Venting about my crummy job

[Perd Hapley]

Apartment maintenance, all by my lonesome.  I got this job a year and a half ago, and it has been testing my thin layer of sanity ever since.  I will quit as soon as I can, but I am trying to buy my first house, so I need to stay with it for a bit.  

I told them when I applied, that I had never done that kind of work before.  The ad mentioned they needed someone with painting experience, and I had been doing some of that.  I did part-time custodial work while schooling full-time. "We can train you," says the Boss.  Sure.  My training consists of calling for help when I don't know what to do.  As a result, I spend two hours doing half-hour jobs, and I don't do them that well.  Of course, common things I'm getting better at.  I am the toilet master.  

My first day on the job, I go to this apartment complex, seven buildings, 48 units in all.  The guy I'm working with tells one of the residents that I will be THE maintenance guy for the whole property.  This is news to me.  I guess they must have told me I'd be on call, but of course I didn't know I would be the only maintenance guy.  At least I can share it half the time with some guys at another property.  A few months into the job, the Bossman tells me I should leave my company cell phone on while I'm driving to and fro, just in case.  Just a few months ago, after working there for over a year, I am informed that I ought to be leaving the phone on ALL THE TIME.  What?  Like I want to lug around that giant, rubber-armored Motorola all the time.  I could have just started using it for my personal cell phone - that would serve 'em right.  Instead, I had the calls forwarded to my personal cell phone.  They're pretty good, though, about limiting emergencies to actual emergencies.

Oh, and then there's the fact that the property has no money to buy equipment, as we have had only 75% occupancy in the past, and we still have 8 empty apartments out of 48.  No one wants to put in any money (like to hire someone else part-time to help out) until the place starts pulling in more rent, but how can we make any more rent when I can't get any of the vacants turned over?  Takes me months, sometimes, to get an apartment ready.  

Oh, the best part.  Old, upper-middle class women, these are big, "luxury" apartments - mostly old folks, Jewish part of town, but with some blacks and a lot of white goyim.  My goodness, these people complain about everything!  OK, most of them don't complain that much, but some call twice a week.  And every problem is the end of the world.  They whine, as if I'm not going to help them unless they are near death.  Just tell me what the problem is, and I'll try to fix it, whine to somebody else, (like on an internet forum).  On the bright side, most of them love me (they just hate my boss), some are really good folks, and I collect about 300 bucks every Christmas, from Jews and Gentiles alike.    

This post could be much longer, but I will stop.  Gotta get up early to drive the wife way into work tomorrow, as my truck's transmission needs a rebuild, and we are sharing the Buick.  Without a truck, of course, the job is a little harder.

[Justin]

Working in anything with the word "luxury" affiliated with it is a pain in the ass.  If you aren't 100% dedicated to making it absolutely spit-shined perfect, it will drive you insane.

[K Frame]

I've had similar crummy jobs before, one in which I worked in a quasi-military operation (a military credit union). There were normally 40 layers of approval, with each layer sucking more and more life out of marketing presentations designed to appeal to not only military members, but also their families. Bright color? You can't have that. Conversational tone in the narrative? Can't have that.

That was bad enough, but the VP of marketing really put the icing on the cake.

We worked for weeks on a coordinated campaign. I spent a lot of time in the artist's cube, and he in mine. It was, quite frankly, a freaking excellent piece of work, and for once it went through the various layers of approval with hardly any major changes.

Then we went for our presentation to the president of the CU. What a piece of work he was, but that's another story. We walk in there with the VP of marketing, and the FIRST and I mean FIRST words out of her mouth before our asses even hit the chair was "If you don't like it, we'll change it."

As you can imagine, the presentation was largely a disaster, and we pretty much started from square one because she, in her desperate desire to be loved by upper management, never gave us the chance to sell the concept before she poisoned it.

The artist and I were furious. We pushed her into her office, and spent the next 10 minutes screaming at her, after which we stalked out and left the campus. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a single alcoholic beverage at lunch. That day I had three. Our lunch hour was about 4 hours long.

A week later the artist resigned, and a week after that I resigned.

[The Rabbi]

Like some cheese with that?

Look at it this way: if you are buying your first house, whatever experience you get in maintenance on  the job is going to help you with your house and keep costs down.  Honestly I wouldnt mind a job like that at all (actually I have one pretty much like that, just working for myself) for all the experience I would get.
I dunno, I tend to see opportunity in situations like this.  Of course it isnt me answering calls about clogged toilets at 2AM.

[garrettwc]

Rabbi beat me too it. The earned experience is worth more than the groan factor.

[charby]

Could be worse, you could be working in a packing house or shoveling chicken *expletive deleted*it. I used to have a job like yours while I was in college, yeah I don't miss the late night toliet clogs but I gained a lot of experience and I loved the freedom of hours.

C

[Perd Hapley]

Working in anything with the word "luxury" affiliated with it is a pain in the ass.  If you aren't 100% dedicated to making it absolutely spit-shined perfect, it will drive you insane.

True.  $900-1200 is a high rent payment in Saint Louis, and the sign does say "Luxury Apartments."  I wish they wouldn't use that word.  My commitment to "luxury" can only go so far, of course, I need to be supported better than I am.

[Perd Hapley]

Like some cheese with that?

Look at it this way: if you are buying your first house, whatever experience you get in maintenance on  the job is going to help you with your house and keep costs down.

Believe me, I am looking for the silver lining, and I have learned a lot, but only because I knew so little to begin with.  It is great to be able to learn on someone else's dime.  If they, had trained me as they said they would, I would have learned a lot more and I wouldn't be planning to bail out on them.

I still don't understand why they put the new guy, with no experience, out there by himself.  They have other tech's at other properties who could have done the job, while I was learning from others at a larger property.  My guess is that no one else who has experience wants to do this alone, or deal with these very particular old ladies.  Or perhaps they don't think they can trust those guys to be out there by themselves, with no accountability.  But again, what made them think they should trust me?  And why do they want me trying to figure out electrical systems and gas furnaces without supervision?  They're lucky they're not paying me worker's comp.  I have asked my boss some of these questions, and never really gotten a reply.


I always thought I would like working alone, and it definitely has its perqs.  I can be flexible in my schedule.  If I come into work late, I can just stay a little longer that night, and no one notices.  I can indulge my talk radio habit, rather than hearing the same, recycled, so-called country music every day.  But it can also be discouraging, and sometimes the temptation to goof off or leave early is too much for me.  I have given in a few times, and then later I have to work some uncompensated overtime, just to get it off my conscience.

Also, there's no one to vent to, so you all get the privilege.  Ain't you lucky?