Things that annoy you...

You're right tipping is a cultural thing. I've heard it said that in Australia tipping isn't favored like it is here in the USA. I hate tipping, so I never go out to dinner that's how I solve that.

Not just in America. Guessing the UK is the same unless things have drastically changed since I lived there.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

This is exactly why I refused to use my phone to clock in at work. I used it a few times, I turned off my location when I logged in, then turned it back on to logout, my manager wasn't happy with this so I totally refused to use my phone, so my manager had to set up a tablet at work for me to use.

As I've revealed - I do freelance yardwork for a living these days and the majority of my customers are older, mostly widowed women. (I feel like a gigolo!) I had a couple older male customers, but they died unfortunately.

What's annoying is most of my customers have children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who are of the ages where they could help out their grandparents. Some of my customers have up to a dozen great grandchildren who are teenagers. Yet I'm asked by my customers for everything from computer help (and I'm about as good at fixing a computer as I am at repairing a car engine... which is not at all) to dusting to painting to shampooing rugs to repairing car engines, and everything else you can imagine.

Not one of my customers can get a single one of their grand or great-grandchildren to help them with anything. When I ask why, they say, "Oh, they have lives of their own," (as if I don't? I'm supposed to be landscaping, but instead I'm cleaning house, acting as a home health aid, trying to find lost pdf files or figuring out why a car seat won't move any further forward).

I'd write this off as isolated cases, but from what I'm seeing, it's fairly universal - many of today's young people just don't want to help their families out. And to add insult to injury - many of these kids hit up their grandmas for money, yet the grandmas offer the kids money if they'll come over on a weekend for a couple hours to help with some housework and the kids refuse (then continue asking for monetary handouts).

Similar story with my elderly neighbour, she has loads of grandchildren and great grandchildren but none of them help her with her shopping, I've offered to do it for her but she's refused my help and struggles to do it on her own, so I've started waiting for her to arrive home with her shopping and I just happen to go outside as she's parking her car and I carry it inside for her.

Rule of Acquisition # 9 'Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.'

I'd be charging all those old people for your services. Charge them fairly but it's not fair to ask you to do work for free if they can't get their kids or grandkids to do it.

Yep the cold like symptoms are nearly clear and had it for at least seven days now so hopefully it's on the way out. It's just the smell and taste now to come back. Lungs seem to be fine and so on.


My relative I care for has lung problems and the first two days she was having a problem with coughing stuff up but thankfully that seems to have stopped and seems to be mild like me. She's up to date with all the injections so looks like they helped.

Was worried she would have to go into hospital at one point.

All good so far.


Glad it came back. Sweets coming back first would be fab.

Apart from the landscaping, do you at least get paid for the extra curricular work?

One thing you didn’t mention, but is prevalent here in America & elsewhere too I’m sure, is the looking after of grandkids by their grandparents. Because the kids’ parents are MIA. I see this as very common here & I wonder how much of this causes what you first describe - elderly people with no help.

I charge $10.00 / hour.

This is partially a joke, but one friend who I worked for used to say he only wanted to pay me a flat price on a project by project basis, and didn't want to pay me by the hour.

When I asked why, he said, "Because you're old and fat and slow, that's why."
(Now, he was obese and thus could get away with saying such things. Sadly, he also died from a botched bariatric surgery.)

Jokes aside, those facts are all true (at least compared to someone in their teens or twenties) - therefore I only charge 10 an hour because my age and weight make me a relatively slow worker (slow but thorough). Plus it's a nice round figure that's easy to figure out when I total up my hours!

Yes, most of the time (unless it's something that I choose not to charge time for).
None of my customers try to stiff me.

Although I sometimes stiff myself - for instance, I made a deal with my neighbor to cut her lawn for $10.00 a cut. Since it only takes me 45 minutes, I decided to throw in any weed whacking & edging as part of it. But lately, the weed whacking & edging has begun to take me several hours each time. (I've become a bit anal about the edging - I want it to look like the pros who use heavy duty, gas-powered machines to get a perfectly straight edge!)

And what's really annoying - it's the clean up that takes twice as long as the actual activity - especially with yard work. Raking, sweeping, bundling, tying, bagging, moving, removing, putting garbage out - getting rid of all the refuse seems to take far longer than cutting the stuff. (And none of my customers ever have enough leaf bags or barrels to contain the amount of refuse that needs to be removed.)

My husband pays our guy who cuts our grass $100. Last time he paid him $150. Can’t help wondering why he pays him so much.

One reason relates back to what I was talking about before - young people (who aren't running an entire business and thus, probably wouldn't charge as much) just don't want to perform labor like they used to.

When I was a teenager, lawn-care companies were far more rare, and that's because most lawns were cut by local teens looking to make some money for spending or saving.

This stupid cat just attacked me for no reason. I was sitting at the front desk doing work on the computer. She was sitting on the desk near me. I moved my arm to move the computer mouse and now my arm and hand are bleeding because I guess she didn't like that. I didn't even touch her.

Not an isolated incident either. She hasn't done this to me in a long time, but she has a habit of attacking staff.

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That is what I call a good neibor @Ellie. My neibor and I got off to a bad start when they moved in about 15 yrs ago,. Firstly she refused my offer to carry in some items and then a week later he tried to mow a section of my lawn which he said was his. Naturally it took me some time to become friendly with these new neibors

Was the neighbor right or wrong about the ownership of the section of lawn?

when parents filming their kids on snapchat spotlight just to get likes and views -.-

[quote=RichieRich;2481061]That is what I call a good neibor @Ellie. My neibor and I got off to a bad start when they moved in about 15 yrs ago,. Firstly she refused my offer to carry in some items and then a week later he tried to mow a section of my lawn which he said was his. Naturally it took me some time to become friendly with these new neibors[/QUOTE
I don't get too involved with neighbours. We exchange Christmas cards and have a quick chat, and I post a newspaper for an elderly man, but I do like to keep myself to myself.

Can’t even imagine sending Xmas cards to our neighbors.

school holidays -.- and school holidays traffic and parking -.-

I hate bad traffic and crowded parking lots, ugh...I rather just stay home and avoid the hassle.