Frustrations

JT job is really pissing me off and to an extent JT. He doesn't have an office, he has a van which he has to drive over 1/2 - 2/3 of the state on any given day (they have even tried to send him to other states). He can spend six to eight hours behind the wheel on a fairly normal day. This is because we are in a rural state where the companies customers are spread out all over the damn place. He services and repairs mostly computer registers for grocery and retail outlets. His company or more specifically his boss like to play a juggling game with his hours and overtime. Overtime happens in this job a lot. It's not created by slowness it's just the nature of the job. If you have to drive 2 - 3 hour to get to the store to work for 20 minutes on the equipment and then drive back and do other calls along the way or in town then you are going to have overtime. There is just so much a person can squeeze into 8 hours. The way calls operate is that they are dispatched and rated on importance from a 1 - 4 with 1 being immediate priority. Something with an immediate priority usually has a 3 - 4 hour repair clock ticking on it that begins when the store called it in. They have to make it to the store and complete the repair in that time. It's in the stores contract with the company and most of the stores can cancel the contract if the company misses something like more than 5% of those deadlines in a month. 2 and 3 level calls can have between 8 and 24 hours (can't remember the specifics), but if you get say two level 2s at the same store at the same time it ups it to a level 1 and changes the time frame. Level four are low priority and don't usually have a time but need to be done within a few days anyway. Stores can call in things anywhere from 7am to 11pm. If the whole register thing is down though they can call it in at anytime, like say 5am. There are only two guys to cover this territory and do this work. Well a third is sort of there but he's not on call and isn't trained on most of the stuff because his primary job is something else. Sometimes they even have to do other parts of the state because the contractors in those areas don't want to or can't do the job when it has to be done. Because of all these crazy time demands, contract obligations, two people doing it all, and all the distance to travel from place to place over time is unavoidable.

JT has been dispatched to call at 3:30 in the morning and 11:30 at night. He is on call for seven days in a row, twice a month, for after hours calls (6pm -8:30 am as well as every other Sunday).He only has 3 days off every 14 days. Sometimes a lot of overtime happens and sometimes hardly any happens. Overtime cost money and the company is all about the money. Since he started working for them they have tried all kinds of things to cut back on overtime despite the fact that when he was hired he was guaranteed overtime and in fact told he would be obligated to work it. His latest boss has decided that they must balance out all overtime by making them take days/hours off in whatever amount of overtime they rack up each week. This while still requiring them to be on call and take calls at night and weekends after their regular shifts.

It's pissing me off. JT shouldn't have to drop everything we are doing on a Sunday afternoon or a wed night to drive to Hays and back but then not get decent compensation for the interruption of his life by getting to keep that as overtime. He gets phone calls from his boss all the time on his "off days" that he doesn't get paid for either. It's not a minute or two either. He can have a couple of 15 - 20 minutes calls a day on his day off! His boss knows his days off but doesn't seem to respect them. The company has skipped out on bonuses and raises as well.

I'm mad at JT because he never even asked his immediate boss if this balancing thing was anew company thing or just a new policy of his boss. it makes a huge difference in the end. If it's company policy then it's just more ridiculousness from some nameless dud in Japan. If it's his bosses newest idea it is simply to make his boss look real good to his boss and get himself a raise or bonus all well screwing over the guys beneath him. His boss is known as a stickler for regulations and a tightwad so I really believe it's all to benefit him while screwing others. I'd like JT to just straight out ask. If it's a company policy thing then it will probably pass on by when it's shown not to work well or the financial quarter they are pinching pennies in passes. Limits on overtime have come down from the top before and passed pretty quickly. If it's all to benefit his boss then I think he should just say no to working beyond his scheduled 40 a week. He isn't getting any benefit for never being able to plan to do anything or dropping everything and int erupting our lives to go do something for his job. On call simply isn't worth it if you don't get decent compensation and treated in an appreciative manner for it. JT says it's pushing it to simply ask why and who decided that nobody could have beyond their 40 a week now. I think it's simply asking for clarification on a subject that is becoming a huge problem for those in the field. He also says if they just say no to working after hours then they will just have to start working weird shifts and weekend days to have coverage. I'd rather have that. With that at least we know when he is working and not working and there would be no more sitting on our butts not doing anything for fear that he would get a call or being woken up with 5am oe midnight surprise calls. He wouldn't have to quit watching a movie in the middle of a day off to go put in six hours of work. We could plan a life around his work even with a weird shift schedule. The only reason I haven't gone insane with the weird hours and dropping everything and having to explain to the kids why dad is not their yet again is because of the overtime pay that was paying our bills.

He can't exactly quit the job but I'm strongly encouraging him to keep looking for a new one and to beef up his resume so that he is more desirable to other companies. He does really good in this job, gets all kinds of pats on the back and has wanted to move up the line into higher positions.Sadly the company is treating him, as an employee, like shit when they insist he forget about having a life in order to serve the company and then want to take away the one thing that makes it a tiny bit worth it. Not to mention for all the praise they give him for doing so great they haven't given a raise and the bonuses they dangle in front of him as possible always seem to disappear around the time they were suppose to appear. It just doesn't inspire any company loyalty from employees.

School

Schooling kinda sucks around here. Sure we are having some good times but it's really been bumpy lately. We started out the years doing well. Hannah was really enjoying both the online classes and the classes at the high school. She was doing the work with very little prompting or nagging and I really didn't feel like I needed to check up on her a lot. The younger kids were really enjoying the seat work they asked for and we were doing some pretty cool units. As time has worn on though we seem to have hit a lot of pot holes. Homeschooling is a very hard job and I spend a lot of time thinking nothing I am doing is right.

Jason has meltdown fits more often than not over school work. Hailey needs me to guide her step by step through each letter she writes or group of objects she counts up on every paper. neither of them are big on following directions and then get really upset when something doesn't turn out right. They even skip numbers in dot to dots because they think they know what the pic is and then get mad when they were wrong! Xavier only wants to do the work they are doing which he can't because he hasn't got a clue about letters or words and that is what they are doing. I've given him workbooks over the same material and told him to go ahead and do it but then he gets mad because he doesn't know how and doesn't understand it. It would be funny if it weren't so hard to deal with his frustration and tears. A few good and memorable things have happened though. Jason read his first book out loud to me. Hailey has decided she really likes adding and she has picked up on phonic sounds without any particular help from me. Jason struggles a little with this and when he's having trouble with a letter sound or the many sounds a vowel can make she often pops up with the answer for him. Xavier has learned to do puzzles and candy Land really well plus he's got his colors and shapes down really well.

I wish I could find something nice to say about Hannah and school or even her in general really. it makes me sad that I can't.

Hannah stopped doing almost all of her online class work and was telling us she was doing it. She is about six weeks behind in most of her classes now. I found this out a couple weeks ago and there was a huge, mega huge blow up over it. I was furious and hurt that she would just lie to us like this. We were asking her all time how specific classes were going, did she need any help, doing anything interesting, have you finished your work for the day and such. She was just streaming us a crap load of lies. Then when I confronted her about the lies and told her how frustrated and hurt I was and wanted to know why she hadn't done any work and then lied about it, she told me it was all my fault as well as a few other things which she blamed me for. Oh yeah I was pissed and did things I'm not terribly proud of.

In the end we took away her social life, computer in the bedroom privilege and made her do school work at certain times in the kitchen where she could be seen doing it. I really thought this would be motivation to stop lying and just do the damn work. For two weeks she sat in the kitchen logged into her classes just not doing a damn bit of work! I really didn't think I would need to sit next to her and check up on her hourly to prevent her from lying more but apparently I was wrong. I've now had to set an hour by hour schedule of what class she works on when and she's literally working form 8am to 9 or 10 at night, plus Sat and Sun in order to get caught up. I have to go in and do check of what assignments in what areas have ben turned in every single day now. I absolutely hate this!!!! She's still making every excuse in the world as to why she can't do it, it doesn't work or she doesn't understand it. I'm really going to lose it one of these times and smack the crap out of her when she's having one of her little temper tantrums. It's not that she doesn't understand she just doesn't want to do the work, read the lessons, do the problems and then skip right to a quiz and get pissed that she doesn't know the answers. She has done this in all of her online subjects. She has become a horrible brat in so many ways I've actually looked at boarding school costs a few times. JT is very little help in any of this. He thinks I either over react or am being to harsh, he's not here to deal with it and when he is here he doesn't want to be bothered with dealing with it.

I'd let her just fail but it has no meaning to her. She doesn't care about passing or failing. She has no particular plans for college so a GPA means nothing to her. She also doesn't seem to care about having to repeat the classes. I've made it clear that at this point I am not going back to traditionally home schooling her so if she thinks that she'll get an easy diploma from me when she bombs public school, she's nuts.