Five for Friday: Potential Crazy Alert

Good morning!

Fridays used to be wonderful for me.  See, Fridays were my day off from the likes of Elsie W and Noelle C.  But now, every day is a Friday, so Fridays just aren't that special.  Top that with the fact that this is a non-payday Friday, and thusly I'm probably broke, and well, it's just a day, except the weekend is coming, so there's that.

This week Aqua Girl, the New Elsie W/Noelle C joined us here at Stuff, Installed.  Her training period lasted two and a half days.  Why such a short time?  Well, after realizing I was getting saddled with all of her training  (Lumbergh kept having "important errands" that kept him away from the office while I trained a girl half my age, someone who is going to make more than I do per hour, to do half the job I do.)  I ran out of patience and shoved her into her office and told her to start dialing.  Seriously, the job she hasn't isn't difficult.  Dial the phone, read the script, move on to the next call.  If you get a live person, get them to schedule an appointment to look at the stuff we install here at Stuff, Installed.

A monkey could do it.  How do I know?  Two insane monkey people have been doing it for the last two years.

Anyway, I'm encouraged by Aqua Girl.

Actually, not a bad likeness of her.

She has picked up the basics of her job quickly, and everyone seems to like her.  Who wouldn't?  She's not yet 25, she's blond, fit, and adorable.  And yes, I'm officially the oldest woman in the office, and I've moved into the #4 spot for oldest person in the building.

In spite of that, I've kept a close eye on this new inside sales person.  See, I was fooled by the first two, at least in the first couple days.  But, since Aqua Girl  (I call her that because she was a collegiate competitive swimmer) has made it through her first four days without showing me her girl glands or her underwear, and without screaming at the local authorities to break into her house and turn off various appliances, I think we've got a winner.

I have, however, picked up on a couple, five, potential things that could signal trouble, and these I'm sharing with you for this week's Five For Friday:

Five things Aqua Girl does that might make her blog (and book) worthy:

5)  She is loud.
I'll give this to Elsie W and Noelle C.  When they weren't ranting about one thing or another, they had very nice phone voices.  The same cannot be said for Aqua Girl.  Her voice is a not so melodic mix between Valley Girl and a very cranky donkey.  It's not something you pick up on in casual
conversation, but when you have to listen to her answer the phone over and over and over again...and she gets louder with each answer, you know that spells BLOG.

4)  She has a sense of humor all her own...and no one else is laughing.

Granted, it might just be nervous laughter.  But a customer called yesterday while I was at lunch and she took the message.  This was a customer with whom I've had an ongoing issue. He loves the stuff we installed, but he wants his referral reward  (We give customers a small cash reward for referring other customers to us.)  For one reason or another, this reward has been delayed.  (Many of those reasons are because the customer is a raving lunatic who is too busy yelling at me about how he's not yelling at me to actually listen to me when I tell him what he needs to do.  I will bet a big portion of my paycheck that he got the reward and tossed it in the trash because it came in an unmarked envelop.  You can see, this has been an issue.)  So he called yesterday to again yell at me, and she took the message.  Halfway into his rant about how he was going to call the Better Business Bureau, she started laughing.  I've heard this laugh.  It's a cross between a seal bark and that yelp of snarky disbelief only the young have.  You know that sound.  Your kids make it every time you try to tell them how the real world works. Anyway, she thought it was funny that this guy was yelling into the phone and raging about a small cash reward.  Basically, she thought he was kidding.

Nope.  And her laughter only made him more cranky so that by the time I called him back, he'd worked himself up into a good rabid lather and I then spent nearly half an hour apologizing because our company wasn't taking his claim seriously.

Now I cringe when I hear her laughing on the phone.

3)  She only has to screw up once, then she's perfect.

While training Aqua Girl I must have heard her say this two dozen times.  Again, maybe it's an age thing, but I think if I were trying to reassure my employers that I was going to get better in time I would say something like, "I'm a quick learner."  I would not say I'd be perfect...because, see, now I expect her to be perfect.  Which just means I'm going to have to keep track of her. Which makes her blog worthy.

2)  "GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!  I HAVE TO PEE!"

I might be old.  That might be my problem.  But I've just never felt the need to announce to a room that I must relieve myself.  (Except in this blog...where there are no holds barred.)  But young Aqua Girl, from minute one, feels she must either announce her need to pee, or, and this is weird and hilarious, she simply does this odd little run walk to the ladies' room while growling.  I'm not making this up...she growls as she shuffle runs to the loo.  (For the record, Noelle C would loudly announce her intentions by saying, "I HAVE TO POTTY NOW!"  And Elsie W wouldn't tell us anything...if she wasn't at her desk for 20 minutes or more, we'd hear her on her phone in the bathroom.)

1)  Like, like, like, like.

I use the word "like" a lot.  I'll say, "Hey, we're, like, going to Culver's for lunch."  I do not, however, use "like" as the space between every word.  Aqua Girl does and in three days I'm to the point where I want to, like, slap her.  Here is an actual sentence from her mouth, "So, like, I don't, like, know the answer to that question because, like, I'm, like, just the person who, like, schedules appointments.  But, like,  if you have a person, like, come out and like, give you a price, then you'll, like, know what, like, the project will cost and then like, you can, like, decide if you, like, want to get it installed or something, like that."

When you hear that word 10,000 times in three days, you know, you KNOW it's going to be the thing that gives you yet another work place book.

Now, on the face of it, none of these things are that bad.  But, hey, I rationalized the early actions of Elsie and Noelle C and look where that got me.  So I'm on guard with this one.  I'm going to be so, like, watchful for anything that, like, looks like crazy.