(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Old-time Kossack could use some support [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-02-01  

My wonderful cat, Frankie who makes me smile. I hope this photo makes you smile as well.

Greetings Kossacks. I’m a long-time member here, infrequent diarist and fairly frequent commenter and even more frequent recommender. I wanted to share my sad tale to get some support if you don’t mind.

In 2020 I was offered a retirement incentive by my employer for them to save money due to the pandemic. My job at the time was awfully stressful and that itself is a long, sad tale that I won’t go into here. Just know that due to my stress I began to have physical issues. Or I should say some of my physical issues resurfaced. My low back issue became so much worse when I took this job in 2019. Along with that I re-injured my shoulders right after I started this job, which didn’t help my situation. I did physical therapy for my shoulders until November 2019. The following month was when my back issues resurfaced. I decided to try acupuncture and wow!!! I felt 80% better after the first treatment!

Then we all got sent home to work in March 2020 due to Covid. Around June a bunch of us “older folk” were offered this incentive and I immediately said “where do I sign?” It was my ticket out of this awfully stressful job. I worked the numbers over and over again, sent it to my sister and my financial advisor to check over. Did I miss something? Can I really do this? They both said yes, I can do this. And another good friend told me to take it because these types of incentives don’t come around very often. So I took it.

But I was too young for Social Security so needed a part time job to fill the gap. I got what I had hoped would be a simple job to earn what I needed until I could retire at 62. The job was easy, however, the woman I worked for wasn’t terribly bright. She was the kind of boss that made so many errors that it caused work for the rest of us. I started there in October 2020.

Something happened December 2020-January 2021 that caused me to distrust her: she lied and I had proof. The details don’t matter, just believe me when I say that she lied. And that bothered me to no end!! But I had to keep working there so it was never addressed. By November 2021 I started getting migraines again. I only get migraines when I’m stressed. So I knew I had to do something.

I happened to be emailing with the gal that worked for me in the job I held prior to taking the job in 2019. I’ll call her Mary(not her real name). She told me that Georgia (not her real name) had taken another position and her last day was that week, as it happened. I’m calling it divine intervention. Georgia replaced me in 2019 when I took that horribly stressful job.

My wheels began to spin wondering if Leslie (my old boss and not her real name) would let me come back for my last few months of work. My plan was always to retire fully when I was 62 in May 2022 due to my physical issues which apparently aren’t bad enough to qualify for disability. So I composed an email to Leslie basically saying “have I got a deal for you!!” because Georgia’s departure couldn’t have come at a worse time for my old department: budget time. I proposed they let me work the budget and some of my other tasks until I could retire at the end of March. Between my vacation pay and bonus from my job at the time I had enough to get me through April 2022. After that I’d get Social Security.

So, that’s what happened. I was able to spend my last working days(or so I thought) without stress!! And it was great. Except it doesn’t end there.

Meanwhile my financial advisor posted something on LinkedIn about how retirees should “spend” in their “go-go” years (65-75) because by the time you reach 75 you might not have the energy to do as much. I took that advice and planned a trip to D.C. to celebrate my retirement. It was a wonderful trip!! I also planned a trip to Chicago for two reasons: to visit my elderly aunt and uncle and to spend time with my sister since I hadn’t seen her since October 2019. And meanwhile, my retirement savings began to dwindle.

We also had some other things that came up: damn dental issues where we both met our annual limits so of course had to withdraw money for those. Editorial comment: you pay, pay, pay for decades for dental insurance and then when you finally need to use it for other than regular check-ups, well, I probably don’t have to tell you. Pretty damn disappointing. I’m still paying off my second crown after an emergency root canal. Oh, the fun.

When Mary(gal that worked for me for 4.5 years) quit last summer Leslie contacted me to see if I would help them out until they found the replacement for the best employee I ever had, Mary. I felt I owed it to Leslie since she bailed me out of that other stressful job. It was also easy money and zero stress and worked great. It was about 5-10 hours a month.

Enter early October 2022 when Edna started. Edna is Mary’s replacement and Edna is no Mary. I was tasked to train Edna in one fairly easy task(actually it was more than this one but this one she just doesn’t get), and I should say easy for an accountant like me. And easy for Mary because she is damn smart. I could tell in those training sessions that she didn’t have what it takes to do this task. She’s probably good at the accounts payable stuff but, again, she is no Edna. Her Excel skills were awfully lacking, something that is needed for this task. I decided to cut my time short because of Edna. I wrote up all kinds of instructions to help her, something that I didn’t get and Mary didn’t need.

Enter the week before Thanksgiving when I requested another distribution from our retirement savings. I had asked during our meeting with our financial advisor in September “what do I do when my employer’s gift comes to an end in December?” Because I needed to cover my health insurance. The gift covered my health insurance for just over two years. His answer was to request a distribution. When I did this he told me it wasn’t sustainable because of what happened in the stock market. I went into a tailspin and came to the conclusion that I would have to look for another part time job. And didn’t really enjoy my holidays because of my new situation.

During my last meeting with my boss in October, I casually mentioned that if the stock market didn’t start coming back up that I’d be looking for another part time job. His answer: well don’t look too far! I could use your help with the budget. So I contacted him and I’m back at my old employer for the third time. I thought I would help him with the budget while I continued to look for another part time job because after the budget is done, there was nothing else for me to do.

Except, that’s not what happened. Mark(not his real name) rehired me the week before Christmas and then sent me a screen shot of a summary that I created when I took this job in 2015. The summary is used to combine two reports of hours worked by the staff to ensure that the keying of those hours into various other spreadsheets are accurate. I linked to the various other spreadsheets and had a formula to ensure everything tied out. If you keyed everything correctly, you should get to zero. This is the task that Mary cannot handle. The screenshot that Mark sent me was off TWO HUNDRED (yes, 200) hours!! And thus began where I am today.

First question: did Edna send the invoices for processing. Of course she did because she didn’t (and still doesn’t) understand what the summary is for. It took me nearly three hours to find all the issues!! And then I got my first migraine in early January. Stress will be the end of me…..

I showed Edna how to create September’s invoices. Mary helped her with October so she had two months’ worth of help(I had only one). Doing it on her own in November was when she was off 200 hours. And she was late so no revenue for December. Not a big deal but I always strived to get all the revenue booked each month.

I had a chat with Mark to ask him to take this task away from her. That she’s not an accountant, that her Excel skills are lacking. Mark said she HAS to learn this. Okay, then how about you let me do this task for a few months until Edna is more acclimated to the rest of her tasks, the stuff she already knows how to do. My old department is a complicated animal and I remember it took me a good 6-8 months to finally understand everything when I started there in 2015. My thought was that she is too overwhelmed right now. Except I don’t think she can handle it. I suggested she take an Excel class “oh, I’ve taken them.” Um, maybe a refresher then so you get more practice? Anyhow, Mark had to check with Leslie because Edna reports to her. He came back to me with “all good”. Except that’s not what happened.

Edna decided (I think) that she could handle it and keyed in December’s hours. When she sent me a question about December I was dumbfounded. I thought I was doing December! Her answer told me that maybe the three of them had a different conversation. She said “oh, I thought I was doing December and you would check my work, per conversation with Mark.” Nope, that’s not what I proposed and not what I understood would happen. And it took me another couple of hours to fix December.

Now we’re finally in the current week. I got so frustrated again last week that I got my second migraine in the same month. Not a great start to my time back in my old job, or pieces of it. So I talked with Mark again on Monday. And he said that yep, she was to stop working on the invoices except she didn’t listen. That’s another issue with her to add to the other issues.

So I asked Mark to please send an email to this effect so that she does NOT key January!!! I’m still waiting for that email that likely will not come. I’m sure Mark is very busy but it is SO important that we’re all on the same page damnit!!!

I’m seeing a new acupuncturist this afternoon to help me control my stress. I remembered that when I had my first treatment in December 2019 for my back that my migraines disappeared!! Except, wait, I’m supposed to be MAKING money not creating more bills. I am fit to be tied!!

Mark said he had enough work for me to last the rest of the year. Since I’m now drawing Social Security I can only make $21,240 this year before it affects my Social Security and we calculated that I could make about $18k for the year. I’ve got some other stuff paying off later this year and hoping I can quit for the last time towards the end of the year.

What bugs the crap out of me is that the reason I took the retirement incentive was so that I’d have less stress because it affects me physically. My first part time job stressed me out and now I’m stressed having to deal with someone who doesn’t have the right skills but she HAS to learn this task. Too young for Medicare, I am forced to work yet again. Pretty damn depressing. Yea, I know it’s temporary and I know there are so many others out there whose situations are much worse than mine, but damnit, it wasn’t supposed to be this way!!

And so here I am writing this diary to vent and to get some support. I don’t need a GoFundMe as my situation is not dire. However, I’m anxious about that damn debt ceiling. I had to take a second mortgage just so that my extra distribution from retirement funds wasn’t so big and that saved me $300 a month. And my house has since decreased in value. I had hoped the Dems would keep control of the House so that we could continue on the progress road under our great President Biden and so that I wouldn’t have to worry about my retirement funds. But worry is my middle name.

Thank you for listening. A not-so-retired Kossack who needs support right now. Maybe others out there have more suggestions for me that I haven’t thought of.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/1/2150487/-Old-time-Kossack-could-use-some-support

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/