Inconsiderate and irresponsible roommates-Part 2

As of 2 days before Christmas, Leann was still planning to move the first week in January.  We tried to explain to her that she would be paying the same amount whether or not she moved out, as she doesn’t have to buy groceries here, and buying her own groceries at her new place would bring her bills up to $350 a month (same as she agreed to pay here). That was when she came up with the lie that her new landlord had lowered her rent to $250 a month for rent, all utilities and cable/internet. There is no way that anyone would be stupid enough to charge that little for a 1-bedroom apartment with everything included. She must think we are complete morons if she thought we were goingt to buy that.

She left for her dad’s house the afternoon of December 23, telling us that she would be home sometime Sunday night because she was housesitting for her dad until Sunday morning then they were celebrating Christmas that day instead of the 25th. She did come home Sunday evening, though it was just to pick up a few things. Her grandfather died Christmas night, and she was staying with her aunt to be closer to her family when they made the funeral arrangements, and to give her aunt some comfort as she is the one who found him. I know she isn’t lying about this, but she is now using her grandfayjer’s death as a way to screw us even more.

She has told us all along that since she is not moving that far away she will be able to continue to help us with rides to the the grocery store when we need to go. Now we are supposed to believe that she needs to move to Water Valley to live with her aunt because she is the only one who can help save her grandparent’s land. After living with her for 6 months, I can tell you that if her family is depending on her to help make payments to keep the land, they are not going to save that land. They will lose it. She makes just under $400 a week at her job and still could not manage to pay her half of the bills for our house, which (with rent and utilities) came to $403.50. She constantly excused her lack of money for her portion of the bils by telling us that she only made a little over $1100 a month and she had other expenses. I happened to see her student loan bills when she let them laying out and I was cleaning up after her one night. Together they came to about $125 a month. Her car payment and insurance were about $300 a month from what she told us. So, at just under $400 a week she makes around $1200 after taxes, and her rent and other expenses came to approximately $828.50 per month. That should have left her plenty for gas and other odds and ends she needed and/or wanted. Yet we had to pay a 2 month pastdue electric bill plus reconnect fee because our half was the only half that was being paid.

We have figured it out, and not including the times we put extra toward the bills before paying off her electric bill, she owes us at least $700. She has decided that leaving us a bunch of her used furniture and such covers what she owes us. We can’t seem to get her to realize that something that has been used constantly for the past year is not going to be worth the same as when it was purchased. Therefore, she cannot say she is leaving me her desk then tell me that it cost her $20 so that is $20 off what she owes us. The desk is chipped and has spots where the wood warped due to her leaving take-out soda cups sitting there half-full until the soda leaks through the cup. She’s lucky if this desk is worth $10 right now. She gave me her webcam, told me she lost the install disks for it and I would have to go online and look up the download for them, then she said she paid $20 for the cam and that took care of another $20 she owes us. She is completely clueless!!

Lunatic is so mad that he could easily hit her, if he had not been taught not to hit women. So, instead he went outside and punched the brick wall a couple of times, breaking his hand yet again. This time Lunatic has had it. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Every time we have been completely screwed by someone we were helping or that was supposedly helping us, he has always had to tell me to stay calm. This time I am telling him to stay calm. I don’t know how much longer I am going to be able to keep him calm as I am getting damn near the end of my rope in that respect.

Yes we got her to pay the electric bill so that it would not be cut off, but now she complains about it every time she stops by to pack more of her stuff. We even got her to pay the phone/cable/internet bill, but she waited until everything was disconnected before paying it then complained that she had to pay the reconnect fee as well as the bill. Plus, in order for her to pay that bill, we had to go off on her about the fact with no phone or internet we have no way to keep in contact with anyone, and Mom and Chauceriangirl were both going in for surgery. We were not being kept from keeping up on how the surgeries and recovery afterward went just because she is an irresponsible child.

So we are set on the bills for at least one more month. But with Leann moving so far away and there being no public transportation in Grenada, Mississippi; I can’t look for work. There just isn’t anything close enough to us that is hiring. So even though our bills and rent are paid, we have no clue how we are going to buy things like toilet paper, dish soap, laundry soap, sanitary pads, toothpaste, etc. All things that Leann agreed to pay for since we were paying for groceries, and all things that she is no longer going to be here to pay for. So, we are completely screwed over in so many ways; including the fact that we just found out that Lunatic’s hearing may not be until June.

I hope things get better, but I doubt that will happen.

Happy New Year everyone.

Why I am no longer employed (and the reason you should not eat at the Shoney’s in Grenada, Mississippi)

While writing my last post, I mentioned that I was no longer working and stated that I would explain the reason in a new blog. Well, this is that blog.

As I said in my last blog, I nearly lost my job before I even started it due to our roommate bailing on me as far as a ride to work during my first week there. I managed to work things out. I went to work my first day, planning on a day of being trained for my new position, as I had never worked the buffet at any of the restaurants I had worked at before this. Boy was I mistaken as to what my first day would entail.

I was taken to the prep kitchen by one of the managers, where I was introduced to the general manager and a manager she was training to take over at another store. I was then taken into the walk-in cooler so the manager I was working with could get some items he needed for the prep work. The manager that was supposed to be training me then proceeded to walk away to do prep work that needed to be done in the grill area, leaving me standing in the prep kitchen not knowing what to do.

The general manager showed me the binder with all the recipes for items such as cornbread muffins and told me that I was to always follow the recipes when doing the prep. She then went back to the person she was training and left me wondering what I was supposed to be doing. I went in search of the manager I was supposed to be working with. He told me to go get some stuff out of the walk-in and the freezer, he did so without having given me a tour of the back area of the restaurant so that I would know where everything was.

I went and searched for what he needed, as it was now obvious that I was not going to be trained at all; but was just going to be left to do the job with no clue of what I was doing. I was finally given some real work to do. I was asked to make up some cornbread muffins. So, I went to get the binder of recipes from the general manager and began to mix the batter. Once the batter was done, I went to grab some muffin pans off of the rack of “clean” dishes. Every single muffin pan had bits of muffin from the day before stuck all over them. Cornbread muffins are only made for the breakfast buffet and we had just opened for the day, so I know it was from the previous day. I took several of the muffin pans to the sink and started to wash them so I could use them. At this point, one of the managers came and asked me, “what the hell” I thought I was doing. When I explained that I was washing the pans so they could be used, I was told that they had been washed the night before and to just make the damn muffins.

I quickly noticed that no one there did more than a half-ass washing of any of the cooking utensils, pots, pans or anything used to put the food onto the buffet. Whenever I tried to wash any of it so that we were serving the food on clean items, I was told it was already clean. It was utterly disgusting! However, I needed the job, so I continued to work there. I saw roaches around the buffet, and when I moved one of the rolling coolers for keeping cold buffet items cool in the waitress station, there was 3 inches of filth under there. I don’t think anyone ever bothered to clean under anything in that place. Yet, I kept working because we needed the money.

I worked there for 4 weeks, getting maybe 15 hours a week; and I was never trained for my job. I had 5 different managers telling me 5 different ways to do my job. All them got mad if I wasn’t doing things their way, and yet none could understand why I had no idea of exactly how to do said job. I made to work however I could, as Leann was constantly making excuses as to why she couldn’t take me or pick me up. I even made it to work for 5 aam shifts a couple of times after spending the night in the er with Lunatic.

When we found out that unemployment was approved to continue, Lunatic and I discussed it and decided that when the checks started again I could quit to look for another job. Leann sort of beat me to it though. I asked her to check my schedule for me when she went into work (she worked the day it came out that week and I didn’t), she told me I wasn’t on the schedule anymore. I called to verify that and was told the same thing by the co-worker/manager that answere the phone. I then figured that I no longer had a job. Leann decided she didn’t need a second job anymore and just didn’t bother to chow up for any of her last 3 shifts for that week.

When we went to pick up our last checks, I was asked why I had never called for my new schedule. It seems that without discussing it with me or letting me know in any way, the scheduling manager had decided to give me a week off because of Lunatic’s visits to the er. I wound up telling him that I just couldn’t work there anymore; afte letting him know that I had called to see why I wasn’t scheduled and was told I was no longer on the schedule.

I just got tired of working in a nasty, filthy place that I would not feel right recommending to anyone; and I was tired of having several of the managers I worked with constantly yelling at me due to the fact they never bothered to train me properly for the job. When I started yelling back, I knew it was time to go anyway. Especially since I wasn’t even making enough to pay much toward anything as far as our bills.

I have asked Leann repeatedly to take me out to look for a new job since then, but she always tells me that she either doesn’t have the gas money or that she has no time. I found out last month that she told Lunatic that she was not taking me job hunting because she figured I would do the same at any other job I got as I did with the job at Shoney’s. Not sure what she meant by that, as I worked my butt off at a job I didn’t like until she told me I no longer worked there. She is the one who quit with no notice (hell she didn’t even tell them she was quitting, let alone give them any notice). I at least thought I no longer had a job when I stopped showing up.

And, that is why I am no longer employed.

I highly recommend that you NEVER eat at the Shoney’s Family restaurant in Grenada, Mississippi!

Inconsiderate and irresponsible roommates

As I said earlier, I have not been blogging regularly because I tend to use my blog for bitching. I also have been having computer problems, and have not been able to do a lot online; but that is beside the point. I have decided that if I need to bitch, that doing so in my blog is the safest way to do so, since if I don’t get to vent about what is ticking me off I may just go off on someone.

That being said, Lunatic and I have the most inconsiderate and irresponsible roommate we have ever had right now. We moved to Mississippi because Leann knew that we were having problems saving any money or paying for Lunayic’s meds with the cost of our housing. She had an extra room and said that our moving in with her would save all of us money on rent and utilities. So, we took one entire unemployment payment, rented a U-haul, and moved all we own down here to move in with Leann.

Yes, she had an extra room, though she had not bothered to clean all of her stuff out of it before we moved in. So, we had to sleep on the futon in the living room of her very small apartment. The living room also had totes full of her stuff stacked up all over it. The apartment was above a garage, with rather steep steps leading up to it. This made it difficult for both Lunatic and myself, as we both have health problems that make climbimg stairs difficult.

When we were discussing with Leann the possibility of moving to Mississippi, she informed us that she didn’t care if we tended to be a little cluttered as long as we kept it in our room. That would have worked if we actually had our own room when we moved in with her. As it was, whatever clutter we had (which wasn’t much since she had us put most of our stuff in either the garage or the room that was supposed to be ours) was added to all of hers in the living room. Before we moved, we were also informed that she didn’t care if dishes were put off until the following day, but she did not want dirty dishes stacking up for days at a time. When we moved in, every dish, pot and pan she owned was sitting dirty in both sinks, every bit of counter space and even on the floor. She actually had a pan half-filled with spaghetti sitting on the kitchen floor next to the fridge. I wound up washing all of them after we had been there nearly a week and she never made a move to do so herself. I don’t always feel like doing dishes after dinner, but I try not to let them stack up to the point that there are no clean dishes left before I wash them.

Because it was going to take all of one of our checks just to move down here, Leann said that she would cover all costs for the month of June and half the month of July so we could get settled in. A week after we moved we found out that unemployment benefits had been stopped (the Senate was fighting about continuing them at the time), so we were waiting to see if benefits would start again; and had only one more check coming in until the Senate’s decision. This was the first week in June. From that time until the decision was made to continue unemployment, Leann would tell us daily that she could not afford to carry three of us, This was during the time she had told us we didn’t have to worry about paying toward anything after the move. She even got into the habit of opening any mail Lunatic got from Unemployment of Disabilty to see what was going on; she would hand me the open mail and comment that she hoped I didn’t mind her opening it. Even when I said I did mind she comtinued to do so.

Once we moved in, she stopped taking care of her puppy, stopped taking garbage down to the bin or out to the curb, stopped doing any cooking at all, and stopped doing any cleaning around the house. She left all of this to us. We soon found out something else she had stopped doing, even before we moved in with her.

When the unemployment was temporarily ended, she also started nagging me about getting a job. It took a little bit to get her to realize that she needed to be available to take me out and apply for jobs if she wanted me to get one so badly. Finally, she took me out to put in some applications; deciding that she needed a second job, she was also going to put in applications. We both wound up with jobs at the first place we applied. I needed a fulltime job, so Shoney’s gave me a parttime job working the buffet. Leann needed a parttime job to work around her fulltime job at the paper, so Shoney’s gave her a fulltime job as a waitress. She started a week before I did. Two days before I was supposed to start work, her mother was in a car accident and was hospitalized in Memphis. Leann went there to see if she was ok, telling me that she would definitely be back in time to get me to my first day of work. She said that she didn’t plan on staying any longer than it took to make sure her mom was going to be ok, as she was only going because it was her mom; but since she can’t stand her mom and wants her to stay out of her life, she wasn’t staying longer than necessary.

The night before I was supposed to start work, she called to say that she was not going to be home for several days. She said that her brother was making her stay because he couldn’t and that I needed to call in and ask to be rescheduled. Not a good thing to do on my first day at a new job.

I called in, but I was actually calling to see if there were any co-workers that lived close to me that started around the same time as me that could maybe give me a ride to work. The manager I spoke to was rude, he misunderstood what I was asking, and informed me that they gave me a job and it was not their responsibility to get me to work too. So, I explained the situation and asked if I could start work a day later so that I could try and find a ride in to work. I wound up asking our neighbor (whom I had only met once before then), and she was nice enough to take me to and from work both days I was scheduled for that week. Therefore, I didn’t lose my job, but by the end of the first day I was sort of wishing I had. I will blog about that later though.

Back to the roommate situation. We came to realize that the garage apartment was too small for the 3 of us, so Leann started looking for a little bit bigger place for all of us to move to. We were still waiting to see what was happening with the unemployment, but it was looking good; and if it didn’t start up again, Lunatic was elligible for one last emergency benefit check. Besides, I did have a little money coming in. We wound up finding a very nice place that could easily fit 2 and a half of the garage apartments in it.

The place we found is about 2200 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, dining room, laundry room, den, 2 pantries and a HUGE kitchen with center island for $500 plus utilities. We found out that the unemployment was continuing and Lunatic would get back pay to June 2 just before we moved in. So, we were able to inexpensively furnish the house. Lunatic and I paid for all the new furniture, except for splitting the cost of the sectional with Leann.

We didn’t go overboard. We were still trying to watch our spending because we knew that the unemployment wouldn’t last forever. We didn’t realize there was anything wrong until Leann went to her dad’s one weekend. Lunatic picked up the phone to make a call, and the phone was dead. We knew it was charged, as it had been on the base all day; and we knew it wasn’t the electrical outlet, as Lunatic’s computer was plugged into the same outlet and it was still working. I started looking around to see if there was a shut-off notice for some reason. That is when I found all the bills stacked by the front door with mail for the previous tenants. All the bills were opened, so we know Leann got them. Looking at them ourselves, we found that there was a disconnect notice for the phone (the phone/internet hadn’t been paid since May), as well as overdue notices for the water/sewer and the electric. The total pastdue amount on all the bills was nearly $725. We had given her $300 to be put toward the bills 2 weeks earlier. None of the bills showed any payments made within 2 months before the pastdue notices I found. Come to find out, Leann had stopped paying everything but her rent at least a month before we moved in with her. Needless to say we were livid.

When we confronted her about the bills, she tried to tell us that after she deposited the check Lunatic gave her for bills into her account (so she could make a debit card payment on the bills), several bills she had set up for automatic payment had payments taken out early. We still haven’t gotten her to realize that when you have an automatic payment set up, the payment don’t get taken out early, they are taken out the same day every month. We paid what we could to try to catch the bills up, and we started changing the bills to our name so that we could actually keep tabs on payments better. At that time, it was mainly having phone/internet/cable turned on in Lunatic’s name as he needs his computer and the phone for his editing work. Having to try to cover the pastdue bills, when we had already paid our portion of them as well as our rent, started to tax our funds; especially since I was no longer working (will explain in another post).

On top of our half the rent, the $300 we gave for bills that never went toward bills (and was never paid back to us either), and the fridge and furnishings we needed for the house; we were buying all the groceries. Even though we were trying to be frugal, it was starting to tax our finances; yet Leann was eating out for lunch every day and bringing home fast food for dinner most nights (even with the kitchen fully stocked by us).

Then in October we find out that she still isn’t paying the bills, when both the water and the electricity are shut off. That was the second time the water was shut off. The first time it happened, Leann used her connections from the paper to cut the reconnect fee in half if she paid the entire amount owed in 2 weeks. When she didn’t pay it, the charged her a new reconnect fee plus what was owed. Lunatic and I paid that bill or nearly $100. The water bill is $27 a month, the reconnect fee is $50, and we had already paid nearly $70 of what was past due. How do you not pay a $27 water bill for so long that the past due amount is over $100? Anyway, when the electric was cut off, she again used a contact she had due to working for the paper, he agreed to drop the reconnect fee and have it turned back on immediately (no payment necessary at that moment) if Leann agreed to have the pat due anount paid by the following week and the current bill paid by the end of October. She didn’t stick to the agreement, then she was surprised when the power was cut off and tried to say that she didn’t remember what the agreement was.

She decided to have her account with the electric company closed and told me to call and have it turned on in my name so that Lunatic and I would have power, as everything in the kitchen (including the stove) is electric and we needed to be able to feed ourselves. That didn’t work, since she had herself down as the only tenant at this address at the power company, all they had to do is call the landlord and ask if she had moved out and new tenants had moved in; and then my request for service was denied. We were told that the power would not be turned back on until the pastdue amount of nearly $300 was paid, Leann’s reaction was to tell us there was nothing she could do. In order for us to have power without having to wait 3 weeks for her to pay her bills (as far as we were concerned it was her bill since we had paid nearly $1200 for bills since July) we had to pay it. It was understood that she would reimburse us for the cost of it. Lunatic was supposed to have one last check coming in a couple of days, and we did have some money left in the bank; so since the other check would be direct deposited in time to cover anything over what we had in the bank before an overdraft occurred, we called the next day and made the full payment of what was owed. We had to wait until the next day because Leann had to call and reinstate her account with the power company first. Little did we know that the last unemployment check was only going to be for one week instead of 2, so what we paid for the bill was not covered and we still wound up overdrawn.

I am still out of work (blog about that tomorrow), mainly because the few places within walking distance are not hiring and Leann refuses to take me out to look for a job anywhere else. Lunatic’s church is temporarily paying the rent (we have all but the water bill in our names and Leann took her name off the lease), we have a letter from Leann agreeing to pay $350 a month as her rent (which covers the bills and the food we provide her). We needed the agreement from Leann in writing for me to take in to the food stamp office to show how our bills are being paid with no income at present. We are hoping to just need help until January or February when Lunatic has his disability hearing. He has a lawyer for that now, so we are hoping for the best since he has a lot of trouble just getting around the house and has to lie down a lot during the day or his legs bother him.

Now that we have helped her get out from under all her bills, and helping her pay a lot toward her student loans (we found out that is where the $300 we gave her for bills went), she has informed us that she is moving out on the first of January. She says she will make sure we are caught up on bills first, but as the bills were due by 11/25 and 12/07 and the only one she has paid is the water bill; I doubt she will even do that, thereby completely screwing us after we helped her in order for our utilities to remain on. What really burns my butt is the fact that she says she is moving because she found a place that is only $300 a month with everything included when the agreement for her rent here is only $350 and that includes everything plus food.

If we didn’t need her to stay and help out with the bills, I would say good riddance, as she doesn’t do a damned thing around here anyway. She leaves her trash from tv dinners and such lying on the counters, she expects me to wash her dishes and I keep having to pick her bedding up from the living room as she refuses to clean her bed off and sleep in her room and has been using my living room as a flop house. We have to care for her dog and we do all the cooking, but she has no trouble eating what we make or anything we bought special for ourselves or all of us. Lunatic bought a 12 piece cheesecake assortment (all different chocolate cheesecakes) because I really wanted chocolate cheesecake. There were 3 slices of each flavor, so I said we each got 4 slices (1 slice of each flavor for each of us). I got 1 slice, Lunatic got 2; Leann ate the other 9 and when I called her on it, she used her period as an excuse.

Now you see why I say that she is inconsiderate and irresponsible. I also think that for her being the only staff reporter for the local newspaper, she has no integrity to speak of. She has no problem using her position to get help from department heads and such st the various utility companies, yet she never bothers to stick to the agreements she makes with them; which has ultinately screwed Lunatic and I over each time she does it.

I have so had it with being used and screwed over by people, especially when we have helped them out in some way. Most of all I am worried that Lunatic and I will lose our house and we have nowhere else to go now.