Some things never change

Lots of drama going on, which will hopefully be over now.  My dad got a job working for another cleaners, but promptly quit a few weeks later because he couldn’t get along with the owner.  The owner apparently is a bit crazy and would tell my dad to do something one way and then come back and tell him to do it another way.  Also, he would yell at my dad saying stuff like “are you retarded?” when he didn’t do things the way that he thought they should be done.  Yeah….that made me pretty much want to kick this guy’s ass all the way from Texas.

Anyways, so my dad quit.  Understandable.  Then my sister gets a call from my kungomo (paternal oldest aunt) who pretty much ticked my sister off because she told her that my dad needed money and that he should come work with her again and be her delivery driver.  Well, my sister got pissed off cause she didn’t think that my dad was in any financial trouble, and she thought my kungomo was just butting into things again.

Come to find out that my dad was indeed feeling a bit anxious about finances.  It just blows my mind that he would ask his siblings who are also financially strapped for cash rather than ask his children for help.  Considering that his son makes a fairly hefty salary, his daughter and her husband are pretty financially stable and his youngest daughter is living at home with completely disposable income, you’d think we’d be his first choice.  But no, I guess that he was too proud to ask us.  Stubborn old Asian man…

Well, my sister talked to him and found out the situation was not as bad as kungomo was making it seem, but that he was a little worried.  So, my siblings and I transferred a pretty sizable chunk into his account to help him out.  Course, he doesn’t want to keep accepting money from us (you know, that whole Asian machismo thing) so he talked to my kungomo about heading up the delivery side of her cleaners.

This caused my sister to break out into hives again.  She does that when she gets stressed out.  I think it was the whole thought of having to deal with my kungomo on a regular basis again.  My dad swears that the delivery part will be his business and that it’ll be completely separate from my kungomo (minus the deliveries he does for the customers within her zip code, yeah that sounds clear…).  So, he went and bought a new van; all despite our very, very vocal protests.  He also asked my sister to create a new webpage for the cleaners so that they could advertise.

It’s all a huge headache.  On top of my dad bugging her to create a website, there was talk of furloughs at my sisters workplace, so it was making her very stressed.  I kind of ended up taking over the project.  So, I purchased stock photos, created coupons, made a website, made a facebook business page and got that all rolling.  Even made a Facebook Ad campaign which launches soon.

I still see some huge issues with this plan.  For starters, my kungomo is pretty much bankrupt.  She hasn’t paid the rent on her work spaces for almost a year now.  She’s tried to get out of her lease, but the landlord is desperate to have people in that space so he’s pretty much letting her stay there for free.  Meanwhile, she’s been getting further and further into debt paying for utilities and operational costs.  Who knows how much longer she has until she’s just forced to shut down?  Then there’s the whole hassle of having to work for her again.  Though, to be fair, my dad is also pretty hard to work with.  On second thought, this might work out if I can get enough interested generated from social marketing.  I guess this can be my little experiment.

Until things pick up for the delivery side, my dad is helping out at the cleaners that does the actual cleaning for my kungomo’s shop (her’s is a pick up store, which means she sends the clothes out and gives a portion of the profit to another cleaner) by pressing pants.  Their pants presser just quit and my dad is filling in until they find someone new.  He thinks he can handle both…  It’s all making me wish that I lived closer to keep an eye on him.