All The Wrong Way Around

One of the things that's always irritated me is the way that people who should know better tend to approach a situation the wrong way around.

I contacted a guy in Chattanooga thru the church about finding housing when I get there so I don't have to go back to that temporary place I was staying at. Admittedly, I was a bit on the defensive, but only because of prior bad experiences.

Back in '97 or '98, I had taken a temporary job at McClellan AFB (outside Sacramento) and was able to stay in Base Billeting for a while on a space-available basis. But that was hardly an acceptable long-term solution. So, I asked around at church about a place to rent. Unfortunately, the first question I was greeted with was "How much can you afford?".

To me, that seems to be all the wrong question. My approach to the situation would be to ask "What do you need?". I guess I'm just weird that way.

The same sort of attitude seems to spill over into other areas. I've run into it when I've gone job hunting. Instead of offering enough money to induce me to accept the workload they want done, people want to see if they can get away with offering as close to Minimum Wage as possible. On one occasion, a guy offered me Mimimum Wage for a very complicated and back-breaking job and then had the gall to ask if that plus my Reserve pay would be enough to keep the wolves from the door.

Imagine his shock when I said that my Reserve pay had nothing to do with the job I would be doing for him, but that that wasn't the proper question anyway. The real question, I explained, was whether or not he was offering enough money for the work he wanted done. The answer, I further explained, was 'no'. Hopefully, no one is terribly surprised that I didn't get that job. Oddly enough, the agency that referred me to them no longer deals with them. Strange, isn't it?

The dating scene is no better, although it seems that people have long since given up on me. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone's tried to "set me up". Sadly, it's done more with an eye toward reducing the number of single mothers by one than with any thought as to what my preferences might be. On more than once occasion, I've been told "I know someone who'd be perfect for you". That nonsense stopped when I pointed out that although the individual might know that other person quite well, she didn't know me at all and therefore couldn't possibly say such a ridiculous thing.

At least no one in Chattanooga has asked me how much I can afford for housing. Yet.