The Boss is Away and . . . Things Happen

Oh, it's just great fun (and I use the word 'fun' loosely here) when the boss goes on holidays. Throughout the region, little 'boss-free zone' radars go off and, suddenly, people are confused . . . perplexed . . . forgetful . . . and/or just plain grumpy.

Forget the fun and sun in California. Back at my office, in the wind, sun, snow, and, well, wind is where the real party is!

Take some mix-ups had with a shipment. I thought everything had been worked out. X didn't happen, so there was no hope of Y coming to fruition. Someone Who Had to Know knew this. But the next day the boss is gone and *poof*. Confusion. So I, the still-a-newbie-shipper was asked to find out what happened. Someone Who Helped Organize Stuff said it was a problem on our end before adding they could not quite recall the event in question. Lady in Another Time Zone became a bit . . . snippy when I requested an e-mailed explanation of our earlier phone conversation. "We have done nothing wrong and do not need to send a written explanation." (Translation: "No way are you tracing this back to us.") A few other people said "Do Z, because of X and Y will be taken care of." Someone Who Had to Know called after a brief e-mail conveying Z, X and Y. Didn't leave a message.

Thankfully, I was able to take a breather after talking to a few Higher Ups. Low and behold, after some time (the weekend) and a perusal of the notes compiled during the investigation into X and things made a bit more sense. After hearing from The Fence Post that Someone Who Had to Know was looking for Someone to Crucify, I whipped off another e-mail (after relaying when the boss would be back) and have not heard a thing since. Is no news good news in this case, or is something going to hit the fan come Monday?

But the fun and excitement doesn't end there! No siree-bob!

A Dude had been calling, wanting a price on a bag of seed. Now I don't know how things are where you come from, but when someone asks me for a price on a bag of seed, I take it to mean they want just one bag. So a price was procured for the one bag for the Dude. He came in the following day to pick it up. At the time, I was on the phone in regards to Situation X, the other lady in the office was also on the phone. Okay, so I should have said "Be right with you." My bad. But before I knew it, the Dude was gone, having gone through the door marked "Employees Only", grumbling about being ignored for an hour and broken bags.

A Fellow Employee took up the call, letting the Dude know his bag of seed was ready, here is the invoice and here is the seed. Well the Dude must have been operating with some sort of new math because he wanted 40 bags of seed. Fellow Employee makes a call to obtain the price. It was $5 more per bag than the price quoted for the single bag. This made the Dude mad. He grabbed the invoice, waving it in the air as he began to rant about wanting the price to be honoured which is on the invoice; he's a shareholder in the company, by gum (not a direct quote) and he won't be delivering anything to our company again. Fellow Employee told him the price on the invoice was being honoured -- one bag of seed for x amount of dollars. I piped up with the fact that any time the Dude had talked to us, he only mentioned the one bag, not a pallet with forty.


This did not placate the Dude. He obtained Fellow Employee's name, the name and number and location of one of the Higher Ups and off he went. I secretly hoped we would never see him again.

Ha, ha!

He came back for more seed, was accidentally given a deal, and then in the process of trying to invoice it for him, I asked Two . . . Folks for help. Two . . . Folks proved to be not good folks to ask, as it was later revealed they were making fun of my not knowing how to to something I have done only once or twice (and minus the Dude) since working for the company.

But things are smoothing out a bit. Fellow Employee was a bit stressed earlier this week for saying Yes to Too Many Things. And today Supplies Were Low which may not help us with Someone Who Helped Organize Stuff.

The boss is back on Monday.

I can hardly wait.