But whether I'm the rose of sheer perfection, a freckle on the nose of life's complexion, don't bring around the cloud to rain on my parade. - Fanny Brice, Funny Girl, 1968Alright, these past few days were sh*tty. There's no other word for it. Work sucked ... school sucked more. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong, did. It all started when my co-worker had to go to a funeral. No big. I had back-ups. Or so I thought. (Oh, I guess I haven't told you. I work in an office 90% of the time ... Sometimes I deliver, but mostly I answer phones.) Now, even on slow days phones can ring simultaneously, so the rule-of-thumb is that there must be at least one person backing up a sales-rep ... if only to put the waiting customer on hold. The phones were ringing off the hook and I was doing my best to answer all of them, but it was a struggle. When they finally stopped ringing, I had a question, so I went from room to room trying to find a co-worker. No Charlie (he'd gone to lunch), no Sandy (she'd gone to lunch), no Joy, no Steve, no Maria. Where was everybody? Then I heard Joy's laugh. I followed it upstairs. And guess where everybody was? Upstairs, in the break room, laughing and having a wonderful old time. Kay, keep in mind I was already annoyed and overwhelmed at this point. I looked at Joy, my manager, "Okay, I have a question for you. What is the route number-for-Kanab-and-WHY-am-I-the-ONLY-ONE-downSTAIRS?!" The last was said in a rush of frustration. "Oh!" she said in surprise, "Is no one else down there helping you?!" Surprise. Right. Everyone was upstairs! Who did she think was helping me?! She was supposed to be my help!
So, after my slight fit, I got some help. But, more problems. The Kenab person's order never got processed. My fault. So he needed it a week ago, and he didn't have it. It would ship Fed Ex - which means that it would take 3-5 business days to get to him, if he's lucky. So, needless to say, I had a very pissed off customer. During my trying to sort this out and dealing with angry customers, I had to print out ship-outs (and all of my print-outs must have gained lives of their own and decided to crawl away because the person who tags these ship-outs says he never got the print-outs). Anyway, needless to say, I was late leaving work and, therefore, late to class.
Now, class was fun. I got there late, tried to sneak in the back, but, of course, all the back seats were taken (perhaps the teacher's notorious for spitting... who knows). So, sneaking in wasn't an option. The teacher, during a brief pause, asked who came in late. So, I raised my hand and she wanted me to introduce myself and tell the class something about myself. So, I said, "I'm Rochelle Brown, and what do you want to know?" People threw out a few suggestions so I told them what my majors were and joked that I was afraid of public speaking (since she was making me talk in front of the class ... get it?). She - meaning the professor - took me literally (though I was only half-serious) and told me that I didn't act like it.
Anyway, the ironic thing is I found out that for the class we are required to do a 50-minute group oral presentation (that's right, 50!). Well, first of all, I hate groups. I almost always end up carrying the entire weight (the weight that should have been distributed between two-to-four other people - depending on the group size). Whenever I've decided that I won't be the person who puts in ten-times more effort than the others, the project always ends up mediocre. Furthermore, 50 minutes?! This is an English class, not a Public Speaking class, for heavens sake. And these oral presentations start week three. So, at least 50% of the teaching, from week three and onward, will be by the students. That did it. There's no way I'd spend a ton of money to do a 50-minute school assignment and have students teach me. No way. Even if I wanted to, I barely have time to do homework in my own free time, much less coordinate homework time around two-to-four other people. No way.
But, like a good little student, I sat there for the remainder of class. The problem was Mr. Gross was sitting next to me. It was the seat that was unoccupied when I came in, so I sat there. Now, he obviously had skin problems, and although I thought it was a little gross, I overlooked it and sat next to him. And I was okay with it. Until Mr. Gross became Mr. Picks. As in his skin. As in he started picking at his oozing skin while sitting next to me. Can anyone say gag reflex? Okay, that surpasses gross. All of a sudden I was having major difficulties with impulse control. I nearly got up and walked out of the class (or at least switch seats - even if it had to be the professor's chair), I almost wrote him a message saying "Stop it!", I just about raised my hand and asked the class to take a vote on whether or not Mr. Picks was allowed in the room. But, I ignored it.... well, sort of. I had my body turned so that my back was to him; I had stopped taking notes (don't ask me why I was taking notes if I wasn't planning on staying in the class) and had my arms tucked in my coat and wrapped around my waist. And, once again, I was controlling my gag reflex, because, even though I couldn't see him, I could hear him scratching at his face. Gross! But I hadn't done anything drastic, so I figured that qualified as "ignoring."
Anyway, I snuck out of the class as soon as possible and went to bed with the prayer that today would be better than yesterday. But, it's not, so far. More ornery customers ... some of whom I referred to Joy. I dealt with one annoyed customer while she dealt with the other and then when we both got off the phone she was griping about how she was sick of people. I laughed bitterly and said, "Me too!" And she turns to me - or rather turns on me - and snaps, "Just be glad you don't have to do what I do!!" Okay, I do have to do what you do, I just don't get paid as much as you do to do it!
No, I didn't say that, but I wanted to. Then she goes into one of her rants about how we, meaning my co-worker Tom and I, need to keep our desks more organized. As if all the businesses problems would be solved with organized desks! (By the way, they are all organized - she just doesn't understand our system). I just nod and smile and pretend I care about what she's saying.
Boss Man comes in later and says, "So, I hear you had a problem with Kenab." I said, "Yeah..." "Well, you're lucky it got figured out. If it were up to me I would have sent you to Kanab to fix the mess." Right. I simply told him (while thinking There's no way you would have gotten me to do that. I had class.), "Yeah, well it would have been a better use of my time than class was."
Anyway, the whole two days weren't bad. Just the huge majority of it. Two funny things happened. One was today when a customer called and I had to put him on hold. I usually say, "Thank you for holding. This is Rochelle. How may I help you" when I pick up. Instead, to this customer, after I took him off hold, I said, "May I hold you?" You know when the brain short circuits and you can't speak? Yeah, that's what happened. The guy laughed and said, "Sure you can hold me. Come on up!"
The other semi-funny incident resulted from that earlier story of being left all alone in the office while everyone else was upstairs socializing. I had to be mad at someone fore the situation, so I decided to be mad at Charlie for going to lunch. Charlie was wearing a black hoodie that day, and, about twenty minutes after my little fit, he came up to me and said, "Hi, Rochelle." I just turned my head a little, saw his black hoodie, and glared at him and went back to work. He said, surprised, "Did you just glare at me?!" And I swiveled my chair around to face, and chastise him, and realized it was Boss Man. "Oh! I'm sorry! I thought you were Charlie!" Just then, the company's owner walked in and Boss Man turned to him, and said accusingly, "Rochelle just glared at me!" It was all in jest, so, I didn't get in trouble.
But yeah, that pretty much was it. The two semi-funny things. Everything else, so far, sucks. I hope this weekend is better.
