I Hate Raking Leaves.

Let me preface this by saying (the woman I spoke to) was a very nice and cheerful lady who brought me cream soda in a huge steel drum of a cup with enough ice to freeze an elephant's dick. Her husband was equally as nice and her dog was just...fuckin' angry.

I took off that morning in a school bus. A yellow school bus, because I'm pretty sure all the good ones come in that colour. Apart from my crazy grandfather, I was the only one on this bus. He was driving. He dropped me off some way down a street intersecting mine. This is where I began my shitty journey. I walked across the park (later discovering that I didn't need to; it would've been faster to leave from my house) towards the stranger's home. I traversed a series of unbearably unnecessary turns which I also later discovered to be redundant and pointless. Needless to say, I didn't know my way around this strange, rich people neighbourhood and I cursed them for having winding, inbred gay crescents.

I arrived at the house that I had surveyed previously via Google Maps (wonderful, never-updated software full of pictures from the summer...it's November. Send the bike guy or fuck off). Prepared to honour the arrangement we had negotiated via email, I knocked on the door. I was hastily informed that there would be some..."changes." Instead of performing my bought-and-paid-for duties on just the front lawn, I would be tending to the front, side, extra front, and extra side that was shared with this couple's bitch* and nosy* neighbours. Essentially, I would be performing $35-$40 worth of work for what turned out to be $25.

*Direct quote.

Let me address everybody reading personally; don't ever, ever agree to rake a flowerbed. Even with a quaint, tiny rake, there's no way to get all the leaves. When I rake a lawn, I want every leaf raked. I want every leaf within a mile raked, in a bag, and put away. In a flowerbed underneath moulting trees, however, the leaves are little brown Anne Franks among the thorns and little plants; hiding away, never to come out no matter how hard you knock. I was, needless to say, very surprised when I pulled out the first pretty green plant. The next two weren't that much of a surprise. After a while I started ripping out the dead ones on purpose, out of spite. Their cries went unheard. I did the best I could but, akin to the Nazis, sometimes you can't win 'em all.

In the end, there was no chance for me to negotiate the price. I said "I can do the front lawn for $20." Apparently, however, the "front lawn" is "everything in the neighbourhood except the back yard." I hadn't set out to earn minimum wage, but that's what I ended up with.

On the bright side, their dog hated my guts.

I hate raking leaves.