Losers On The Job

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Hubby’s in here complaining about having to work tomorrow. Normally he’s got a crew of about 4-5 guys, but tomorrow since it’s a holiday he’ll have all the guys from all the other job sites working for him. That’s because no one can work on the other job sites because they’re all in ritzy gated communities, and no one is allowed in the community to work on holidays.

Hubby hates it because he can’t stand a lot of the guys on the other crews. That’s why they’re not on his crew. They do a half-assed job, a lot of them are what I call the crack head type, and some of the guys have papers to work in the US, but it seems a little fishy to me because most of them look like they’ve barely hit puberty and can’t speak a bit of English.

I have nothing against people who are in this country legally working, but I can’t stand it when people are faking papers. I can’t stand the fact that people like Hubby are expected to learn a second language just because the boss keeps hiring people who can’t understand him. If you can’t speak English, that’s not my problem. If I were to move to France, I’d try to learn French, and the same goes for anywhere else.

Anywho, that’s a rant for another day. Hubby’s just upset about a ton of the guys on the other crews because they don’t know what they’re doing. Half of them claim to have years of experience, but can’t take simple measurements or do simple cuts once they’re hired. I really wish the boss would take the time to do employment screening before hiring half these losers. It’d save him and Hubby both a lot of headaches.

I’m trying to calm him down and make him happy by helping him look for the car cover he’s been wanting for the Blazer. I hope that works. I don’t want to deal with an ill Hubby all night.

Tags: Bad Business, employment screening

Hurricane Season Is Definitely Here

I’m watching the weather like crazy right now.  Not only do I have friends who are evacuating due to Hurricane Gustav, but now I see tropical storm Hanna is headed our direction.  It looks like Hanna will be hitting somewhere around Savannah, and I don’t like that at all.

Many of my friends and family members live in that area.  If Hanna becomes a hurricane before it hits, it will definitely impact my friends that live farther up the coast across the South Carolina border.  If it hits they’ll probably be evacuating which means they’ll probably end up here.

I’m also freaking out over how active things are becoming right now because I seriously don’t want lose the money I just put down on the beach house for our vacation.  If there is a hurricane that hits around that time we’ll receive our money back only if a mandatory evacuation is issued.  The catch 22 there is that if we’re already in the middle of our vacation we won’t receive any refund for missed nights if we leave before the evacuation becomes mandatory.  I’m sorry but I’ll lose my cash in that case.  There’s 1 road onto the island with a huge bridge.  The bridge freaks me out as it is just driving over it, and I can only imagine my panic attacks if we got stuck sitting on that bridge in evacuation traffic backed up for miles.  Nope, not going to happen!

The last time we went to Edisto we got stuck in a tropical storm.  I’m not doing that again.  If there’s even the slightest chance of getting hit while we’re there, we’re leaving.

Being Smart About Bills

A few years ago Hubby and I found ourselves in serious financial trouble. I’ve got the typical story, we were young, we were stupid, blah blah blah. The massive credit card debt was piling up along with student loans. I didn’t want to be one of those people working myself out of a $50,000 hole, so when we reached $10,000 in debt I said that’s it, I’m looking for Debt help.

I looked into a few different options for Debt relief, and it was all very very overwhelming to me. Hubby sucks when it comes to dealing with finances, so that left everything in my hands. I admit math was always my worth subject in school, and I definitely didn’t want to be dealing with our finances on our own. I finally took responsibility of it though and started looking at more options to work ourselves out of the situation.

If I were to write a haiku about my life at that time it would probably be something like this.

no credit spending
young stupid debt piling up
consolidation

That might not be exactly perfect since I’m not that great at poetry, but hey, it says what it needs to.

I settled for Debt consolidation, and I’m glad I did. It took us a few years to get back on our feet, but debt consolidation lowered our monthly payments drastically. We went from paying out over $1000 a month just to meet minimum payments to paying one monthly consolidated payment that was less than $500. Within 3 years we were almost out of debt.

Now we do have debt, but we have what I like to call a “healthy” amount of debt. We have our car loan and motorcycle loan, and that’s enough to help us build our credit again. I’m trying to stay on top of it in every way possible, and I want to make sure we don’t end up in the same situation again.

That’s why I’m glad I found BillsIQ. It’s a free quiz that helps you determine how financially fit you are, and you can learn what to do to improve your financial status. My Bills IQ is currently a B. When I took the quiz about 2 months ago I was bordering between a C and a B. I took the advice that was given to me, and I already see a change in not only how we’re paying off our current debts but in how much we’re saving as well. Hopefully shortly down the road I’ll find myself receiving an A.

So, what’s your Bills IQ? Why don’t you take the test and find out?

Tags: Bills IQ

Get A Freakin’ Clue

I’ve got this friend who’s been begging me to help him for awhile.  His company needs a business website.  He is a co-owner of the company, and currently they don’t have a business website simply because he hasn’t wanted to shell out the cash to build one.

He’s gotten quotes from different graphic designers, and all of them have given him a price he believes is way too expensive.   Then again, all those quotes have been at least $750, and I can understand why for what he wants.  He also doesn’t know very much about websites, how much effort it takes to build something like he wants, stuff like that.  It took me almost 2 weeks just to teach the man how to insert a photo into an email.
I’m not going into details about what type of site it would be, but he wants a lot including an e-commerce site with all of the company’s products.  I will tell you he’s in furniture, and everything is high end.  The design of the site would have to match the overall appearance of the business.  He wants to hire a professional photographer to take photos of displays he wants showcased on the site.  He wants that included in the price of the design, not someone he has to hire on his own.  Basically he wants the designer to go out of their way to hire a photographer out of the fee they’d be earning.  They’ve all flat out turned down that request because it’s ludicrous.

He also doesn’t understand setup costs and hosting costs, why he has to pay an extra fee monthly for his website to be online, why he has to pay extra for a domain name.  The man is clueless.

What he does know is that he has a friend who does website design, even if she only does it as a hobby/part time on the side.  He knows his friend has always been willing to go out of her way to help him for free when one of his computers needs repaired.  So what does he do?  He calls said friend, who would be me in this case, and asks her to create this site for him so he can save himself $750.

I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen.  First of all, I can’t do a lot of the stuff he wants done.  I’ve told him over and over again I’m not a full fledged graphic designer.  I dabble here and there, and I know enough to do what I need to do.  He’s asking me to do things I would have to learn, and those things make my head spin.  That’s why I haven’t taken the time to learn them yet.  He’s asking me to hunt down a photographer that’s willing to work for free (or basically for a plug on his website) because he “must have these shots”!

He doesn’t understand.  He tells me he knows I can learn how to do the stuff if I don’t know how because he knows how much I love computers.  I tell him it would take me weeks to learn how to do this stuff on a minimal level.  I would have to take time out of my day…away from my own business…to study and learn how to do these things.  Building what he wants would be extremely complicated.  I told him there’s no way I’m going to find a photographer who’s going to work for him for free, and that shouldn’t be my place.  I don’t even have the knowledge to build what he wants.

He doesn’t want to take no for an answer.  He keeps calling, leaving me voicemails, sending me emails, calling my husband and asking him to talk some sense into me…he just doesn’t get it.

Friend or not why should I go out of my way to take time out of my schedule to learn how to do all this stuff just so HE can save money.  I’ve tried to explain to him that it’s a tax write off.  He doesn’t care.  He doesn’t think he should have to shell out the cash in the first place if his friend is good with computers.

He just can’t grasp the concept that I don’t have a freakin’ clue how to build a website like he wants, and even if I did I wouldn’t do it for free anyway.  Yes I would take into consideration our friendship, and I would discount him greatly on it, but I couldn’t do it for free.

I’m so fed up with arguing with him about it.  Now I’m to the point of completely ignoring him.  Dude, get a freakin’ clue already.  I said no.  I said I won’t do it.  I said I can’t do it.  What more do I have to say?

By the way, for a friend who wants me to do so much for free, he wouldn’t even give me a small discount on a bed frame last year.  What would he think if I walked in and demanded he give me the bed for free?