Fridays and Work and House Hunting
Jan. 24th, 2025 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI'm mostly back on a Monday to Friday schedule, even though I am working shifts again. I work two weekends every two months, and am rewarded with nearly two weeks off every two months as well. The rest of the time, though, I work Monday to Friday, albeit different hours than most people. For three weeks I work from either 8 to 4 or 7 to 3, and then I work a week of evening shifts, and then a week of night shifts plus the weekend, followed by five days off and then one weekend of day shifts.
So Fridays have resumed being the last day of the work week for me, for the most part, and Mondays are the first day of the week, which means that I'm being slowly reintroduced to looking forward to specific days of the week (e.g. Friday). It's a kind of novel feeling, even after two-odd years of working a regular schedule, because I spent so many years just dreading the first day of whatever "block" I was working and not associating that with any specific day of the week.
To be fair, there's very little dread these days. I'm still very much in the honeymoon period of this new job. My coworkers are all varying degrees of nice so far, and while there's the usual array of personalities with some who are more inclined to work hard than others, no one is actively an asshole. More importantly the manager appears to be a genuinely good guy, and if there's anything I have learned in 17+ years of working in the government, it's the manager that makes or breaks a department. So I'm cautiously optimistic that, as long as the current guy stays here (and he's fairly young and doesn't look like he's dying to climb further up the ranks right now), I should be okay. I'm currently looking at a minimum of 19 years before I can retire, so I'd really rather not spend all that time working for people who make me miserable. Should I be able to rise above poor management? Probably. But it's not a skill I've mastered, and I doubt I will ever fully master it before I'm either of retirement age or dead, whichever comes first.
KK is currently dealing with her manager, who is just kinda casually ableist and is therefore making her life extra hard. KK has had to either work from home or take sick days the past little while because her arthritis has been making it incredibly painful for her to go into the office three days a week, and her manager is taking umbrage. She (the manager) has moved into "performance management" mode on this, and is now officially documenting how KK is not being compliant with the Treasury Board directive on working three days in office. She has written down that the reason for KK's failure to attend is the dog and my work schedule, which is absolutely not true. The epileptic chihuahua and my shift schedule make things more complicated, for sure, but KK has been working around both those things, and what causes her actual absences is her chronic pain, which is made exponentially worse by having to go into the office as often as she does.
I am livid on her behalf, of course, but luckily KK is well versed in her rights and obligations as a federal employee, and is now taking action accordingly (the "performance management" conversations officially began yesterday). She's in an unrepresented position, meaning she doesn't get to have a union representative, but she still has all the same rights, so she's planning on talking to the Ombudsperson for Workplace Health and Safety today. If it comes down to it she can file a complaint based on a Human Rights Violation, but hopefully it won't come to that. She works in a tiny office (10 people or so), and it's never great to have a totally adversarial relationship with one's manager.
The manager says that she's been getting complaints from other employees about KK not coming in, for which I have no sympathy at all. As a manager, it's up to you to manage your employees, and that includes managing their expectations and telling them to mind their p's and q's when it comes to other people's business. If KK was having actual performance issues that had a direct impact on their work, that's one thing, but whether she does her work from home or the office has no bearing on the quality of said work. Apparently the manager's boss has also remarked on it, but again, as the manager it's up to her to explain that KK has a medical condition that needs accommodation. Of course, that's not what the manager has been doing and has instead thrown KK fully under the proverbial bus, which is infuriating, but hopefully they will get that straightened out soon.
On top of it all, the manager is faking concern that KK "doesn't do well" psychologically when she's at home all the time. In her capacity as a mental health professional, I guess. *eyeroll* She has absolutely zero basis for this opinion, of course. She herself is of the opinion that "no one does well on their own," which is, you know, her opinion, man. She has no qualifications to make mental health assessments, and so I am just adding that to the category of casual ableism.
That manager is lucky I'm not in their office, because I'd be obligated to go throttle her for the benefit of humanity.
In other news, we're going to see at least one more house tomorrow, possibly two. I say possibly because my real estate agent says the second already has two offers on it and may be conditionally sold by the time we get to it. It's not surprising, because it's a "turn-key" house on 1 acre of property at a very competitive price for the market. The price honestly made me wonder what was wrong with it. ;) I think it's probably because it's actually a really, really small house. Like, not quite Tiny House proportions, but really on the small side.
The other house has a lot less property but looks to be bigger, and also seems pretty turn-key by the looks of things. That being said, it's about $40k more. Still within my price range, but much more in line with real estate prices in the area these days.
It would be nice to see both houses and see if either or both would be a good fit. This isn't truly an ideal time to be buying a house for me, since I'm a little on the strapped-for-immediate-cash side of things, but if we find a house that we absolutely fall in love with I can probably swing it. I just have to get my shit together and hope that the deposit required isn't horrendously high. I'm honestly still a little insulted that there's a deposit required in Ontario, when that wasn't at all a requirement when I was purchasing a house in Québec. What's so different between my home province and this one, I'd like to ask?
In the meantime, a third house has cropped up! So I have asked if we can see that too. Our poor real estate agent will be run off her feet tomorrow. Usually we see one house and that's it, but tomorrow it might be as many as three. Yikes. It's January. I have no idea why there are suddenly a bunch of houses on the market within our price range that actually look like they could be a decent fit, but I am not complaining. Well, I am complaining a tiny bit, but mostly because I really wanted another couple of months to save up more money for a deposit. But mostly I'm not complaining. Mostly.
So Fridays have resumed being the last day of the work week for me, for the most part, and Mondays are the first day of the week, which means that I'm being slowly reintroduced to looking forward to specific days of the week (e.g. Friday). It's a kind of novel feeling, even after two-odd years of working a regular schedule, because I spent so many years just dreading the first day of whatever "block" I was working and not associating that with any specific day of the week.
To be fair, there's very little dread these days. I'm still very much in the honeymoon period of this new job. My coworkers are all varying degrees of nice so far, and while there's the usual array of personalities with some who are more inclined to work hard than others, no one is actively an asshole. More importantly the manager appears to be a genuinely good guy, and if there's anything I have learned in 17+ years of working in the government, it's the manager that makes or breaks a department. So I'm cautiously optimistic that, as long as the current guy stays here (and he's fairly young and doesn't look like he's dying to climb further up the ranks right now), I should be okay. I'm currently looking at a minimum of 19 years before I can retire, so I'd really rather not spend all that time working for people who make me miserable. Should I be able to rise above poor management? Probably. But it's not a skill I've mastered, and I doubt I will ever fully master it before I'm either of retirement age or dead, whichever comes first.
KK is currently dealing with her manager, who is just kinda casually ableist and is therefore making her life extra hard. KK has had to either work from home or take sick days the past little while because her arthritis has been making it incredibly painful for her to go into the office three days a week, and her manager is taking umbrage. She (the manager) has moved into "performance management" mode on this, and is now officially documenting how KK is not being compliant with the Treasury Board directive on working three days in office. She has written down that the reason for KK's failure to attend is the dog and my work schedule, which is absolutely not true. The epileptic chihuahua and my shift schedule make things more complicated, for sure, but KK has been working around both those things, and what causes her actual absences is her chronic pain, which is made exponentially worse by having to go into the office as often as she does.
I am livid on her behalf, of course, but luckily KK is well versed in her rights and obligations as a federal employee, and is now taking action accordingly (the "performance management" conversations officially began yesterday). She's in an unrepresented position, meaning she doesn't get to have a union representative, but she still has all the same rights, so she's planning on talking to the Ombudsperson for Workplace Health and Safety today. If it comes down to it she can file a complaint based on a Human Rights Violation, but hopefully it won't come to that. She works in a tiny office (10 people or so), and it's never great to have a totally adversarial relationship with one's manager.
The manager says that she's been getting complaints from other employees about KK not coming in, for which I have no sympathy at all. As a manager, it's up to you to manage your employees, and that includes managing their expectations and telling them to mind their p's and q's when it comes to other people's business. If KK was having actual performance issues that had a direct impact on their work, that's one thing, but whether she does her work from home or the office has no bearing on the quality of said work. Apparently the manager's boss has also remarked on it, but again, as the manager it's up to her to explain that KK has a medical condition that needs accommodation. Of course, that's not what the manager has been doing and has instead thrown KK fully under the proverbial bus, which is infuriating, but hopefully they will get that straightened out soon.
On top of it all, the manager is faking concern that KK "doesn't do well" psychologically when she's at home all the time. In her capacity as a mental health professional, I guess. *eyeroll* She has absolutely zero basis for this opinion, of course. She herself is of the opinion that "no one does well on their own," which is, you know, her opinion, man. She has no qualifications to make mental health assessments, and so I am just adding that to the category of casual ableism.
That manager is lucky I'm not in their office, because I'd be obligated to go throttle her for the benefit of humanity.
In other news, we're going to see at least one more house tomorrow, possibly two. I say possibly because my real estate agent says the second already has two offers on it and may be conditionally sold by the time we get to it. It's not surprising, because it's a "turn-key" house on 1 acre of property at a very competitive price for the market. The price honestly made me wonder what was wrong with it. ;) I think it's probably because it's actually a really, really small house. Like, not quite Tiny House proportions, but really on the small side.
The other house has a lot less property but looks to be bigger, and also seems pretty turn-key by the looks of things. That being said, it's about $40k more. Still within my price range, but much more in line with real estate prices in the area these days.
It would be nice to see both houses and see if either or both would be a good fit. This isn't truly an ideal time to be buying a house for me, since I'm a little on the strapped-for-immediate-cash side of things, but if we find a house that we absolutely fall in love with I can probably swing it. I just have to get my shit together and hope that the deposit required isn't horrendously high. I'm honestly still a little insulted that there's a deposit required in Ontario, when that wasn't at all a requirement when I was purchasing a house in Québec. What's so different between my home province and this one, I'd like to ask?
In the meantime, a third house has cropped up! So I have asked if we can see that too. Our poor real estate agent will be run off her feet tomorrow. Usually we see one house and that's it, but tomorrow it might be as many as three. Yikes. It's January. I have no idea why there are suddenly a bunch of houses on the market within our price range that actually look like they could be a decent fit, but I am not complaining. Well, I am complaining a tiny bit, but mostly because I really wanted another couple of months to save up more money for a deposit. But mostly I'm not complaining. Mostly.
