A Time To Kill

Spring is in the air folks!
Mainly because it felt like spring all winter, but that's besides the point.
Here's a story that happened last summer. You probably don't want it to happen to you, so take heed of the few lessons buried within.

A Time To Kill
I work taking care of animals for a man who likes everything in it's place. I've been there 5 years, so I must be doin it right. A new girl whom I trained and will call "N" and I became friends. She is a hard worker, and is honest, and I appriciate those things in people. She is also candid and funny, which makes our interactions anything but boring.
2 weeks ago, N told me she answered an ad looking for a gardener, and said she must be crazy because with her other jobs, she wasn't sure when she could do this one. She said the property needed everything done. I told her I could help her out, if she wanted, so that she could get done twice as fast. I am one of the fastest workers where we work now, so N happily agreed. I further told her, that while I may boss her a bit at our job, this landscaping job was hers, and she would be my boss - just to establish things upfront.

Suposedly, these people had money, and like I told L one thing I have learned about folks with an abundance of money [I never use the word 'rich' because I find them to often be 'poor' in pretty much everything else, including mannors] is that they waste it on a lot of things, but don't want to pay a proper wage to take care of those things.

N had met with "L" the owner of this "weekend lake house", and followed her around while she pointed, and barked out items she wanted taken care of. One of those things was a giant wheelbarrow of debris which included her precious seedum plants that a previous employee "Nick" had detatched from it's lodgings in the rock wall that separated the lawn from the beach. L was very upset, and said she wanted "every last bit of them" saved. The yard was lined on every side with greenery, along with some unkept ornimental trees. The boxwoods lining the drive were leaning like they were trying to escape, and weeds thrived everywhere. She also wanted everything weeded, and lamented that summer was half over and nothing on the property was done yet. L painted a picture of one who was taken advantage of in such a way, that N and myself felt sorry for her. Poor woman couldn't enjoy her lake house cuz everyone that worked for her, had done her wrong.

Ya'll might wanna make a mental note here folks, when a potential boss starts pointin and barkin, TAKE NOTES!
and anytime a potenial employer starts complaining that everyone has done them wrong, remember - there are two sides to every story, and the one with the most money thinks theirs is the right one.

We began on Tues, and N tells me she suggested to L [and L agreed] that we would make a "Hospital bed" where we will carefully place the seedum after rescuing it from the smoldering wheelbarrow of death, and attempt to get it to root so it can be transplanted later, when it is healthy. She places me on that task, and begins to weed on the other side of the house.

I remember thinkin "what an idiot for pulling out that seedum, could he not see it was a plant?", as I began preparing the bed by the fence. I pulled a pile of festering seedum [among other things] from the wheel barrow, spread it out on the grass to breathe, and begin picking pieces of it that looked like they had some potential. I would place a handful of this in the row, and then water it with some mixed miracle growth stuff for stressed plants. The key word there was Miracle, but I didn't know it at the time. I also didn't know who the real idiot was. I just thought I did.
After a couple of hours, I stood up, to check my progress. It looked good, but the time! Oh the time it took to painstakingly pick 4" to 6" pieces of seedum outa that seething compost pile! I just can't believe they'd wanna pay us $12.50 an hour do do this! So I stop and go tell N how long it's taking. N assures me that L wanted it ALL saved. Now I knew that couldn't happen because if you went 8" down in the wheelbarrow, it everything was moldy, and litterally smokin. We each put in 3 1/2 hours that day.
The next day she wanted me to work on that seedum again, but when it got to where it was taking me too long to pick tiny 2" inch pieces that looked like it wanted to grow, I had to stop. So I began weeding out the path from her back door [so it would be purdy when they arrived for the weekend], and then the beds next to the new seedum, that had dead things in it. These dead things wanted to be a tomato, and 2 black berry plants. It was L who wanted us to make them grow, but being they were already in a location well suited to their growth, there was nothing to do but water them with miracle growth stuff.
I also attempted to spray part of the upper beach area with some weed killer that ended with the word "Clear" [like round-up only worse - it says right on the bottle not to spray it near anything you want to grow, or anywhere you want to grow something before a year is up]. This stuff wasn't a premix, and we were not supplied with anything to mix it with. I searched our supplies to find a 16 ounce glass bottled drink to make a measuring device, and another plastic bottle which I cut the bottom off to make a funel. The spray was commin out in such a thin stream, after many attempts at adjusting it, I determined it was easier to just pull the dang weeds out myself, so I did.

We took the next day off for other jobs, and came back on Fri, the last day before the weekend, in anticipation of L and her husband comming to their beach house for the weekend, N wanted me to finish spraying the beach and driveway, so it would be nice for them, but told me to be careful of the water. I love our planet, don't you? So I pulled up weeds along the water line for the first 4 feet up. I was just finishing when MrL arrived on the scene and asked me why I wasn't spraying the whole beach. I told him about our concern for contamination of the ground water, and said I was going to spray from 4' away from the waters edge forward. He replied that he wanted the weeds gone in the water, too.
He then pointed at the sand, and said "See where there's no weed? If you don't spray here, a weed will pop up. I want the whole beach sprayed, weed or no weed"
Ok, so then I told him there might not be enough "clear" stuff. He tells me there's a whole extra gallon of it, and I reply that there's only a partial one. He looks at me accusingly and asks "Are you mixing it?" I said, yes, and the 16 ounce bottle, which I used 2 of, plus funnel I used to measure are right there. He picked up the empty container of black death, and said it was full last week. I told him it was empty and I was using it to measure the gallon of water. He shook his head, and acknowledged that the Nick, the seedum puller, must have also used this full strength. Although based on all the weeds I saw pokin up out the junipers, all over the beach, driveway, and everywhere else, it did make me wonder where he used it.

Once happy that I am poisoning the planet to his specifications, N tells him that L had asked if we wanted to get paid on the 15th or the 30th, and N had said the 30th would be fine, but then the day before told her to call her with our hours to get paid on the 15th. I heard him telling L that she shoulda had her hours in by the 10th or the 25th to get paid on those dates. I quit listening as they settled on something. Hey, I was there to work, so I did.

Aledgedly there would be a check on the way.
That Sat, they called N, said they needed to talk, and when N got there L ran around pointing and barking again, only this time insisting we didn't do anything she wanted. She pitched and moaned. Why we were there on Thursday, but had no hours written down? [cuz we weren't] When shown our hours written on a calendar, they insisted the cameras had shown us to be there on Thurs [when we were both miles away], and what were we doing there if not working? [I'd like to know that too, actually] Went on to say she never pays $12.50 an hour, that she takes bids and only accepts the lowest one. [Then why didn't she tell N to submit a bid before?] The bed that ran the length of the driveway didn't need weeding [even though it was one of the first things she pointed at the week before], they asked why I hadn't sprayed the whole beach and driveway, which I did [dontcha hate when you get accused of not properly destroying our eco system when you know you did?]. They wanted to know why it took 4 hours to rescue all the tiny pieces of that freakin seedum. Why are the tomatos and berries still dying? Why wasn't black fabric placed and covered with mulch [which they had not provided] and why did we say we weeded all those beds over there anyway since they were all sprayed?
Huh?
Oh, Oh.
I told N if that woman had told us all those beds were poisoned, I wouldn't have placed the seedum there. It's all gonna die, and I don't wanna be there when it does. She agreed, but we got a sinking feeling that 1. they were only gonna pay us a small portion of what they had originally agreed on, and that any future work would be for free, and that 2. If we told them we quit, we wouldn't get paid anything for the work we had already done. So we did what any self respecting underpaid gardener would do - ignored them. They called and called and called for 4 days [if we were that bad, why did they want us back?], and when the check [which amounted to 7 $hr] came, we drove the 20 miles to their bank, cashed it, and right next door was a Salvation Army Thrift store, where I got a great deal on some fabric and 2 giant quilting hoops! but I digress. I let N call them back and tell them we were not suited to their needs, Or some fancy crap that means we are taking the $7 an hour the cheap hustlers sent us and runnin for the hills!

I don't know what they paid Nick, but I'm no longer thinkin he's the only idiot. Clearly he got paid to kill seedum, tomatoes, berries, and a few weeds.