My third job: THIS ONE GOES TO 11.

I have a temporary third job this week -- that is, unless you count the newspaper, in which case it's a temporary fourth job -- as I had for two weeks back in March. The gig only lasts 25 hours, five hours per evening, five weeknights in a row, which was the only (ONLY) reason I agreed to do it. If it had been even one moment more permanent than this, I would have thrown financial caution to the wind and boldly declared myself "not for sale."

Which made it all the more alarming and agitating when I arrived at the site last night and found that the supervisor wanted my client to work a 30 hour week, making my schedule 5-11 p.m. instead of the already lamentable 5-10 p.m.

Was I told about this in advance?

Come to think -- and complain -- of it, was I told where the site was when I agreed to do the job? Was I given ANY information about the client in advance? Was I even told his name without needing to ask?

Why even bother answering these questions when the fact that I'm asking them becomes the answer?

All I want is the absolute minimum amount of information and attention required for me to DO MY JOB. AND THEY WILL NOT GIVE IT TO ME.

I called my supervisor for this job and asked her if she could email me the report questions as she had said she would do yesterday. She said she didn't think she had time, and asked if I had written them down when she read them to me yesterday; I said that she had not read any questions to me yesterday. She insisted that she had. She then proceeded to read me the same thing she had read the day before -- a series of statements from the counselor handling the case -- and formed them into questions.

Okay. I'm trying to breathe deeply, but for some reason, the only thing I can think of that might save me is an entire cake. And I don't even really like cake.

The thing about this level of oversight -- that is, ABSOLUTELY ZERO OVERSIGHT -- is that I could go to the site tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, and sit somewhere reading the newspaper or playing video games or listening to my ipod (if I had either of those last two things), write some crappy report (which would be badly edited) based on making no actual observations of the client, and get paid the exact same amount of money and get the exact same credit for "a job well done" as if I actually did my job.

Of course, I will DO my job, because as my girl would say, I'm "a good person."

But if they're paying me for being a good person, they should be paying my weight -- my pre-anorexic weight -- in gold. Ethics and responsibility aren't free, and they should bear some of the cost. I've already given up every weeknight and the good mood I woke up in this morning.