I didn't even try

I understand that being an adult is hard. Truly, I do. I personally prefer being an adult to being a child, and I know that may be a bit controversial, but I get that even though it is my preference, it isn’t an easy task to be the grown-up in the room.

But…

There are a few things that are NOT hard about being an adult. Like, I don’t know, picking out my Cinnamon Toast Crunch with secret glee whenever I go to the grocery store, knowing full well my mother isn’t going to grab the box out of my hand while slipping a box of Raisin Bran into the cart instead.

What’s another one…

Oh! Getting paid! I find nothing about checking my bank account every other Friday to make sure my check has been deposited hard. Nothing. In fact, it’s one of the few things I do without a calendar reminder set up! Because getting paid is awesome. It just is. Not like when you are a kid and you have to do your chores with no guarantee at all as to whether you are going to get paid for them (the concept of my allowance was somewhat…flexible…during my childhood and seemed to be very dependent on the financial stress of my parents. Imagine that. Sheesh.).

In my particular subset of the recruitment industry, it is difficult for contractors to submit their timecards each week. It is even more difficult for them to understand that if they do NOT submit their timecards, they don’t get paid. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they have such a hard time doing something each week that will directly result in them receiving money.

Because I’m an overly critical but self-absorbed cynic, I wouldn’t bother chasing these people down for their hours save for the fact that I'm sick of answering calls on Friday with people bitching that they never got paid.

Case in point: I sent a text to a contractor recently to see if he worked the previous week and asked him to submit his timecard before the end of the day so we could process payroll (on time) for him. His response? A very cryptic “24 hours.”

[Sidebar: “24 hours” means what, exactly? He worked 24 hours last week? He would submit his timecard in 24 hours?]

I waited a few hours before asking if he had submitted his timecard since we were coming up on the end of the day. His response?

“No, I never tried.”

Welp. Points for honesty, I guess, but I was over it.

If he can't be bothered to put in his timecard—and I know for a fact that he is capable of doing so because he has done it for weeks on end—then I'm not going to give a damn he doesn't get paid. I'm not his mother. He is a big boy (literally – the guy is huge), and if his weekly check isn't important to him, who am I to try to course correct his priorities?