"Just sit there in your car and watch them. Listen to music or something." - Mohammed, telling me my job description for the week.
Watching other people work is harder than you'd think. Not that it's physically tough, but it is painstakingly boring to just sit all day doing nothing. Here's what went down on my first day doing office work for Landtec Ground Experts:
I show up around 10:00, learn a couple of basic things about the invoicing system etc etc, and then start actually making a few invoices. All I was supposed to do today was invoice the Township of Langley - my Dad - for $24,000 worth of work that Mohammed hadn't billled them for yet. So I did all that by 11:30, and with Mohammed gone by this point there was nothing else I could do. So I wasted some time checking my email, looking at some baseball scores, and talking to Mike on MSN (which was conveniently already installed on the computer). Then Mohammed called me and asked me to go to the Annacis Island job site, where I had previously worked 2 days as a weed monkey a month ago. Now, he doesn't want me to work - just supervise the crew that's already there. The problem was that none of the crew is certified to work there because they hadn't went to this mandatory safety seminar - I had. And without a certified person, they aren't allowed to work on the site.
So there I sat, in my car, from 1:30 to 4:30 listening to music and trying to stay awake. So it was a real tough day.
Maybe not as tough as Ian's day though. Instead of mowing grass like he normally does, his job today consisted of laying in an Aldergrove parking lot "guarding" hanging baskets. While two other guys went around Aldergrove for an hour at a time hanging the baskets, Ian's job was to watch the remaining ones to make sure they weren't stolen (which happens quite often, as pathetic as that is). And Ian wasn't just being a lazy ass either, he was actually told to guard the flowers by Mohammed.
Yep, the very guy who signs his paycheck told him to lie around for hours at a time. I swear to God.
And they're actually paying us for this.
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