Hi, I hope it’s ok to post this here. I have followed this sub for a long time but not posted.
I quit my corporate job several years ago and have managed not to have another one. Recently, I took a job working for an elderly friend of my mother. The elderly woman, ML, has a large number of health issues and can’t drive, uses a walker, and has to be on oxygen. There are a lot of things she can’t do herself.
The job was presented to me as “a little bit of typing.” Come to find out, ML is actually making a book of her family history, and needs me to not only type up her handwritten notes (she doesn’t type), but also edit the book, scan and arrange photos for it, and literally put the book together.
It is a huge project, for which she is paying me $20 an hour. She had me sign a contract that she would pay me $20 an hour for the book project and “other things” as designated by her—but not specified.
The thing is, of course, that “other things” keeps expanding. It started with driving ML around and running errands for her. Next she had me moving furniture and replacing light bulbs and little things around her house. Then yard work got added in. Now she wants me to do deep-cleaning projects around her house that her cleaning lady “doesn’t have time for,” or just refuses to do (I don’t blame her), such as climbing up onto a 12-ft high ledge in ML’s living room and dusting it.
I told ML I was not going to dust the ledge and she reacted as if I’d said “maybe,” and keeps trying to find a way to get me to do it.
The typing has become secondary. ML parcels it out to me in sections, and I’ve been asking her to give me the next section for two weeks and she won’t. Instead she wants me to do all of this housework. She makes snarky little backhanded comments about “making me work for” certain things.
I swear every person who ever hires another person to do a job becomes super entitled and expects way more out of the employee than was originally agreed upon. It’s like the bar for “getting their money’s worth” just keeps moving and they have to squeeze more and more out of you to feel like it’s worth it for them.
Ugh. Thanks for listening to my rant.