Those Pesky Bills

     Page Two Hundred Forty.
     So the new job at the museum is going well. The pay is quite questionable but the job is really great (3 weeks in anyhow). I feel valued and like I'm in my element. It's kind of weird how many people walk in whom I know. Probably 4-6 people per week appear and say, "Jeremy, what in the world are you doing here? When did you start working here?" And then we chat for a while. Or, I simply start talking with customers about absolutely nothing. Being on the sales staff at the museum store, I guess I'm fulfilling my job duties (but really, I'm just talking and talking and talking.) I feel good about it and think that down the road, there's the possibility of a move to another department with more hours, responsibility and money. Optimism is in the air on that front.
     (I know that retail has a bad reputation because customers are considered meanies by store clerks. But on my first day my boss pointed out that at the museum customers are happy because they're all on mini vacations. Really, our clientele appear to have all taken many anti-depressants prior to arriving in the store.)
     At the beauty salon however, things are unfortunate. In moving locations, February, '13, we lost about 60% of our clients. (I came on board as the salon manager the day we opened in the new location.) I'm afraid that we've continued to have a variety of other issues, i.e. staffing, marketing/advertising and so forth. I'm thinking that it won't be wise for me to stick around too much longer as the earlier someone got off the Titanic the safer they were. (If Jack and Rose had jumped into a lifeboat, they might still be alive today.) The owner of the salon is a long time friend. But really, sometimes you simply have to pay bills.
   Which brings up the question: okay.. so what now? I'm someone who's notorious for constantly throwing many darts at various boards and just through the law of averages some darts hit. I'm also better at juggling multiple part-time jobs than working one at 40 hours. Right now, I'm stoking the fires on 5 or 6 completely unrelated job opportunities, hoping that they'll net some income in a year or two. But in the meantime, gotta pay those bills somehow...
     I've decided to start listing myself on a national nanny service website (Care.com). I've always been hesitant to do that as "word of mouth" is my close friend. But I LOVE nannying and cooking for kids and their parents and the phone simply isn't ringing right now. That phone got my bills paid sufficiently from 2006 when I left the nursing home industry until 2013. But right now... nothing. Notta. So I guess I need to get aggressive and proactive.
     The reason I've always preferred word of mouth is because I'm a male and historically that does throw people, let's be honest. When I was a live-in nanny for the two different families from '82-'84 then again from '86-93 it positively shocked people. And the only job I went after initially was the first one in '82. But that family, who's blood was bluer than the Danube, by the way, were amused by this guy who responded to their ad and the rest is history*. There are many more male child-care workers nowadays which I find refreshing. But there is still a certain amount of eyebrow raising that goes on and subsequently I do feel a bit uncomfortable.
     I'm not a child molester, I promise.
     And that's really what it comes down to. I will corrupt, Lord knows. I'll teach a 6 year old poker, I'll show a 9 year old how to sneak candy into a movie theater, I'll tell many stories about diarrhea and I'll disregard bedtimes, but that's about the caliber of my naughtiness.Nothing worse.
     So... wish me luck as I attempt to find a new part-time nanny position. Unless the phone rings of it's own volition.
    

     *I met the first family in spring '82 through an ad I saw at the off-campus housing bureau of Case Western Reserve. Later that summer I distributed 400 flyers in local front doors advertising myself to do odd jobs. One job I received that autumn was babysitting a family with 3 boys on the next street over. They invited me to move in, an invitation I declined because I was already taken. In mid-'83, the first family told me they'd sold the house and were moving. I then called that second family and moved in with them, staying a year 'till August '84. I proceeded to live in another situation for two years while working full-time doing hair. When I decided to resume college in '86, I moved back in with the boys and stayed 'till the twins graduated and were off to college, a year after I graduated. (I had to have been the world's first live-in nanny.) The End.