The blog has been sadly neglected of late....I'm pretty sure my mother and Big Liver Girl are the only ones who have lamented that fact, and they can get me on the phone any time they want.
But I think I've had enough of a hiatus, and it's time I got back into it.
Thing 2 is 15 now, and she has been dying to get a job since she was about 8 years old. You see, she found out that people will pay you to do things, and since she would like to aquire a lifestyle that will demand enormous wads of cash, then gainful employement is the obvious place to start. (I'm just glad she didn't know about the lucrative possibilities of becoming a golddigger.)
Thing 1 has been working as a busser at a local restaurant for the past few years, and they asked her if her sister would like a job. Did you read that correctly? They handed her a job, just like that. And Thing 2 was all "well, I don't know if I want to work there". After I gently reminded her that she has no skills, no experience and that being offered a job was the rarest thing in the entire realm of human experience.
She took the job.
After her first shift, she came home pretty pumped; she's a fairly social kid, and new people and new experiences is right up her alley.
And, she was thrilled to come home with twenty-five dollars in her pocket! (She had no idea that the waitresses tipped out the bus staff, and so the bonus of coming home with cash in hand was totally unexpected.)
I said that the one really great thing about restaurant work was the tips...its dirty work and hard work, but the fact that you leave with cold hard cash in your hands was a decided bonus. I also said that when I worked in restaurants, I tried to live off my tips and bank my paycheques entirely.
She said, "what do you mean?" and I said "If I could swing it, I'd put my paycheques into the bank and try not to touch them at all, and just live off my tips, if possible. That way I'd have money in the bank and money in my pocket."
She gave me a hard, squinty-eyed look and said in a deadly, quiet tone...."There's a paycheque?"
She had no idea, she thought the twenty-five bucks was her pay. And, get this, she was happy with that. Imagine her delight when she found out she would get MORE than five dollars an hour! Capitalism has never looked so appealling!
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Monday, June 4, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Telemarketing Follies
From time to time, meaning, at least once an hour, we get a phone call at work from a telemarketer. Lots and lots of phone calls from people who want to speak to the Mister and get him to buy something, or sign up for something, or donate something or give them something.
I get that telemarketing must be the most miserable of all jobs on God's green earth. No one wants to be a telemarketer; I imagine they've fallen into it because fate has consipired againste them, they were desperate and had no other choice, sort of like a Victorian prostitute. Really, you won't find any seven-year-olds proclaiming that when they grow up, they want to be a telemarketer.
And I get that that's their job, to get to the Mister. Just as it is the receptionist at work's job to make sure they don't ever get anywhere near the Mister. And the receptionist at work, Barb, takes this aspect of her job deadly seriously. The only time the Mister has to deal with a telemarketer is when Barb is off on vacation, or when she's reallly pissed at him.
She is always (well, usually) very polite and says the Mister is busy with a client, and if they leave their name and number, she will pass it on. She usually pretends to take down the information and that's the end of it. On occasion, they are on to her, and ask if they can call back another time, when he's available to come to the phone, and she politely says "no", without explanation. That often gets a puzzled silence on the other end of the phone before they say "okay" and hang up. Once a telemarketer, who was already having a pretty bad day, snotted that we had a funny way of doing business, and she'd appreciate if Barb would just get the Mister already and stop screwing around. Barb hung up on her, and then called the company back and pitched the mother of all hissy fits. I'm pretty sure that young woman isn't in telemarketing any more.
Most of the time, you can tell when the telemarketing company has no idea who or what they are calling. If they use the Mister's name at all, they usually get it wrong, or assume he's a woman. (In that case, Barb tell's them she's the Mister, and expidites matters. It's all in the name of efficiency.) I like the ones who call asking if they can speak to the "Head of Accounts Recievable", or "the Manager in Charge of Human Resources". We are a hair salon with 12 employees, 11 of whom are women: ALL of us think we are in charge of Human Resources. And I guess Barb is the head of Accounts Recievable, because she's the one who knows how to work the debit machine.
I like when they try to sell us things like calendars and pens as "client and employee incentives". Seriously? How awful is your job when you are inspired by a crappy pen with your company's name on it? (I know!! A You're a telemarketer!) Our staff is way more likely to find incentive in a plate of natchos or a Lululemon gift certificate.
We are a very low tech operation.
Barb has told people that the Mister won't tell her when he's coming in to work, that he's on vacation and she doesn't know when he'll be back, or that he's been too busy to come to the phone. She's toyed with the idea of telling people he's in rehab or a the casino.
I've suggested that she use my brother's standard phrase when we were teenagers and someone would call looking for me: "She went crazy and we had to shoot her."
That should shut them up. It worked for my brother.
I get that telemarketing must be the most miserable of all jobs on God's green earth. No one wants to be a telemarketer; I imagine they've fallen into it because fate has consipired againste them, they were desperate and had no other choice, sort of like a Victorian prostitute. Really, you won't find any seven-year-olds proclaiming that when they grow up, they want to be a telemarketer.
And I get that that's their job, to get to the Mister. Just as it is the receptionist at work's job to make sure they don't ever get anywhere near the Mister. And the receptionist at work, Barb, takes this aspect of her job deadly seriously. The only time the Mister has to deal with a telemarketer is when Barb is off on vacation, or when she's reallly pissed at him.
She is always (well, usually) very polite and says the Mister is busy with a client, and if they leave their name and number, she will pass it on. She usually pretends to take down the information and that's the end of it. On occasion, they are on to her, and ask if they can call back another time, when he's available to come to the phone, and she politely says "no", without explanation. That often gets a puzzled silence on the other end of the phone before they say "okay" and hang up. Once a telemarketer, who was already having a pretty bad day, snotted that we had a funny way of doing business, and she'd appreciate if Barb would just get the Mister already and stop screwing around. Barb hung up on her, and then called the company back and pitched the mother of all hissy fits. I'm pretty sure that young woman isn't in telemarketing any more.
Most of the time, you can tell when the telemarketing company has no idea who or what they are calling. If they use the Mister's name at all, they usually get it wrong, or assume he's a woman. (In that case, Barb tell's them she's the Mister, and expidites matters. It's all in the name of efficiency.) I like the ones who call asking if they can speak to the "Head of Accounts Recievable", or "the Manager in Charge of Human Resources". We are a hair salon with 12 employees, 11 of whom are women: ALL of us think we are in charge of Human Resources. And I guess Barb is the head of Accounts Recievable, because she's the one who knows how to work the debit machine.
I like when they try to sell us things like calendars and pens as "client and employee incentives". Seriously? How awful is your job when you are inspired by a crappy pen with your company's name on it? (I know!! A You're a telemarketer!) Our staff is way more likely to find incentive in a plate of natchos or a Lululemon gift certificate.
We are a very low tech operation.
Barb has told people that the Mister won't tell her when he's coming in to work, that he's on vacation and she doesn't know when he'll be back, or that he's been too busy to come to the phone. She's toyed with the idea of telling people he's in rehab or a the casino.
I've suggested that she use my brother's standard phrase when we were teenagers and someone would call looking for me: "She went crazy and we had to shoot her."
That should shut them up. It worked for my brother.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Too Bad, So Sad.
Last week was a bit hectic here at Chez Loudshoes; the Mister was bulldozed by another kidney stone attack, which resulted in two trips to the hospital, there was a skunk lurking around our front door all week, which made me very twitchy, and the weather got cold really fast, which meant I had to scramble to find shoes and socks that actually covered my entire foot, something I have not needed in almost 6 months.
While at work last Wednesday, I plugged in the kettle to make my co-worker a cup of tea, and set the Tassimo machine to make myself a cup of coffee. About half way through both processes, the coffee machine sighed heavily and stopped dead, and the kettle swooned and fainted altogether. The ventilation fan stopped, leaving the room in an ominous silence, and the lights went out. I'm no electrical engineer, but I was pretty sure we'd popped a circuit somewhere. I went down into the bowels of the basement to suss out the fuse box (and I do mean bowels...the building the salon is in is about a hundred years old, and the back room in the basement has a dirt floor and has a single naked light bulb and looks like Tiny Tim and his family might have lived there. It's pretty grim.)
Nothing looked out of place.
Normally, I'd have gone home and told the Mister (who wasn't working that day) and had him sort it out the next morning. But he had spent the day in the hospital writhing in pain (they actually gave him morphine, if you can believe it.) and had lost two night's sleep. I made an executive decision and called the electrician we usually deal with.
Our electrician's name is Steve, and he is possibly the most morose, despondent, world-weary man I've ever met. He's about 60 or so, and gives the impression of having been disappointed and disillusioned more times than you could ever count. Until, of course, you call with an electrical problem, wherein he sighs heavily and says he will be right there, and you know you have just added one more stone to the Everest of despair that he has to climb every day. He's like Eeyore.
Steve showed up, disheartened and let down by our electrical system, and indeed, the world at large. He poked around and sighed and stifled a sob once or twice, and quickly got the fan, the lights and the outlet working again. Except, there was a set of lights over the shampoo basins that he could not get to work. He tried this and that, he flicked switches on and off, he had a little cry, and finally gave me a look of deeply wounded disappointment and said he couldn't figure it out. I was afraid he would leave and slit his wrists in his truck.
Just then, the Mister came in. He had been at the hospital again that morning, getting an ultrasound (so that they could tell him he definitely had kidney stones.) and he was able to tell Steve/Eeyore that those lights didn't work because the bulbs had burned out and had not been replaced; people complained that they shone in their eyes when they were getting shampooed.
Poor Steve. He looked at me as though I had drowned his boyhood puppy while eating all his birthday cake. I've never felt so totally responsible for one person's happiness as I did at that moment.
He eventually packed up his stuff and left. I couldn't bear to tell him about the switch we have that nobody knows what it does. Or the light fixture that goes on and off according to it's own whims. (Sometimes we come in in the mornings and it's on for the first time in months. Or it just goes off for no reason at all.) Or the outlet that hates the straight iron. I'm afraid he'd lie down and weep.
While at work last Wednesday, I plugged in the kettle to make my co-worker a cup of tea, and set the Tassimo machine to make myself a cup of coffee. About half way through both processes, the coffee machine sighed heavily and stopped dead, and the kettle swooned and fainted altogether. The ventilation fan stopped, leaving the room in an ominous silence, and the lights went out. I'm no electrical engineer, but I was pretty sure we'd popped a circuit somewhere. I went down into the bowels of the basement to suss out the fuse box (and I do mean bowels...the building the salon is in is about a hundred years old, and the back room in the basement has a dirt floor and has a single naked light bulb and looks like Tiny Tim and his family might have lived there. It's pretty grim.)
Nothing looked out of place.
Normally, I'd have gone home and told the Mister (who wasn't working that day) and had him sort it out the next morning. But he had spent the day in the hospital writhing in pain (they actually gave him morphine, if you can believe it.) and had lost two night's sleep. I made an executive decision and called the electrician we usually deal with.
Our electrician's name is Steve, and he is possibly the most morose, despondent, world-weary man I've ever met. He's about 60 or so, and gives the impression of having been disappointed and disillusioned more times than you could ever count. Until, of course, you call with an electrical problem, wherein he sighs heavily and says he will be right there, and you know you have just added one more stone to the Everest of despair that he has to climb every day. He's like Eeyore.
Steve showed up, disheartened and let down by our electrical system, and indeed, the world at large. He poked around and sighed and stifled a sob once or twice, and quickly got the fan, the lights and the outlet working again. Except, there was a set of lights over the shampoo basins that he could not get to work. He tried this and that, he flicked switches on and off, he had a little cry, and finally gave me a look of deeply wounded disappointment and said he couldn't figure it out. I was afraid he would leave and slit his wrists in his truck.
Just then, the Mister came in. He had been at the hospital again that morning, getting an ultrasound (so that they could tell him he definitely had kidney stones.) and he was able to tell Steve/Eeyore that those lights didn't work because the bulbs had burned out and had not been replaced; people complained that they shone in their eyes when they were getting shampooed.
Poor Steve. He looked at me as though I had drowned his boyhood puppy while eating all his birthday cake. I've never felt so totally responsible for one person's happiness as I did at that moment.
He eventually packed up his stuff and left. I couldn't bear to tell him about the switch we have that nobody knows what it does. Or the light fixture that goes on and off according to it's own whims. (Sometimes we come in in the mornings and it's on for the first time in months. Or it just goes off for no reason at all.) Or the outlet that hates the straight iron. I'm afraid he'd lie down and weep.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Crunch Time
Could somebody stop this month please? I'd like to get off.
I realized a number of years ago that June is a bit of a slog....it's hellishly busy and you hemmorhage money. May is fine, July is wonderful, but June has far too much going on, and it all costs a fortune. Believe me, it's not that I don't want to do any of the things I'm involved in, I could easily say "no", but I want to do everything, and it's all jammed into those 30 days.
One year the Loudshoes family had so much going on in June that I actually had to write things in the margins of the calendar, because all the little squares were all filled up. This year I've worked an extra couple of days, we had to go to a funeral and the garden needs a lot of attention.
Work has been fairly busy,which is good because I will need the money for our holidays. I gave up a LONG time ago trying to figure out when we'd be busy and not busy, it seems to careen from "boring" to "frantic" within hours. I've been trying to get myself ready for a weekend away, and Thing 2 is graduating elementary school, which means an entire new outfit for her, too.
Thing 2 went to Montreal with her Grade 8 class last week, for 4 days. I got her up at 4:30 in the freaking morning, to catch the bus out of town at 5:30. Naturally, she had to get up that early to straighten her hair and put on some makeup. What a difference 35 years makes! My priority at 4:30 in the morning is to get some coffee into me, preferably intravenously, and not frighten small children.
As was the case when Thing 1 went three years ago, they did not want any parent volunteers for this trip, which was fine by me...I'd have gone if they needed me, but experience has told me that you if you can avoid 8 hours of driving in a production of "Hormones on Wheels", you should do so.
She came home on Friday evening, malnourished from a 4-day, vegetable-and-fibre-free, junk-food binge, and exhausted from talking for 96 hours straight.
Then the Mister and I took off for Montreal the next day. He and I and the staff from the salon went to see a hair awards show.We took the train this time, which was fabulous....you can drink on a train, which they frown on when you are driving, plus there is the added bonus of being able to go the bathroon whenever you want and NOT when your husband decides you should need to go to the bathroom. We had a good time, but maybe the other people in the car did not.
The hair show itself is pretty boring, but the people watching is only spectacular.....I tell you, hair dressers are great value for money, they do NOT disappoint. Think of it, a room full of a thousand people desperate to be the center of attention, and all of them very good at it. You hardly know where to look. Everyone is dressed up and dying to be seen...the shoes alone are worth the price of admission. And that's just the gay guys! The picture above is the Mister and I all cleaned up and ready for public consumption.
The train ride home was fine, except I had to sit beside a 9-year old boy who either need to be medicated or is just incredibly obnoxious. He didn't sit still for the entire 6 hours to Toronto, he shouted at his mother incessently and he spilled a bottle of water on me. I think maybe karma was paying me back for the use of my "outside voice" on the train on Saturday evening.
Next week is Thing 2's graduation, a dinner out, and a memorial service to go to. At least they all involve food. And come July, it will be all over, and life will settle down again. Stop me if I complain about being bored, okay?
Thursday, August 19, 2010
All Worked Up
Thing 1 started her first job this summer...she's bussing tables at a roadhouse/diner sort of place nearby. She's finding her way through a whole new kind of world, and finding out that it's awfully nice to be making your own money, and that there are a whole lot of different grown-ups out there.
My first job was working at a catering company, around the late 70's when I was 15. I worked for the princely sum of $2.85 an hour, when minimum wage was only $2.15. We packed up a large van with potato salads, macaroni salads, fried chicken and bread and headed on out to a retirement party or an annual sportmans' dinner or a wedding, somewhere in a Legion hall in southwestern Ontario and unpacked the whole lot onto a buffet table. After smoking about 40 cigarettes while they ate, we served the coffee, THEN we were allowed to eat the leftovers. The food was pretty lousy; only the fried chicken and bread were in any demand. We often slipped fried chicken into our pockets while we were unpacking, so that we could be sure to get some at the end of the night. (So, if your 25th anniversary party was woefully short of drumsticks, I apologize.) We were not terribly good caterers..... many was the time where lukewarm food was served by indifferent staff to surly guests. I can't imagine how awful your wedding would have to have been to have us there.
But I learned a lot about dealing with other people, that even though this was a part-time gig for me for some pocket money, this was a real job to most of the people I worked with, and it was the first time I ever saw, close up and personal, how hard most single mothers had to bust their asses to keep their kids fed and clothed. I saw that lots of people didn't have the choices or opportunities that had, and took for granted. I learned that every job, no matter how piddly, was important to someone, and that I had a responsibility to do the best I could at that job. I found out the people you work with can make all the difference in how much you enjoy the work, and that a teenage girl can fit about 20 pieces of fried chicken in and around her person without showing any outward signs of having done so.
My next jobs were: working at cafeteria style restaurant with my friend Carolyn (where I learned that if your boss is an asshole, the job is never going to be worth it.), a kitchen at a fancy-schmancy French restaurant (where I learned how to make 10 pounds of pork liver pate at a go, which looks and smells just like baby poo.), working the counter at a dry cleaners (where I learned that the smell of skunk will NEVER be eradicated) a sales clerk at a classical record store (where I learned the difference between Bach and Beethoven) and a receptionist at a hair salon (where I learned that people will do just about anything to get their hair done, including show up for an appointement when they are in full-out labour.)
I've always liked my jobs, and I've always rather liked working. And I got something out of every job I've ever had, good and bad. But I've never eaten fried chicken again.
My first job was working at a catering company, around the late 70's when I was 15. I worked for the princely sum of $2.85 an hour, when minimum wage was only $2.15. We packed up a large van with potato salads, macaroni salads, fried chicken and bread and headed on out to a retirement party or an annual sportmans' dinner or a wedding, somewhere in a Legion hall in southwestern Ontario and unpacked the whole lot onto a buffet table. After smoking about 40 cigarettes while they ate, we served the coffee, THEN we were allowed to eat the leftovers. The food was pretty lousy; only the fried chicken and bread were in any demand. We often slipped fried chicken into our pockets while we were unpacking, so that we could be sure to get some at the end of the night. (So, if your 25th anniversary party was woefully short of drumsticks, I apologize.) We were not terribly good caterers..... many was the time where lukewarm food was served by indifferent staff to surly guests. I can't imagine how awful your wedding would have to have been to have us there.
But I learned a lot about dealing with other people, that even though this was a part-time gig for me for some pocket money, this was a real job to most of the people I worked with, and it was the first time I ever saw, close up and personal, how hard most single mothers had to bust their asses to keep their kids fed and clothed. I saw that lots of people didn't have the choices or opportunities that had, and took for granted. I learned that every job, no matter how piddly, was important to someone, and that I had a responsibility to do the best I could at that job. I found out the people you work with can make all the difference in how much you enjoy the work, and that a teenage girl can fit about 20 pieces of fried chicken in and around her person without showing any outward signs of having done so.
My next jobs were: working at cafeteria style restaurant with my friend Carolyn (where I learned that if your boss is an asshole, the job is never going to be worth it.), a kitchen at a fancy-schmancy French restaurant (where I learned how to make 10 pounds of pork liver pate at a go, which looks and smells just like baby poo.), working the counter at a dry cleaners (where I learned that the smell of skunk will NEVER be eradicated) a sales clerk at a classical record store (where I learned the difference between Bach and Beethoven) and a receptionist at a hair salon (where I learned that people will do just about anything to get their hair done, including show up for an appointement when they are in full-out labour.)
I've always liked my jobs, and I've always rather liked working. And I got something out of every job I've ever had, good and bad. But I've never eaten fried chicken again.
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