:o Confession time. Two friends who were going through an ugly separation were switching off the kids regularly until custody was determined. The dad wanted me to meet them at the switch-place and be his witness of what went down since (to hear him tell it) she was slinging all sorts of crap about him and manipulating those who had input into the custody situation. He’s a good guy and while talking to him I was convinced that this was the right thing to do, and agreed that it was a reasonable idea that I be there.
As I thought about it later, though, I thought that I really don’t want to end up in some sort of legal situation where I have to take sides. I can see that she was losing her mind to some extent but that’s happened to me too and I wouldn’t want my kids taken away.
So I was a chickenshit and left an outgoing message on my machine saying I couldn’t make it, sorry, etc. I really don’t know how much this affected the whole thing, but you are right that I should have been honest from the get-go. :o :smack:
You weren’t being dishonest when you first said yes unless you knew at the time you didn’t want to do it. Thinking better of something that you initially agreed to is ok, but putting an outgoing message instead of calling the guy was pretty chickenshit.
Yeah, that’s the ticket here: independent contractors, meaning we’re responsible for making sure that the route is covered. We’re not employees in the nice sense of the word.
And Elza, I’m glad that your husband’s routes take only about 2 hours. Ours (and it’s not even rural) take around 3-4. Then again, we’re delivering three different editions throughout the week, plus 400 separate advertising mini-papers, in an area that’s heavily saturated. Many places are apartments, so we (or more to the point my husband, since I’m usually not with him) have to get out and go into the security-protected places.
It’s not ideal, and we don’t plan on being in this situation forever. That said, it’s a nice bit of supplementary income while I look for a full-time job.
I did the paper route thing for about a year and a half about 5 years ago.
A good friend was getting married in Chicago one weekend, I couldn’t find a sub so I did my route Saturday, drove to Chicago, showered and changed, went to the wedding, left and drove back to Detroit in time to pick up my papers for my Sunday route.
It wouldn’t have been too bad if I didn’t get a flat about 4 or 5 streets from finishing my route.
I don’t know how long his carriers take, but when he’s delivering for someone, typically it’s less than two hours. However, there have been weekends where he leaves at 2 AM to pick up his papers, and doesn’t get home until 7:30 or 8 AM. Those are NOT my favorite flippin’ mornings :rolleyes: . He enjoys it because it gives him a reason to go to Waffle House early in the morning and have breakfast. I just hate sleeping alone - I end up waking up every ten minutes when he’s gone because I get nervous being alone in the house.
I actually wanted to get a job delivering papers when I first moved here - he said absolutely not. I get the feeling other papers actually compensate their carriers decently - it’s very hard to make decent money doing routes here, unless you’re a young teenager or something, to whom $50 a month is a lot of money. I’m really glad it’s working out for you guys - I can imagine it does come in handy while job hunting. I think I’m just pissy about his job right now because we’ve already cancelled one vacation due to the fact that he couldn’t leave town (after we’d planned the trip), and he went into work THREE days out of five last week when he was supposed to be on vacation and home with me helping me unpack the boxes in our new house. So I’m harboring a bit of bitterness towards his job right now. We’re going to Florida in a month, and I’m expecting very much that our vacation will either be cut short or something similar because of his job. I’m sick of it.
I like our carrier, though. He’s a good guy - and extremely reliable. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t get this section of town to manage, he gets the crack dens and low-income housing projects to manage.
