She's a Witch! No, She's Nice!

My job is killing me. I know I've said that before and none of you believe me, but I swear, when I'm dead I'm putting "Told You So" on my tombstone. Or I don't know, maybe I'll just end up in an institution, spending my waning years babbling and making baskets. Please tell me what color you'd like, and I'll see what I can come up with for you.

I had an interesting occurrence there at the old offices of TheCompanyIWorkFor today. Ended the day with a bang. I had to throw someone out of the office.

Now, I've never done this before. I've seen it done once and it's even been done on my behalf once. I've also been witness to our calling the police when a man threatened to come down to see us and kick all our asses until we were as flat as little pancakes. But I've never done it on my own.

And I'll get to that later, but let's talk about me and my job a little. If you don't mind, of course.

When I have job evaluations, they always end up with the same spiel. "Your clerical skills are top-notch. However, you're a lousy salesperson, and I can't figure out why because you have the most excellent people skills. People love you!" And of course I refuse to believe this, I think everyone hates me, but that's just me, but on those rare occasions I'll deal with someone or diffuse a sticky situation and think, "Wow. I kinda did that well."

I had a couple of those experiences this very week. The first happened with Mr Redhat. He came in last week to get quoted and written up, and I did that, the quoting anyway, did it well, placed him exactly where our trusty TheCompanyIWorkFor systems told me to, and he was happy. He was coming in this past Friday to get everything set up. After he left, the boss said, "I thought we couldn't do him, remember?" And she went on to tell me some reason he'd tried to become our client before but was refused. Why she waited until he left the office happy, and didn't motion for me to come up to her office to tell me while he was there, I'll never know. Yes, I do know. She didn't want to deal with any confrontation over it. She wanted me to handle it.

So Friday came, and Mr Redhat appeared, and I told him up front there might be a problem. I explained it, and said there was a way I could double-check everything with a back-up questionnaire on the computer's application. I went to that section, asked him all the questions, answered them, and yep, there it was, "A-OK! We Want This Person!" So I wrote him and he was still happy.

Monday I got an email from someone in Regional telling me, "Nope, not A-OK. We don't want him. We will, however, take him at almost double the price." And I cussed and the boss said nyah nyah or whatever she says, and I felt like dirt. Because I was going to have to call Mr Redhat. Which I did, left him a message, and he was in the office within the hour. I told him the news, and he was suddenly no longer happy. He wasn't very happy at all, and I can't say I blame him, and he ranted a while and I listened, and then he said, "What do I do?" And I was very honest with him about it all, because, well, I'm that way.

I first told him how much we'd love his business. I then told him some things about what he had at TheCompanyHeWasWithBefore, and how he could probably save some money staying there, and then after six months he could come back to us with the rate we'd given him before, and that would be the most beneficial to him, and that he had a little time to think about it all, and we'd be here now or six months from now, whichever he liked best.

And his answer took me by surprise. "I really thank you for being so honest, and I like you all way more than the other people, so let's just sign me up at the higher price today." And I did, and he ended up staying in the office till the end of the day, showing me pictures of his daughter and talking about the trials of parenting. So, a person who came in my office very unhappy left it being my best buddy.

Then there was the case of Mrs Store. Mrs Store is unhappy her claim is taking too long to handle, and I agree, kind of. It's about 40% her fault and 60% ours. And she knows there's not a thing I can do about it, but I seem to be in the middle of it anyway and she calls me every three or four days and we talk.

And she did that today, not exactly happy, but not ranting and raving. And I listened again, and gave her my honest opinions of what she should do and what I hoped our claims people would do, and we swapped stories of how stormy it's been outside lately and her husband's health, and she ended the conversation with, "Listen, I know this isn't your doing, but I sure do appreciate your letting me call you up and get all this off my chest. It really helps." And I told her to call me anytime she wanted to, and yes, I meant it, and she left the phone happy.

So see? I'm nice. But I guess I have my limits.

Now to the throw-out. The old heave-ho. OK, first of all, let me explain a little of how it works at TheCompanyIWorkFor. I'll keep this as brief as possible. I'll give you enough background info to keep you apprised, but not so much that you'll get bored.

The systems at TCIWF are thusly: at the end of the day we do the bank deposit. The bank deposit software renders just about everything else on our computers useless. We can't take payments, do changes, do applications, do transfers, do much of anything, really. We can look up a client and say, "Yep, there you are!" That's about it. Also, because we're all women, once four women, then three, then normally two, and today it was two, we are forbidden to say, "Our computers won't let us do anything because we're doing a bank deposit." This is because that statement implies that there are indeed large sums of cash being counted only a few feet away. And sometimes that's true. It's very, very true. So the party line we've been taught to toe is, "I'm sorry, but our systems are down."

And so there we were, San and I, and I had started the bank deposit. I was right in the thick of things, tallying and counting and punching buttons. And a man came in the office. We'll call him Mr OutOfStater. Now, I was in the back, so I wasn't catching every word of what was transpiring, but there were two things that struck me about Mr OOS. First, he seemed to come into the office speaking the middle of some sentence that had San really confused, and second, he was really leaning on her hard. I knew this because when someone is starting to back San up against the wall, she starts with the "sirs." And I heard "sir" all over the place. "I'm sorry, sir, but our systems are down and, sir, if that's what you need, sir, well, sir, we can't really do it right now, sir."

Then San popped her head back into my office and said, "Did you catch any of that?" And when I told her only bits, she went on to explain Mr OOS's situation. He was from another state and needed to pay immediately, this was his last day, she said, and needed to transfer here to this state, immediately, and she didn't know what to do.

I thought for a minute, and came up with this idea. "Well, we're pretty much shot for the day, what-we-can-do-wise, but if we can find out exactly what he owes in his other state, I'll take that, get a little of his local information, and we can complete the paperwork tomorrow. Might not be the exact amount, but it'll be close enough to get things done." A logical and rather brilliant idea, I thought. Surely that would make him happy.

Well, by the sound of his constant ya-ya'ing in the front office, I pretty much realized that nothing was going to make Mr OOS happy. But San went and tried to tell him all this, while I went back to the bank deposit, working it now like a nervous sun-visored bank attendant with a rifle sticking up his ass. San talked to his other state's office, who said it definitely was not his last day to pay but that's beside the point, I guess if he wanted to pay he wanted to pay, and that they'd fax us all his information. And so San began that long walk back to that little machine of hate, the fax machine.

And it took forever. That fax was as slow as molasses in January. And the whole time, Mr OOS was up front talking. To no one in particular, but to us, if you get my drift. And what he was saying got uglier and uglier, and I sat there and counted and sighed. The OOS rhetoric went from not believing someone didn't want his money, to maybe some other CompanyPeopleWorkedFor wanted it, to "Systems Are Down" being a euphemism for "It's Late And We're Tired Of Working," to something involving "The Biggest Bunch of Bullshit I've Ever Seen."

After an interminable amount of time the fax was printed, and San brought it up to me. And this is where things get interesting. Because Mr OOS stuck his head in the office in front of mine and said, "You said your systems were down and you're back there playing on the computer! You printed out my information!" To which we answered in unison, "It's a fax!" but it made no difference. He was off again on a new series of rants, and I never even got to the sheet where it told what amount of money Mr OOS owed. Because when I was on about sheet two of the fax, I heard it. Right from the front office.

"You're a bunch of fuckin' liars."

And I snapped.

"That's it!" I yelled, picking up the sheets and charging to the front office. I'm pretty liberal about temper and the bouncing of cusswords, mainly because I have no spine, but I'd had enough. I may drop the old f-word around the boss and San, but I'd never use it in front of a customer, so my rule is none of them uses it to me. I don't get paid enough for that kind of abuse.

I told Mr OOS that we were all trying to make the best of a bad situation here, and that we'd try and help him but if he didn't curb the language pronto, I'd ask him to leave.

Had kind of the opposite effect I was looking for. He went on a veritable "fuck" tangent, using it in every sentence he spoke. So I informed him that I wasn't the agent, but I was the office manager and today I was the boss. And those were my rules and they went. Stop the language now, or leave, or I'd call the police to make sure he did.

To make a long story short, he didn't. So I took another deep breath, told him that he was to leave and not come back, that if he wanted to remain with TheCompanyIWorkFor I'd suggest he try either representative in the two neighboring towns. To which he replied, "You don't think I'll call your fuckin' corporate office about this, do you?" and started out the door. To which, forgive me, I couldn't help myself and said after him, "Please do. Be sure to mention my name."

And that's how it ended. I went back and finished up a very dismal bank deposit, I don't even know what the bank will make of it tomorrow morning, and the rest of our systems "went down" for the day.

See, here's the thing. This man was going to have exactly what he needed, but he couldn't shut his trap for a good 30 seconds while anyone explained that to him. And he chose to get ugly, and I chose to get just as ugly right back. And that's pretty amazing. No one at the office has seen me snap. None of you has. In fact, I don't know if the amount of people who have can be counted on one hand. One finger! But I did today.

And I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but you know, I don't feel bad about it. In fact, I'm rather proud. I finally stood up for myself, stood up for San, and this poor guy bore the brunt of 20 years of my being stepped on by ugly customers. And he deserved it.

I also hope he calls corporate. I'd love to get a call from them and have a chance to explain myself. He probably just went off to a CompanySomeoneElseWorksFor, though. And I hope they enjoy him.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* I'll let you know if anything else transpires.
* I also stopped by the folks' after work to swim 45 of the fastest, meanest, most violent laps I've ever done. I think I hurt the water. Mom gave me some green beans afterwards, though. Green beans can help a lot of things.