May 17th, 2007 by Kateastrophe

I live the plight of the middle-class worker bee. I’m slowly making my way up the ladder of the corporate world, trying to wait my turn and do the right things to get where I want to go in my career. I, naturally, realize that my laziness is an issue . . . and that my choice of a Music Theatre degree didn’t exactly help in the corporate picture.

There are, however, large glimmers of hope surrounding me daily. Yesterday, while frustrating, made me realize that if “these idiots” can make boatloads of money, by darn, so can I.

Example #1 - Sales Manager
Makes good money . . .most of the time makes great, amazing amounts of money. Most of the time, TOTAL IDIOT. The examples of the idiocy are shocking and many but, so are the examples of commissions that would make my head reel and pretty much pay off every single bill we’ve ever had. I just don’t get it. I think this person has mastered the art of delegation . . . making it look like they’re doing TONS of work, but in reality, just passing it off to other people and only gathering all the information and putting it in a pretty package. I will say though, this person knows what they are doing and our clients love this person, and if that makes the company and this person tons of money, so be it. I guess I’d better start learning to be more like that!

Yesterday’s idiot moment went a little bit like this . . . Sales Manager was on hold with the phone on speaker (a thing that this person does CONSTANTLY and is really annoying to me, as I sit nearby and can hear the annoying hold music.) for about 20 minutes. This in and of itself, is not unusual, as we’ve all spent our fair share of time holding to cheesy music. What is odd, is the conversation that ensued once the holding ceased.

Sales Manager: Yes, hi. I’ve been on hold for twenty minutes. That was very rude, but oh well. I am XXXX with XXXXX company and we have a meeting with your CEO tomorrow (note: meeting with CEO in a sales meeting to sell them something that will probably cost them millions of dollars) and I’ve been trying to reach CEO for many hours, but he’s not answering his phone. So I called and was on hold for a long time because I am from Arizona and we are flying in tomorrow to XXXX city, and I’m from XXXX city originally, and I have your address but I need directions to your offices.

People, I work for a technology firm. We all have very fast computers, fast Internet connections and even TWO. SCREENS. We are HOOKED UP with so much technology, boggles the mind. This sales manager wasted TWENTY MINUTES on hold to get DIRECTIONS to somewhere this person already had the ADDRESS for.

Idiot Sales Manager, let me introduce you to ONLINE DIRECTION SERVICES. They’ve been around for a very long time and have replaced the need to sit on hold for many minutes merely to get directions. I’m also willing to bet that the car you rented has a GPS system in it, and that all you might need to do is punch in the address you ALREADY HAVE and viola! off you go with a voice telling you where to turn and EVERYTHING!

It was all I could do not to reach through the cubicle wall and start ringing wealthy little idiot necks.

Example #2 - Gift Certificate Order
So, a few weeks ago my company went to a conference and had a drawing in which we gave out five very large gift certificates to partners randomly drawn from a fish bowl. I was in charge of ordering the gift certificates from the online site and having them shipped to the vendors. It should be noted that my company provides many services to the online site from which the gift certificates were ordered.

Jump to yesterday, now dubbed “Day o’the Idiot”

I received and email from one of the directors of the online site, basically saying “Hi, someone from your company ordered some large gift certificates from our company for the drawing winners. One of them is trying to use their gift card, and the number isn’t working. Can you tell me what gift certificate number you gave to your winners?”

Ummmmm . . . .

The response I wanted to give would have gone like this:

Dear Idiot,

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but I don’t work for your company, therefore, I do not assign the gift certificate numbers for gift certificates ordered from your site. Come to think of it, I don’t assign gift certificate numbers at all, because that’s NOT WHAT MY COMPANY DOES.

While I appreciate the distraction from my day of dealing with idiots here at my office, I am not really overjoyed at having to deal with idiots at your office too. I’m sort of “idioted” out.

Thank you for playing. Please find an idiot at your company to ask your idiot questions to.

Peace out,
Kate

In other idiot news, our realtor had our house “mis-listed” for the first three weeks, so up until I caught it, only someone looking for a house with no square footage and a bad picture were able to see us. I just have to keep telling myself that we’re saving about $4000 by using this realtor and that we have plenty of time . . .

And that, folks, is the Idiot Report. I will try to update you on further idiotic activity throughout the week, because, judging from the first half of the week, I’ve got many more stories on the way.