Tight customers and bosses who dont listen!!!!

[allstarit]

Essentially they would call me with one simple problem, I'd get there, and there was a damned list a mile long nobody told me about.

Oh man i get this with one client - every time-- While your here...pulls out a gigantic list of things.

 

[allstarit]

I don't recommend quitting without thinking. I did just that about a week ago and panicked a bit after. I did it just in the heat of the moment after getting fed up with something there. Told him this was my 2weeks notice. I didn't think it through enough to properly determine if I had enough saved (I probably did, but just barely).

Thankfully my boss really needs me, and we agreed that I could just work part time there instead while I worked on my own business. Now I'll have enough time to think about it, and really focus on my business until I can more naturally leave. Plus the reduced hours here will mean less unnecessary stress in my life.

Im in no position to leave just yet- I have a long term plan to build my business up whilst having full time income. Im looking at other avenues like hiring a contract worker or part timer to help me maybe. They can be my go to person when im at work and have a urgent issue that needs attending too.

Being part time at my FT job wont work for me as im helpdesk manager and manage 5 techs. Maybe try go for a once a month work from home or something but cant see it happening yet.

 

[allstarit]

he actually used the words "beck and call".

I sort of get this as well - "Peter its part of your Salary to be available after hours and on weekends!!!"

So when we work projects on a weekend we get paid for this but if its after hours work ect its part of my "salary" so no extra pay for this type of work. Luckily i dont get a lot of after hours calls as things run pretty smooth.

 

[fencepost]

Oh man i get this with one client - every time-- While your here...pulls out a gigantic list of things.

As long as you know it's coming, that's not always a bad thing - what might be a short visit is now several hours of billable work, just make sure a copy of that list is kept and on the invoice/ticket(s)/etc.

Peter its part of your Salary to be available after hours and on weekends!!!

Well, be sure to keep track of your time on that - dunno what the labor laws down there are, but I'm pretty sure there can be some situations in the US (or some states) where things like that might allow for either overtime pay or comp time.

 

[MotzTech]

Have the guy buy office365 home. 5 pcs for $99 a year

Please tell me you are joking......

 

[Kirby]

Oh man i get this with one client - every time-- While your here...pulls out a gigantic list of things.

I've had to start explaining to these customers how "scheduling" works and I have allotted an amount of time for them to do the things on the list they had given me and no more. I would be happy to do the rest, though. When would you like to schedule that work?

I sort of get this as well - "Peter its part of your Salary to be available after hours and on weekends!!!"

I could see that in some cases. But after 2 years of 40+ hour weeks on straight commission, answering phones and doing free work for his friends during that time, the added "salary" I got took me up to a paltry $26K a year, and that INCLUDES the commission. So it wasn't a $26K salary, it was a much smaller salary plus commission adding up to about $26k. For twice that, beck and call it is! But the only reason he even gave me the salary is because it was illegal to require me to work 40+ hour weeks on straight commission. I spent many a Saturday there doing nothing but free tech support, making nothing for the day's work.

Don't take it the wrong way, though. I loved my work and I loved working for him most of the time. But I'm one of those people who "simmers". I'm non confrontational most of the time. By the time I lash out we have a serious problem. Which reminds me of a funny story! Please forgive the off-topic content, but it's a good story!

There was one time when he wanted me to go right away to a customer site and install antivirus for them. I'm in the office for an hour waiting for the antivirus to come in when he calls. He immediately starts chewing my ass for not having done that already. I explain that I was waiting for the product to come in and he says to just take our disk and install it on all the computers. He treated me like someone who WASN'T at the shop at 2AM many nights making sure we were caught up, or someone who DIDN'T come in on a Sunday to shovel the snow off the sidewalks without being asked or paid to do so. So I hung up on him and I left to do the job.

The job went well. Our version of Norton Antivirus was 2003. They wanted the latest, 2004. So I turned around and came straight back to find out the shipment arrived minutes after I had left, and was still the wrong version. The secretary told me he had called back immediately and demanded to talk to me. She shyly told me that he had said if I ever hang up on him again I would be fired. I chuckled. He didn't come in or call back all day until the end of the day, so we both had all day to stew. So when he did call back moments before close, we were both cautious at first. He asked how it went, I told him I put in an order for what they actually wanted and would go back and do it when it came in. He understood and the conversation was mostly civil. But I was still ******. I'm nobody's whipping boy. When all the business was settled he calmly said, "If you ever hang up on me again I'll fire you." I thought about that a moment, I replied "Okay" and I hung up and started collecting my things. He called back immediately, I answered "I'll slide the key under the door after I lock up." THEN we had to talk about it. The absolutes just disappeared at that point.

He was a good business man. He knew what he had, he just didn't want to admit it to me. I was loyal as a puppy, I was good at it and I worked hard without complaints. I think I spoiled him too much. I took one sick day in 4 3/4 years and that lead to a 45 minute chew out about how hard the day had been for him when I didn't go to work that single day, but he bought me lunch to chew me out over being sick the previous day. Still, it wasn't fun having to point out that I had never missed a day of work before that and that I was really sick the day before.