Sunday, June 12, 2005
What Women's Lib Movement?
In addition to teaching the art of shorthand, the book I got for a quarter has some interesting advice for would-be shorthanders. Women readers should be careful reading this; your bra might spontaneously combust.
Friday, June 10, 2005
The Thing About Onions...
...is that they can make you cry.
On the plus side, the customer who bought the one item I sold today also got the replacement guarantee, so I'm up to 0.76%. Woohoo.
On the plus side, the customer who bought the one item I sold today also got the replacement guarantee, so I'm up to 0.76%. Woohoo.
My Sharpening Days May Be Numbered
Yesterday was fun. I've sold a total of zero replacement/service guarantees for the month of June, for a total of zero percent of my sales. It's not that I'm not trying, mind you, but the more pressure they put on me to sell the things, the worse I feel for my customers, and the less enthusiastic I feel about selling them.
So of course I had to watch the training video again, in accordance with policy. This time they made me watch it standing up, because if I got to sit in a chair it wouldn't be "like a punishment." Then I got in trouble for going back to watch it without consulting with all three managers. It sure is fun having to ask permission to do something you've been ordered to do, but it comes with the territory when you have three bosses who actually pay attention to you.
The worst part was that they revoked my yo-yoing privileges. I'm not allowed to touch the Yomega for a full week, and in the meantime, I'm supposed to handle products that aren't selling well, or that have a higher profit margin. That got old a much faster than the yo-yo did, since all it did was drip on me and make me look even less sophisticated.
Anyway, I was closing yesterday, and it was just me and Chris, who bears a striking resemblence to Morpheus, but whose resemblance doesn't bear much on the narrative I'm about to relate. About ten minutes to closing, a woman in a hot pink shirt and shortish skirt came in and asked if we had any of the 23" LCD HD TVs in stock. I dutifully checked on it, and couldn't even begin to try to sell it to her before she decided to take it. So I looked in the 'puter, and it said we didn't have one, but then I asked Chris, and he said we should have one anyway, so he went back into the cage to unlock the one we had while I rung her up. Of course I told her about the service plan, but she wasn't having none of it. I figured, ok, if she buys a $1700 TV on a whim, maybe she considers it disposable. How should I know?
Naturally, she pays with a check, which is where the story gets slightly more interesting. It's a winnie-the-pooh check from Bank of America, with an address on it, a name that matches her ID, a watermark, and the whole bit. I run it through the validator, and it validates itself, so the transaction goes through. So Morpheus goes and retrieves the TV from the holy of holies in the stock room, while my customer asks me to show her some iPods. Interestingly, she inquires as to how many people we have working at the time, and, being the honest kid that I am, reply, "Just us." Then she wants to know if I have to go back and help him carry it, but he's got a handle on it, so I follow her to the iPod case.
At this point, accounts differ. Chris says that hot on her tail was another gentleman with the same area code as her who wanted to buy a DV Handicam with a check. Same deal, no questions, he just wants one. Since we haven't seen anything illegal happen yet, he goes to the back and fetches it.
About this time, I'm helping a 9-year-old explain to her mother what an iPod is, and how it's better than an XM MyFi. For one thing, it comes in pink. I'm so jealous of all these preteens with iPods. When I was her age, I was lucky if I could bang on a pot with a spoon for entertainment, and then only after I'd eaten all the porridge out of the pot. But I digress.
Anyway, since Certegy verified the check and I did all my procedures right, it looks like we're not liable for the TV. I'm not in trouble for the likely $1742 theft, or the stereo that disappeared sometime during the circus, about which, coincidentally, someone called two minutes after its vanishing act to inquire about the price. I am, however, in pretty deep effluent for not selling the service plan on the TV. According to Chris, who is the world's leading service plan evangelist, if he were going to pass a fraudulent check to buy something, he would always get the service plan. I tried to argue that it's just one more trail of bread crumbs for us to follow to get to the culprit, but he countered with the fact that we don't write down serial numbers of the gadgets we sell.
So anyway, I'm still at 0% RSGs, and will almost certainly be written up for not selling 5.25%. There's no real fixing it now, since I've sold like $4000 already this month, and the only way to sell the big RSGs is to sell a high-dollar item, which will further dilute the percentage anyway. Plus, as Chris was quick to point out, selling something big without the plan hurts the store's percentage, which takes money out of the managers' pockets. I'm did my best to cry myself to sleep over that one.
The moral: if you suspect someone is using a stolen check to buy a $1700 HD TV, make sure you get them to steal the service plan while they're at it. Retail is harder than it looks.
So of course I had to watch the training video again, in accordance with policy. This time they made me watch it standing up, because if I got to sit in a chair it wouldn't be "like a punishment." Then I got in trouble for going back to watch it without consulting with all three managers. It sure is fun having to ask permission to do something you've been ordered to do, but it comes with the territory when you have three bosses who actually pay attention to you.
The worst part was that they revoked my yo-yoing privileges. I'm not allowed to touch the Yomega for a full week, and in the meantime, I'm supposed to handle products that aren't selling well, or that have a higher profit margin. That got old a much faster than the yo-yo did, since all it did was drip on me and make me look even less sophisticated.
Anyway, I was closing yesterday, and it was just me and Chris, who bears a striking resemblence to Morpheus, but whose resemblance doesn't bear much on the narrative I'm about to relate. About ten minutes to closing, a woman in a hot pink shirt and shortish skirt came in and asked if we had any of the 23" LCD HD TVs in stock. I dutifully checked on it, and couldn't even begin to try to sell it to her before she decided to take it. So I looked in the 'puter, and it said we didn't have one, but then I asked Chris, and he said we should have one anyway, so he went back into the cage to unlock the one we had while I rung her up. Of course I told her about the service plan, but she wasn't having none of it. I figured, ok, if she buys a $1700 TV on a whim, maybe she considers it disposable. How should I know?
Naturally, she pays with a check, which is where the story gets slightly more interesting. It's a winnie-the-pooh check from Bank of America, with an address on it, a name that matches her ID, a watermark, and the whole bit. I run it through the validator, and it validates itself, so the transaction goes through. So Morpheus goes and retrieves the TV from the holy of holies in the stock room, while my customer asks me to show her some iPods. Interestingly, she inquires as to how many people we have working at the time, and, being the honest kid that I am, reply, "Just us." Then she wants to know if I have to go back and help him carry it, but he's got a handle on it, so I follow her to the iPod case.
At this point, accounts differ. Chris says that hot on her tail was another gentleman with the same area code as her who wanted to buy a DV Handicam with a check. Same deal, no questions, he just wants one. Since we haven't seen anything illegal happen yet, he goes to the back and fetches it.
About this time, I'm helping a 9-year-old explain to her mother what an iPod is, and how it's better than an XM MyFi. For one thing, it comes in pink. I'm so jealous of all these preteens with iPods. When I was her age, I was lucky if I could bang on a pot with a spoon for entertainment, and then only after I'd eaten all the porridge out of the pot. But I digress.
Anyway, since Certegy verified the check and I did all my procedures right, it looks like we're not liable for the TV. I'm not in trouble for the likely $1742 theft, or the stereo that disappeared sometime during the circus, about which, coincidentally, someone called two minutes after its vanishing act to inquire about the price. I am, however, in pretty deep effluent for not selling the service plan on the TV. According to Chris, who is the world's leading service plan evangelist, if he were going to pass a fraudulent check to buy something, he would always get the service plan. I tried to argue that it's just one more trail of bread crumbs for us to follow to get to the culprit, but he countered with the fact that we don't write down serial numbers of the gadgets we sell.
So anyway, I'm still at 0% RSGs, and will almost certainly be written up for not selling 5.25%. There's no real fixing it now, since I've sold like $4000 already this month, and the only way to sell the big RSGs is to sell a high-dollar item, which will further dilute the percentage anyway. Plus, as Chris was quick to point out, selling something big without the plan hurts the store's percentage, which takes money out of the managers' pockets. I'm did my best to cry myself to sleep over that one.
The moral: if you suspect someone is using a stolen check to buy a $1700 HD TV, make sure you get them to steal the service plan while they're at it. Retail is harder than it looks.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Verbosity City
For the sake of sounding more edumacated, I wrote down some more words that I wasn't a hundred percent on, then made 'em blue with my magic excel commands. Nothing much happened yesterday, except that I got a new belated birthday present. I'm lovin' it.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
We Love to Fly and It Blows
I got nominated to fetch the sister-to-be-in-law from the airport, and found her (and the airport) right off. Of course they managed to leave the planeload of luggage on the tarmac for an hour while they waited on the lightening to get less scary or something. It was a dubious excuse, since several flights that arrived after hers had their bags in the claim before hers did. Naturally I inquired into getting the second hour of my parking validated, and the dude who answers the phone in the parking department got a good chuckle out of that suggestion. The chief baggage apologist said it was an act of God and there was nothing to be done. She recommended that I call 1-800-GOD. I told her it seemed more like the work of Zeus to me, but then gave up.
I would've called God, but then I remembered all the backtithes I owe. You don't want deities auditing you, especially ones who have tax collectors following them around.
My neighbor, the retired Colonel and active barber, got himself a new puppy, tentatively named Heidi. I'll post pics when I get back home, because dogs are more photogenic than most of the people I know.
Oh, and I went on a $2.50 shopping spree at the Friends Bookstore at the Homewood Library. I got a book on shorthand, a 200+ page, full-color biology textbook, a booklet on the Atomic Energy Merit Badge, and a history of Germany written in 1947. Plus a bonus book of Robert Frost's poetry. I like Frost because his poems don't make my head hurt. For all you Whitman fans, they've got Leaves of Grass for a quarter.
Some of the family came by yesterday, and we cleaned up the place for the first time this season. Everybody seemed impressed with my vaccumin' accumen, and a good time was had by all.
I'm gonna stop writing, because there's not much left to say.
I would've called God, but then I remembered all the backtithes I owe. You don't want deities auditing you, especially ones who have tax collectors following them around.
My neighbor, the retired Colonel and active barber, got himself a new puppy, tentatively named Heidi. I'll post pics when I get back home, because dogs are more photogenic than most of the people I know.
Oh, and I went on a $2.50 shopping spree at the Friends Bookstore at the Homewood Library. I got a book on shorthand, a 200+ page, full-color biology textbook, a booklet on the Atomic Energy Merit Badge, and a history of Germany written in 1947. Plus a bonus book of Robert Frost's poetry. I like Frost because his poems don't make my head hurt. For all you Whitman fans, they've got Leaves of Grass for a quarter.
Some of the family came by yesterday, and we cleaned up the place for the first time this season. Everybody seemed impressed with my vaccumin' accumen, and a good time was had by all.
I'm gonna stop writing, because there's not much left to say.
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