OK, several people I respect have offered to help so I'm going to post my dilemma.
Say, I have two people in plum positions (well, it's plum where I work). It's not our concern how they got these jobs since I wasn't in charge of hiring at the time. One of these people does everything he's told to do, unless, he goes to sleep somewhere that I can't find him instead. He occasionally pulls a drunk and disappears completely for 2 or 3 days but has never been written up for this by his previous supervisor. (He's been written up twice in the last month by me). The other person, I'm thinking, must have some kind of passive aggressive thing going on. I'll talk to her about something that needs to change and she's all smiles and, nods and, understanding and then, she continues to do things exactly the way she was. I can never find her and she never communicates to me what she's doing. (She's been written up once in the past month) Together, out of 16 hours they are being paid for in a day, they work maybe 10 and I am paying other people to take up the slack. I need two people with initiative that like to stay busy. People that can communicate with each other and will say "I can do that if we change this time by 15 minutes" instead of "I can't do that". I mean, the woman actually said to me "I really don't want to do that" when I asked her to do part of her job!
I'm way to busy to be babysitting these people and they actually make more work for me when their positions were created to alleviate it.
I don't have to fire them. I'm not required to renew their 8 hour a day contracts. I can offer them a four hour contract instead. So where's the dilemma? you say.
This is their job, they don't have other people to support them. I'd be cutting their paychecks in less than half. They're not bad people.
That's it, I don't know how to do this. I don't know if I should do it.
We'll get to the hiring question later, I'm verklimpt (sic). This is the one that wakes me up at night.

Vincent walking with his dad. I just love this one.

Happy Mother's Day Everyone!

What a pain, what a load of pressure these things are. I totally forgot this year. When people were leaving the office Friday they started saying "Have a happy Mother's Day" I was goin "Yeah, you too." even to the men. Then all of a sudden I was like "What? Wait. Wha.., moth.., no.., arghh." So, I haven't gotten a hold of my mom yet so I still have all that grovelling to look forward too. I feel bad because I'm supposed to be a good kid.
Speaking of good kids

Having a popsicle to balance out all those brussel sprouts he eats. Seriously, I grind up steamed Brussel Sprouts and mix them with whatever else I'm grinding up for him, spagetti, stew, chicken soup, and then I freeze it in ice cube trays. 30 seconds in the microwave, lunch. And he eats a lot of brussel sprouts.

Really Important Stuff

My Daughter is graduating from OU next weekend! I am so proud of her! Many family members are coming up to share the proud moment and take their share of credit for her brilliant genes. The occasion will not be marred in any way by the choice of Commencment Speaker. It could have been so much worse and my Republican friend is not coming till the next day graduation ceremony because, in her words, "I hate John McCain", so he can't be too bad. At first I thought it was going to be Edwin McCain and that seemed sad so this is a step up. I know some of you will disagree. Go ahead, you can't bring me down, I'm just so tickled and thrilled.
Besides, she'll be starting Graduate School in the fall so in a few years I expect I'll be able to tell you that President Hillary Rodham Clinton is giving the Commencment Address.

Here we are in the land of Oklahomophobia, where Summer has turned to Spring and back to Summer. I have emerged, victorious, from a mountain of work to find the rest of the world still bass-akwards. I have received yet another letter from Senator Coburn, thanking me for for writing him (once), about the importance of our judicial nominees.
Thank you Senator Coburn, for killing the trees instead of using e-mail and, being an all around dickhead that's wrong about almost everything. No, I mean everything, wrong about everything.
Now back to my victory. I didn't climb the outside of the mountain with the advantages of exercise, fresh air and exciting danger. No, I took the Hobbit path, through the dirty, scary underbelly of the mountain where I met trolls aplenty. I came across Gollum several times in my quest and I kicked the annoying fuckers ass. Now all the trouble makers have straightened up or, been banished. Well, not all, but they all know it's coming.
There is so much still to do but I hope I'll have more time to read y'all's blogs and write here occasionally. Any of you that have ever been in a position to hire and fire people, let me know so I can get advice from you.

I dreamed that Bush decreed that all income tax returns would be invested in the stock market. Everyone found out about the time the checks were supposed to be in the mail. If you had a State Return but owed on Federal, it didn't matter, you wouldn't see it, it was being invested. It didn't matter what your income level was but, of course, it was all the poor people and the middle income that had a ton of extra money taken out every month so that they won't owe, that were hurt. In the dream I was realizing that Bush knew he wasn't going to get to murder Social Security and he knew the Stock Market was going to Crash and I knew, that this wasn't going to work either. No shit, that's what I just dreamed.