Be warned in advance. This is a rant. It has nothing to do with my usual long-drawn-out descriptions of playing music in bars around the world. But I do hope it will be at least as entertaining as a night at an open mic….
On 6 Dec. after 33 years as an employee of a company, I went freelance. The plan is to continue to do everything I always did – journalism, writing, music, film – but to be accountable only to myself, and the private company I am currently creating, which I will call: Unfinished Business. But, astoundingly, since my official separation from my employer – I was one of 69 people fired – and my decision to work only for myself, I have actually been involved in the most absurd, at times laughable, and always frustrating task of doing other peoples’ jobs for them!
For the last two months, almost every time I have had to deal with people employed to serve me – through me paying them for a service, or through government agencies, public positions, private businesses etc. – the employed individuals have not quite done their jobs correctly, not paid attention to essential details, which has in turn led to infuriating situations of me working overtime trying to resolve the consequences from the lack of attention to those details. Ultimately, it has felt at times like this has become my new full-time job.
If you think I am exaggerating or have unrealistically high ideas of a work ethic, just take a look at this incredible string of events over the last two months, this unfortunate list of 15 excruciating events that has occupied me in near full-time employment unravelling jobs-not-well-done, and let me know if you can relate to this – or worse, have your own excruciating list of such events:
- The annual, so-called “check-up” for my apartment’s heater turned into a one-week ordeal of emails, telephone calls, early morning meetings with a technician over the machine that had heated my home and water perfectly for years after it broke down the night following the technician’s visit since he destroyed a regulating valve during the check up. One week to get them to repair the damage, and accept that I did not have to pay an extra fee for the valve they broke.
- Three hours lost – instead of 15 minutes – and several days of stress created over a government official’s lack of attention to a detail sending me the wrong form letter invitation to a vitally important meeting that was supposed to be done by phone, but for which due to the incorrect letter, I was obliged to show up at the office of the agency, where I was unwanted.
- An hour wait for both me and for the doctor at a check up, due to an error by one receptionist who failed to send the doctor the message and a lie by her replacement when I asked 30 minutes into the wait if it was normal, and she said, “Yes,” claiming without knowing it that the wait was entirely normal as the doctor was delayed, when in fact the doctor was just waiting for me in frustration.
- Several days of email communications, stress, and confusion over the sending of official documents to various government agencies after a staff member went on sick leave while preparing important documents for me which then lay in limbo for weeks.
- Due to a Paris metro trip from my home to the Gare de Lyon taking 1 hour 13 minutes instead of 25 minutes thanks to a so-called suspicious object, I missed a train to Milan from Paris and lost the 38-euro cost of the train ticket and was obliged to buy a 114-euro ticket for the next train that left 4-hours later.
- That delay led to me going into a nearby Fnac store where I ended up paying 500 euros for the wrong handheld steady-cam thanks to a salesman not giving me correct information about the model of the camera – and loss of time and money in an international call over this error.
- Endless visits to the ticket office of the Paris metro, missed metros, and sometimes lost tickets, due to some Metro employee’s new, poor choice of cardboard for the Paris metro tickets, which is ultra-sensitive to whatever happens to be in my pockets – like keys, credit cards or lint – that then demagnetizes the tickets.
- Spending 1125 euros on new eyeglasses that do not work correctly as they were either poorly mounted or poorly prescribed; with the even worse insult of two months’ occupation in sending documents, emails, return visits, and debates, due to a poor job of filing the papers by the optician as I try to be reimbursed for at least part of the cost of these glasses from the Social Security and private health insurance.
- A failed battle to receive an adequate sick leave note from a house call doctor for the horrendous case of the flu of my son – which lasted nearly a week.
- The subsequent more than an hourlong battle to find a pharmacy open on the Sunday to buy his medication after the officially assigned pharmacy for that Sunday’s opening was closed for no apparent reason, despite its legal requirement to be open.
- Having to pack up and carry internationally across Europe from Milan to Paris and then Paris back to Milan an electric moka machine that I bought in Milan and found defective once I got it back to Paris.
- Returning from Milan earlier than I wanted to in order to attend a meeting at my bank in France only to have the meeting cancelled at the last minute, thus robbing me of my time in Milan and causing extra work to set up a new meeting.
- Paying 23 euros, plus 2 euros tip, for a very bad, rushed, haircut so inadequately done that it required another haircut to make up for it, despite having previously discovered a great place where I can get my haircut just fine for 10 euros, plus tip, but deciding to be loyal to the more expensive place as a good client.
- A more than weeklong battle with The New Yorker to be reimbursed for having accidentally taken out two 146-euro annual subscriptions from the web site because there was no adequate confirmation that my first subscription had been registered.
- Repeated calls, emails, stress and information sent to a new potential colleague who failed to correctly either save or understand the information in the first place.
So tell me, is there really a conspiracy against the unemployed by the employed – to do their jobs for them – or am I just over sensitive and this just happens to all of us all of the time due to the fact that most of us, while employed, may officially be categorised as sleepwalkers? Or is this just one of those classic cases of work filling out the time available to achieve it – i.e., I have so much time on my hands now that regular daily tasks will take all that time in order to be completed? Only time will tell….