Bill's Crew

Wednesday night was the first night that Bill got to meet the members of his crew. They are all in their mid 20s and are all from Georgia. There is Quentin, Landrick, Antwan, Racio and David. Three of them ride in one car and share a hotel room and two ride in another and share another room. When people say that we live in small quarters imagine these guys - especially the group of 3! - living in one hotel room. Maybe it will work better with men than it would with women!

Bill was not sure how much of their paperwork and other follow up tasks he would have to be doing as they are independent contractors as he was in Phoenix and no one followed up after him. But Friday morning Roger, Bill's immediate boss, was on the phone looking for all the paperwork so they could get advances on their pay. I took the call as Bill was sleeping and he said that we need to babysit them. So Bill had to call them so I could give them their print outs and invoices. They are getting $175 a day which will be ok when there is a full week but this week they only worked two days. Bill says that the guys are all good workers but especially Quentin who also takes the initiative to do something that needs to be done without being told. Of course, the first couple of nights they were dragging by 3am or so as they weren't used to working overnights.

Also Friday after Bill had left the Target with all the paperwork signed off on he got a call about 5:30am from the manager who had found a "different" planogram. He didn't know what to do so he went back and had to spend another hour adding different parts to the cases. I mentioned that to his boss who then said that he does not have to do that -- once there is a sign off of paperwork that is it, done deal. So hopefully by going back when he didn't have to it made a good impression. Now that Bill is on salary he will no doubt have work every week as they will have to pay him even if he's not working -- and I highly doubt they will want to do that very often! Due to the fact that most of Prime Retail's work is between January and the end of October as the stores do not want large resets or projects during the Christmas rush, he has applied again for Amazon.com but this time in Campbellsville, Kentucky for a change of pace. I will be able to do merch work in Lexington and Louisville from there. He already received his first per diem pay on Friday, which will come now every Friday. It seems nice to have some reliable income again finally! Now hopefully with the new healthcare bill we will be able to afford some reasonable health insurance and be back where we were about two years ago this time.

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