tree; apple is still attached to the tree. It's so bad that he thinks he knows what he's doing and he attempts to complete certain projects, except he's actually making them worse and BBC is having to redo not just the original work, but then fix the problems the son caused. This is a good use of time and resources. The son isn't totally stupid, but he is completely lacking in critical thinking skills. If he can run down a list of tasks, he's fine. But the projects don't come with boxes to tick off; they require more than that.
--The hardware situation. Our computers are old. I joke that mine runs Windows Hamster, as in there's a little hamster on a wheel and that's how my hard drive runs. Lately, it's like I've not been feeding the hamster. There are a few things that need to be upgraded around the place, and my computer is one of them, but because my workstation does so much of the necessary business, our IT helper--who is not directly employed by my job, mind you--does not want to take that down until the second workstation, which my minion uses much of the time, is fully up and running. The IT helper's been trying to do that, except he ran into a snag, and he's needed my boss to do something crucial in order to move forward, but that would require my boss to be around and actually focus on completing this task for the IT helper to continue on. So we're stuck for now. Related to that, we're supposed to get a new phone system, and the phones in the other building keep crapping out on us--even when we try to call between buildings--but for whatever reason there's been no movement on that. And again, if my deadbeat dad of a boss was around on a regular basis, perhaps he'd care a bit more, but he's basically gone Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, aside from Wednesday nights when nobody else is working.
--Our business' website is atrocious. We'd started working on things we wanted to see on the website, to try to put together a frequently-asked questions page...and then right as we were working on that, the pandemic happened and it stalled. That's been four and a half years, getting close to five. In the meantime, instead of focusing on fixing the current website, my boss hired a guy to create a mirror website using a different domain name. Mainly, all it does is point back to the main website. I brought it up at a recent meeting and suddenly my boss realized the entire thing has been a complete waste of money, because the website has to integrate with the proprietary software we use, and the mirror site doesn't. Like...duh. And aside from that, there are a lot of things that would be easy for us to change if we simply had an internal staff member that we could go to when we discover issues, and who could stay on top of things, and we simply don't. My boss is all, it just takes a phone call! So-and-so will do whatever we ask! That's great. Please give me his contact info so I can get going on this. ...That was two weeks ago and he never gave me the info. Super helpful.
With all that going on, an astute businessman might go, okay, we have a lot of work to do; let's pick an area and make it a priority. Instead, I have the boss who's decided to fix something that isn't broken, or at least is less broken than all the other crap. We had a girl email a couple months ago saying she'd worked in a similar business downstate, and did we have any openings? I replied, yes, in our back building. She indicated that she did have that experience and was granted an interview with the boss, wherein she indicated she also had experience with room renters, and that was nickel that got put in my boss. He hired her for a position that didn't previously exist--coordinating the room renters and their clients. Basically, we're going to take over that whole thing. Currently, we take client info, pass it on to the room renters, and at that point they take over and do their own scheduling and such, and they get paid directly by the clients and in turn pay us a small amount to use the rooms. What my boss wants to do is have the clients pay us. Essentially, the clients will pay more overall, and the room renters will get less overall, but they'll be considered business employees so they'll get regular paychecks and have taxes taken out and all that jazz.
I...do not think they'll go for it. Like, one person is making X amount for 30-minute meetings. The rate once this is implemented will be X+5 over 60 minutes. Why would someone be okay with making only $5 more for twice as much work?
I have so many concerns, it's not even funny. They were running through my head last weekend, but I had our client jamboree going on to focus on for much of last week, then the cleanup and final write-ups about that earlier this week, and then, oh yeah, it was basically me and my minion for much of this week. The office manager was on vacation, and DW's partner had a procedure done so he was out for a couple days, and then deadbeat dad boss was his usual gone self, and even when DW came back yesterday, he and the boss had some sort of presentation they were giving and there went a good portion of yesterday, so, like, I got to play manager and do the daily financial reconciliation for much of the week. By the time today came along, I pretty much had it down, which was good, but yeah. Usually my boss would do it, but since the last time the manager took a long vacation, my boss has been showing up less and less at work, so if I want to know how we stand--and this is something that kind of needs to happen for the business to function properly--then I've got to do it. I'm just glad that my minion is really good and helpful, and we get along really well. He makes work enjoyable and allows me to get stuff done, since he can do the little or more basic tasks.
As for the new girl, she kind of grates on everyone's nerves. She doesn't get that she isn't supposed to just barge on in and take over the place when she's new, that the rest of us have our own ways of doing things and she needs to fit in with us, not the other way around. As for her claims that she's done back building projects before, it was more like, yes, she has in fact walked inside her previous job's version of the back building, so basically she lied about that particular ability, which is really what's needed to happen around here. BBC is pretty pissed at the situation since he's directly dealing with her a lot of the time. Also, early on--she's been here over a month now--there came a Tuesday where she had basically nothing to do and was waiting for my boss to show up to give her instructions. Honey, for all intents and purposes he's not in the building on Tuesdays, between his client visits and his side hustle. I have no work for you to do, as there's just enough work for my minion and me; I'm not splitting that up even further. Go find back building projects to work on. I would've just sent her home if it had been up to me, really. I don't know what she ended up doing but as long as she's out of my hair, I don't care. She's the one who set off the potpourri bomb a few weeks back, and she still has that infernal air freshener plugged in. It was on at some point today, as I went back there as I was leaving, and the smell was permeating the area today. This is the other problem with my boss, where he doesn't know how to be firm about certain things. Supposedly he told her not to use it, but he's not enforcing it, and it's strong enough that I smelled it on DW when he walked past me in the front building today.
There are enough good things about my job that I continue staying. But it gets harder and harder for me to see them sometimes, and this job drains me of my energy. It shouldn't. But my boss has been a 12-year-old boy for 50 years now, and his lack of maturity and insight and what have you is sucking the life out of me lately. It wasn't this bad this time last year, I don't think, but dang, 2024 has sucked so badly in so many different ways. Like it's invented new ways to be terrible. I didn't need my job to jump on that bandwagon.
There are so many things wrong at my job. So many things. Starting with my boss, but he's not leaving anytime soon. What he likes to do is ignore things and hope they go away. Spoiler alert: They don't. They just get worse.
So, what is he ignoring?
--The back building situation. BBC has not had adequate help in seven and a half years. At least, not long-term. This summer was probably the best it's been in a long time, where he had six extra bodies back there, with three of them having been employed previously/currently and able to work with little to no supervision. Of those, he's down to one on a regular basis--my boss' son, who's basically feral, because my boss is unaware that you can't just throw someone at a job and expect him to know absolutely everything right off the bat, especially when he's 20 and as big of a blockhead as his father. Apple didn't fall far from the tree; apple is still attached to the tree. It's so bad that he thinks he knows what he's doing and he attempts to complete certain projects, except he's actually making them worse and BBC is having to redo not just the original work, but then fix the problems the son caused. This is a good use of time and resources. The son isn't totally stupid, but he is completely lacking in critical thinking skills. If he can run down a list of tasks, he's fine. But the projects don't come with boxes to tick off; they require more than that.
--The hardware situation. Our computers are old. I joke that mine runs Windows Hamster, as in there's a little hamster on a wheel and that's how my hard drive runs. Lately, it's like I've not been feeding the hamster. There are a few things that need to be upgraded around the place, and my computer is one of them, but because my workstation does so much of the necessary business, our IT helper--who is not directly employed by my job, mind you--does not want to take that down until the second workstation, which my minion uses much of the time, is fully up and running. The IT helper's been trying to do that, except he ran into a snag, and he's needed my boss to do something crucial in order to move forward, but that would require my boss to be around and actually focus on completing this task for the IT helper to continue on. So we're stuck for now. Related to that, we're supposed to get a new phone system, and the phones in the other building keep crapping out on us--even when we try to call between buildings--but for whatever reason there's been no movement on that. And again, if my deadbeat dad of a boss was around on a regular basis, perhaps he'd care a bit more, but he's basically gone Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, aside from Wednesday nights when nobody else is working.
--Our business' website is atrocious. We'd started working on things we wanted to see on the website, to try to put together a frequently-asked questions page...and then right as we were working on that, the pandemic happened and it stalled. That's been four and a half years, getting close to five. In the meantime, instead of focusing on fixing the current website, my boss hired a guy to create a mirror website using a different domain name. Mainly, all it does is point back to the main website. I brought it up at a recent meeting and suddenly my boss realized the entire thing has been a complete waste of money, because the website has to integrate with the proprietary software we use, and the mirror site doesn't. Like...duh. And aside from that, there are a lot of things that would be easy for us to change if we simply had an internal staff member that we could go to when we discover issues, and who could stay on top of things, and we simply don't. My boss is all, it just takes a phone call! So-and-so will do whatever we ask! That's great. Please give me his contact info so I can get going on this. ...That was two weeks ago and he never gave me the info. Super helpful.
With all that going on, an astute businessman might go, okay, we have a lot of work to do; let's pick an area and make it a priority. Instead, I have the boss who's decided to fix something that isn't broken, or at least is less broken than all the other crap. We had a girl email a couple months ago saying she'd worked in a similar business downstate, and did we have any openings? I replied, yes, in our back building. She indicated that she did have that experience and was granted an interview with the boss, wherein she indicated she also had experience with room renters, and that was nickel that got put in my boss. He hired her for a position that didn't previously exist--coordinating the room renters and their clients. Basically, we're going to take over that whole thing. Currently, we take client info, pass it on to the room renters, and at that point they take over and do their own scheduling and such, and they get paid directly by the clients and in turn pay us a small amount to use the rooms. What my boss wants to do is have the clients pay us. Essentially, the clients will pay more overall, and the room renters will get less overall, but they'll be considered business employees so they'll get regular paychecks and have taxes taken out and all that jazz.
I...do not think they'll go for it. Like, one person is making X amount for 30-minute meetings. The rate once this is implemented will be X+5 over 60 minutes. Why would someone be okay with making only $5 more for twice as much work?
I have so many concerns, it's not even funny. They were running through my head last weekend, but I had our client jamboree going on to focus on for much of last week, then the cleanup and final write-ups about that earlier this week, and then, oh yeah, it was basically me and my minion for much of this week. The office manager was on vacation, and DW's partner had a procedure done so he was out for a couple days, and then deadbeat dad boss was his usual gone self, and even when DW came back yesterday, he and the boss had some sort of presentation they were giving and there went a good portion of yesterday, so, like, I got to play manager and do the daily financial reconciliation for much of the week. By the time today came along, I pretty much had it down, which was good, but yeah. Usually my boss would do it, but since the last time the manager took a long vacation, my boss has been showing up less and less at work, so if I want to know how we stand--and this is something that kind of needs to happen for the business to function properly--then I've got to do it. I'm just glad that my minion is really good and helpful, and we get along really well. He makes work enjoyable and allows me to get stuff done, since he can do the little or more basic tasks.
As for the new girl, she kind of grates on everyone's nerves. She doesn't get that she isn't supposed to just barge on in and take over the place when she's new, that the rest of us have our own ways of doing things and she needs to fit in with us, not the other way around. As for her claims that she's done back building projects before, it was more like, yes, she has in fact walked inside her previous job's version of the back building, so basically she lied about that particular ability, which is really what's needed to happen around here. BBC is pretty pissed at the situation since he's directly dealing with her a lot of the time. Also, early on--she's been here over a month now--there came a Tuesday where she had basically nothing to do and was waiting for my boss to show up to give her instructions. Honey, for all intents and purposes he's not in the building on Tuesdays, between his client visits and his side hustle. I have no work for you to do, as there's just enough work for my minion and me; I'm not splitting that up even further. Go find back building projects to work on. I would've just sent her home if it had been up to me, really. I don't know what she ended up doing but as long as she's out of my hair, I don't care. She's the one who set off the potpourri bomb a few weeks back, and she still has that infernal air freshener plugged in. It was on at some point today, as I went back there as I was leaving, and the smell was permeating the area today. This is the other problem with my boss, where he doesn't know how to be firm about certain things. Supposedly he told her not to use it, but he's not enforcing it, and it's strong enough that I smelled it on DW when he walked past me in the front building today.
There are enough good things about my job that I continue staying. But it gets harder and harder for me to see them sometimes, and this job drains me of my energy. It shouldn't. But my boss has been a 12-year-old boy for 50 years now, and his lack of maturity and insight and what have you is sucking the life out of me lately. It wasn't this bad this time last year, I don't think, but dang, 2024 has sucked so badly in so many different ways. Like it's invented new ways to be terrible. I didn't need my job to jump on that bandwagon.