No matter who you are, what town you live/work in, what field you work in, or where you work, there is *always* someone that you periodically work with, that you would almost rather do the job yourself than have to work with them. Sometimes it's just a personality clash, we all have those sometime. Sometimes it's nothing you can put your finger on, but you Just. Don't. Like this person.
Regardless, tonight I had to deal with this person. I don't work with her frequently, but every time I do it seems like a ginormous clusterf&*k. I'm not going to call this a personality clash, and it's definitely something I CAN put my finger on. No matter what's going on, she always has to stick her nose in, because she knows more than you. But she's also generally the first to complain about a heavy workload. Or what she percieves as a heavy workload. "I'm not doing that, I'm too busy."
"The supervisor told me I didn't have to do X, She said I only had to do Y"
And despite the fact that she thinks she knows more than you, and always has to stick her nose in, or give her opinion, she's actually not that knowledgeable, and in fact if you think about it, it's kind of frightening. Because she really thinks she knows her shit. But in reality, she's actually kind of dangerous to work with.
I find this a difficult situation to deal with, because there is usually very little you can really do about it. Confronting the person, even in a subtle and not nasty way, isn't effective, because they are always right, and your opinion of them doesn't matter to them, because you're wrong anyway. Reporting anything but blatatnly inappropriate or dangerous behavior to your supervisor kind of seems like tattling. (Please keep in mind that if the situation is truly dangerous, and not just annoying, I would report it withut a second thought.)
Right now I'm just thankful I don't have to do this very often.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
It's a shame what some people will do to a nice house.
House hunting adventures. Because of regulations for BFB's job we need to move inside city limits within 9 months of his contract date. That puts us at July 1st. We have a contract in place and should be closed before the end of February. Still not totally in the bag, but damn close.
We've been inside a few houses, and looked at over a hundred online. Some are very nice houses, with prices I wish we could've afforded. But alas.. the budget won out. We didn't want to eat Ramen every other day for the next 10 years. Some other houses were very nice, just not what we were looking for. Some houses we knew would be gamble, and the smart part of our brains won, and we didn't go that direction. Others, just UGH!
Just a couple tips for anyone out there trying to sell your house.
1) Paint is cheap. You're more likely to sell your house if the buyers arent repulsed and revolted by your paint job. Your 4 year old princess may have loved the cotton candy pink, with silver clouds on the ceiling, but Me.... not so much.
2) If you can't paint well,or don't know what the hell you're doing, hire a painter. A crappy paint job is (in my opinion) worse than the obnixious hot pink.
3) Put good pictures of your house in your listing. If the pictures look like crap, I don't see how great your house really is. And I'm deleting it from my list. It amazed me during our search how many real estate agents took and or used really crappy pictures. And make sure yor house is clean when the photos are taken. Packing boxes I can understand , as well as things that indicate your house is lived in. But dirty dishes in the sink, visibly overflowing trash, and cluttered countertops, walls, floors, couches etc.. don't attract buyers. If you can't be bothered to clean up a little for the pictures, what does that say about how you take care of the house the rest of the time. I'm assuming if you can't take out trash or do dishes, then you definitely haven't had time for event the most basic maintenance tasks, and that there will be issues with the house. If you have pets, they probably shouldn't be in the pictures. Do you really want a prospective buyer to know you have 6 indoor cats? I think not.
4) If you're going to advertise in the listing that you just put in a new tile floor, please be sure you actually knew how to install and grout tile. If the tile job is brand new, I expect even spacing, unbroken tiles and even grout lines. Just like with the paint comment above, if you don't know how to do it and do it well, please hire a professional. Please.
and last but not least
5) If you have pets in the home, try to take them with you for a showing, or at least notify the agents that a pet is in the home, and wether it is or is not friendly. If you MUST leave your pets home, they should be crated, to allow potential buyers to move through your home safely. One home had a dog loose in the back yard. Friendly, but still. Yet another had a dog or maybe 2 little dogs gated in a laundry room. A laundry room I was unable to get into to look at because of the yappy barky dogs. The same home with the yappy dogs, also had a nice pile of dog crap on the downstairs rug. Um.... Gross. And I'm so NOT BUYING YOUR HOUSE!
6) I hate the scented candles and sprays that overpower my nose. If you have to spray these in the house, I'm not enjoying the scent, I'm wondering what odor you're trying to cover up.
Any one of the above things is enough to turn me off, and any one of them could be or WAS the reason I'm not buying your house. And the one with the dog crap on the rug... was also the one with the poorly done interior paint job and the one with the sloppy tile work. And the best part... If none of those things had been amiss, I might have bought that house. Because it was one of my favorites in the pictures.
At this point ther are so many houses on the market with similar floor plans and features, that unless your house is something special, or you've got a remarkable piece of property, you are competing with a hundred other houses almost exactly like yours. The difference between a sale, and a disappointing showing could be as simple as taking out the trash, or cleaning up after your dog.
And yes paint is cheap, but your buyer doesn't want to have to paint before they move in. SO maybe its time to rethink the unique paint job.
We've been inside a few houses, and looked at over a hundred online. Some are very nice houses, with prices I wish we could've afforded. But alas.. the budget won out. We didn't want to eat Ramen every other day for the next 10 years. Some other houses were very nice, just not what we were looking for. Some houses we knew would be gamble, and the smart part of our brains won, and we didn't go that direction. Others, just UGH!
Just a couple tips for anyone out there trying to sell your house.
1) Paint is cheap. You're more likely to sell your house if the buyers arent repulsed and revolted by your paint job. Your 4 year old princess may have loved the cotton candy pink, with silver clouds on the ceiling, but Me.... not so much.
2) If you can't paint well,or don't know what the hell you're doing, hire a painter. A crappy paint job is (in my opinion) worse than the obnixious hot pink.
3) Put good pictures of your house in your listing. If the pictures look like crap, I don't see how great your house really is. And I'm deleting it from my list. It amazed me during our search how many real estate agents took and or used really crappy pictures. And make sure yor house is clean when the photos are taken. Packing boxes I can understand , as well as things that indicate your house is lived in. But dirty dishes in the sink, visibly overflowing trash, and cluttered countertops, walls, floors, couches etc.. don't attract buyers. If you can't be bothered to clean up a little for the pictures, what does that say about how you take care of the house the rest of the time. I'm assuming if you can't take out trash or do dishes, then you definitely haven't had time for event the most basic maintenance tasks, and that there will be issues with the house. If you have pets, they probably shouldn't be in the pictures. Do you really want a prospective buyer to know you have 6 indoor cats? I think not.
4) If you're going to advertise in the listing that you just put in a new tile floor, please be sure you actually knew how to install and grout tile. If the tile job is brand new, I expect even spacing, unbroken tiles and even grout lines. Just like with the paint comment above, if you don't know how to do it and do it well, please hire a professional. Please.
and last but not least
5) If you have pets in the home, try to take them with you for a showing, or at least notify the agents that a pet is in the home, and wether it is or is not friendly. If you MUST leave your pets home, they should be crated, to allow potential buyers to move through your home safely. One home had a dog loose in the back yard. Friendly, but still. Yet another had a dog or maybe 2 little dogs gated in a laundry room. A laundry room I was unable to get into to look at because of the yappy barky dogs. The same home with the yappy dogs, also had a nice pile of dog crap on the downstairs rug. Um.... Gross. And I'm so NOT BUYING YOUR HOUSE!
6) I hate the scented candles and sprays that overpower my nose. If you have to spray these in the house, I'm not enjoying the scent, I'm wondering what odor you're trying to cover up.
Any one of the above things is enough to turn me off, and any one of them could be or WAS the reason I'm not buying your house. And the one with the dog crap on the rug... was also the one with the poorly done interior paint job and the one with the sloppy tile work. And the best part... If none of those things had been amiss, I might have bought that house. Because it was one of my favorites in the pictures.
At this point ther are so many houses on the market with similar floor plans and features, that unless your house is something special, or you've got a remarkable piece of property, you are competing with a hundred other houses almost exactly like yours. The difference between a sale, and a disappointing showing could be as simple as taking out the trash, or cleaning up after your dog.
And yes paint is cheap, but your buyer doesn't want to have to paint before they move in. SO maybe its time to rethink the unique paint job.
A New Year indeed.
Happy belated New Year to everyone. (Really? Who am I kidding. No one reads this crap anyway!)
Anyway.. It's been a little over ayear since I started writing. I haven't posted nearly as often as I intended, but having an actual life takes up a lot of time! And that's what a lot of last year was about, starting to have an actual life again.
In the past year things have changed so much. I've moved 1100 miles. And for a relatively new (and complicated) relationship that had been up to that point, mostly long distance. Started a new job. Said goodbye to someone very important to me after helping him get through his last few days of life comfortably. Endured more family drama in a week or two than anyone should ever have to deal with in a lifetime. Started another new temporary job, as for various reasons the previously mentioned new job, didn't pan out like I'd hoped. Moved again for temporary job, as this job was about 175 miles from my new home. Had temporary job become even more temporary when several people came off disability leave earlier than planned. Started yet another new job. Continued to endure family drama of the "I wish I could drop off the face of the earth and have no one find me" kind. Spent a ginormous amount of money dealing with said family drama and dealing with the final stages of my long awaited divorce. The divorce was final shortly before the end of the year.
It's a new year. I'm not starting out fresh this year like I did last January, I still have family drama. Although it's not so bad I want to disappear anymore, just bad enough to earn me a glass (bottle?) of wine every so often. The last new job has turned into "the" job. I am happily getting to know people at work, and I am happy about going to work every day. I'm enjoying what I do, and the people and patients I do it with. That's pretty good. Some things are new this year. We (reference previously mentioned complicted relationship) are deep into the process of buying a house. Hopefully to be moved by mid March. By that time we will have spent a year in the old place together. Lots of memories. The three of us are starting the next part of our adventure together in a place that is "Ours"
There's going to be a lot of things to do this year. Lots of packing and unpacking. (There are still boxes in NY with a family member that we still ned to figure out how to gt out here without breaking the bank.) There will be some remodeling, or finishing of some space in the new place, a garden to start, and hopefully some downtime for all of us to just enjoy being "US"
Last year was tough, in a lot of ways. But nothing worth it is ever easy.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
Anyway.. It's been a little over ayear since I started writing. I haven't posted nearly as often as I intended, but having an actual life takes up a lot of time! And that's what a lot of last year was about, starting to have an actual life again.
In the past year things have changed so much. I've moved 1100 miles. And for a relatively new (and complicated) relationship that had been up to that point, mostly long distance. Started a new job. Said goodbye to someone very important to me after helping him get through his last few days of life comfortably. Endured more family drama in a week or two than anyone should ever have to deal with in a lifetime. Started another new temporary job, as for various reasons the previously mentioned new job, didn't pan out like I'd hoped. Moved again for temporary job, as this job was about 175 miles from my new home. Had temporary job become even more temporary when several people came off disability leave earlier than planned. Started yet another new job. Continued to endure family drama of the "I wish I could drop off the face of the earth and have no one find me" kind. Spent a ginormous amount of money dealing with said family drama and dealing with the final stages of my long awaited divorce. The divorce was final shortly before the end of the year.
It's a new year. I'm not starting out fresh this year like I did last January, I still have family drama. Although it's not so bad I want to disappear anymore, just bad enough to earn me a glass (bottle?) of wine every so often. The last new job has turned into "the" job. I am happily getting to know people at work, and I am happy about going to work every day. I'm enjoying what I do, and the people and patients I do it with. That's pretty good. Some things are new this year. We (reference previously mentioned complicted relationship) are deep into the process of buying a house. Hopefully to be moved by mid March. By that time we will have spent a year in the old place together. Lots of memories. The three of us are starting the next part of our adventure together in a place that is "Ours"
There's going to be a lot of things to do this year. Lots of packing and unpacking. (There are still boxes in NY with a family member that we still ned to figure out how to gt out here without breaking the bank.) There will be some remodeling, or finishing of some space in the new place, a garden to start, and hopefully some downtime for all of us to just enjoy being "US"
Last year was tough, in a lot of ways. But nothing worth it is ever easy.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)