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1:44 p.m. - 2004-01-10
Stormy Weather.
I've been having difficulty understanding why I felt so overwhelmed this week. Yes there were a lot of challenges, but broken down one by one - the way I usually deal with things - nothing was insurmountable. Haven't I done that for years and sometimes in much more difficult situations? I've always been capable of making things work somehow, fear notwithstanding. It wasn't the two fammily deaths in December - that brought grief and closure, not panic. So where was all that angst coming from - I spared you that as much as I could, dear diary, by just not writing.

Was ist den los? Finally the light dawned this morning. At the back of my mind was this little warning signal. My current contract is technically finished next Friday. I need to be dealing with that - or do I? Dumb question you'd think. Of course I have to find work quickly, I can't afford not to. But the intuition, which has been scary in it's accuracy and other signals are saying - not to worry. Internal storm raging just below the level of consciousness. Me being torn between wanting to deal with that or stay in denial. So all those other challenges just seemed to be too much to cope with without knowing why. Avoidance? Maybe.

So measuring pluses and minuses this week, and the shadowy forms of things to come what next? Hmmmmmmmmm.

Well the tiring things. Let's see then, weather and transit issues. No trains running rush hour morning on Monday in weather nearing -30 C/F. Transit's solution on Tuesday, with no change in weather? Well you see, our trains get their energy through wind power, a wonderful conversion to a non-polluting fuel. The problem is that there wasn't enough wind energy being generated to both get the trains running and heat them at the same time - that is why they hadn't run for a bit the morning rush hour the day before. I arrived downtown Tuesday morning on time and very, very alert - as in frozen like a popsicle. It was so cold in the cars, that I nearly had to get off halfway on the route to warm up in one of the stations. Now I'm a native of this city, I know how to dress for this frigid weather and I did. Guess you can imagine how cold it must have been. My solution, if we want to rely on wind power, is that extra energy be drawn from the hot air in the chambers of our political institutions. Should be enough to solve any energy crisis.

Wednesday was a bit different, still bitterly cold, but a Chinook (hot wind from the SW) due in by midnight. In otherwords, the high temperature for the day was about 10 degrees colder than the low temperature for that night. Got that? Human bodies don't always take to kindly to those reversals of the norm. Mine protests with full-blown migraines the 12 to 24 hours before the chinook arrives. Wednesday, I worked with the feeling that the top of my head was going to blow off at any moment. When I could see, it was with auras surrounding everything. Pretty, but not something one mentions to one's co-workers. "Hey did you know you've got this really psychedelic helix swirling around your mid-section?" Uh yeah.

Thursday was quiet where those two issues were concerned, but going home on Friday, almost all access into our area was shut down due to one major and two minor accidents at key intersections right at the beginning of the rush hour in the 'burbs. My youngest witnessed the worst accident between 4 and 4:30 pm while out walking. In the communities affected, there are approximately 80,000 residents. No movement allowed except on three narrow residential streets as detours. Finally got home near to 7 pm. Oh well. On each day there was a problem though, I got to spend the travel time talking with someone I might not normally have connected with and those conversations were each in different ways very fruitful and uplifting. So do I look at the plus or the minus. Guess I'll take the plus right? Can't change the circumstances that caused the encounters but why not savour that they had the chance to occur?

The other negatives had to do with work. First the liaison from this contract, C, came back to work on Monday after a two week holiday. She was quite upset with how much work I had been able to complete in that time and the fact that I had helped the scientists find a lot of material that they needed during her break. I had thought she'd be pleased. Obviously her interpretation was that I was trying to make her look bad. She had told the scientists the material they wanted didn't exist. I didn't know that, but I wouldn't have lied about it anyway. Also if she would stay off the phone and focus on learning more about her assigned tasks I wouldn't be any threat at all. Several times during the week she demanded to know why I had redone some of her tasks. She had made several errors, so I quietly fixed them and then showed her the reason without telling anyone else about it. She demanded I prove my choices. I could, because I wouldn't do it otherwise, but that made her even angrier. Can't win.

Finances. Tuesday, got a call from my supervisor, documented earlier. One begins to question one's judgement and worth when something like that is thrown at you - "we're cutting your pay by redefining what you call a task to something else". Then you start to question your worthiness to be paid if everyone else doesn't want to compensate you. But on the other hand, for several months one has been paid without them quibbling about it. So who's issue is it? Well, for my supervisor a year end accounting deadline had come up without he or his assistant being able to meet it because of their workloads. Not only that, they weren't allowed to call me at work because no one in the records group is willing to take messages for me, even though I am not allowed a phone. Decisions had to be made without consultation. They were made in a negative fashion toward me, because the client was getting pressure from her bosses to justify her expenditures and I got to be the fall-guy/girl. She told my supervisor she didn't see why she should pay for the tasks being done. Too late to make that determination after I've done the work already with her direction as well as consent, I think.

When I protested the decision, I was asked to send in my time sheet reflecting the changes made without my consent, IF I wanted to be paid on time mid-month. I divided my hours between time on the two tasks as they requested. However I did not alter the actual time on tasks. I had mentioned to A I had already undercharged for actual analysis tasks by 4 hours because R kept challenging those numbers. I expressed the view that changing the task allocation arbitrarily diminished the value of the work I do in the client's mind. Something that is already a problem. Finally, although it may be "just a few dollars" to others, the cumulative loss is not something I can afford, especially since I did not work for a portion of the year due to health reasons. There was one snide comment about "people who can't budget better over Christmas" made to me by one records staff member at the end of Thursday. Right, I successfully raised six sons on my own while living on less income than the poverty line for several of those years. It made me wonder if the issue of what I am paid is being discussed among staff despite privacy legislation.

The whole discussion is especially galling, given that I write my technical weekly reports at home. They each take a minimum of an hour and a half given the amount of detail that must be documented in each of them and there has been absolutely no compensation for that time invested, nor for the time in the evening I spend writing interim reports to my supervisor when problems arise during the work day. In addition, because I am not given access to a computer at work, I also have to document all my time on task at home in the evening which is also not compensated.

I noted that to alter a person's timesheet and not advise an employee of that, so that they have the opportunity to address any problems is unfair. I did not receive a phone call, e-mail, or any other form of communication at work or at home. The other contractors at the company have access to e-mail, phones and computers to do this administrative work during the day and they are paid for that time. It is not my fault that I do not have a telephone or computer at work - I have already protested that fact before. One person I know tried to call me at work through the main reception desk to ask if I would meet them at noon Thursday and was told "no such person works here", so I am basically isolated from all outside contact. That is probably a violation of the labour code, since I should be able to be reached in case of emergent issues - like my time sheets.

Add in similar issues with Elections Canada coming to a head this week too. I had my assignment from them in at the end of November. The commitment from them was that payment upon completion would be not much longer than three weeks. Around Christmas time. As I mentioned earlier, dear diary, I called just after Christmas to ask about the timing of payment only to be told that one missing piece of paper was blocking payment. No one had contacted me about the issue although we were told we would be called immediately if any questions or concerns arose. As a result of my call, the commitment was made that if I faxed that paper in the next day - December 31, I would be paid no later than this Friday - yesterday. No money in my account yesterday. I called them from my daytime work because I had no other options. I argued my case, being passed from person to person for nearly half an hour yesterday, all the while being on a phone that was within hearing distance of several other staff, because I'm not allowed to have access to a phone of my own while I'm working there.

After three months of working for a lower wage than I normally am paid to start with, plus a couple of months of no work when I fell and couldn't walk well enough to go to work, there was very little in the account to last to whenever either body deems me worthy to be paid, notwithstanding their contractual obligations and our labour laws. And my contract is supposed to end in a week. All single issues all can be addressed in time and resolved but the cumulative result was that overwhelmed, "what am I going to do" feeling.

So what are the pluses. Well first, I've already seen the value of the work I did on last year's contract at the same company, and I know there is a lot of environmental damage remediated as a result. During the call to Elections Canada, mention was made of another assignment coming up very soon. I don't think that after yesterday's discussion paying me on time is going to be as much of an issue so maybe this contract ending now isn't so bad. I go to Ottawa for training the second week in February and I do get paid for that time as well. At the end of yesterday, R came by to talk with me. Could we spend one afternoon next week working together on the problem issues I've identified that aren't addressed yet. Yes of course. Would I be able, if she can find the dollars in her budget, to work another week there. Fine - right now any money is better than no money. We'll talk about other things too. She mentioned another project in addition to one my supervisor let me know he was negotiating when we had our tiff on the 6th. So what does that foretell? Maybe nothing, but one of the records staff was checking later to see if I was willing to wait out an extended period while negotiations proceeded. No - there's a recruiter who asked me to let him know when I was available again. I'm e-mailing him on the weekend. Then, questions about other areas of skill or work I've done. OK. I know the company is considering major work in those areas, but I want a phone and a computer at the very least as part of the deal. The last question was really off the wall and I'm hoping it was rhetorical. Who was I dating? Are they affiliated with any other firm in this industry - you know that you mustn't take those kinds of risks. I don't know what propted that but usually those types of things don't get asked without a reason. I just verified that I hadn't dated since my marriage ended over a decade ago because I already had way more on my plate than I could handle as it was. Weird end to a strange week. So that's my story, dear diary.

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