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I've been working for a painter as her driver/errand boy. It's far from a steady income, but it's better than nothing. Aside from the pay not being stable my big problem is the lack of professionalism.

We've made 3 big trips out of state since I started working for her. She will set a day we need to go and that day will be planned out a few weeks in advance, then it gets delayed a few days. This trip she wanted to leave Tuesday but we didn't actually leave till Friday. Time tables mean nothing as well. She said she wants to leave at 8am so I get up at 7, get ready for the trip and get to her place a little before 8 so we can load up and she's still in bed. We don't actually get on the road till 11. This morning the alarm went off at 7 to get up. By 7:30 I was ready to leave for the job site. It's 9 now and she's just now getting out of bed. It's about a half hour drive and we're supposed to meet the client at 10. We left Friday and now it's Sunday and she's still not done with phase 1 of the project which she said would be done in "just a couple hours" on Friday night. Phase 1 isn't done yet, phase 2 is the long part, and somehow she expects us to get home tomorrow night. Probably not going to happen.

Another thing that bothers me is alcohol. Almost every day I work for her I have to do a beer run. I'm not some straight arrow who is against alcohol, but while working on the job drinking just doesn't seem professional to me. On our first out of state trip she brought an assistant with her and he drank a lot. He drank at least 3 cans of four loko each day on the job AND he had to operate a scissor lift. Alcohol and heavy machinery are just a horrid combination but it gets worse. One of the last days on the project the facility had an opening ceremony where investors, owners, and other big wigs came out to see the facility. There was a lot of money walking around out there and if they were impressed it could have meant a lot of potential new jobs for the company. The plan was to see an artist adding the finishing touches on the mural just as the party started. Instead they saw plastic outline sheets taped to a wall and a drunk Mexican on a scissor lift talking to birds. That just screams professionalism.

The biggest problem I have is how half assed the plan is. The first two trips were for the same project. The first trip was quoted to take about 2-3 days which seemed nice, but instead it took a week because she couldn't work as quickly as she predicted. Had she said it would take about a week it wouldn't have been as bad as saying 3 days then saying "well it looks like we need one more day" every day. The first trip took a week then we had to leave because she didn't bring enough paint and she spent too much of the money the client paid on other things so she had to ask the client for more money to come back and finish the mural. The second trip took about 3 days to finish the job. With the current job the client paid half in advance and was to pay the other half when we're done. Rather than actually saving money for the trip she spent it all then had to ask one of her regular customers to lend her some money for this trip. Yesterday she ran out of paint again, the nearest distributor of her brand of paint is 200 miles away, and we were out of money with no way to even get home. The client is being nice and paying the rest of the money today so we can finish the job, but this job has relied on the kindness of others rather than proper planning to get the job done. I'm going to have to try harder to get a better job.