Disturbing news

At 6:30 am the temp was 58 degrees...the sky was pretty dark.  The house was showing about 58 degrees as well, even though I had dropped the windows before we went to bed.  Might have been a touch warmer if I hadn't left the front door open so the dogs could hang out on the front screened porch.  Such is life. 

Mojo enjoys the porch more than the other two and if he wouldn't think I was mad at him, I would close the door and let him stay out there  But, if the door is closed, he thinks he's being punished, so for now I'm leaving it open.

Hubby came home with a bit of disturbing news last night...today might very well be his last day on his job.  Seems he has finally come to realize what I've been seeing with this job.  When he was hired in it was as mechanic/driver.  The owner was wanting to retire out and had sold the company to another on payments.  When that deal seemed to fall through, the old owner took the reins back.  This was just after the accident with hubby and the oldest boy being run over.  The old owner was aware of hubby's physical condition and asked him to come back and work for him.  In the first few months, the old owner wasn't pushing him to do things outside his limits...but as time has passed, now he's pushed hubby to his limit.  He knew hubby wasn't to be lifiting, and also the climbing on the truck to tarp the load was just more of a physical job than hubby could handle.  They installed a motorized tarp rack on the truck he normally drove...life was ok.

Now it seems they want him to play laborer, constant bending, dragging and tossing.  As well as putting him in one of the trucks that not only bounces and jars his body, but is one he has to climb on to tarp again.  He's been in pretty intense pain from this for the past week.  Yesterday was his final straw.  When he said something about the new driver giving his truck back, the owner informed him that it wasn't his truck.

I'm pretty bent over the entire situation since it has cost us money for hubby to work for this group since year one.  He has not been holding taxes...which makes hubby a self employed sub-contractor...and with no expenses, we get hit for the full amount.  Hubby has stuck with this company because "..... is a good person".  Yeah, well honey, I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen the kind of 'good' person this man isn't. 

When hubby was sent home the other week 'because the permits aren't ready'...he had already been at work for almost four hours...because the boss's daughter is the one cutting payroll, she didn't deem it necessary to pay him for that day at all.  Just lots of things that have rubbed me the wrong way, especially lately with them.  When hubby only worked 13 days in August...the boss's kids who also work there, were still drawing their full paychecks of over a thousand bucks a week.  We were the ones who did without cash several weekends as the daughter didn't bother to let him know he could pick up his check after having a short week.  He was given days off because 'we just don't have the work' and then getting a phone call on Sunday night to let him know there was work Monday, with the little side remark 'you know your paycheck is at the office right?'  This after being told they didn't have the money for payroll the last day they worked.  GGGRRRR  This makes me insane.

Yet in spite of all this hubby has remained loyal to this group.  During the past five years that he has been with them, even after the accident, he has missed less than two weeks work in that entire time.  Yeah, it might take him twice as long doing heavy mechanic work as it once did and he might have to have a helper depending on what he's working on, but he's there on time every day and works at whatever they've asked.  The mechanicing he's done has saved them thousands of dollars as he's been doing this type of work his entire adult life.  He can work on heavy equipement and the semi tractors as well...re-building big engines is something he once enjoyed immensely, but has to have help with now.  Since he's been working for a flat per day fee, whether he works a few hours or the entire eight hours he was being paid for the full day....until the daughter began doing payroll.  Now it seems that they are trying to push him to work ten hour days for the same pay at times...which doesn't set well with me, or wanting him to work Saturdays and then conveniently 'forgetting' to put the extra day in his pay.  I've been ready to raise hell with them for over a year now and this is just the final straw in my book.  Makes me fighting mad when people take advantage of my husband.

So last night when hubby came home he made the statement 'you might need to go find a job'...HUH?!!  That was when he began telling me about what has been going on with the new driver taking over his truck.  He has only mentioned it a couple of times in the past few weeks and I had already told him he needed to speak with his boss about it and let him know that what he was being asked to do was creating physical issues again..  But for the boss to inform him, after referring to this semi as hubby's truck, that 'it isn't YOUR truck...that ticked hubby off.  It takes alot to really push my husband to the point of quitting a job he enjoys.  Since he began working at 16, he's held only four jobs....all of them mechanic related and the current job he went and upgraded to a CDL license so he could get away from the mechanicing. 

When he told me last night I should go get a job, my response was 'we better start getting things dealt with here and begin downsizing our junk so we can head to the mountain...I'm not working in this state again'.  Don't know what he thought about that, but the way the work is going around here, we can do better working for ourselves.  Why work for minimum wage when we can work together and make the same as what's being earned by him right now...usually more in fewer days?  We used to enjoy working together and for a couple of years prior to him working at his current job, we were doing pretty good working for ourselves.

I'm ready to take the leap and head to the mountain...things can only get better from this point on.