BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER'S BLOG
My Less Than Triumphant Return to the Fold
Monday, August 27, 2007 12:46 AM
Well now...glad to see things haven't collapsed into a spiralling and rather flamey plummet to crapulence around these parts. Ya know…when I ain't here to lead in the cheers of Browncoat goodness. Warms my emotionally leaden ticker, it does
Yes, my fellow Browncoats, consider this a formal declaration of my continued existence in the 'Verse, though leagues more world-weary and frustrated with my life than I was a mere 2 months ago, when things took a camouflaged turn toward the Hoban Washburne definition of "interesting."
The following is a short summary of the intervening time between when I last hung about these parts, making with the cheerleading and the feedbacking, and this moment (7:56 PM EDT, Sunday, August 26th, 2007):
Around the 21st of June, I answered an ad in my local daily's classifieds for a company seeking someone to help out around the place when it came to their day-to-day operations. Applying for the job under the assumption (and we all know what happens when one assumes something) that is was for an office gopher and desk jockey position, I submitted my resume to what turned out to be a used car lot; I also submitted resumes to another used car lot and a Suzuki dealership that was looking for someone who could do auto detailing (i.e. cleaning vehicles) and lot security on the same day. A couple of days go by and I get a phone call from the first used car lot’s head honcho, asking if I could come in for an interview the next day and I agreed immediately (being a then-unemployed university student). Honestly? It was probably the first step toward my current status of barely hanging on, sanity-wise.
I arrive about 10 minutes early for the interview and wait patiently to meet with the man who became my current boss. Finally, it’s show time and I get called in. It should be said that my boss being dressed in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and loafers probably was the first sign of things not being as one would expect, but I brushed this off mentally as being a pleasant discovery of probably being able to wear casual clothes on the job. We sit down and the interview begins. It was mostly the usual kinds of questions that HR people throw at one to feel out how a person would react or handle a given type of situation, but thinking back on it, there were an awful lot of questions related to sales. Mainly because, as I found out on my first day after getting hired (supposedly did real well on my interview, according to my boss weeks later), I had been hired to replace my boss’ right hand man who was going back home to New Brunswick (that’s a province in Canada that is partially surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, for those not familiar with North American geography). This is where things got interesting in the previously indicated way….
Basically, to condense the following 2 months in a tidy summary, I got 3 weeks of training from the guy I was taking over for (an obscenely small amount for the job I have), I have sold more than 20 cars in the 2 months I have had my job (an impressive number…until my boss tells me he wants to see the sales board constantly full and that he once sold 12 cars in a day), I recently found out that it has been illegal for me to sell cars as a salesperson since I have not completed the mandatory certification course and registered with the Ontario Motor Vehicles Industry Council (a regulatory board for automotive sales), I was used as an avatar for my boss to basically fire one of my coworkers (boss was off in Toronto when he got a status report from the lot’s garage manager that the co-worker was seriously behind in his work, so my boss has me send the guy home ‘till Monday on his behalf), and my boss has more mood swings than River when she’s off her meds (pre-Miranda). All of this has left me feeling like I need to quit ASAP…but realizing doing so would cause major problems; I know I have every right to…but I get the feeling that if I quit, the next person to come along would be worse off than I am because my boss doesn’t believe in acclimatization periods and p
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