My God, I am so unhappy. So I think I posted before about this, but if not, I summarize: I'm on the Board of Directors and the Grounds Committee for a graveyard, it's all volunteer work, no pay or glory from it. The graveyard has a really awful caretaker, over whom I was put in charge of "supervising." However, this duty includes no actual ability to fire him or punish him if he's not cooperative; anything like that must be approved by the entire Board.
Meanwhile, the Board as a whole -- while it has a few members who understand what a problem he is, that's how I got put in this place of watching him afterall -- does not seem to want to fire him, because the past caretakers were even worse and they seem to dread that if he's gone someone even worse will take over instead.
So I'm stuck "supervising" this awful guy. He lies about work he's done, and lies about other things if he thinks they might help gain him sympathy or benefit him otherwise -- and many of these lies are unworthy of a 9 year old. For example, he is supposed to close the gates every night at 8 PM. I haven't seen those damn gates closed at night for five months. A couple days ago I talked to him and he particularly mentioned how he closes the gates every night. Now, I knew he hadn't been closing them for a while but hoped maybe his particularly mentioning his so doing meant he'd started remembering to do so.
That same night I was being driven back home after visiting a friend, and we passed the graveyard, and the gates were TOTALLY OPEN. So I made my friend pull in and I called the caretaker right there and then, but he didn't answer the phone. I just left as polite a message as my irritation could allow, just letting him know it was 10:30 and the gate was still open and he must fix it.
Guess what his excuse was? Guess! Guess!
Basically it amounted to "I closed it, but then for some reason when I came back in the morning it was open again." (Note that these gates, if closed and locked, have a padlocked chain around them, and if open those chains have to be removed and replaced so as to chain the doors into their open position. Which is to say it would have to be someone with a key doing this, at least.)
Then he called back (or rather his wife did -- they're a team, technically) to let me know that tonight, (just in case I checked) he was going to have to leave the gate open because the garbage man was going to come in the middle of the night but they didn't know exactly when. Fuck 'em, whatever, I reported the rest of this to the Board as well. I'm hoping the Board will finally see the stupidness being dealt with and fire them.
Meanwhile, the Board as a whole -- while it has a few members who understand what a problem he is, that's how I got put in this place of watching him afterall -- does not seem to want to fire him, because the past caretakers were even worse and they seem to dread that if he's gone someone even worse will take over instead.
So I'm stuck "supervising" this awful guy. He lies about work he's done, and lies about other things if he thinks they might help gain him sympathy or benefit him otherwise -- and many of these lies are unworthy of a 9 year old. For example, he is supposed to close the gates every night at 8 PM. I haven't seen those damn gates closed at night for five months. A couple days ago I talked to him and he particularly mentioned how he closes the gates every night. Now, I knew he hadn't been closing them for a while but hoped maybe his particularly mentioning his so doing meant he'd started remembering to do so.
That same night I was being driven back home after visiting a friend, and we passed the graveyard, and the gates were TOTALLY OPEN. So I made my friend pull in and I called the caretaker right there and then, but he didn't answer the phone. I just left as polite a message as my irritation could allow, just letting him know it was 10:30 and the gate was still open and he must fix it.
Guess what his excuse was? Guess! Guess!
Basically it amounted to "I closed it, but then for some reason when I came back in the morning it was open again." (Note that these gates, if closed and locked, have a padlocked chain around them, and if open those chains have to be removed and replaced so as to chain the doors into their open position. Which is to say it would have to be someone with a key doing this, at least.)
Then he called back (or rather his wife did -- they're a team, technically) to let me know that tonight, (just in case I checked) he was going to have to leave the gate open because the garbage man was going to come in the middle of the night but they didn't know exactly when. Fuck 'em, whatever, I reported the rest of this to the Board as well. I'm hoping the Board will finally see the stupidness being dealt with and fire them.
kay:
No shit. They should can this dynamic duo!
knavish:
This sounds like it could become an episode of "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" You could haunt the groundskeepers with a series of ethereal ghosts and scare them into doing the job correctly. And no meddling kids would be around to uncover your fiendish plot!