in the realm of the fictionman

Sometimes They Do Listen...

There was a recent program at work to gather employee suggestions to reduce costs, or save time, or help morale, etc. A committee was set up to make sure that every idea was reviewed. The goal was to find one or two ideas from each floor to put into place. (And then continue getting more and getting everyone involved.) They mentioned no idea was too little. There was a submission form to explain the idea, the possible benefits, and what it would take (including costs) to implement.

So I put some numbers together. Every four coffee drinkers in the office was using a case of paper cups a year. Each case had a cost, but I also noted the total paper weight of those cups. In a company with something like twenty thousand employees that adds up. I noted the cost of decent quality insulated travel mugs with printed logos. They'd pay for themselves in about 6-9 months.

There were a dozen or so total submissions from our floor. I figured at least I spoke up. This was a couple of weeks ago.

Then I came in today. There was a nice red travel mug on my desk. Insulated, stainless steel liner, not cheap plastic. There are no paper cups to be found on the floor any more. Even the plastic ones for water are gone. I haven't checked any of the other floors to see if it happened everywhere or not.

Hrm. Whatdyaknow? :-)

Why I have Trust Issues With Corporate America

In the fall of '99 I started a temp job at Sara Lee Coffee & Tea, although it was known as Superior Coffee at the time. I was filling a position while they tried to find the permanent person. I got that officially in December of that year. I was hired as a Department Assistant. It was my first real job. Everything before that had been part time or temp jobs.

Along the way, the company's name changed, and my title became Sr. Department Assistant. But they had three different sister companies all doing more or less the same things to more or less the same customers. The three got crammed into one. There were round after round of layoffs. They didn't need three HR departments, or three IT departments, and so on.

In 2004 I got a new boss during one of those rounds of restructuring.

Then on a Monday in August (still '04) I had a meeting with him. Everyone has having those meetings. It was partly him getting to know everyone and what they did, and partly discussing the future and how they wanted the different teams structured.

It was an afternoon meeting. We talked about what I was doing, and he asked where I saw myself in the future. I talked about how my position had already grown beyond just an admin, largely because I had kept taking on new responsibilities. I suggested potential titles to more accurately reflect what I did, and I talked about where I thought the job should evolve to next. He seemed to like what I was saying. He talked about how he would review with the senior management crew and together we would work out a plan to get me there.

Everything he said was a lie. That Friday I found out, when he asked me to join him in a meeting. I followed him into a conference room. There was an HR person there. The meeting was going over my severance package. They told me I wouldn't be allowed back to my desk, but assured me any personal belongings would be mailed to me, but that it might take some time. My boss went up for my lunch and car keys.

Shaken and a bit numb I drove home. There were things at my desk I needed pretty quickly, so I called the lady I worked next to. I told her where to find most of my personal stuff. She boxed it up and mailed it. She was great.

I never got the rest of my stuff.

Included with the severance package was some layoff paperwork. Signed by my boss that Monday morning. Morning. The morning just before he told me how he was going to help me plan my career path and career evolution.

I still haven't gotten over that. I'm still resentful. Nearly five years later our finances still haven't recovered.

A year or two ago he applied for a job where I'm working now. One of the HR guys asked me if I knew him. I said I did, but admitted I couldn't give them an unbiased comment and explained what had happened. He didn't get the job.

I still can't help but get a little anxious whenever I see my boss meeting with HR. Part of me still gets a little uncomfortable on Fridays. Every job I've ever had end unexpectedly (albeit mostly temp jobs) did on a Friday.

This week we were told there would be changes to the org chart to "better align" us with another major arm of the company that restructure recently. Monday we're supposed to see the new org chart. There are people anxiously waiting until then so they can look to see if/where they are on it. One of the bigger things I'm working on is one of the major initiatives for 2009. While intellectually I can tell myself I should be okay, I just can't shake the dread in my gut.

I guess I know what I'll be discussing with my therapist tonight...

Promoted

I've been promoted at work. Starting Monday my new title is Logistics Analyst. It's a salaried position instead of hourly with no administrative assistant duties what-so-ever.

I now have a boss who lives in the same state, so I'll see him more than once a week. He has a six-year-old kid, and he left at 4:00 yesterday to have more weekend time with his family. He gets it. I like him.

The pay is better, and I get the yearly bonus. Finally I've really escaped the Administrative Assistant career path. Now I'm on a better-paying career path that I haven't pretty much already hit the top end of.

Now I'm paid to analyze things, make sense of them, and explain them in meaningful ways. Heck, I can do that... :-)

Irkitude?

There's one person at work with a line in her email signature that states, "God is in Control." Part of me can't help but be offended by this. But it's not the message that bothers me. Although I disagree somehwat strongly, I have no problem with her thinking that. Mostly I just feel it a terribly inappropriate place for the message.

Yet I also can't help but wonder if some part of the annoyance might stem from feeling I couldn't get away with such a statement from my own perspective.

But what would I say? From time to time I toy with the "we don't inherit the Earth, we borrow it from our children" quote on the side. But if I find it inappropriate for her to put her message there, is mine any different? Or is an environmental statement different than a religious one?

If I were to say something to HR, I have little doubt that they would say something to her and that message would go away. Woudl anyone find my little quote offensive if I included one?

But I probably won't say anything to HR, although they do strongly encourage people to speak up on even little things. It just feels like unnecessary meddling. It isn't my way to interfere with things that only bother me. Then again, I too often just don't interfere at all. I can admit I don't know where to draw that line. I just don't know if this is the place to start...

Wierd Jobs

HR at work got a resume from someone who's a specialist in extracting gelatin from catfish and finding new, innovative uses for it....

Now there's a transferable skill...right??

Contrasts

Oh, I think I'll get used to this just fine...

Let's see:

Covered parking garage.
Concierge service.
Two (2) restaraunts in the building (attached hotel).
Fitness center.

Compare that to a boss who'd sometimes hand out a shovel on a snowy day, saying, Guess who's turn it is..."

Oh, and within an hour and a half I'd fixed the broken macros in the Word form that had taken someone a complete day to get started, and had stumped their IT people.

When I'd shown up just before 8 my main contact there had admitted he was panicking because he had to get the document passed onward by 9:30. He asked if maybe I could try. At 9:35, when we'd been done for a little bit I pointed to the clock and said, "well, I guess that worked OK..." As far as he was concerned, I'd earned my day's pay before lunch time.

Vaguity

I've been light on details about the job. Just now I'm typing one-handed, with a sleeping baby on the other. No long stories tonight...

One reason for lack of details had been that even going into interview #3 I didn't know precisely which job I was applying for. They had a couple positions they were considering me for--one they hadn't been actively recruitiung for yet. That's, of course, the one I got.

There was one amusing bit to share quick from that last interview:

"So, tell us what you know about the position you're applying for, and how [all this] relates to that."

"Actually, that was one of the questions I've been meaning to bring up..."

Details when I'm not typing-challenged.

Unexpected Surprises

Today was a short day at work, as I stayed home this morning to watch the kids while Amy went to class. It made for good training time using the on-line training stuff the dealership signed us all up for. Good stuff.

Then at work something unexpected happened. One of the customers I sold to back at the RV show came in to pick up the license plates for her camper. Okay, so that's not the unexpected part. But she came with a gift bag, with a card and two outfits for Kayla.

That pretty effectively made my day.

A Couple of D Words

It seems that customer traffic at work was good right around the time Kayla was born. Since then it has slowed back down. I'm told that's normal this time of year. Spring breaks happen at different times for different schools, which creates a few weeks of slower traffic. This is the weekend things are expected to pick back up again.

It has been disappointing and frustrating. I've doing this for eight or nine months and I still don't feel good at it. It's not a personality or temperment thing, I'm just slow climbing over the learning curve. Intellectually I know what to do. I just haven't been able to create some of the habits. Some of it is a lack of confidence, but I've struggled with that in every aspect of my life pretty much forever.

They say in sales, your paycheck is a direct reflection of your selling skills.

One of the new sales people is doing better than the others. Better than me, lately, too, which adds to the frustration. Now, a lot of customers lately have been "just starting their research," and pointedly not ready to buy yet. I'm good with those people, and I just need to be patient with them. But patience doesn't buy groceries or pay bills now. Somehow the one doing better seems to get the customers who are ready to buy--and some of them even know what they want.

There was a book I read back in the motorhome, so 1998 or '99. The author mentioned a restaurant cook he worked with at one point. When that cook was off, the place was chaos. Customers came in in spurts all at once, flooding the kitchen with orders. When the cook was in, customers seemed to come in more spread out, and they were able to keep up. The only variable the author could come up with was the one cook. Somehow he was controling the flow of customer traffic.

So that, some determination, some confidence... There's a new on-line training program we got signed up for at work that I can start today. What I need I'll get more effectively from something seminar-like, but this might be a good start. I just have to make it all happen. Having faith that I'll get there isn't good enough. I have to prove it and make it happen.

So that's what been on my mind of late, especially the last couple of days.

Cold Weather Shoppers and other stuff

Yesterday the three new sales people started. For the longest time they had had one salesman, or a couple of part time ones. Now there are four of us. The new ones look promising so far.

Now, when they hire me and the other one, and for a while had three, they were worried. They were accustomed to salesmen that didn't generate work, they just handled the people who came in. They didn't follow up with anyone, they didn't try to bring in their own traffic. So at first they were worried about having three. They didn't feel there was enough traffic to divide the sales between three.

But they've been watching me doing some of the things I'm supposed to do. So now, because I follow up on leads, instead of having five people come in on a Saturday, there are seven or eight, and two or three are asking for me specifically. Suddenly they really can't afford to have just me.

So now they're starting to see what could happen if it was four of me. The same five or so people come in, but there's four of us to handle them very well. Plus, if we've each got two or three people coming back in to see us, suddenly there's more than double the normal traffic, with people who are even more likely to buy.

Yesterday, with sub-zero weather, there were still four people/couples that came in out of the blue, and one couple that came in to see me because I had been following up with them over the phone. I sold pop-up campers, one to that couple and one to a walk-in couple. At least anyone who comes out in sub-zero weather to see a camper probably intends to buy one, not just browsing.

So yesterday I pulled my boss aside and explained the whole needing three weeks for the baby. I told him I had wanted to wait until the hiring happened. He ended up appreciating that part.

He's not happy with it, but he doesn't want to lose me. On one hand he says he's not deciding anything then and there, and we'll talk more about it, but on the other hand he says we'll find a way to make it work out. Yet again, we'll see. I think a lot is going to depend on how the new people do. If nothing else, there's a bigger dealership hiring. I think Wednesday I might call them and see what their pay and benefit plans are, just to have it. (Hey, they're 7 miles closer, that's a plus... :-)

We'll See...

Well, there's a new batch of potentials going through the same recruiting/training program I went through when I started at the dealership. This time it's looking like a smaller class, so we'll see how many get hired.

And then the big RV show will start a week from today. We'll see how many (if any) we have after that.

And I still have to break it to my boss that I'm taking three weeks off for the baby. They're trying to say they can't afford me to take more than two, and a couple of them don't even believe that two weeks is necessary.

So it's time to buckle down and explain to them that family is going to come first, even if I spend more time with them than I do with my family. So some of the extra days they want me aren't going to always work out. If they can be okay with waiting three weeks, then I'll be happy to come back. If not, then I'll find something else. Personally, I'd like to think they're more concerned with the other 49 weeks than these particular 3...

But we'll see (which is a phrase I'm using rather a lot these days, isn't it?)

Yesterday

Yesterday was a pretty good day at work. The record for most sales on one day (not counting shows) is six. Yesterday we had five (although one fell apart and two might not make it through financing. Now, about a week or so we had already had the best January in the last five or six years. Yesterday added to that margin.

One of the units that sold was a 1991 Jayco popup camper. It was in on consignment. It showed up just before the Outdoors Show, so yesterday was the first day it was opened up and actually available for sale. The first couple that saw it bought it. They came back a few hours later and took it home.

Now, there were three or four people that already knew we had it. A few people had emailed about some other used ones we had, and had asked if we had any others similar. I had mentioned the one we had in, but that it wasn't quite ready for sale yet. One guy in particular wanted to be the first to see it.

Now, I encourage people to make appointments, in part to prevent six people all showing up at once and me not being able to help any of them the way they deserve. This particular guy didn't want to do that, and said he'd show up when he could. I warned him.

I also recommend that people put a deposit down on something they think they want. It's refundable. But people don't want to do that, so we get people that show up all ready to buy something half an hour after it leaves with someone else. At least now that it's just me I'm not having the other salesman sell something just before my customer shows up.

On that note, we're going to be hiring. It looks like the plan is to hire two just before the big show. After the show we'll know if either of them have long-term potential. The expectation is to keep one, maybe keep two until I'm back from time off with the new baby.

And then there's a motor home that we have. It's older: 1973, and not in the best shape. It runs, but needs a tuneup. Handyman Special. But hey, it's under $1000, what do you expect? Now, so far, 80% of the people expressing any interest in it have been from Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana... Nothing local.

A few weeks ago someone drove up from Oklahoma to see it. It didn't start right away, and idled rough, so they got nervous about it and didn't buy it. A lot of driving for nothing.

Yesterday a guy drove 20 hours from Oklahoma to buy it. He liked the interior. He wasn't afraid of the work it would need. It started right up. It ran, although it needed the manual choke to keep it running at idle. Old gas, old fuel filter, carb that needs cleaning. Nothing major. He bought it. Paid cash. Drove it off.

He got almost a mile before complaining that it had no power and couldn't get past 25 mph. We determined the trans was shifting up too soon, and getting to 3rd gear at 20 or 25 and not having any power at that point. Okay, so use it as a manual transmission. Problem addressed. Probably not a huge problem to resolve when you get home. The guy even said he had a mechanic at home, it just needed to get there.

Then we noticed there were no brake lights, turn signals, or rear running lights. Not good, but fixable. Hey, we can't put a whole lot of time into a $1000 motorhome when our shop labor rate is $80 an hour. We warned about all that in advance. But come on, even if you spend another thousand fixing it up it's still a motorhome at $2000.

So while he complained about needing to get going to get home with enough time to rest up before work Monday, we got lights fixed. Everything was good except brake lights. That was just a matter of tracing the wires to the brake switch and fixing whichever wire had come loose. Five minutes, we said.

He gave up, demanded his money back (which we did), and he left. Three minutes later the loose wire had been plugged back in. Sigh.

So, the lesson here? He spent about three hours, maybe four total here. If you're driving 20 hours to buy something, and another 20 hours driving back, is four hours really that bad? Shit, when Amy and I bought our cars I think we sat for two or three each buying those. When we bought Jenna's it was about as much. Whatever. It'll sell to someone who wants it. Everything sells eventually.

Oh, and the '88 Fleetwood Limited 37J (the same year, model, floor plan and color that Amy and I had for a year and a half) that sold in April and had been sitting at the shop waiting for the final payment... it left Thursday.

Okay, that's quite enough for today, I think.

Differing Trade Show Perspectives

There have been other side benefits to the other salesman quitting. For one thing, he created stress for too many of the people there--including both me and the sales manager (my boss). He was less stressed and grumpy yesterday. I was less stressed and less interrupted, and got more done than usual.

There were five people just yesterday that either called or came in saying that they'd seen us at the Outdoors Show over the weekend. Shows are sort of odd things. Some dealers go to shows expecting to sell at the show. They get frustrated if they don't.

Apparently the big RV show in Rosemont (starting Feb 23rd) is one case where people do buy at the show. For one thing, prices are reduced too low.

But most other shows don't necessarily generate a lot of at-the-show sales. The point to most of the shows isn't about having a big sale and selling next to your competitor. It's advertising. It's showing what you have and what you are. If it's done right, people come to the store to follow up on what they saw at the show.

Selling at a show is about high-pressure, buy-it-now sales. Advertising at the show is about getting people excited about coming to the store to see the rest of what you have so they can find the unit that's perfect for them.

Now, I'm likely to get paid better for selling at the store than at a show. The customer benefits from having more time to make a decision, more time to compare units, less pressure, and gets a better experience out of the whole thing. Everybody wins.

The attitude towards shows is changing at the dealership. They used to see shows as just about selling. They're more and more seeing it as about advertising. I like that direction, and it looks like it's working.

There's a 150+ Year Old Snapping Turtle at the Outoor Show

Today's quote comes from an email group.

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn
to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.

~ Mary Ellen Kelly

The Outdoors show is moving along. Today's the last day. Yesterday was a long day, but not a bad one. Lots of people to talk to for the first half or so, but then it got pretty dead for the evening.

Yesterday's 13 or so inches of snow was fun...well, not really. But it was pretty.

And the other salesman quit yesterday, which is mostly a good thing. As my boss is fond of saying, "...and we'll just leave it at that." His version of "if you know what I mean, *wink*."

Lots and lots to do, both at home and at work.

That slow, quiet kind of busy

What a wierd January. The store has already had the best January in five years. Monday we start setting up for an outdoors show. 35,000 sportsmen and outdoor enthusiasts over five days. Some of those days are going to be very long days. It'll mean getting home after Jareth's in bed for a few of the days.

But, these shows are supposed to be good for creating sales and store traffic. I'm not sure I saw that at the other two shows we've been at since I started, but we'll see. The big show isn't until later in February. We'll see about that one, too.

For the moment, store traffic has slowed down, so more time has been claimed by show prep. On one hand, there are customer follow-up things I should be doing (especially) during these slow times. On the other hand, if I'm going to spend half of next week not at the store, I think I'm better off just waiting.

So many things... but time to go to work. Maybe a proper blog post in the next day or two.

Updates

Okay, a few things have happened while I've been falling behind here. First of all, the aforementioned drama at work unfolded more quietly than expected, and pretty much blew over during a long closed-door meeting. Since then there has been a less dramatic issue that has ended with a firing. It took about a week, and yesterday it became official and he did the long slow walk out of the building. I was with a customer and missed it. The boss kinda felt bad about it, but it was the employee's choice. It wasn't really one of those things that can be just glossed over, but it isn't my story to tell here, either. Sorry.

The Louisville trade show was huge. We saw what parts of it we could in one day. We mostly saw what we needed to see, although I really would have benefitted from at least one more day. If nothing else, every competitor was there, so it could have been a tremendous training opportunity. But we were there to pick out a couple of new brands. We found one. Still working on the other.

At the end of each day at the show a few manufacturers each throw parties with free food (meaning reasonably elaborate buffets) and open bars (meaning wine and crap beer). So my boss goaded me into drinking...more than I would have normally. It was all about keeping up with the rest.

Now, tolerance has some to do with body mass. So I started at a disadvantage, let's just leave it at that. :-) One person nearly had trouble getting through security. It didn't help that he had trouble just getting his shoes off. I was fine, and I was sober enough to drive home by the time we eventually made it back to our cars at the store. Good time, very long day. I felt just fine the day after. Not everyone got to make that claim. *grin*

Today... It's cold. As in below zero (F) cold. And there's a to-do list, some of which involves being outside. Shoveling and salting the driveway and bringing in decorations from the garage. Whether we get to inside decorations today or not, I'm not getting on a metal ladder to string lights outside. Nuh-uh.

It's Always Something, Eh?

Today will be the next installment of a particular drama at work that would be wonderful blog fodder... if it weren't at work. But I don't think it'll be appropriate to blog about it, depending on what happens today. Apparently there's a lawyer involved. We'll see. It may be rant fodder, if nothing else.

Tomorrow, on the other hand, will be a very long and full day. Tomorrow we're going to the big industry show in Louisville, KY. Apparently it's the second biggest trade show in the nation. I'm not sure by what standard that's measured. Physical size? Number of attendants? I'll post details about it when I get back, obviously.

Our flight out of Midway is at something like 7am. Which means getting to the airport at what, 5:30-6? Which means leaving the dealership (where we're meeting) at something like 4:30-5. Which for me, means leaving home at something like 3:30-4.

Our return flight gets back to Midway somewhere around 9:45pm. That gets us all back to the dealership around 11, and me home around midnight. Thankfully, I have Wednesday off (other than helping Amy get up at 6 or so for her jewelry class).

I'll also be posting something about a particular Christmas carol I've heard once too often already, but I'm saving that for a slower day.

So for today I'll leave you with a co-worker's favorite joke, shared last week:

A pirate walks into a bar with a ship's steering wheel attached to his privates.

The bartender asks, "Um, excuse me. Do you know you have a steering wheel attached to your... um... stuff?"

The pirate replies, "Aye. It's drivin' me nuts."

Good morning! :-)

Winter is Coming

Another way I can tell the days are getting shorter:

This morning I took a moment to revel in the bright full moon before the sun came up.

On the way home, after the sun had set, I paused at a red light to admire the same full moon over the other horizon.

This morning at work the day started off gray and rainy. Everything was quiet--no customers. A couple of people expressed some disappointment about that. The rain stopped and a couple of customers came in. At one point we turned to see who was next. There, on the counter, stood a large praying mantis looking around calmly. Nobody had seen it come in. The man standing at the counter, just inside the door, not two feet from it, hadn't noticed it.

I pointed out that in several cultures they were considered good luck. We offered it some paper to step on and it obliged, and we set it out on the grass out front.

The day ended up being a busy one, with a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Winter is coming, but I have a feeling it's all going to turn out.

Camping for Business or Pleasure

About half an hour or a little more before I drive down to Sandwich, IL. The fair starts today. Amy and Jareth are coming out mid-afternoon or so, and we'll hang out for dinner for my birthday.

But except for Thursday night I'll be living in one of the rental motorhomes for the week along with four or so others. Ray the Sales Manager, Jonathan the other salesman, and Ryan, one of the shop guys. It'll be interesting, to say the least. We'll see what kind of stories I come back with.

Sunday night everyone's making a trip back to the dealership, but since I'll be driving my own car out I might not really be able to help on that trip. Monday and maybe even Tuesday will be more trips getting it all back.

I might post something while I'm back to babysit Thursday night, but otherwise I won't be posting until next week. As it was, we made sure to wrap up Quick Shtick Writing so we didn't leave it with a week's interruption and then end it. We're both glad to have that one over. It wasn't anywhere near as enjoyable to write, and can't have been that exciting to read.

Well, time to hop in the shower, methinks...

Oooh, a Two-Day Weekend...

Hey, holiday weekends mean two days in a row home. Tonight we're going to Mom and Dad's for dinner (and early birthday celebration). Tomorrow we're staying home and roleplaying.

Yesterday was Scott's last day. Scott was the other salesman hired the same time as me. He was miserable, so he left. I guess he'll be working in banking next.

After the first week I doubted he'd like it there, and I was right.

He and I had just so... nothing in common. Completely different worlds and attitudes.

His attitude had become extremely negative, and he was bringing me down with him. It's always sad to have to be glad someone's gone, but that's the way it is.

Wednesday, aside from being my birthday, is the start of the Sandwich Fair, the largest fair in Illinois. It runs through next Sunday, and they're expecting as many as 200,000 people. That was what last year's attendance was, at any rate. There are five or six RV dealers that'll be there. I think we have the better spot than the rest.

So Tuesday night I'll drive out there after Amy's jewelry class. Other than driving back for Thursday evening to babysit during her Thursday class (and taking Jareth to his 'nastics gymnastics class, I'll be living out at the fair for almost a week.

Amy's planning on coming out to see it/me, possibly on Wednesday since that's my birthday. My folks are talking about coming out, maybe on Sunday.

It's going to be a wierd experience, but it'll be fun.

Another First and Sense of Humor

Today Amy had an appointment to get her hair cut. I met her there. While she was getting her hair cut Jareth got thirsty. His sippy-cup was in the car, but we had a water bottle. He was willing to learn to drink from that, and it was a success.

Of course, it occurs to me that we forgot to get a picture for Amy to post. But she'll blog about it, no doubt.

Tonight, just a little while ago, he applied that learning to figure out how to drink from a regular cup on his own. He's so proud of doing it, too.

Very cute.

On a different note, someone at work accused me of not having a sense of humor. I replied, of course I did--like so many other things it's in a box in the garage.

Just before I left today I sold a 1970 pop-up camper for $500. We had it priced at almost $600, and most people who looked at it thought it was overpriced at that. Because I was literally on my way out at the time, I had John (the original salesman) finish the paperwork for me. Tomorrow I'll make a show of asking if anyone can make change for a quarter in case I need to split the commission... :-)

Attitude

At the call center there weren't many people I had problems with--well, people I worked with. Never mind the callers.

Sure, there were people I had nothing in common with, but was there anyone I tried to avoid? No.

Not quite the same at the dealership. The prior salesman is a bit burned out and negative. The other new one is frustrated and his attitude really grates at me. He's a post all by himself, but I don't think I'll be doing that. I'm finding I have to keep some distance from both or they drag me down.

There was one woman at Sara Lee that I avoided for a number of reasons. Amy knows who I'm talking about.

On the other hand, I don't think either of the two are staying around long.

I love the job, but every day without a sale I find myself feeling guilty on the drive home. I tend to feel like if I'm not bringing in enough money yet to support us, do I have a right to enjoy it? I don't spend the day watching the clock to see how soon I get to leave. I enjoy the customers. I just need to get better at closing sales. I know there's a learning curve, but that part is frustrating.

Two

Sold another one today. It was a consignment unit. Like my last sale, it went for dirt cheap. Like the last one, it was one that had been sitting there a while and everyone was happy to have it gone. All good.

If nothing else, the more older units we can get rid of, the more room we have to bring in newer ones that'll pay better.

There's One

Well, I can officially call myself a salesman now. I sold a nice trailer today. They aren't picking it up for a couple of weeks, so I don't get paid the commission on it until the paycheck after that, but it's sold.

I'm really enjoying this job, even if it's going to take up quite a bit of my time. All the better that I enjoy it, then.

Road Trip

Early morning. The dealership hired me and one other new sales guy. The sames manager is driving us out to Michigan and Indiana to see eight of the plants they're made at. It'll be a great learning opportunity. We'll also have scads of road time for discussions.

It also means staying overnight tonight. Three of the stops are today, with the first one at 9am. That means leaving Chicagoland at 5.

That means me leaving home no later than 4:15.

I got up at 3:30.

Oh, I'm going to sleep well tonight.

It's Official

I start August 1st selling motorhomes and campers/trailers. The owner is out traveling all this coming week, so there won't be time for training.

He did give me a couple of assignments already. I'll be Mystery Shopping two of his competitors, since I'm still an unknown in the industry. In class we all mystery shopped one dealer, and of five of us, only one was treated at all well, and mostly because she fell in love with an RV pretty much right away. So this will be an opportunity to see two other dealers, and maybe they do things better. If they're all like that first one... fish in a barrel. :-)

Also, either their service manager or their sales manager is going to be driving me to Elkhart Indiana to see the factory that most of their stock is built at so I can talk about the construction of the units more personally.

I've got some stuff to do during the week. I might even spend a day at the last company I worked at, doing some work on their database. Hey, there's most of two paychecks short in the process of all this, I've got to do what I can.

Waiting

So today I sit and wait for the phone to ring...

The training session started on Wednesday with seven of us. Thursday there were five. Those five graduated yesterday with certificates. We all interviewed with the owner and sales manager at the dealership. That dealership is planning to hire three. Which means that two of the five will be calling the placement service Monday morning.

It's a little odd that I'm considering cutting my hair. When I've been asked about that in the past, it was something I really didn't want to do. Then again, it was in the context of cutting it to get a job I didn't actually want. No appeal there. But for this? For selling motorhomes and campers? That I can do.

The main issue at this point is I've had long hair so long it's hard for me to envision anything else. I cut in back in '99, and Amy liked the style, although I don't really remember it. Within six months I'd regretted cutting it. I haven't cut it since, and didn't plan to. At the moment I'm considering going for the shorter ponytail look. But there is something to be said that there is a large portion of the motorhome market that is a little older and quite a bit more conservative and might feel less comfortable paying a lot of money to buy something from "some long-haired hippie kid that doesn't shave."

I've been wearing my beard extremely short, so I'll probably let it grow out a little so it looks like an intentional beard, and not just stubble. Completely clean-shaven I look way younger, so that's probably not the better solution. If I look like I'm still in college that isn't going to help professional credibility...

But supposedly the owner and sales manager (both of whom I like) sat down together last night to decide which ones they were going to hire. The owner said he'd call everyone today and let us know one way or the other.

So now I'm just waiting for the call. I'm pretty sure I know the answer. I'm just not entirely sure what to wear to work on Monday. :-) (Maybe not the most manly of statements, but oh well.)

In training we were in shirts and ties. The employees all have logo golf shirts. I expect I'll be given a few of the shirts, but I never did meet their current sales guy, so I'm not sure if it's a dress shoes or hiking boots environment.

Beginnings

Yesterday morning I had a job interview at a local RV dealership looking for more salespeople. Gee, after living in one for a year and a half do I have any qualifications to sell them?

--The sales training starts today.

That meant getting to work yesterday at about 11 or so and having just that half day or so to get everything wrapped up or transitioned to someone else. They've already suggested that I could come in on days off (depending on what my schedule ends up being) for pickup work on some of their projects and database work. I wonder what kind of pay rate I can work out for that... :-)

If everything goes well, I'll be going to the official first day next Monday. There's still a number of details I don't know yet, but those are supposed to be gone over today.

It's scary, but it's an adventure just beginning.

3 Personal Calls at Work...

At work they've got a few of us logging all the outbound calls we make so they can understand the call stats better. That includes the personal calls. They aren't saying we can't make them, but they want an idea how many of the calls being made are being made for what reasons.

Basically, there are a number of calls being made that aren't being documented in the database. Some of them are cases where the call gets cut off and we call them back right away. Sometimes I've been documenting the second half as a second call, sometimes not. A number of them are when we have to call all over the place to find a service company for a customer.

I think the record was 20+ such calls for one customer. The customer was a judge in NY, and a particular ass-pain. We called nearly every service company in a ten-mile range of him at least. We talked to pool repair companies, and as soon as they heard who the customer was, several of them immediately said "We don't service pools" and politely ended the call. That oughta tell you something about him. He is in fact the individual leader in documented calls. He and his wife are a whole blog in and of themselves...

--So yesterday there were three outbound calls on my log. Two were to a temp agency returning calls about three positions I probably don't want. I'll talk about those later. They weren't as interesting after the third call. Amy's pregnant.

And So It Begins?

So yesterday the job hunting began in earnest. I've got an hour each morning with the new schedule.

Yesterday a recruiter saw my resume on careerbuilder.com. She called and got Amy at just past 5pm. Amy emailed me right away, and I called and got the lady's voicemail. I was talking to Amy when she called Amy again. So Amy and I hung up and I called again.

The position is half entry-level marketing, and half administration. I can do that.

It's in Schaumburg, so it'd be a shorter commute than I have now. Probably more like half an hour. I can do that.

I found myself thinking, if only it's a decent product I'm set. So I ask what kind of company it is.

"Oh, they make custom motorcoaches." Immediate mental reaction: I'm so there. I explain I lived in a motorhome for a year and a half. "Oh, really? Wow." (Yeah, that's the usual reaction.)

So this morning is the screening interview. This particular agency is diong the recruiting for it. Their finding the potentials to forward on. The company is looking to do the actual interviews before the end of the week.

And today is the first day of summer. Sometimes I just love how life works.

Corporate Life, or the Cost of Renting Your Soul to Evil.

They've decided to change my hours at work. I wasn't really presented any alternative. Sue (my direct supervisor, whose decision it was not, and whom I generally like and respect) told me as soon as she was told. I think partly she wanted to be sure I had advanced warnign and partly to see if I was okay with it. I'm hoping I got my displeasure across appropriately.

Starting Monday, June 20th I'll be working 6-9 9-6 [Amy caught the typo...] instead of 8-5. It's expected to last 2-3 months and then go back to normal once call volume decreases some more. It means I'll get home a little before 7. Jareth will already have eaten dinner. I'll eat dinner (which Amy will now have to be cooking 100% of the time instead of me helping sometimes), and then there'll end up being about an hour before Jareth goes to bed. This is the last shift slot I would have chosen. But it was made clear it isn't a volunteer thing. (There goes any chances of night classes for a while...)

I've decided there is a small plus side to it. I've got an hour each morning for dedicated job hunting. Now instead of looking for permanent jobs to replace this one, I'll also be open to long-term temp that's equal or lesser distance and similar pay.

Just the other morning I turned down a customer service position (to also include occasional warehouse support) at 70% of what I'm getting paid now ("Plus they have great benefits," the gal at the agency assured me...) at a company that wouldn't wait for a two-week notice. The agency gal appreciated the work ethic. I didn't mention the other side to it, that a company acting like that says something about their sense of respect.

I'm more likely to say one week for notice now...

Big Brother is Watching, Eh.

Aparently Big Brother is actually Canadian. Who knew?

One particular Canadian caller at work today records all his phone calls to us. This was originally discovered after the fact, when he offered to play back a prior conversation to one of the other people at work.

Today he called and got me. He started off by informing me he was recording the call.

At the end of the call, when I finally had the chance to get words in, I politely asked him not to record the calls anymore, and also politely told him that he did not have my permission to record the call. My supervisor told me to make sure I got that in. I had to ask her something else during the call anyway.

He went on to somewhat rudely tell me:

Don't tell me what my rights are. I know the law. I have every right to record whatever I want to as long as at least one of us knows about it.

Yeah, sure. I'm sure the govenment would love to use that reasoning.

"Oh, we know we're tapping your phone, so that makes it okay."

So now I have his name and file number noted on my desk, in case he gets me the next time he inevitably calls.

Keeping Up To Date...?

Opera puts a little banner ad in the window to encourage people to pay/upgrade to get rid of the ads. Usually the banners are ignorable. Every now and then one strobes, which just means I close Opera and re-open it to get a different add. Here's this morning's:

Of course, I get the image of selecting a coworker and hitting delete to update. Today my supervisor was training somone to replace someone who started Monday and was invited to not come back for Tuesday. Yesterday was the first time our phone list was updated twice in the same day. There are twenty of us, plus twelve on the list of those not here anymore. Ms Monday never even made the list. Apparently she was taking personal call on her cell phone even during training. I think it was seven times total. I got to hear most of the call to the agency explaining that it just wasn't going to work.

I suppose it's a bad sign when HR is lining up replacements in advance. i don't specifically like the job, although it is refreshing to have a job where it matters if I don't come in. On the other hand, we laugh a lot. I've never laughed so much at a job before, and I actually feel popular there. Maybe that says something about the people I work with. Maybe it means I'm making progress in therapy. But there are conversations over the cube walls, and I let myself take part in them. I'm not just keeping to myself like I normally would. We've all been invited to the company's Christmas party two Fridays from now.That'll be my first really social setting in some time. We'll see how that goes...

Infrequent Updates, Work, and PETA

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.

I have, however, been busy with the kinds of things that don't make for good blogging. Okay, I've been busy working. There hasn't been a lot of news I've heard that garnered the "Oh, I so have to blog that" response.

Work is... well, it is. It pays and doesn't suck. There's this wide gray area between good and suck. It's hard to measure. This job has a lot of aggravations, but it's still in that gray area, so it's tolerable.

I've had a second belligerant caller, and one guy who said he couldn't afford to wait ten weeks for the good gas valves. So he'll probably sell the defective, potentially dangerous ones to his customers before then. There's a caring guy for you. I noted what he said in his call record. If someone gets hurt it's on him.

I nearly had to blog an article about PETA protesting fishing as cruel. Um... yeah.

Now, don't get me wrong, I support compassion to animals, and disapprove of cruelty to them. But is it up to me to decide what experiences those animals need? No. In my belief system they chose that life and the experiences that come with it. They need those experiences to grow. In later lives they may be the people that campaign for animal and human rights. Maybe the people working with those animals need to see certain things to grow themselves.

On top of that, I have never been to any of those commercial food farms. I don't know first hand what conditions they live in, and I tend to doubt at least some of the alarmist claims. PETA in particular doesn't bear a lot of credibility with me.

Yes, I'm a pagan who eats meat. I have a leather jacket. And a suede coat. And leather boots. I have some vague ideas about just how many other things are made from animal products. I appreciate and am thankful for the things we get from animals. I believe that how we treat the world is how we treat ourselves. Some of that is the pantheist in me. We shape our own future by how we treat the world around us. There is good and there is bad. But you can't really appreciate one without the other. There has to be balance.

I'm reminded of a shirt I've seen.

People for the Eating of Tasty Animals

Surprised? Nope.

I had to chuckle. No, this isn't about something absurd overheard at the tech support desks near me at work.

No, this is about the prior job.

Before the canning, I was working on transitioning all the merchandising and sales collateral from one facility to another. The original client had been given their three-month notice. I think it was even sent over in writing.

Then after I was gone the project was given to the trade show manager (who already had enough to keep her busy).

And now I hear from an old co-worker that the facitiliy and ordering web page is all shut down. Aparently nobody told them not to. The new facility won't be ready until some time after November 1st.

Little sympathy here. Sorry.

And So It Begins...

Another day another 70¢ after tax.

And yet it was a day unlike so many.

Okay, for one there was the 5:00 wake up. Not exactly standard for me recently.

Ran a bit later than intended, still there with ten minutes to spare. There were six of us new.

The company makes gas valves for appliances. Some of them had a manufacturing issue that has the potential (under some specific, not overly common circumstances) to leave them stuck in the open position. This is only a problem if the pilot lights on said appliances go out for any reason.

There have been a few reported cases where that has happened. There have been minor injuries and some property damages (largely related to oven doors becoming projectiles).

So they're jumping on the recall procedure, proceding faster than they're normally supposed to. They're a good week ahead of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

They're bringing in a bunch of people to man the 800#. I get to be one of them for somewhere between six and eighteen months.

Hey, the pay is good. On top of that, I've been toying with trying to get a computer support help desk job, and this will make for perfect customer service call center experience for the resume.

At the end of the day I saw the time and thougth, "Oh, it's time to go."

I didn't spend the day waiting for it to end. And it was a slow day with a lot of waiting.

Oh, and the coffee is Hills Bros. I could have brought one of those mugs home from Sara Lee...

So far I've avoided snide remarks, although there are better blends and pack sizes they should be using. Crap, I almost remembered the SKUs for some of the ones to recommend.

I have got to leave that place behind me...

Overwhelmed, More Testing, and Growing

I've been feeling overwhelmed the last few days. That Business In Piralle (formerly The Reltice Emerald) needs what will amount to a near total rewrite. I need to re-storyboard it (essentially outlining it), which is just about back to square one. It'll be a better book for it. I'll still have the sense of accomplishment that came with finishing the first version rough draft, but my initial plans of having it ready to submit to publishers/agents by year's end now seem...remote at best.

I'm estimating there were maybe 300 hours put into the first one. That, plus revision time, doesn't seem feasible in three months. Between job hunting and being helpful around the house there just aren't that many hours available in the week.

In other news, on Monday I tested at another agency. They're working on a decent lead for me, if it pans out. I took the same test for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. All three took me about twenty minutes total. I also tested in Access. I guess I know it, too:

Basic Score Percentage	100
Intermediate Score Percentage	91
Advanced Score Percentage	100

I might set up that test at one of the other agencies and see if I can get Microsoft certified in it. I did that for Word/Excel/PowerPoint no problem. It was free. How could I pass that up? Doing it for Access just seems to make sense.

In other other news, this morning marked three weeks of jogging every morning. It's been the same block (about a third of a mile) every time. One more week and I'll switch to a block down the road, which should push it to half a mile. It's not much, but at least I've done it every single morning. And it is getting a little easier each week. Seeing progress from it feels good. I'll be adding more things like that, too. By the end of the year I want to look back and see a year unlike any other (and not just because of the job transitions, thank you).

Maybe even the year I turned my life around.

I Win

Or, to quote the woman I interviewed with today:

Oh.
My.
God.

We've never seen scores like these before!

They posted the scores printout on the wall.

Today was an interview to get set up with another agency. Before the testing she asked how well I knew Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I try not to be smug when asked that, so I let the test scores speak for me:

<gloat>

Word 2000
Basic Score Percentage	100
Intermediate Score Percentage	100
Advanced Score Percentage	100
Excel 2000
Basic Score Percentage	100
Intermediate Score Percentage	100
Advanced Score Percentage	100
PowerPoint 2000
Basic Score Percentage	100
Intermediate Score Percentage	100
Advanced Score Percentage	100

</gloat>

Office Gossippy Stuff

So I talked to Rita, who was the one I sat next to at work. She and I talked frequently. She was (is) one of the coolest people at the office. She's one of the three people that have read and critiqued the rough draft of the first book (for which I'm still working on a new title).

Part of my job was given over to the already over-worked trade show manager. It appears that the consumer correspondence is just not happening. The 800# (listed on several web sites and most of the marketing literature) has 15 messages on it. It's still my voice on the recording, and they haven't changed the passcode. I got far enough to hear how many unplayed messages there were and hung up.

Rose, who had been basically the department secretary, was laid off the same day I was. Apparently she got a call from Kelly Services (one of the worst temp agencies for a number of reasons). They tried to offer her a temporary position supporting the woman who took over her desk. Needless to say, she declined.

Ain't that typical?

"You should like hire me and stuff..."

Okay, so I said it better than that. I had a job interview today. I think it went well, but it may also be only about the third job interview of my life, so I only have so much to compare it to.

The job sounds good enough and the atmosphere far better than before. Their initial pay suggestion was a bit low, but that will be at least somewhat negotiable. Whether it's negotiable enough or not becomes the next question.

Well, that and whether they want me or not. I should keep that in mind. Maybe they really want some underskilled entry-level twerp who won't really work out.

We'll see how long it takes to find out. They admitted they've seen one other applicant, but that they're wanting to get the position filled quickly.

Eliminated, Part II

Well, it turns out I wasn't the only one. Rose, the department admin, was about an hour after me.

Today is her boss's last day, but he's known that for months.

Mind you, he was Sr. VP of Marketing before this all started back in March or so.

Then down to Director. Then his direct reports went away two and three at a time. Then his "end of August" termination date turned into August 1st just about a week ago. But he has known the whole time.

That's the difference. Wednesday the department gave him a cake and sendoff. He's a baseball nut, so we got him a baseball that we all signed. You get crap like that when you're senior management.

The peons? Nope. Just the swift boot. Get the hell out. That's why workers don't give their all to companies like they used to. Loyalty is dead, because, like trust, it has to work both ways.

But I'm a better man than to be bitter and vengeful about it. Corporate leaders just behave that way. They're shallow, empty people. Expecting them to behave differently is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

The difference is, I can see this as the opportunity I've been afraid to take. Mind you, I'd feel better if I knew just what it was an opportunity to do...

"Eliminated"

Well, if you've read Amy's blog, she's already stolen the thunder.

I got to work, turned on the fountain at my desk, started up the computer.

Typed in the password, got an error message. Hit return without reading it and retyped said password. It's an intentionally mistyped word, so sometimes first thing in the morning I type it correctly.

This time I actually read the message.

Your account has been disabled. Please contact your system administrator.

Now, viruses have been moving through the internet. One of my contacts had already left me a voice mail that he had to clean one off. Because I send emails to consumers, I end up in a lot of people's address books. And that's how email viruses (virii?) like to propgate.

So it was one of two things. Virus, or an impending visit from HR.

I was on the phone with the help desk getting a ticket number when my boss stopped by, needing to see me for a minute. He was supposed to be in a staff meeting with his boss, and after I hang up we head towards one of the conference rooms. But we go past it and down the stairs. Now there can only be one place he's leading me. HR.

And then we were sitting in an HR office.

"With all the reorganizing that's been going on, your position has been eliminated."

Then the whole severance package review.

I wasn't even allowed to go back to my desk. The HR representative went up and grabbed the bag that had some of my stuff (like car keys). My steel travel mug is still sitting on said desk. As is the fountain.

The rest gets boxed up and shipped to me. No idea how long that'll take.

The good news is that now I'll have more time for writing and blogging...?

Meet the new boss...no, really!

I like the new boss better than the last...three that I've had there so far.

Not that most of the meeting was blog-worthy, though.

But yes, I did meet him.
It was an encouraging discussion.
It does look like we're going to be resolving most of the main issues I have. We're meeting again Monday afternoon to resolve some of the details...like what the hell is my job description and title.

Other than that I spent today so busy that I had two piles:

• Urgent Crap to do Right Now, and
• Crap to sort through and figure out what the heck it is later.

Meet the...doh!

Yesterday was not meet the new boss day. That's today.

Yesterday I had lost track of what day of the week it was. I've done that a few times already since getting back from Canada. I keep thinking it's later in the week than it really is. Maybe it's just subconsciously wishing it were closer to friday...

So today we'll see how it goes.

Meet the new boss...

Today I actually get to meet the new boss. He's coming in from one of the other offices to meet with his new people. Partly to discuss what we do, partly find out what we do.

I'm not looking forward to it. I'm still wondering if I'll get a chance to politely confront him about how somebody really needs to decide what I should and shouldn't be doing, and let me know.

I'm really hoping to be able to get up early Saturday morning and devote some time to getting resumes out. There are just some things I'm not going to do from work. Heck, I wonder if the job sites are blocked at work yet or not. That sounds like something they'd do...

Meet the new boss, same as the—um, wait...

Another one to add to the official Bad Signs list:

When your boss comes to your desk, asks you to come to his office "for a minute" but "it's nothing to panic over."

Then he closes the door. "I don't want you to worry, but..."

Any time soon the announcement is supposed to come that I (and most of the rest of the people reporting to my boss) are about to report to someone else instead. So now, rather than waiting on my current boss and his boss (who I think still doesn't know what I do) to tell me what my job is, I'm waiting on a new boss I've never met and the same next boss up to tell me. Once they decide. If they even decide. It's been what, four months already?

I will give him credit for wanting to tell me in advance of the email announcement. I mentioned how very rare that is, and thanked him for it.

So, some day I'll meet the new boss. In theory. He doesn't even have an office in our building yet. Apparently he comes here frequently enough.

What's that saying about change? Oh, I think it's being revised. Sorry.

Sense of accomplishment

Well, Amy has already mentioned it on her blog, but yesterday I finished the rough draft on The Reltice Emerald. That's what nearly a year of lunch hours adds up to.

That was followed by a good half hour or so of what felt like an adrenaline rush.

But after that I found myself still at work, and still not happy about being still at work. At work, when I'm frustrated or feeling insecure about my job, I clean things.

My desk damn near glistens. The coffee area is spotless. I started running out of places to clean...

Confidentiality

Sometimes things marked "confidential" are labeled that not because you shouldn't know, but because you don't want to know.

Case in point -
We have three MBA student interns at work for the summer. They're working on a project of their own, so them being around (despite our being expected to support them) doesn't reduce our workload or anything.

And one of them needs to learn about managing confidentiality—specifically not printing confidential materials and leaving it sit on the printer for hours and hours. In this case is was the internship agreement. Now, I had been under the impression that interns were barely paid, since it's more for their benefit anyway.

Not so! They're paid almost double what I am. Plus they get to tour the new building. Management can't even confirm to us which building we moving to sometime September-December. We don't even get to know when. The interns won't even still be here by then. But they're being shown that so they can be impressed about how great a place it would be for them to work after they graduate. Crap, can I be an intern?

I wouldn't mind being the low guy on the totem pole. At least I'd be on it. I just wish they would quite dropping it on my foot.

Oh, you are SO getting blogged for that...

I needed a CD burned at work today. Until very recently no one but IT was allowed to have CD burners. Since that changed, the people getting new laptops are getting them with the free burner upgrade.

But I'm not one of those people. No one in this end of the building has one.

So I called the Help Desk, per standard procedure:

Me — Hi, this is Brian up in Marketing. I need a CD burned.

IT Guy — Okay. Which one do you need?

Me — Um, the contents of a directory on the network drive.

IT Guy — Oh. Hang on.

IT Guy — Do you have a CD burner?

I'm not sure if I sighed out loud or not.

High Compliments

Well, of all the people at work, there is one who is the coolest one there. The Roastmaster. No, that's his actual title. He creates coffee blends and supervises everything that coffee should be. He has a really cool job. Although pretty soon I have to start thinking it in the past tense. His last day is Friday. He's taking a grand-high coffee dude position for one of our bigger competitors. Mainly it means he gets to stay out where his family is. I can't say I blame him, but he'll be sorely missed.

On the other hand, it means if/when I start my own coffee shop, he has already said he'd do cheap consulting. :-)

In a recent e-mail he paid me what might be the highest compliment I've ever received:

I have very much enjoyed working with you. An island of sanity in a raging sea of craziness.

Is that Graffiti?

Alas, no. 'Tis the writing on the wall...

It would just figure, though. I come home early because I miss my wife, and she's out running errands.

Of course, I also left work early because I wanted out before my mood got worse. We've suspected for some time now that the axe was being slowly lifted. Now we know that if falls on the 30th.

Three mostly parallel divisions are merging. That happened late March. Nobody was sure what the results were going to be. And the announcements have started.

The three HR departments merged, and where there were three HR VPs, now there is one. The other two "left to pursue other as-of-yet undertermined senior-level positions."

Other departments started announcing their new, combined structures. With each announcement there was the welcoming of new (merged in) people, and the loss of some now redundant people.

On the 30th, the new Sales and Marketing structures get announced. Since late yesterday it's all anyone's been talking about. The huddled chats at the coffee machine... The closed door meetings... Everyone knows. Well, everyone knows something. Little bits here, little bits there. I sit in the kind of spot where I get to almost overhear a lot.

One guy has resigned from what he himself has called his dream job on many occasions—to work for a customer. I'm pretty sure another guy (one of the ones who's been around longer than average) is jumping ship as well.

The rats are gathering, and they're wearing life jackets. That's never a good sign.

So the bottom line is that until May 1st, nobody knows for certain if they'll still have a job, what that job might be, and who they'll be doing it for. But for most of the middle and senior managers it's a game of musical chairs, and there's a lot of chairs being removed. I suspect that my job is different enough that it won't be redundant, but we'll see. The entire department is being redrawn from scratch. Hopefully in the process of that there will still be a slot I'll fit in.

On the plus side, if I do find myself suddenly getting some kind of weenie severance package, I'll have more time to blog while I'm sending resumes and interviewing.

No offense, but that's not very consoling.

Noting the Incidence of...Incidence?

The problem with working in a field that genuinely interests you is that work is never completely out of your head. Facts, terminology, the works.

I go into a restaurant and cannot help but wonder what kind of coffee it is. If it's bad coffee, I can usually tell pretty quickly what I would recommend to improve it.

One term important to the study of the foodservice industry is incidence. Incidence (in a foodservice context) is a measure of how often something is ordered. If X percent of orders include coffee, that's the incidence of coffee at that restaurant.

So this morning I'm writing an email about using bold or italics in place of all caps. I very nearly suggested reducing the incidence of all caps. That would, of course, have gotten me a, "reduce the WHAT?!?"

So, never mind me, I'm just going to sit here and drink some more coffee.

The IT Panic

I got to work today, and got about twenty minutes of work done before the grumbling started.

It started with voices in ever direction asking, "Hey, what's going on?!?"

First e-mail crashed.

Then the Internet was gone.

Then PCs started locking up randomly.

Then the network drives were inaccessible.

Then IT started telling secretaries to shut computers down, "quickly."

There's something morbidly amusing about seeing IT staff running around cursing in near-panic.

"Infected." Enough to make one secretary feel the need to wash her hands.

By 11:00, I got IT to admit they still didn't know the extent of the problem. At that point, repairs hadn't yet begun. So they'll lock out all the computers from the network. Then they'll run around to each and every PC and clean it before it can be readmitted to the network. The last two times took several hours just for that part. There will be no computer usage for the rest of the day. I've been home since about noon.

Good day to play with Jareth and rearrange the living room.

WebSense

As is bound to be the case when morale is low at a company, people end up dreading reading the all-company email announcements. These typically get "published" by HR, but could originally come from anyone who has an official message for everyone. These historically cover things that affect everyone, like:

• reminders of the computer usage policies
• computer servers expected to be down
• people (like the president) leaving the company (these are never sent until the first morning without said person)
• raises being frozen until next year
• layoff announcements

There have been many that I can't think of examples of right now, but they're almost never upbeat or cheerful. They're vague in details, and usually leave people asking more question of each other than they had before the email. The one paragraph email after the president left particularly set the rumor mill aflame.

This one came from the IT manager personally:

Next week, Information Technology will implement a new internet monitoring and blocking tool called WebSense. This tool will prevent access to certain web pages based on the content of those pages. The type of content being blocked is prescribed to us by (parent company), and should not impact our user community. The types of content we will be blocking will be adult, nudity, sex, abused drugs, MP3's, gambling, games, web chat, racism and hate, to name just a few, and all are considered to be outside the scope of what we, as employees of (company) would need to access in the course of conducting our day to day business.

Additionally, all internet use, both actual and attempted, is recorded and categorized in the system by time, user id and machine name.

If you attempt to go to a web site that is being blocked by WebSense, you will receive a message page stating "Access to this web page is restricted at this time." This page also describes how to report a web site that is being blocked inappropriately so it can be removed from the block list.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

I didn't hear any grumbling or confusion after this one. That means that either nobody cares, because they never ever do personal browsing at the office (possible, most of the people around me have internet at home anyway), or the possibly more likely option that they just didn't read it. Quick scan over the content and, "Whatever..."

PowerPoint=Evil?

Many people have said that PowerPoint is evil. Some of those were people who don't know how to use it, and find it frustrating. And some of them are people who *do* know how to use it, and therefore know it to be true.

As pervasive as it is becoming in Corporate America, it seems that for every company full of people who can just barely do the basics, there is but one person who actually knows it. Hundreds who can type bulleted lists, and know just enough to really screw things up. But just one who can actually fix their crap or do what they wanted to do in the first place.

At my job, I am that one person. I say that not as something to brag about. I say it as the condemmed man says, "Yes, I'm the one that got caught."

Leave it to presidents and vice presidents and directors to panic when the new president from The Parent Company gives them a deadline. The new uber boss makes a complicated request (justify everything you plan to do and why you need a budget to do it, in a one-hour presentation).

So these people realize (correctly) that they can't possibly get a presentation put together in time. They barely have enough time to figure out the content, let alone put slides together.

But that's ok, because Brian can do it.

Never mind that he does in fact have a job to do. Never mind that next week you're going to yell at him for not getting it done. Yes, he'll spend the next two weeks doing your job for you, and saving your ass, because you're his boss's boss. But you better remember that when you get phone call after phone call over the next two weeks about the things Brian *isn't* going to get done now.

So yes, he'll take care of you. Yes, he'll make it look better than you envisioned. Yes, he'll make you look good to the next two levels of senior management above you. You'll look professional and organized. You can impress your boss with a slick presentation that is understandable and not "busy." And he'll even create the one piece of really slick animation that very neetly ties together what you would have struggled to explain.

And he'll even be patient with everyone else when he has to explain to product managers why they can't roll out their new product yet, and why customers are being delayed on the first product shipments for their vending machines (and Sales really hates when they close an account, and the machine is in place, but there's no product).

But you damn well better thank him when you get back. And you really should consider two important things: That if he doesn't get a raise, and if you don't hire or train somebody with some computer skills past hunt-and-peck, then you might just find yourself having to do your own damn job. Because Brian has a lot of patience, but he's practically rehearsing the telling-off he's saving for his last day.

Rant complete.

I feel better now.