Five for Friday: Adventures of Captain NUBBIN!

Good morning!

Most of you remember that I've renamed my Boss.  We no longer call him NBM  (New Boss Man) here.  I mean, he's been my boss for almost three years.  He's not exactly rocking that new boss smell anymore.

Now we call him Captain Nubbin!  Why Captain Nubbin?  Fans of "Friends" will recognize the term as the word they used to describe Chandler's third nipple.  Connecting the dots, you'll realize that yes, I work for a man who is as useful to the business as a third nipple.

This week was especially super Nubbin-y and I knew, by Wednesday, what my Five for Friday was going to be.  

So, without further explanation, here we have it:  Five for Friday:  The Adventures of Captain Nubbin!

5)  Stop trying to use economics and logic, no one goes home early for any reason!

So Captain Nubbin decided, after those of us who live and die by the jacked up/semi illegal phone and  internet in our office, to change phone and internet services.  But, CN being CN, he was not as interested in good service as he was in "best deal."  (This is a guy who locks up the pens in a cabinet.  NGTJ and I bring our pens from home.)  Since he's really only interested in the bottom line, things like...quick, efficient, CORRECT installation becomes less of a priority.

Thusly, installation of our new internet/phone service, something that takes ten minutes for most people, is now, as we speak, entering it's third week.  

At some point last Friday, during the second attempt at installation, the Mensa Member doing the installation from "Joe's SUPER LEGAL INTERNET" disconnected the phones and the Internet.  And he disconnected them so completely that, according to NGTJ, it was HOURS of dead air, dead phone, dead internet.

In case you've forgotten, her job and mine are 99% making calls and entering information on the company database on the internet.  In short... she was sitting at her desk, doing NOTHING.  She thought, hey, it's Friday.  It's in the afternoon.  We close at 5 anyway, maybe I can go home.  So she tried to locate CN, who was sitting in PM's office, chatting.  (Yes, CN does not have to obey his own rule about chatting in the office. He can do it all day if he wants. He's Captain Nubbin!)  She made a request to leave a couple hours early since it had been a couple hours, there was no indication that Joe's Super Legal was going to get things rolling before five.  Nubbin said no.  Because, you know, why would anyone be allowed to leave early? No, instead, she had to sit at her desk...not doing anything since she couldn't go online, she couldn't make calls, she couldn't do anything other than stare at the wall.  For which she was paid.

He probably paid her out of all the money he saves by not giving us pens.

4) Better yet, how about if you just stay home and we handle things?

This week has been one of those rare weeks when it's actually nice weather here.  Not too hot, not too cold, a bit of rain, sure, but more sun than rain.  And Captain Nubbin has spent quite of a bit of time finding reasons to leave the office for short spans of time.  Yesterday was probably the worst.  He went to the bank and the grocery store.  Then, having put in a torturous half hour in the office, he realized he had to go to the post office.  For those of us who have to pay for our own gas in our cars, we might consider making one trip for all these errands, saving gas.  But, see, CN drives the Nubbin-mobile, a vehicle provided by the company and all gas is paid for by the company.  So, while he's keeping overhead low by locking up the pens and post it notes  (something else NGTJ and I have started just bringing on our own, paper for phone messages and what not) he's making multiple short little jaunts out and about.  By the time he heads out for his last errand of the day, one that ALWAYS has to be done a mile from his house...convenient...he's started up the Nubbin mobile a minimum of four times.  

3)  Do not try using your logic, or facts, or Jedi mind tricks on me. This is still your fault!

A big part of the way we generate business is through a booth at festivals and home shows. Our Events Girl  (EG) is great at getting people to fill out cards with personal info so NGTJ and I can schedule appointments for our Crack Sales Staff to go out and sell stuff to be installed.  (Notice what's not involved in that line?  Yeah, Captain Nubbin isn't what you'd call an active participator in the process.  He doesn't go to the shows, he doesn't gather information, he doesn't make phone calls, he doesn't sell anything, he doesn't schedule anything, and he certainly doesn't install anything, service anything, or follow up on anything.  CAPTAIN NUBBIN!)  Anyway, on Tuesday there was an appointment, scheduled at a festival over the weekend, set up for a sales guy. Now, probably number one was the appointment scheduled to happen during the weekly sales staff meeting.  CN knew the appointment was on the schedule.  On Monday I told him to look at the schedule.  He saw the appointment.  In fact, he moved the appointment from one guy to another.  No comment on the time. Check number one.

Tuesday dawned, the sales guy left the meeting early.  Okay, it wasn't all that early. The meeting is scheduled to end at 9:30, but for the last several weeks, it's been done by 8:30.  So, check number two,  a 9 AM appointment shouldn't have been an issue based on the meeting length of the past several weeks.  This week, however, CN decided the Crack Sales Staff had made a few too many mistakes measuring stuff to be installed, so he was going to CRACK DOWN and MAKE THESE GUYS SEE THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS. That meant that PM was going to have to spend two hours with the guys teaching them how to measure things...again, CN wasn't actually doing anything because, well, that's not his deal.

So, since, for the first time in many weeks, the sales meeting was going to actually last until 9:30, CN felt the need to reprimand SOMEONE for the 9 Am sales appointment.  And that someone, since I was the only woman in the office at the time, was me.  He sent me an email  (yep, and email)  REMINDING me to NOT schedule appointments during the sales meeting.  I was not interested in taking the heat for something I didn't book.  I fired back an email  (because we sit eight feet apart) apart, that I didn't book the appointment and that the time to raise this question was YESTERDAY when he looked at the schedule.

The sales guy called from his appointment telling me that what the customer wanted installed we don't install.  That prompted email number two:  You need to tell the customer what we install because this was a waste of time.

Hey, I called the customer, I dropped him an email telling him to call me so we could do just that.  I can't force people to call me.  And I haven't quite perfected ESP with strangers.  Again, I relayed this information to CN.

That meant nothing.  I had clearly conspired to break up his perfect training time with the sales guys (which he didn't actually attend the whole time) and scheduled (nope) and appointment for something I clearly knew was not something we install.  And when I refused to be apologetic via email, he stood in front of my desk and informed me that I need to do my job more carefully.

Bite me.

2)  But apparently I'm the only one who can spell or read.


When she started at Stuff, Installed back in August, NGTJ noted that our official company phone list was a hot mess.  She wasn't wrong.  But it's easier for me to just cross out names and phone numbers and write them in than to actually sit down with an EXCEL sheet and correct everything.  A couple months ago, however, I decided it was time to do a really good job of making a new phone list.  So I took an hour, double checked phone numbers with everyone, and got everyone's names on a shiny new phone list.  I then put a copy of the list on everyone's desk.

On Wednesday one of the installers decided he no longer wanted to install the stuff we install.  So he sort of just...quit.  And, in quitting, started a sequence of paperwork that CN actually had to fill out.  (which mean he had to take time from checking up on the US OPEN gold scores to actually fill a couple blanks on a piece of paper.)  At one point, and I'm not making this up, he shouts of out of his office:  "HOW DO WE SPELL SHANE'S LAST NAME?"

"Just a minute, " says I, "I'll check the PHONE LIST I PUT ON EVERYONE's DESK."

Instead of realizing I was telling him to look up his own darn phone list...he waited.  (Knowing how to spell his employee's last names would be way too much to expect, of course.  There are, you know, 15 of us and keeping the spellings of 15 last names, one of which his OWN, is too much.)

I don't have to look it up.  I spelled it for him.

"Are you sure?"

"THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS ON THE PHONE LIST!"

He's silent. It's at this point I'm starting to wonder if he's illiterate and just doesn't want to share the sad fact with me.

1)  And finally.

We've been having a TON of street construction on the road in front of our office.  So much so that the construction guys moved our mailbox to a spot a couple blocks away from our building.  It's not a big deal, but it does take a little more time for me to take out the mail and go get the mail and, since I can't walk on the street and there is no sidewalk, I have to cut through a couple parking lots. Not a big deal, but there's a certain amount of grass and gravel and dirt I have to traverse. 

Wednesday it rained.  Hard.  All day.

While running the mail to our box in front of the building would have been little issue in the weather, the walk to the new mailbox in a downpour wasn't exactly something I was excited about doing.  And, since most of the road in front of our building is torn up and full of construction men and vehicles, it's not wise to try and drive it during the day.  So, I told CN that since I didn't have anything pressing that needed to go out, I would see if the rain was better in the afternoon and I'd walk to get the mail.

It didn't stop raining. Not all day.  It was wet, it was soggy, and everything was muddy.

Captain Nubbin took and opportunity to go do something silly in the afternoon.  So he got in the Nubbin Mobile, drove past the mail box going out of the office park.   Then he did the errand, and drove past the mailbox coming back into the office park.  And it rained HARD the whole time.

But, Sarah, you say, surely he picked up the mail for you...right?  Surely he didn't make you walk to the mail box in the pouring rain to get the mail when he'd driven past the box twice!

Surely, you'd be wrong.  Nope, he waltzed back into the office, made a comment about how hard it was raining and then asked me if I could get he mail because he really, REALLY need to get all the bills into the daily mailier for our home office.  (Which yes, meant he'd be taking another trip past the mailbox to go to the post office.)

So I put on my raincoat and walked out into the downpour.

And thus, this week's Five for Friday was born.

ALL HAIL CAPTAIN NUBBIN!

The Birth of Captain Nubbin!

Good afternoon!

So this week on Face Book I promised that I had a new nickname for NBM my boss at Stuff, Installed.  

I did not get out of bed Monday morning expecting to be putting a new name into the record for my boss, but wow, did he earn it this week.

Last week I shared with you five things he did that made Michael Scott, the oblivious goofball boss from "The Office."  If you haven't read my Five for Friday last week, go read it.  We'll wait.

 Okay welcome back.

So this week I thought it couldn't get any worse.  Surely, I thought to myself, we've hit the peek of the ridiculous, childish, gross, icky behavior and NBM will, certainly, at some point return to proper boss behavior.

I'm starting to wonder if proper boss behavior is just that: childish, gross and icky.

And then, on Wednesday, NBM answered that question and earned himself a new nickname.

To be honest, NGTJ, PM, and I had been tossing around new nicknames for him.  Officially, NBM didn't have a nickname.  We would just listen to him rant about this or that, or make some kind of ridiculous proclamation and then retire into his office to watch golf or basketball on his phone.  And we'd whisper, like those filthy raggeddy people in "Les Miserables" when they sang songs about revolution, we'd whisper, What is it, you say, you do here?"

On Wednesday, the skies cleared and it became obvious just, exactly, what NBM's new name would be.

It went like this:  at 8:25 Tuesday morning I place a phone call to a potential client.  The phone rang once, clicked and went dead. This happens frequently in my line of work.  It means one of a couple things:  The client has hung up without the courtesy of saying any words to me or there was a disconnection in the phone.  I chose to call the number again.  This time the man answered and before I could tell him who I was, he laid in to me with a tirade about how this was too early to call a home  (for the record, he'd asked us to call him...and he'd not answered his phone at other times of the day and evening.)  and that his wife had had a rough night  (oh, dude, do NOT go there with me.) and that I was basically a horrible person for, you know, doing my job and what he'd asked us to do.  I said, "What would a good time be to reach you?"  He spouted something.  I don't know.  I don't care.  I was busy killing his lead so that NGTJ and I would not have to suffer this abuse again.

At 9 AM Wednesday morning a gentleman called the office demanding, rudely, to speak to the branch manager.  Well, that's not going to happen unless he proves he needs to talk to the branch manager because, see, NBM never takes calls.  I mean never.  I mean if someone calls and asks for him by name we've been instructed to tell them he's not in, he's never in.  If someone walks into the office for any reason, he dives into his office and informs us, like he has to, that he's not there.  He takes no calls...he talks to no one.  Because his time is spent in much other, more important ways, like watching golf and basketball on his phone or writing poorly spelled, woefully constructed rants for the local newspaper, which he then puts on my desk to edit down to 300 words or less.

After the verbal dance that is my duty every time someone asks to speak to the branch manager, it became clear this guy was not going to leave a message, he was not going away, and he was really outraged about something.  I wasn't in the mood to take more abuse.  By Wednesday morning I'm pretty much battle scarred anyway.  So I put him through.  NBM talked to the guy for about twenty minutes.

After the conversation, NBM walked out of his office and spent the next fifteen minutes talking about how rude the man was and what a jerk he was and how unreasonable he was.  We dissected this phone conversation  (It was a big deal...after all, it was the first incoming phone call he'd taken in more than a month.) for a long time and I explained and rexplained exactly what I'd said the day before.

None of this was necessary, because NBM has the capability to listen to any and all phone calls made or received on my phone and on NGTJ's phone.  No, not all phone calls are recorded for "training purposes" just the ones she and I make because, well, NBM is always perfection on the phone. So, we could have saved ourselves quite a bit of time on Wednesday had he just gone in and listened to the original phone call.

At least, that's what should have happened.  Instead, he spent two hours NOT being able to listen to the phone call and not knowing why.  See, remember last week he got a new computer, and he installed it by himself and swore up and down he didn't know why anyone else was having issues with their new computer because his was working PERFECTLY...and then he went golfing?  Yeah, well, turns out, maybe his ability to install a computer wasn't so perfect because he spent two hours on Wednesday stomping around, cursing, calling people at our corporate office and cursing at them, all all because for some reason he couldn't "access" the database that allows him to listen to our calls.

(My guess?  He couldn't remember the website address and since it wasn't in his FAVORITES list on his computer yet, he was convinced his computer was malfunctioning for reasons that were NOT his fault or that Corporate was loaded with liars and criminals or that everyone everywhere was wrong and stupid except for him.  Really, when he gets lit this, it's like watching a second graders struggle with a math problem to the point of hysterics.  

NBM kept talking about how this man told him he was convinced NBM wouldn't do anything about the problem.  That's pretty much our attitude around here.  A problem comes up, NBM stomps around cursing for a couple hours, and then someone else will solve the issue.  Either he'll pass it up to the owner, or PM and I, or the sales guys, or NGTJ will figure it out, but NBM rarely actually DOES anything.  I sort of have to applaud the man for being that intuitive. 

After wrestling unsuccessfully with this for two hours, and talking about it with me for the same amount of time a sick thought dawned on me.  He wanted me to apologize to this guy.

FOR WHAT?  For doing my job?

I let this wash over me for a while and about the fourth time he brought the phone call up to me that morning I said, "So, would you like me to apologize to him?"

I have not seen that expression on anyone's face since the day I told the math department in my high school that I wasn't going to take physics.  There was relief, joy, and a certain light of "oh good, you've finally realized you're a moron" in his expression.

We stared at each other for a few seconds and then he said, "Well what you should say, what I would say, would be this..." and he launched into a long soliloquy on what he'd say to make things right between Stuff, Installed and the guy NBM had spent the last several hours insulting and cussing out.

Apparently I have no self esteem.  I dialed the number and left a groveling message apologizing for my rude tone of voice and promising that if he gave Stuff, Installed another chance he would certainly never experience such awful treatment.

Satisfied that the problem was solved, and that he'd proven he would DO SOMETHING, and exhausted from a morning of not looking at basketball scores, NBM went on a long lunch that didn't end until Thursday morning.

Thursday morning he attacked the problem with renewed vigor for reasons I don't understand.  After all, I apologized. We were just waiting, I thought, for the man to call back and do business with us.

But this was far from over.This time...and remember I never make anything up....NBM decided to hook up his old computer, find his FAVORITES list and listen to the call that way.  Which he did...although it took him two hours of yelling and stomping and crawling on the floor around my desk  (he decided that rather than hook his computer up in the privacy of his own office, he'd do it at my old desk next to where I sit now.  His noisiness crushed any ability I had to do my job for most of the morning.)  He managed to hook up the computer and TAH DAH "found" the phone call.  (It wasn't lost.  He is just one of those guys that commits NOTHING to memory and therefore if he can't find a web address then there must be a malfunction in the computer.)

He made me listen to the phone call.  And what do you know?  I WAS PERFECTLY LOVELY AND POLITE and the man was A COMPLETE AND TOTAL JERK.

NBM looked at me and said, "Well you didn't say anything the way he told me you said it.  You did everything just right."

I glared at him.  "And you made me apologize to him."

NBM said, "Yes I did."

He then decided he needed this man's email address.  Why?  Well isn't it obvious?  Having proved HE WAS RIGHT, NBM was now going to send the evidence to the man proving that I wasn't a horrible rude person and that yes, he IS A GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE manager who DID SOMETHING.

I looked up the email address, what do you know?  Turns out, this guy pulled the same nonsense on NGTJ back in September when he asked us to call him and then she called and he hung up on her twice.  So...it really wasn't me, this guy is just one of those people...you know the type, the ones who just live to be rude.

No one torments my office girls but me.

NBM saw that and moved into a whole different gear of upset.  He started talking about how he was going to write all of this in an email and he was going to give the man what for for being rude to his office girls. 

Yep, we live in 1955 and he's Don Stinkin' Draper and we are the office girls.

I don't know how this will end, but I know this:  NGTJ and I will wind up taking the brunt of whatever rage the man has left in him because if he calls back, he probably will, we all know NBM won't take that call.

Somehow, it will wind up still being our fault.

So, I promised you a new nickname for NBM and you shall have it.  Ladies and gentlemen, my boss will now be known as...

CAPTAIN NUBBIN!

Why Captain Nubbin?

Well, those of you who watch the TV shows "Friends" will recognize the word "nubbin" as the affectionate term Chandler used for his third nipple. A body part that really doesn't belong, and has NO practical use, and only serves to annoy people or gross them out.


I find the nickname appropriate...