Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Am I being taken advantage of? I seem to think so...

Long story short, I have a warehouse employee. Yes, only one. Anyway, he's a good worker, but he always seems to find himself in a hole of financial issues and acts as if HE is the only one who has to go through these types of problems. When he first started, I paid him $10/hour.

About 6 months later, I did a personal evaluation on him and decided that he deserved a raise. I offered him $12/hour. His hours are Mon-Fri with a 30 minute lunch, which he chooses instead of an hour so he can leave early. As time goes by, his starting hours becoming VERY erratic and inconsistent, bringing up excuses to why he's late such as, "My wife had to take my daughter to xxxx".

Every now and then is acceptable because let's get real..Even we do the same thing every so often.

It starts getting worse when he beings to ask for "advances". $20, $40 is always ok for me. "You need $20 for gas, here you go." I keep notes and make sure that I deduct it from his weekly pay.

Time goes on and he starts asking for more. $100 - $200 and eventually about a year into his employment with me, he starts to ask for weekly advances. And when it's time to deduct it from his next check, he asks me to only deduct 1/2 of what he owes, which I think is wrong. I have bills I have to pay too along with things I have to take care of. What bugs me the most is he'll ask during the middle of the week or at the end of the day. Today was a perfect example and I will explain later.

Anyway, about 2 months ago, his car gets repo'd. He cries in front of me asking why things always happen to him. Of course in my opinion, he has poor money management. So being the nice guy that I am, I let him borrow a car, which he used for about a month. He needed a car because I needed that car back. Because the company was somewhat in a hole, I used his identity to create an ebay account. The agreement was that I would offer him $1000.00 towards his car to have full access of a separate bank account that he created. I figured it was more than fair enough. He wouldn't have to do anything. He doesn't lose any money, and it'll just make his new account look good even though all the money would be transfered to MY account. Done deal, right? Fair? I think so.

Anyway, here's were things get ugly. Because he bought a new, used car, his rent payment was put on hold. One week, he asked for a $300 advance along with his payroll check of 30+ hours. I gave him 2 checks. His pay check was a business check and the advance was from my personal account. I explained to him that before he cashed out the business check, to call me to make sure I don't have any pending transactions and that the funds will be available to him. I told him to call me at 3PM. He cashes it out before that, and doesn't even call me. SO much could have gone wrong but thankfully didn't. I was pretty upset. I do someone a favor and just ask them to call me before doing something, and was disobeyed. I already felt like I was being taken advantage of.

So he owes $300 now. The time comes to deduct that from his pay and he asks to deduct only 1/2. I said fine. I understand that he needs $ to live too and the amount he earned that week wasn't going to do the trick since his hours have been so fucking convenient for him lately. But whatever. We're slow anyway. The less time you're here, the better so I don't have to pay you. So I deduct only $150 and the next day, he asks me for $60 because he needs "gas". whether he needs it or not, I don't know. But now he owes $210, which I'm going to deduct this week.

Just went you thought the story couldn't get better, it does. He comes in about 5 minutes before he's supposed to leave and asks me for a $50 advance. Once again, last minute. I told him that this is the very last time for any advances and that this Friday, I'm going to deduct everything he owes whether he was gonna like it or not. He says "OK".

Right before he leaves, he asks if he can get a $700 loan from the company because he has a court date on the 8th of October. I seriously had enough and I had him sit down and I explained to him about this whole situation. IF we do OK, I would be willing to help, but I'll be deducting a consistent $250/week if we do. I have to write a contact later so he can agree to it because this is just getting ridiculous.

I forgot to mention that last week, I was out in West Covina and I get a call from him. He said he needed gas money and he doesn't have any cash. I told him that I can't help him because I was busy and I'm not gonna turn around and do that shit. It's not MY problem. He asks me where I am and of course I tell him it doesn't matter where I am. He follows up saying that he's by my house and was wondering if he can get some money for gas. OMG, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How fucking low can you get? I'm not fucking dumb so don't play me.. I knew exactly what his intentions were. It was so fucking stupid. Luckily, my sister was at home so I told her to go to the corner and give him $5. Super gay, huh?

And another story... I totally forgot. A customer came to pick up some stuff. $250 worth actually. He gave the cash to my warehouse as I instructed him to. My warehouse guy says the $ is on my desk. I was away from the shop and wasn't returning for the rest of that day so I'd just get the $ in the morning. The next morning, I walk towards my office and my warehouse guy tells me that he took $30 because his wife went to the hospital. Uhmm.. That's called, "stealing", isn't it? I couldn't believe it.. He's like a fucking child. Doing something, then telling you after the damage is done. From now on, I'll make sure to collect all the cash..

It's just stupid because sometimes I feel like I'm being too nice and I'm getting taken advantage of. We all need $. $12/hour for him is more than enough. He doesn't get taxed for it. It's all under the table. It's $480 a week IF he works 40 hours.

Anyway, I have some serious thinking to do to what I'm going to do with this guy and how I'm going to handle it.. I'm SO angry right now.. seriously..

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Pervert? Fuck you, Bitch!

Like the title, huh? Let me tell you how it got to that point.

On Tuesday, my friend Jimmy and I went to this outdoors store called 'REI'. It's like a Big 5 Sporting Goods store, but only 10x better. Besides the point, I took my camera along because I've really been getting into this photography thing. BTW, check it out. It's called Snapped-Photography - www.snapped-photography.com. I don't have any samples up yet, but I'll be working on it. Anyway, I took my camera along just because you never know what you'll see, you know?

After REI, we went and ate Pho. He dropped me off at home and that's where it all began. We went up a small hill approaching a stop sign when we see a girl in her mid-late 20's, around our age if I'd have to guess. She was jogging along the sidewalk and we stopped since we had the stop sign. She was crossing and about 50ft from the stop sign in the same direction she's heading is my house. I have my camera around my neck to prevent it from falling. So Jimmy stops at my house, and I get out of the car. She jogs right past me before I shut the door to his car and say bye.

I guess when I waited for her to jog by, there were a group of girls around the same age and as they jog by my house, they yell out, "PERV".

You can imagine my reaction as I already know why they said it. Of course, they thought I was taking pictures of the first girl who passed by. I was SO pissed because now I'm "The Perv" who lives at X house on X street.

Those stupid bitches need to get their facts fucking straight. First off, I have a cap around my lens. Not only that, the lens I have is a fisheye, not exactly the type of lens you'd be walking around with trying to get "peeping Tom" shots. To top it off, how stupid would I have to be to take pictures of some girl right in front of my own house. FUCKING STUPID. I wish they would come back so I can tell them off. They weren't even hot anyways.. I wouldn't waste my time, trust me.

It's just so stupid how people automatically assume the wrong when they don't even have their facts. People making assumptions to what they see is just wrong. I can understand that we all do it every now and then but I think this was a little over the edge.

I really wish that those girls would come back so I can confront them about it. Now they think I'm some sort of pervert living in the neighborhood. To think that I would do something like that is fucking stupid.

Sorry for the language...

Monday, September 15, 2008

New to this "blogger" thing..

I deleted my Xanga on Friday. I don't know why, but I was looking through my "subscriptions" and realized that I haven't touched my Xanga account in ages. So, I looked through my recent posts and they're at least a year old. I wanted to start fresh but apparently, there isn't a way to delete all the posts at once but instead, you'd have to do it manually. Being the lazy guy that I am, I told myself to screw it, and deleted the entire account.

You have to go through a 3 question survey or test..whatever they call it, then it can be successfully deleted/canceled. Oh well.

Anyway, my friend Kristy told me about blogger.com so I thought I'd give it a shot and try it out. Sort of a "fresh start". I just noticed this very second that it auto-saves the blog. Not bad...Not bad at all.

So, I'm really excited about this Friday. I'm going to Big Willow race track for a track day, hosted by trackdaz.com . I think a liter bike would be at advantage, being that it's a long course and the liter bike would have it's advantage during the straight. I don't think it would come into play THAT much, but I'm sure the liter bikes would have just a tad more fun going fast than a gear'd 600.

Needless to say, I wanted to hit up the canyons before the track day to get my weekend fix. I was physically exhausted from the night before since we went to Knott's Berry Farm, so I just kind of went with the flow on Sunday. I had a lot of fun. Didn't want to push it hard and have something happen before the track.

There was a photographer there too.. Took pretty good pics if you ask me..

GMR91508

GMR91508-2

They're un-edited. I just made the border and messed with some colors/contrast just a tad.

I was also messing with my new fisheye lens. I've come to believe that the fisheye lens should be strictly used for fun shots. I don't see how you can use fisheye as "professional photography" at all. But it's a fun lens to mess around with. Here's a sample of Gina's brother's GF's car. Not the greatest because no tripod and dark lighting, but to me, it still came out acceptable.

fisheyeangie3

Fisheyeangie1

If you're asking youself why the background looks so familiar, it's because it's the OG McDs is Downey.

Here's also one from this Mexican restaurant we ate at for Gina's parents' 30 year anniversary. Joey and Angie, Charlie and Jennifer. Joey and Charlie are Gina's brothers.. In case you didn't know.

Joeyandangie

CharlieJenn

Well, this concludes my first official post blog on blogger.com.

UPDATE: I don't know how to post pictures using HTML so that it wouldn't cut off when the blog is published so if anyone knows, let me know. Thanks...