Hello blogging world. I greet you with fear of being entirely sucked, but mostly a sceptical perspective that my blog-life will not be long. So in other words, I probably don't have enough committment for a full-fledged blogarific blog.
I started work yesterday as a pro painter. No experience, but I'm officially already a "college pro" painter. It's not an interesting story so I don't understand why i'm blogging about it, but this is what people do right? oh you know, I scraped flakes from walls, I redid putty, I caulked, and I primed. No I didn't actually paint. I also gracefully dropped my scraper off the ladder and onto my bosses hand.
Yesterday was my first day up on the ladders and it was the windiest day in the history of the world. At one point I left my ladder up while going to relieve myself and came back all satisfied, only to see a not-so-satisfied-bosses-wife sitting on my ladder, she had rescued it as it had blown over in the wind...
The first time I got onto the 20 foot ladder mike, my boss says to me, he says "Melanie, How do you feel up there?" Here I am, blowing in the wind, twenty feet in the air, scared as poo (poo must be awfully scared when it comes from its warm natural habitat to a cold uncertain wet tank) and I yell back enthusiastically "good!". I don't know why. So later, I finally finish scraping and priming the windows, and move to actually paint a window on ground level, which by the way, is glorious. Feet on two ground, no scraping, no sanding... mikes wife moves to ladder duty to scrape sand and prime the soffats. and a couple of brush strokes in she freaks out, so mel is asked, "mel can you do this?" of course I can... So back up I go, however, soffats are the worst of all because you have to use both hands Above your head, (it's the bottom of the overhang of the roof) yeah anyways long boring story shortly less long, I didn't like it, yet once again lied and said I was fine.
They also expect me to carry 30 foot ladders. I don't think they understand that I'm just not that strong, I don't know what I have to do to prove that to them... At 5 when I had already been there for 9 hours Mike asks me I want to stay and finish the soffats, no I don't, but I say ok cause he says it would take a few minutes, yet 2 hours later...
Anyways, I'm trying to figure out what to do for the entire summer cause I never planned on painting all summer. I'm thinking of counselling at LBE for a while, or continuing to search for a job at a shelter... anywho, I'd really appreciate some prayer about that as I would like to end up in the right place. Now next time that something actually interesting happens in my life i'll try to bloggerooony it.
11 comments:
k, testing testing, Apparently comments have been disallowed on my blog until now. I was kinda wondering why you didn't comment Tom, cause I knew you read it and you knew i knew...
there was a lot of gross things in that blog...the word blogerific, blogeroony and the whole scared as poo analogy. But I loved it. Sucks about the painting though. You just need to speak up. I was all like that when I first started my job. And then I realized that if you do that, people will just walk all over you. And there's no point in letting them do that.
I know!! I was so pumped to write the first comment, within five minutes of your posting (I kept refreshing the page while reading something else, haha). And then all those technical issues. I'm glad you got it all sorted out, though. I thought maybe a second phone call on the subject would be overkill in the enthusiasm department. :)
You know, I had the same issue with carrying ladders back when I started painting for my uncle. Somehow he just assumed, despite my constant protests and warnings, that really I was totally fine carrying all our monster ladders. I wasn't at all, and many times it seemed miraculous that I didn't throw the thing through a window or some power lines or something...
After awhile I got okay at it, but to this day I'm never fully sure of myself hefting those things around in the upright position...
As for being on it, though, you'll probably get used to the heights. After awhile you don't worry as much about two-handing the scraper and such.
On the flip side, I can also say I did nothing but prep and cleanup work for the first week or so. No painting, no priming... it was even longer before they let me caulk anything. My uncle has pretty high standards though, we always made fun of College Pro paint jobs. Uuuhhh... no offense. ;)
i totally agree. Here i am doing a good job, making sure all my cut lines are perfectly straight and stuff, and the guy I work with is doing a HORRIBLE job, sitting there and doing nothing for half an hour at a time, and then telling me he's done way more than me. Yeah he did the same amount of windows, but they look worse than they started out looking. He also exaggerates everything, complains allll the time, and swears up a storm...
Aw Mel, It reminds me of my medical student story. Why do we always say the opposite of what we want? Such people pleasers.
hey that was me cheryl
I do that too sometimes...
hold on a sec...
entirely SUCKED??
I'll finish reading now.
okay. seriously.
you should see the shrieking of hilarity that's going on in my roommate's room right now. I'm just glad she's not home to witness this ridonculousness.
POO SCARED WHEN IT COMES OUT OF IT'S NATURALY HABITAT??!?!?!? Classic Mel.
thanks for bloggeroony-ing it up mel.
you rock
nice. well if you're going to continue working in a job that isn't in an office with primarily women or christians you'll probably have to get used to the swearing. I think the word is desensitize. but I say go to LBE.
having worked in an office that was primarily older women...I'm gonna hafta go ahead and disagree with Jer on that one...
but you coming to LBE - Daycamps(!!!) WOULD BE AWESOME....TONES OF DESPERATION IN MY VOICE AND A WILD LOOK IN MY EYES
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