Friday 23 September 2011

FREAKY FRIDAY

FREAKY FRIDAY

Today I lost my cool. It was not cool.

I have not been paid for a long time by one of my casual roles. In the first instance it was my fault in the delay, but not for the last 8 weeks which is the length of time I have actively been pursuing my pay.

I had scheduled many things around this time which would require payment. Landscaping (ok more like demolition), cubby house, solar power and a shed.

The landscaping is so we can put in the cubby and shed.
The cubby is to entertain my little ones, who dearly miss their cubby from the house we rented in the country.
The shed is so that we can move everything out of our attached garage into a freestanding triple garage at the back of our quarter acre. This gives us more storage to put our "junk" in, park a car and to put the "gym". Then we can demolish our attached garage and make way for the reno's!
The reno's are not an optional keeping up with the Jones's type thing; more a matter of absolute necessity. 

Our kitchen circa 1957 has a galvanised pipe running under the laundry floor, which is Terrazzo. The pipe is rusting on the inside and blocks weekly. Short of continuing to use highly toxic chemicals that cost $65 a litre each month, the pipe needs repair. The roof over the laundry has rotted, due to previous tenants not clearing the gutter and not telling us (they were friends and we let them have freedom -too much!).
The kitchen in question!

So the most sensible and cost effective option is to get rid of our antique kitchen and laundry and upgrade, there is no common sense alternative. I digress.

Oh and solar power was just to offset my huge electricity bill in winter. I am not a R/C A/C junkie, but I do have to keep my child's room warm as her asthma trigger is none other than ...cold. Having just reviewed my latest bill which is about $80 more for this quarter than last year, yet I have used considerably less mega joules I know that solar will pay off for our family.

SO back to my pay. It was a he said/she said/ haven't seen it blah, blah, blah. Passing of the buck, claiming of ignorance and a nice little statement of "Hopefully HR will agree to release funds in an off pay week". 

It is not up to HR to decide if they would like to pay me. I have a contract. I have met my end of the deal. We have industrial laws in this country that will protect me and my right to be paid. I am in the union, we have an ombudsman and I am not the only one who did not get paid.

My anger did subside. I was disappointed I let myself go there. My girls wanted to go collecting sticks and leaves today so that we could make our camping centrepiece. We couldn't go as I was negotiating to be paid and e-mailing the multiple time sheets and contracts all over again.

If I do not do my job, someone may die. It is pretty serious stuff. How is it that others do not apply the same ethos to their jobs?

It took me a lot of internal work today to keep my anger in check. It didn't always work.

I am grateful that my girls gave me big cuddles, listened to my apologies for yelling at them and did not complain once about not going for our collection walk!

I nearly fell off the gratitude train today and that would have hurt. Lucky I am still in for the ride, hang in there if you feel off balance, there are bumps in every ride!



1 comment:

  1. bugger I wrote an awesome post....take two...I'm glad you're still on the train ride babe. One day those two little girls will fully understand the inner strength and damn tenacity within their mother xxx.....or something very similar xxx

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