I found this on the web and had to share:

Apartment Managers

My wife and I signed on as caretakers for a "luxury" apartment building in Minneapolis, MN. Our compensation was to be a 2-bedroom apartment & $700 a month apiece for performing "housekeeping & light maintenance." It was quite a reduction from our previous salaries, but I figured we would be able to work second jobs & would be relieved of the burden of the horrendous rents in the area.

That's what I get for thinking. "Luxury" is what the apartment building may have been a quarter-century ago, but today it reminds me of an old *****. You can dress it up & perfume it, but you still end up with an old *****. We didn't work 40 hours a week on this job. We worked a 40-hour week plus 2-7 days of "on-call" duty per week, which we didn't receive a dime for, unless we were actually out unplugging a toilet, etc.

During our on-call time, we stayed in our apartment for each 24-hour period waiting for someone to call us about a problem. And believe me, there were problems. And then, there were the "turns." (Someone moves out, we clean the place till it looks like new, or a reasonable facsimile thereof). We were supposed to be doing these during the afternoons, after the common areas had been cleaned. That is, if we didn't have a half-dozen maintenance calls to take care of, which we usually did.

And finally, there was our adorable manager & boss, whom we nicknamed "Phallus," which was much more appropriate than her given name of "Phyllis." This woman was the most anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, micro-managing, nosy & intrusive person I have ever met in my life. And this after a 20-year career in the Navy and 4 years as a prison guard. During this time, I have met my share of people who ought to be poster children for birth control, but she had them all beat. And she lived in the apartment right next door to us. Oh, joy. We could hear her or her husband Grant ("Grunt" to us) in the bathroom greeting us with morning serenades from the nether regions, the walls were so thin. She always knew when we had arrived or left, and I'm sure she kept track of us in some record somewhere.

On our infrequent days off, we always did a nose check in the hallway to make sure she was not around. This task was rendered easy, due to the fact that she wore enough perfume to instantly vaporize a laboratory rat. She hated to tell an employee they were doing a good job. When we arrived, we busted butt to bring our areas up the standard you would expect in a "Luxury" apartment.

Tenants complimented us constantly, and the woman who inspected and documented our work twice a week could not find fault with us. But "Phallus" could not find it in her heart to say anything except that the woman "wasn't looking hard enough." Well, she had an assistant manager for a time, but managed to drive him & his wife (who worked in the office) off by not permitting them to do their jobs and berating them in the presence of residents & other employees. After they left, it became Phallus's Queendom, and we knew our days were numbered.

Finally, one day she told us that we had to complete a "turn" which had been worked on by another couple (who had seen the light & blew that Popsicle stand several weeks prior) by 4 P.M., as the tenants were supposed to take possession the next morning. Lo & behold, Phallus had not even looked at the place. There was a good 3 days work in it, and if she'd been doing her job, she'd have known it.

We put a note in the night drop along with our keys that night (after a full day's work in the dump) and the next day found other jobs where a person might at least have a little self-respect at the end of the day. She charged us full rent from that day until we left, and has us evicted while we were waiting on paychecks from our new jobs, but it was worth it. At least we had escaped her indentured servitude. So from us to our esteemed former "massa"--"Bite me, Phallus"!

Here is an not very amusing insight, that i'd thought it good to post. I found it on Break the Chain, a group that works on ending domestic worker abuse _ heres the website http://www.ips-dc.org/ there are other stories there and ways to help.


“Diana”, a Ghanian elementary teacher, was brought as a domestic worker to the US on a G-5 visa by a field engineer for the World Bank. Despite her employment contract stating a 40-hour workweek, she was forced to work an average of 15 hours a day. For the first two months, she did not receive a day off. She was given $400 for 4 ½ months of her labor. To keep her from leaving the house, her employer told her she would be raped or kidnapped if she went outside. Diana escaped her situation when her employer attempted to send her back to Ghana -- she jumped out of the car en route to the airport in Washington, DC and fled to New Jersey. Through Immigration and Naturalization Services, she heard about the Campaign, which secured a lawyer and has brought a suit against her former employer.

"Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

For most of us it is not the desire to make a difference that holds us back, but rather the "how to" that stops us achieving our goals.


from:
http://www.volunteer.org.nz/

found this surfing:

"You may have a great resume, you may be very dedicated
and determined and you may have sent out hundreds of
applications, applying to every opportunity, but 80%
of all jobs are found through the 'hidden job market'.

"This is the kind of job you get when you meet someone
at an event, a meeting, as a volunteer, or some other
way, and they are impressed by your knowledge, your
personality, and your enthusiasm. Meeting people face
to face is a more effective way to prove yourself to an
employer. Therefore, learning how to be a good networker
can really improve your chances of finding a rewarding,
challenging, enjoyable career in the environment."

- Chris Benjamin, Coordinator
Environmental Volunteer Network

Third Woman Sues Gorilla's Caretakers.

Sat Feb 26, 7:33 AM ET Top Stories - AP

WOODSIDE, Calif. - A third woman has filed a lawsuit claiming a caretaker for Koko, the world-famous sign-language-speaking gorilla, pressured her to expose her breasts as a way to bond with the animal.

Iris Rivera, 39, sued the Gorilla Foundation this week in San Mateo County Superior Court, saying the foundation's president, Francine Patterson, repeatedly told her to expose her breasts.


Rivera, an administrative assistant at the foundation until she quit last month, claims Patterson told her last year that Koko was signing that "she wants to see your nipples."


Two other former employees of the foundation, Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, filed similar claims last week.


But while Alperin and Keller refused to expose themselves to Koko, Rivera acquiesced, the lawsuit states.


"She took it as a disagreeable duty of her employment," said Rivera's lawyer, Michael Adams.


An attorney for the foundation said the lawsuits had "no merit."


Rivera's lawsuit alleges sexual and disability discrimination, invasion of privacy and Labor Code violations and seeks unspecified damages.


The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of gorillas. It's best known for Koko, a 300-pound simian who has mastered a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs.

Prankster Smuggles Art Into Top Museums

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day.

The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was a 2 foot by 1.5 foot (61cm by 46 cm) oil painting of a colonial-era admiral, to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war graffiti in the background.

The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body -- another comment on war, Banksy told Reuters on Thursday.

"It was just an outsider's view of the modern American bug, bristling with listening devices and military hardware," he said.

An art Web site called www.woostercollective.com has posted pictures of the artist -- wearing an Inspector Clouseau-style overcoat, a hat and a fake beard and nose -- hanging up his work at the four museums and describing how he did it.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location in Britain, Banksy said he conducted all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and provided distractions where necessary.

"They staged a gay tiff (lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," said the artist, declining to give his real name or any personal details beyond his occupation as a professional painter and decorator.

It is not the first time he has staged such stunts. Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and London's Tate, attracting attention in the British media.

"My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre.'"

He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm dead," he said.

His preferred creative outlet, graffiti on trains, was growing more difficult due to greater security so he decided to branch out into infiltrating museums. "I tend to gravitate to places with less sophisticated security systems," he said.

Officials at the Natural History Museum declined to comment on security. Museum of Modern Art officials said only that the offending picture was taken down on March 17.

It was unclear what gave the game away but Banksy's version of Andy Warhol's iconic images of Campbell's Soup Cans showed a can of Tesco value tomato soup, a discounted brand sold by a British supermarket chain.

"Obviously they've got their eye a lot more on things leaving than things going in which works in my favor," Banksy said. "I imagine they'll be doing stricter bag checks now."

He said the painting in the Metropolitan Museum, a small portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask, had been discovered after one day, while the others stayed up for several days. The paintings were fixed to the wall with extra-strong glue.

Asked how he managed to escape notice while putting them up on a busy Sunday at the museums, he said: "They do get pretty full, but not if you put the pictures in the boring bits."

Reuters