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The Skies May Be
Friendly, But the Ground Isn't
09-18-06
I arrived in Minneapolis
with my co-worker Cara - the same Cara who considers herself to have
all the answers and who I generally dislike. I didn't have high hopes
for the week.
These hopes plummeted even further when, that very Sunday evening, I
tripped and took a spectacular fall...a definite 9 on a scale of 10 in
the Olympics of falling. Unfortunately, as a result of my medal
winning clumsiness, I was left with a severely battered looking
face...a huge knot on my forehead, which would turn a sickly
yellow-greenish hue by mid-week, and a chewing gum strip of lost skin
running straight down the bridge of my nose.
On the bright side, however, Cara and I actually started hitting it
off. Perhaps because we were in a strange city and knew nobody else or
perhaps because we didn't have the whole 'work' thing to drive a wedge
between us, I actually thought that maybe some type of friendship
would result. Even her abundant use of the phrases, "totally!",
"that's awesome, man!" and "that's cool, dude!" which usually made me
cringe, weren’t even bothering me as much.
This glorious budding friendship lasted up until Tuesday night.
"You know, man," she began, "I totally got you your job. Vince (our
boss) brought me your resume to look over and asked what I
thought...and I knew when I saw it that it was total bullshit, man.
But I thought, 'you know, he seems okay', so I told Vince to hire
you."
"Gee, thanks...I guess," I said. Because what, exactly, are you
supposed to say to someone who takes responsibility for getting you your job?
'Great! Now that you're done with me, you can continue working on that
cure for cancer,' perhaps.
"The other lady who was up for the job had way more
experience than you...but she had a limp. I think that's why Vince
didn't hire her."
"Yeah, those limpers...what slackers they are."
She didn't appear to be listening, though. Once revved up, her mouth
flows quite freely.
"And Vince is totally screwing me! He's always riding my ass! And I haven't even seen one commission check
yet!" she
fumed.
"Cara, you didn't sell anything in either August or September."
"I'm so going to call the
labor relations board when we get back and tell them how he's screwing
us! It's bullshit, man! Total bullshit! "
And out of all her manic ranting, that one word sent shivers down my
spine...'us'. Because, while I agree that some things about the job aren't ideal,
I have also come to enjoy getting a paycheck.
"Look, leave me out of this," I told her.
"I can't believe you! Well you may be alright with letting people
screw you over, but I have balls, man! Besides, that thing I said in class today, Trudy,
our regional sales rep, told me that she
wants to talk to me about using it in a marketing campaign."
"What thing was that?" I asked.
"You know, when I said ‘don't get left behind'. She loved it! I
think they're going to offer me a job as a marketing manager. See,
I've got ambition...you don't. You may be happy with a lowly job, but
I have so much more potential than that!"
I simply stared at her, not even sure what she was hoping to achieve.
Did she seriously think she was going to get a job with corporate on
the basis of four words? Did she hope to get
Vince’s dealership yanked? Did she realize that, if she
succeeded, we'd both be out of a job?
I doubt that she gave these questions any thought though...because,
unfortunately, thinking is not one Cara's strong points.
The Friendly Skies
09-16-06
This past week was spent
in Minnesota as a part of my new job training. In my past jobs, I
was corralled as a simple office monkey, never straying far from my
cubicle or desk. For the first time in my multitude of jobs, I was
scheduled to ship out to another city. And for the first time in 30
years, I flew.
I was four the last time I stepped foot onto a plane, headed to Boston
with my parents to attend my Uncle's wedding. And while I don't
remember much of the flight, I do recall that it was a positive
experience, because as I stepped off the plane, the stewardess handed
me a little plastic 'airline pilot' pin...a pin which I proudly wore
all weekend, clear through the rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony, and
reception.
Air flight has changed since then, which I quickly found out as my shaving
cream and toothpaste were confiscated at the security terminal…though
for some odd reason I was allowed to keep my razor. Once stripped of
these things, I was declared 'safe'. I could slice someone's
throat with a
razor blade but terrorist activities like soaping windows wouldn’t
occur.
Shortly after my shaving and tooth brushing privileges were revoked, I
was on the plane and in the air. It was smooth sailing until about an
hour into the flight when the 'fasten seatbelts' sign lit up and the
captain announced that we were entering into some turbulence.
"Just speed-bumps in the sky," I overheard a mother tell her screaming
child, who, coincidentally, was sitting directly behind my seat.
Unfortunately, the reassurance didn’t seem to work. The screaming
continued.
The guy sitting next to me shifted in his seat and tried to settle in
for a nap despite the turmoil behind us and the turbulence around us.
Opening one eye, he glanced at me and said, "Don't bother waking me
if the plane goes down."
Deciding that I wasn't particularly fond of airline comedians, I
resolved that waking him up would be the very first thing I did if the
plane began to plummet.
And as the plane jostled and bounced through the air, I briefly thought that perhaps we might go crashing down. And,
for a few minutes at 34,000 feet above the ground, I wondered if this
flight might end up like a real life version of Lost (Wednesday nights
at 9:00, this Fall on ABC).
I was pretty sure that no undiscovered islands existed between Pennsylvania
and Minnesota, though perhaps some tiny piece of land in one of the Great
Lakes had escaped detection.
In the end, it didn’t matter. The plane
didn’t crash. That undiscovered island in Lake Michigan remains
undiscovered…and the screaming from the kid behind me continued all the way to Minneapolis.
When we finally landed, the two hour flight seemed to have lasted
weeks and proved to be nowhere as positive as my first flight 30 years
earlier. Especially considering that, as I stepped off the plane, no
flight attendant gave me a little plastic pilot pin to wear.
Co-Workers Are Best When
They're Not Around
09-06-06
Historically speaking, I
haven’t had much luck with the whole ‘job’ and ‘career’ thing. Whether
it’s the people I work with, the person I work for, or the job itself,
at some point I become disillusioned and disinterested. From here,
things go rapidly downhill, culminating in my departure. The only
variable in this equation is whether my departure is my idea or
theirs.
Knowing this about myself, I decided that with this job, I would make a true effort
to like my co-workers, not hate my boss, and put an end to all office
related complaints.
This is proving to be more difficult than I imagined.
Take Cara, for example…the other sales rep at the company. She’s
making it very hard for me to keep with the ‘like my
co-workers’ part of the plan. In truth, I desperately want to throw a
stapler at her head. She started about a month before I did, having
never sold anything before. Yet, apparently having a start date 45
days prior to mine entitles her to dispense advice freely.
“You’re not adding enough ‘sizzle’ to your phone calls, listen to me
and you’ll see how it’s done,” she says.
“You would sell more if you developed more of a repartee with the
customer, like I do. That’s why I was the top salesperson for the
month of July,” she says.
“I used to make the same mistake that you’re making, but now I only
call quality prospects,” she says.
“What’s a quality prospect? Isn’t a sale a sale?" I asked. "How
in the world do you know who’s going to buy before you call them?”
“You just don’t get it,” she replied.
And apparently I don’t. But, at the same time, while her sales totals
were high in July, her sales totals for August were zero. That’s
‘zero’ as in nothing.
She has explained this massive drop in productivity in several
different ways.
“I’ve been feeling sick,” she says.
“Clearly, companies just don’t have the free cash that they had last
month to purchase things,” she says.
“We need a better marketing strategy than the one we currently
have…that’s the problem! I have some great ideas to share with the
boss that will totally increase my sales!” she says.
Her ideas, the best of which consisted of putting our company’s phone
number on pens and passing them out to potential customers, have all
been shot down by the boss.
Last week, I found her moping at her desk. "I just don’t feel like
making any sales calls today, she said. People tell me ‘no’, and I
just can’t seem to pick myself back up." She spent the rest of
the day surfing the internet.
And, though I’ve tried to like this girl and failed, a small part of
me can’t help but feel bad for her lack of recent success.
Though a larger part of me is jumping with glee.
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