GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #811: A RETURN TO WORK

 After being gone from work for nearly two months, I returned today. Of course I slept lousy last night, so I kind of shuffled through my day. I found, much to my delight, that I did not forget how to sell auto glass. Also, for the first time ever, I didn't have hours of emails and notifications waiting for me upon my return. I got through all of it before even punching in, and I was only five minutes earlier than usual today.

All in all, not a bad day. It felt good to be back to doing something with my days other than stewing in bed, waiting for my sickness bouts to be over. I almost got my quota before lunch. The afternoon slowed down, so I didn't get a lot of sales, but I made more than expected.

It was a fairly easy day until the last call of the shift. It's always the last call of the shift.

I had about eight minutes to go before quitting time, but I figured the incoming call wouldn't be the one to keep me late. It would be the next call. I was, of course, wrong.

"Lemme ask you a quick question," he said. You *all* know how I feel about "quick" questions. And, naturally, I had to do one of my most annoying tasks at work: I had to get OEM info for the customer.

Original Equipment Manufacturer, in case you were wondering. To do that I had to reach out to a dealership, and I usually have to call several of them before I get through to a parts department willing to help. This is where things get tricky because you can't ask what the part number is. 95% of the time they won't give it to you without a fight. The reason is, they want to sell the part, not help me with a fact finding mission. So I have to be very deceptive to get the info I need out of them, and it's a hassle. I have a long history of doing morally questionable things in the name of my job, but I'd just rather not. And then, my least favorite part, is tricking the parts desk guy into giving me the part number. I'm fairly successful at this. I'd say I only fail 20% of the time.

For this customer I called three dealers before I got someone who could help. And when I tricked him into giving me the part number, I saw it was nothing like the one I expected. This is because our system can look up any modern VIN (meaning, a VIN with 17 characters) EXCEPT for brand new vehicles. My system thought it was a Buick Envision, but in talking to the parts guy I discovered that this is supposed to be a brand new model debuting this year.

I kept working on it until I left, which was 20 minutes late. Fuck.

But I didn't talk to any asshole customers. I did have to clean up other people's mistakes, mostly customer mistakes, thankfully. But I made it through without suffering too much.

Except for one thing. After lunch I reached out to my contact in regards to that position I'm desperately trying to get with another team. It's a dream job (as far as dream jobs can go at this company), and I was afraid my time off might have fucked up my ambitions.

My contact was no longer with the company. I reached out to his boss, who would have been my boss, and he said that they decided not to go with anyone. They restructured the department instead. I am once again stranded at a sales job that pays fairly well but is otherwise not very pleasant for me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. We seem to run through supervisors pretty quickly. Maybe another position will pop up, and I'll try for that.

I'm sure that work treated me well merely because it was my first day back. I'm sure I'll be bitching and moaning again soon. Maybe even by the end of the week! We shall see . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #755: AN UNWELCOME GUEST

 Someone sat at my desk while I was out of the office. I could tell due to several things. I'm kind of OCD, so I always know when something's off. The first indication that I had was that my chair was pushed off to the side instead of under the keyboard, where it usually is. Well, maybe the janitor moved it to vacuum. Possibly.

But then I saw all the grit on my desk. That used to happen at my old desk but only because they were building a new office literally a half a foot away from that desk. No such thing happened this time. I'm OK with others using my desk while I'm not there, but fucking clean up after yourself.

And then I noticed the cardinal sin. Whoever it was put their drink down on my pad of paper. The very pad of paper that I had a bunch of stuff written on. I'd written that stuff down because it was fucking important. It was a list of sales leads I intended to follow up on, now smudged and tacky because of the goddam sweat ring that beverage left behind. That's just fucking inexcusable.

At this job? I have never sat at someone else's desk. At other jobs? Sure. And when I sat at those desks, I touched only the things necessary to doing my job, and I put those things back the way I found them. If I messed anything up, I cleaned it up. What the fuck kind of scumbag does this kind of thing?

Yeah, I'm frustrated. But at least it's Friday. Which means tomorrow will feel like a slow and agonizing death, but it's the last of my trials and tribulations before I have a day off.

Jesus fuck.