I work as a gardener/landscaper. Pay is £70 a day for six hours which, as a twenty-one year old student is good money.
However, I’m really torn on my boss. On the one hand I feel petty complaining, because he’s very friendly, isn’t pushy about working fast and even gives me a lift home every day since my house is on his own drive home. He’s a guy I honestly mostly enjoy working with.
However, his communication and timing skills really leave something to be desired, I have reason to suspect he may have lied to me for his own convenience, and it’s increasingly getting on my nerves.
There is no work schedule that I can access which means I need to be told what days he’ll need me on in advance, at what time and even where I need to be, because it could be anywhere in London. Now, that would be fine, except he never does. Week in and week out he fails to tell me, and so I have to text him, and he usually responds annoyingly late.
I can provide two recent examples of how annoying this is:
Last Wednesday for example, he told us he’d need me on Friday, but for some reason couldn’t tell me where and what time until Thursday afternoon. To me, this was annoyingly short notice to begin with because it meant I couldn’t confirm any plans with friends for Friday evening if I didn’t know when I was getting off work and how far from home I’d be. It was especially annoying because my boss told me he already knew what needed to be done on Friday so I don’t see any reason he couldn’t have told me then and there on Wednesday.
Come Thursday however, the hours were ticking away and I was receiving no word from him. I left him be because I knew he’d been going to a funeral and I didn’t want to be an arsehole. However eventually it got to 21:00 and I caved, because frankly I was gonna be going to bed in an hour, and I texted both him and my other boss. The other boss replied and told me my main boss was doing some late work and so probably wouldn’t respond for a bit, and that he had no idea what the plan was tomorrow anyway. The latter half of this I accepted because he doesn’t work directly with us, but the former half I found mildly suspicious seeing as we never work outside the hours of 8am and 6pm due to British building noise regulations. Still, I brushed it off, and at 22:00 as I was going to bed, my main boss finally got back to me. We were to start work at 9am at a place only about a forty minute drive from my house, which was fine.
Only, come Friday morning things change.
I should note that my boss is very insistent that if anything ever happens that affects our ability to work, we must inform him at latest an hour before work starts, which sounds plenty reasonable to me, I have no issue with that.
However, I was a little annoyed when just as I’m getting in my car at 08:21 on Friday morning he suddenly texts me to say that he his apparently awful ex has suddenly dropped it on him that he has to take care of his kids for a bit and asked if I could start work later on. I said yes, because while it was annoying, I could hardly blame him for that. He didn’t clarify when later was though, not until 10:16, at which point he suddenly asked me to come in for 11:00. I just about made it. He himself was about a half hour late, though, leaving me waiting.
Then, to rub salt in the wound, that afternoon at the end of the work day I was talking about my plans for the evening (plans I’d managed to scrape together during my lunch) and he told me about how he’d been drinking heavily on Thursday night and woken up late, which now seems to cast doubt for me on the truthfulness of everything said. Was he actually working late as his boss said or could he just not be arsed to reply to me? Had his ex actually just dropped this on him or had he just forgotten? Was his pushing back the work day at the last minute even really about his kids at all or did he just do it so he could sleep off a hangover?
Example two:
This one would not be such a big deal on its own, but as it’s coming on the coattails of last week it has annoyed me anyway. Also note that he does this every week, this is not a one-off.
My boss also said last Friday that he’d let us know on what days he wanted us to work on Saturday. Only, he never bothered. No, I had to message him and ask about 10 minutes before sending this now on Sunday evening, and I’ve yet to get a reply. It is now 17:36, and since this happens every week I don’t expect a response before at least 21:00 again, when he may well want me in on Monday.