The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I was wished a happy Father's Day by two customers at work today.



I must REALLY need a makeover.

Everyone has had a crap job or two. Rarely are we lucky enough to find that one great job and stay with it throughout our working lives. Usually there is a crap job or two in there somewhere.



Let me tell you about the worst job I ever had. No matter how bad things get in my life, I look back on this awful job and feel a lot better about whatever it is I am going through. That was the worst job ever, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.



I was in a good place when it started, I had just gotten a great job elsewhere, got an apartment, and was living my life on my own. Really enjoying that. Then one day my mother calls me and tells me my dad was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He has a few months to live. "You have to come home! I can't do this by myself!" was her cry, so like a dutiful daughter, I quit my job, moved out of the apartment, put my stuff in storage and moved back home.



About two days after my dad's funeral my mom turns to me and says "You need to get a job! I can't afford to feed you!" As if I was an elephant or something. SHE didn't want to get a job, she was happy just living on my dad's pension. I wasn't wanted anymore. So, I went job hunting. Unfortunately, there weren't any jobs available just then. I thought my mother would explode, she wanted me gone so badly. I resolved to find something, anything, just to get me out of the house again.



I signed up to be an in home caregiver. There was a program funded by the state that provided live-in home assistance to the elderly and handicapped. I got a mix of both, an older woman who was bedridden with severe arthritis. I would be expected to tend to her personal care, keep the place clean, cook meals, etc.



That etc. covered a lot of stuff. I also had to look after her dog, which I quite liked, as the dog took a shine to me immediately. But, when the lady had company come to visit (as she frequently did) I was ousted from my bed in the spare bedroom and had to sleep on the floor in the living room. Not the couch, the floor. Had to cook for all the company also, and clean up after them.



This woman did not permit me an idle moment. From the time the sun came up I had to get her cleaned up, fed, and her bedding changed, grab something for myself to eat, then start in on what she had planned for me to do that day...mop the floors, vacuum, wash windows, dust, clean the upholstery, do laundry, wash walls....I mean every single day. What we ate depended on what she wanted....if she didn't like it, we didn't eat it. In the afternoons she wanted to be read to....whole papers and magazines, cover to cover. Everything. TV? what she wanted to watch. Now mind you, I understood that it was her house and she was entitled to watch what she wanted....but once a week, would it kill someone to watch something another person wanted? Oh, it must have, because we never did.



How I lasted two years of this is something I hardly ever think about. I lived at that place from 3 pm Sunday to 7 pm Friday. I would get home Friday nights exhausted, watch Dallas, and fall right to bed. And this woman had the nerve to tell her social worker that I was "always tired and there was no reason for it."



One day the social worker came round and saw me cleaning the living room. This involved pulling all the furniture into the center of the room, scrubbing the walls, hand washing the furniture and polishing any woodwork. I must have looked like Scarlett O'Hara after the seige of Atlanta, because the social worker looked quite shocked. "Didn't you do that last week when I was here?" she asked. "Yep," I said, "I do it every week. Sometimes twice a week."



You may wonder what I was paid? I got the princely sum of $100 a week. LOL. I stuck it out for as long as I could, then on one of my Saturdays off, I applied for a job in a restaurant, got it, and gave notice to the crap job. Six months (yes kids, six months) later, I walk to my front door and find a police officer there.



This was a surprise. He told me the woman I used to take care of was certain I had stolen her checkbook and some other things she "just now realized" were missing. I was read my rights and asked if I wanted an attorney. I said WAIT A MINUTE. This woman had one checking account as far as I knew, and if THAT book was missing, how the hell had she been writing checks for the six months I had been gone? and what specifically were the other things she was missing?



The officer was apologetic. He said he had to follow up on the complaint, and if he could just look around he would be able to say he had checked me out and I didn't have any of her stuff. I told him he could come in with sniffer dogs and take as long as he wanted, I took nothing from that old fart when I left. He looked around, sort of embarrassed, and left.



I found out later that the whole program the state was running was slightly illegal, we were massively underpaid for everything we had to do...no benefits, no overtime, nothing. The program was discontinued almost immediately after I left.



Worst crap job ever. No doubt about it.