Joe Hustles to Get Through College

I've been crazy busy.

2006-11-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

My lawn care business took off pretty well. I'm getting my papers in order to open a legitimate lawn care business next year. I still have 2 part time jobs in addition to doing yard cleanups. We're also more than halfway through the semester.

I should probably post to this blog more.

In other news: I downloaded and installed microsoft's bootleg quickbooks (accounting express 2007 or something), because using a spreadsheet to handle business transactions is a drag. It looks and functions amazingly like quickbooks. I can now make really professional looking invoices. Even though I prefer to collect cash or check as soon as I finish the work.

On site collection doesn't work for out of town landlords. And I just landed a job for an out of town landlord. She owns a real estate company and has some rentals here. I think this will lead to more work down the road.

So far I've been doing all the work by myself. On one job my wife came and helped me out. But I got a big cleanup for Saturday and I got a helper lined up. The next step would be to get somebody else to do all the work and I just do sales and supervision, but that doesn't seem likely.

Dang. This post was kind of scattered. Oh well.

Scientist are lame.

2006-09-17T08:01:00.000-06:00

It seems like the scientists I work with at my warehouse job are very lame. Most of them are weird. The worst part is they are arrogant. It must be true that they know the best way to do everything, they are scientists and I am only a lowly student employee.

On Thursday I was out digging a hole to put a pole in with a scientist. This guy is a knucklehead. Not that he is a bad guy or anything, just inexperienced. Rather than hiring an excavator to dig it with a backhoe, he chose to go to Albuquerque and rent a jackhammer. So we jackhammered at this very rocky soil and dug it out with a shovel. Total time: approximately 5 hours of hard work.

On Friday this scientist got quikrete and all that goes with it so we can mix and pour 10 cu. ft. Now that, I don't mind. However, he came up with an elaborate plan that involved mixing concrete in one spot that going around supports in a circle to the other side of the hole and dumping. I tried to get through that we should mix and push the wheelbarrow straight to the hole and dump. He didn't understand and got nervous that I was questioning his authority so he said his plan again louder. Silly. I've mixed and poured a lot of quikrete, at my other real jobs. So we mixed the first batch. I grabbed the wheelbarrow and wheeled it straight to the hole. The scientist seeing the efficiency in my system didn't say anything and just pretended that it was his plan all along and I must have misunderstood.

Scientists are lame. There are more lame ones at my warehouse job. Most of the techs there are pretty cool. More lame scientist stories to come.

Getting better at Domino's Pizza.

2006-09-17T07:50:00.000-06:00

I'm getting a raise at Domino's. I'm going from $4.35 all the way to $5.00. This may sound illegally low, however, as a tipped employee (delivery driver) As long as my wages and tips exceed the minimum wage ($5.15) they are in the good. All I had to do was fulfill the requirements for promotion (probationary to level 1). This was easy stuff like: knows the delivery area, fold 15 boxes in 5 minutes, shows up on time, etc.

Domino's is an easy job, but I don't make much. According to my paychecks, I have reported in tips that is just about equal to my hourly wage ($4.35). So I've been making about $8 an hour. Not bad. However, in one payperiod (2 weeks) I got 13 hours and the next I got 19 hours. That aint much. Increasing the hours I work is also sketchy. I've only been working the rushes. Which is the early evening. I don't work days or closings. Either of those would give me more hours, but less tips. More hours plus less tips equals lower average money. I don't think I want to reduce the efficiency of my money making at Domino's.

Issues at the warehouse.

2006-09-17T07:25:00.000-06:00

On Thursday I got a talking to my warehouse job manager Mike. To boil it down: "come to work and do your work!" It turns out that in the month since school started I have missed 5 days of work. Two of those were legitimate: I was at the dentist. The other three were questionable. I also agree with Mike that my productivity has been pretty low. It's hard to be motivated to do much work for $7.50 especially when a lot of the things they have us student employees do is really make-work. It has no purpose other than to keep us busy. For example we sorted and tested cables. Sounds fine right? Except that when we got to the box of crap(not damaged just stuff we probably don't need) we had to get some of the scientist types to tell which of the cables was good and which we didn't need. Turns out all the crap cables went back into the crap cables box after we sorted them. Make work.

So Mike laid it out, "I hear you want to quit. If you want to quit, then quit now." Me, "If I found a better job I would quit. So I guess I will stay." Being a full-time student and having a campus job, even if it is with an outside government agency, sucks. They are just as bad as regular employers. They want you to think they are doing you a favor for being so generous as to let you work for them while you go to school. There are no favors in the employee-employer relationship. Mike is under the impression that I will stay working for him for the semester at least. How wrong he could be. I will quit as soon as a find a student job that allows me to do my homework at work. Even if it pays a little less. I figure it an even trade. I'll take $6.50 if I don't have to do work all day at work.

My coworkers at the warehouse all put up with the job, because for them it is something to put on their resumes. We work for a large government funded research institution that does fancy expensive research. We work in the warehouse but we do all the jobs the scientists and technicians don't want to do. We test and package for shipment most of the equipment that they have. For the youngsters I work with this is an important job. I, on the other hand, already have solid work experience. I have been a lead sign electrician and a pump installer. I know how to show up, do work, make the company money and get promoted. I don't need this job for my resume. I don't need any jobs for my resume. I will sign on with a good company before I graduate.

Marketing My Lawn Mowing Service

2006-09-11T06:12:00.000-06:00

This morning I am leaving early to replace my ineffective pull-tab fliers that advertise my lawn mowing service and replacing them with my improved pull-tab flier. My original flier was packed with information and was difficult to pick out of the crowd of fliers. The new one is much simpler with larger text.

As far as I can tell there have been 2 tabs pulled from my 9 fliers in town and I haven't gotten any calls. So my ratio of tabs to calls is more than 2:1.

I have taken the day off of my warehouse job for a dentist appointment and I have the night off from Domino's Pizza, but there is an employee meeting at Domino's at 8:00pm. That sucks. Later.

Back to school with a family.

2006-09-08T10:18:00.000-06:00

This blog will chronicle the absurd things a 23 year old returning college student with a wife and a kid will do to finish college.

Absurd Things:

I quit a job where I made $40k a year as a sign electrician to move my wife(no kid then) from SoCal to small town New Mexico so that I could go back to school and get my degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Somehow I got lost after moving to NM and ended up doing a few different things: sign electrician, gas station attendant, used car salesman, water well technician and slot machine technician. All in a two year period since moving.

I ended up owning a house 100 miles from the school I wanted to go to. So I put my house up for sale and went back to school. 20,000 miles later I sold my house. It only took an entire school year.

Now in year 2 of back to school I live in the right town, only 1 mile away from the campus. I have two crappy jobs: working in a warehouse on campus for $7.50/hour and delivering pizzas at Domino's for a few hours a night.

That wouldn't be so bad except that my rent is $900 a month. Did I mention my wife is a stay at home mom? So I am the sole source of income in the home. On the bright side my financial aid/student loans after I pay for tuition/books will pay for the rent for 8 months. So I only have to cover bills, car payment, food, diapers etc. At least until May.

So I've been working on ways to increase the efficiency of my monetary pursuits. Namely make more money working less hours. Then I could work more hours and make even more money.

Ways to make more money:

Mow lawns - I already have a lawnmower and a weedwacker so I figured I could mow people's lawns and make decent money. So I made a pull-tab flier last week and put them on all the bulletin boards at school. So far there have been a few tabs pulled but no calls. I think my flier is too busy. Too much text. I probably need to make it simpler.

Sell bottled water - I didn't come up with this idea I got it from http://nevblog.com
So anyway last night I bought a case of water at Smith's grocery store for $3.99. I figured sell them for a buck and make $20 a case. I put the water in the fridge, cleaned up a cooler I already had and rounded up some dollar bills for change. I planned on selling the water on campus because most of the vending machines don't have bottled water in them only soda. So I got up this morning and it was raining and the high today is only going to be in the low 70s. Bad day to start so I put the water idea on hold till the weather gets better which should be next Monday.

Sell Pizza - This one is still in the incubation stage, but I am thinking of a way to buy pizza from Domino's with my employee discount (60%) and sell pizza by the slice on campus. I can get a large pizza for $6. It has 8 slices and selling them at $2 each would net me $10 per pizza. I am still working the details out on this one. Once I see how bottled water goes (whether campus police tell me to cut it out or else) then I'll yea or nay this one.