dianaschnuth

I’ve been re-reading my old diaries and journals, looking for blog-worthy tidbits to share from five, ten, or fifteen years ago. This one is just a little overdue for a Five Years Ago Today, but I’m going to share it anyway.

As a bit of a preamble: in the Spring of 2001, my step-Gary decided (for reasons best left to another blog entry) that he would go into business for himself. He hired me on contract for some graphic design work: logo, business cards, letterhead. Being in my final year of college as a Visual Communication major, I was grateful for the experience, and the pay.

This is one day’s worth of that experience, unabridged, originally written five years ago:

(BTW, Mom? You should probably skip this one.)

Thursday 22 March 2001, 2:45am

There’s never a dull moment when you’re doing business with Gary P. Smoke.

Tuesday night, 11ish, I get a call. It’s Gary. Says he needs to add someone to the list for the business cards I’m making for his new company, but that he’ll have to call me back later.

…His definition of “later” is 3am. At this time, he not only gives me the name of his new programmer, Ryan, but also informs me that he needs the cards printed and ready by noon THAT DAY. *sigh* Since I’m being paid $25/hour, I go with it, but only for the five people he needs a rush order on. At 3:45am, I hang up and head for the [computer] lab.

Just before 6am, I email the files off to Gary and Alex, just to be safe. And I go to bed. At 1pm, I wake up and check my email, only to discover that BOTH emails bounced back, User Unknown. Shit. And I checked my voicemail to discover that Gary had called at 3:47am saying that the file transfer wasn’t going to work, and that he was going to call Kinko’s to figure out how I could transfer the files directly. But that was the only message I got from him. And he hasn’t contacted me since.

I told Aaron about it this evening, and got an earful. He wanted to know how many times I needed to be dicked over by Gary before I finally realize that I can’t trust him. And I’m kind of torn about that. Every time now, I’ve tried to make the boundaries perfectly clear to Gary. And every time now, he’s pushed them to their breaking point. Last year’s tax return… the sale of the car that went awry… and now this. And every new instance, I think it will be different this time because I’m taking X precaution.

And every time, I get dicked over, one way or another. How many ‘second chances’ is Gary going to get?

Oh, well. At least the cards and letterhead are done and ready to ship now, and I won’t have to think about Gary for a while…

And I even get paid $95.00 for all this…