Here Be Dragons

2008-04-29

Here's today's horoscope and considering I lost my job after only a week and a half all I can say is "bullshit"!

Calm and foresight
Now you experience a time of balance and equilibrium in your life, when you can be yourself with the fewest obstacles from people or circumstances. Various affairs in your life will hum along very nicely now, and you may be tempted to think that they will always go this well.

(Bullshit!)

But in fact this is the time to firm up your affairs and make sure that they are strong enough to withstand troubles that may come later on.

("There's more to come? Geesh! Who do I thank?")

You should examine those matters that clearly have not worked out.

("Ya think??")

By now you should have made new beginnings in these areas, so you can tell how your new tack is working out.

("Yeah, it sucks")

Let me be very clear. There are no vacation jobs. They will give you a beating and work you for 12 bucks an hour the same as they would for 25 bucks an hour so you might as well make more. It's not a bunch of old ladies kibbutzing through the day while they work together for a common cause and everyone goes home happy and just dying to do it again the next day. There are cliques and gossips in even the smallest of venues. Coming on gradually doesn't work either. They want brilliance the first day.

Remember researching the trademarks and inputting a years worth of banking? Well, I was supposed to be answering the phones too, but they didn't tell me at first. I thought I was his personal assistant, silly me, but really I was the newest telephone sales person and was being judged on that with no one telling me. So last Wednesday when everyone else went to lunch on the company for Personal Assistant's Day I stayed an hour more and then went home sick. During that hour I did a lot of computer work and let the phones go to the answering machine as I reasoned that at least they would get the names and numbers correct if they were recorded on tape and I wasn't supposed to be there anyways. I was supposed to be home. I upgraded some computers, upgraded some applications and defragged one computer that was 39% fragmented and took apart one machine and reseated memory to get back a gig of memory that it had lost and was running slow. I took in and received the UPS guy's packages. I left a note on everyone's desk about what I had done. I expected an attaboy when I returned.

Nope, I was thoroughly dressed down by the boss for not answering the phones even though the most I could do was take the same message (name & number) the answering machine took because I was not allowed to make a sale yet and even though I wasn't even supposed to be there at that time as they knew I was going home sick. He has a thing about having a person answer and the fact was that I was there and my computer stuff meant nothing to him or his daughter even though she dumped a misconfiguration between dreamweaver and cartweaver in my lap before she left for lunch.

I was taken aback by the dressing down but at least I figured out that I was not his personal assistant anymore except in the loosest terms. I was his daughter's telephone bitch and apparently this left a sour taste in her mouth when she returned to 40 plus calls on tape even though they had the entire office out to lunch and what did they think would happen?

So the boss goes away on Friday and I make a real effort to take messages. The thing is that I feel like I'm trying to beat the people that can actually take an order to the phone because all I can do is take a message and hand it off to one of them anyhow, so I answer on the second ring or if the two incoming lines are busy and it overflows or the two outgoing lines are busy and there is no one to answer the incoming. In other words the real "order people" are busy so I take what they can't because of it. I took about 20 messages out of about 100 calls yesterday. I felt funny leaving messages for other people to complete but the Boss's daughter and I agreed that I was probably ready to move on to actual sales and it was planned for this morning.

My Boss also gave me about 500 more checks to input into Quick Books from early 2007 and late 2006 and I got to about 175ish and I had my chair changed because a girl left (and a new one was hired yesterday. I had a feeling something was up when I saw that) and so I sat with my back to the office talking to no one except to clarify a sales or product matter and inputted old checks into Quick Books while picking up the phone on second rings. I even ended my lunch early and picked up phones while others ate thinking I'd make a few brownie points that way. (What a laugh)

So it was and wasn't a surprise when the Boss actually met my car as I was parking and he droned on and on about how he wasn't getting any production out of me and all I did was sit around and talk and never answered the phones. When I protested that I had made a special effort to be sure that I did answer phones he told me that his daughter told him otherwise and that the checks he gave me should have been inputted in just an hour or so. When I said that I had a new chair that faces the wall and faces no one and that I had in fact answered the phones yesterday he answered that it couldn't possibly be true because he had answered so many phone calls yesterday that I couldn't have been helping. He then stated that we had about 100 phone calls yesterday and when I countered that I had taken at least a fifth of that in messages out of four people available to answer he just flat out denied it and then insisted that 500 checks should be inputted in an hour or two not withstanding no training whatsoever in Quick Books.

Well, at that point I realized that the facts where just getting in the way and he had to work with his daughter who must have taken a dislike to me or something and the fact that he was droning on and on wasn't him trying to make up his mind whether to fire me but his guilt showing because he knew it was a lie. So while I was thinking, "This is not worth listening to for 12 bucks an hour and has no redeeming value even as advise" I said, "So, today I was supposed to be able to make my own sales and take responsibility for my own answered calls. Do I get a chance to go up there and try or instead do you want me to go get my stuff and leave?" I had to cut it short, it was getting tiresome and I wasn't going to keep telling a man that he was wrong who needed to believe that he was right. I could see it wasn't easy for him either and it was time to end this. He went and got my stuff for me and I left.

I am under no more illusions that a vacation job exists. I'm going back for the money. At least that's worth taking the beating for. Maybe even a temp job .. hmmmm.

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