Obsolete/2006-03-09 Help Wanted

Overview

• Title: Family phone assistant
• Status: still looking as of 2006-03-19; (description revised 3/19 for clarity and reduced overwhelmingness)

Sandy & Nick have an ongoing need for a person to facilitate communication between themselves (who are rather phone-phobic, not to mention socially awkward and somewhat disorganized) and the parts of the outside world which require phoning.

If you are interested, please contact us.

Details

Generally, you will handle a limited number of tasks (usually no more than 5-10) involving phoning:

• Check the preferred communications channel (email, IRC, or IM – whichever you are most comfortable with) frequently (at least once a day) for new tasks, updates, changes, etc.
• Respond to let us know if there are any issues with the tasks (questions, roadblocks, task list has gotten too large, etc.)
• Make phone calls as required to accomplish tasks
• Report regularly (twice a week seems good) regarding current status of each incomplete task

Many of the calls will just be finding out non-phone contact info so we can proceed via email, fax, in person, etc.

One significant recurring task (several times a year) will be helping to arrange childcare (usually a combination of babysitters and grandparents) for the three kids during stretches of time when Sandy and Nick are planning to be out of town. For these occasions, you will need to:

• We will give you a span of time needing to be covered (e.g. "from school pickup Tuesday afternoon through school dropoff Friday morning"); we can also provide more details about what needs to be taken care of in between (perhaps I should type up a document for this...)
• Contact known care providers (individual sitters, respite care people, and grandparents) (helping to put together a coterie of providers will be one of the first tasks – see Childsitter Army)
• Find out which of those providers is available to help out during the requisite timespan, and what they are able to do
• Work out
• Prepare a schedule showing who is responsible for each block of time and clear it with care providers (rearranging as necessary)
• Check back with committed care providers periodically, as the beginning of the timespan approaches, to make sure they are still available as promised and that there hasn't been a communications glitch (e.g. changing "two nights" of sitting to "two days, with one night in between" – this has happened)

Other Details

• Location: this could be largely a "telecommute"-style job, as long as phone access isn't an issue
• Hours: About 2-4 hours a week to start with; ideally we would like to see the job expand so that more and more trivia is (are?) taken off our hands
• Pay: negotiable
• Personality: The person in this job will need to be able to interact with reg'lar folks as well as us oddball geeks – so someone with feet (or at least a couple of toes) in both worlds would be ideal. Friendliness, trustworthyness, and reliability are all essential.
• Experience: None specifically required. Being comfortable with computers would be helpful in a number of ways, as they tend to be heavily integrated into our daily lives. Enjoyment of children would also be helpful, as our lives tend to revolve around them (and the vast majority of your task list will in some way involve childcare).
• Skills: Organization and good basic writing skills (since we'll be communicating in writing for the most part) would seem essential. Familiarity with (at least) email essential; other computer skills could be very useful.

Current Tasklist

• Help put together our Childsitter Army
• Help arrange childcare (usually for all 3 kids) while Hypertwins travel to various places:
  • The first week of May, we're driving to Indiana to retrieve Mel from college. Will need Friday kid-pickups and at least two overnights, possibly Monday kid-delivery/pickup as well.
  • We're trying yet again to get to England this summer (third attempt) to visit with Nick's dad; will need at least 10 days of child management (drop-offs, pickups, feeding, etc.). It should be possible to coordinate with their grandma Dorothy to handle some of this, e.g. she can overnight them at her house if she's in town that week, and she may be able to do some of the driving, but we want to minimize the amount of work for (and dependence on) her by having sitters/drivers available as much as possible, either to help her out or to step in if she can't do a particular piece of the child management.
  • Nick will need to drive to Athens, GA at some point in the near future (hopefully late April or May) for one overnight during the week; Sandy would like to come along. We'll need kid management for an afternoon/evening, the next morning, and possibly the next afternoon (to allow for delay in returning).
• Call The Durham Center to find out what the holdup is with Josh's services and why they haven't been responding to our emails (see Josh and The System for details)