a lunchtime week in review

Week one of work without actual employment has been hectic. We were scheduled for the Duluth office this week and next, and traffic up there is murder. 10 minute drive to, 70 minute drive home, all bumper to bumper. Egads, I wouldn’t want to live up in that area.

Today is my only paid day to be working at home. The day to do everything I usually do, all crammed into one day, with the added benefit of Jon being so insanely overwhelmed with handling customer service by himself, that he is passing along the actual contacting customers to see what they want done to me. I’m supposed to work all this into a usual day. This is more than a days work, and well, if it doesn’t get done today, they get one day next week. Right now I’m on 4 day weekends, where my time is my time to work on other things. Damned if I’m working on holdover RMGA or customer service stuff. I realize it needs to be done, but so should FNIS before they ended our actual contract. Customers can get pissed at me for lack of response, but I have no problem passing them right on to Jonathan. I’ve gotten a couple of emails today from just crazy people who are almost constantly writing and calling to have some stupid thing tweaked on a site they have complete access to tweak themselves. When do I start billing them for this shit? Am I ALLOWED to bill for this shit directly? Who knows what kind of legal issues are going on here. SO, I just pass them on or ignore them. I’m about to send a couple folks a message saying that I’ve quit, just so they’ll leave me alone.

Last week, when my phone was ringing off the hook and there was no money expected anywhere, I finally told one lady that my contract was ended, I wasn’t being paid, and I no longer had access to work on her site. I told her that starting THIS week that I was going to be paid for 3 days a week to finish up things, and that I would try to fit her in then. She wrote back, but I really need this now, can I just give you my password so you’ll have access and you go ahead and do this now? Apparently she didn’t read the “not being paid” part… and since she didn’t offer to pay for my time… fuck her. After that, I just ignored her. I already wasted my time even responding the first time.

I’ve made quite the list today of outstanding items to be done just for RMGA people who constantly email and call. There is no way in hell it will get done, not even including the couple people I’m supposed to be calling to set up custom work with… whenever I figure out what I want to charge them. Jesus… I never ever ever wanted to be self-employed. Never. Just give me a job where I can do my job and get paid. Don’t make me arrange jobs, try to sell myself every time, and end up doing customer service and support for every person I’ve ever met in the course of that job.

I think this is plenty enough venting. Lunch is cold, and I have shit to do.