Negative Earning Power

Some days it doesn’t pay to get up in the morning.

On Monday, I had a one-day office temp gig downtown. As I was heading over there on my bike, I realized that my car was parked in a rush hour tow-away zone. But it has been on several occassiona before, and I’ve never gotten a ticket, so I just crossed my fingers and went to work.

The job itself wasn’t too bad, plowing through a word processor version of a deposition and making it match up to a printed version, although I had to inspect every word, because the word processor version was an earlier draft than the final draft printout. Anyway, like I said, not excessively dreary.

But when I got home, I found that my car had been ticketed, and it was for $100! The only good news was that the car had been tagged for towing, but the truck hadn’t arrived yet. So I just re-parked it legally and saved myself another $100 fee and a huge headache.

But since I’ll net only about $80 for the office work, I’m actually down $20 for the day. I would have been better off not going to work. Well, actually, I would have been better off re-parking my car legally in the first place. Won’t make that mistake again.

Of course, it’s mainly a problem because I’m so underemployed at the moment. But at least there will be a little relief: I’m field producing for Old Homes Restored tomorrow, at a home in Ellicott City. Should be fun.