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Post by steev on Apr 16, 2017 23:58:15 GMT -5
If this situation doesn't start looking up, I may be contemplating plastic bags. Not really; I'm sure I can get a prescription for Fuckitall.
The guy who faded on me last week has been calling and hasn't figured out to leave a message if I don't answer, which I mostly don't, since I don't carry my phone sparked up in my pocket next to my nads all the time.
Years ago, I had a loony client who would phone up to 11 PM; when she called at 6 AM Saturday morning, I got an answering machine that day.
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Post by SteveB on Apr 17, 2017 7:18:35 GMT -5
I generally rely on my voicemail to be my secretary as well. I don't feel the need to let my phone tell me to stop what I'm doing and take this most likely non important yet time consuming call. I figure if it is important enough for them to leave a message, I'll listen to it and call back when I have the time.
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Post by steev on Apr 18, 2017 0:29:02 GMT -5
So many people seem to think they need to "reach out and touch someone" immediately; I've seen this delay traffic and even cause accidents, through distracted driving. Oh, well; Nature's way of getting the floaters out of the gene pool, one hopes.
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Post by steev on Apr 20, 2017 1:21:27 GMT -5
So that tyro worked today; we're (I'm) working on the concept "if there is a tool you're done with or trash that must get to the truck, why are you going there empty-handed?" This has often seemed an advanced concept. Somehow, it isn't obvious that I'm paying for work, not strolling, nor do I want tools to be forgotten, so I have to piss away work-time going to search for them or replace them.
He was filling a large trash-bag to brimming, when I suggested that we have lots of bags, so I prefer they not be loaded so heavily; he continued loading that one; I asked "what did I just tell you?"; he replied "I didn't understand you".
I may be less patient than I once was, but I think I'm just tired of the same thoughtlessness repeated ad nauseum.
Of course, he works with earbuds in and the volume so loud I had to literally yell "No!" four times when I saw he was edging a neighbor's lawn, not the one we were being paid for, before he noticed me, at which point I'd walked over to him and waved my arms. He's not going to understand what's up when I tell him he can work for me or he can keep his head up his cell-phone and hit the bricks.
Once I get a house on the farm, I may well retire; thirty-eight years of dealing with such crap has more than satisfied my need for it.
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Post by steev on May 1, 2017 23:17:03 GMT -5
So today, I got chewed out by my landlady because he'd dragged tarps of trash through her potted plants; at least I'd caught him before he dragged that stuff down the sides of her vehicles. He has this macho idea that he's supposed to carry as much as he can, but seems not to get that he's supposed to not damage stuff while over-loaded and oblivious. Different cultural expectations, to be sure; nothing I've not dealt with before; I'm just so tired of coping with this tunnel-vision: "I'm not responsible for anything I've not been told, specifically (or understood, without saying I'm not sure I got it?).
Seriously, I'm tired of this shit.
Just got to get a house built and I'm ready to be gone from this shitterree: the whole over-populated urban experience; the whole under-informed immigrant experience.
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Post by richardw on May 3, 2017 4:23:32 GMT -5
There's no way i could ever go back to living in suburbia. How long ya reckon before you can be living on ya farm?
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Post by steev on May 3, 2017 10:45:16 GMT -5
If it doesn't happen this year it may never.
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Post by prairiegardens on May 3, 2017 13:06:40 GMT -5
Well I am at about the same stage so have decided to downsize drastically and build a tiny house. It will be small enough not to trigger a change in tax status, property taxes have already gone up by 50% and the politicos have just announced another hike. I just got an assessment for the house in the village that someone must have been on a weird lettuce or magic mushroom to arrive at. For starters, they are claiming I have more than 3 times as much land as I have.
I've asked which neighbor's land they have appropriated to add to mine. I've also told them that if they can get a buyer for the assessed price, the day the cheque clears I will write THEM a cheque for 30% of it. And even that would leave me with more than I'd pay for it. I bought the house as a tax sale and that's about what it's still worth, some unexpected issues came to light shortly after that made it more appropriate to replace everything below the roof than to fix it. And since it was always only intended as a stopgap until I could get on my land.... replacing it was never on the cards, I can't wait to get back to having some privacy.
oh yes, car insurance just went from $350 ish to $970 ish.. no claims, but the insurance companies have been hit with a couple of huge fires and a flood so I suppose it should have been expected. Thinking of pony or dog carts...
As far as help, I put a comment in a FB group saying I'd seen an ad a few days before from someone looking for casual work but I'd lost it, so if anyone was looking to private message me. The only response was someone replying in the thread, saying, sure, message me! If they can't even get the very first instruction right is there any hope?
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Post by SteveB on May 3, 2017 13:09:15 GMT -5
If one lowers expectations in a homestead. Homesteads become more reality than fantasy. Life cann be bliss if you focus on the needs vs the learned "needs".
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Post by prairiegardens on May 3, 2017 13:31:32 GMT -5
my expectations have pretty much dropped as low as it's possible to get and still have goals at all. It's been quite a learning experience, the last 10 years. What I hadn't planned on was my knees giving out.and needing help to do stuff it drives me crazy not to be able to do myself.
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Post by reed on May 3, 2017 14:02:31 GMT -5
If it doesn't happen this year it may never. DO IT! I'v said and it isn't far from true that I'd rather live under a big cedar tree than in a city.
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Post by SteveB on May 3, 2017 14:16:58 GMT -5
I've took a short jump to the outer edges of town. I would have went further, but I have my youngest still in school and wife didn't want to move him from his friends.. I have a five year plan. I'll dump it all and live in a tent if I have to, but until the trees are my neighbors, I'll never be home... I don't need much, I just need the rain and the vegetation around me. I grew up spending my time in the trees, I'll die in that same fashion.
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Post by steev on May 3, 2017 20:10:27 GMT -5
I'm thinking this newest helper isn't going to work out; he's been absent a third of the last month's workdays and I think he's looking for, and/or taking, other work; I'm not interested in trying to run a business with unreliable help nor in helping him get by until he dumps me, after I've put up with teaching him from the ground up.
The drought having apparently ended, business is booming in addition to the backlog, so I need another worker, in any event,; two, if he can't get with the program.
When opportunity knocks, you're able to answer the door or it goes elsewhere.
I'm pretty much living in a "tiny house" now, on the farm, but I want my bed not to be up a ladder anymore and I'd like a shower that isn't outside and straight from the well, I mean, I'm not that impressed with my "package" in the best of times, but that cold water really makes things "turtle".
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Post by mjc on May 4, 2017 13:19:44 GMT -5
TMI, steev, TMI...
That said,you really do seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel on the hired help...
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Post by SteveB on May 4, 2017 13:29:49 GMT -5
Steev, perhaps if you weren't taking cold showers outdoors, you would be able too keep helpers from running off..
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