These past two days I’ve attended the company’s business development conference (at a location 40 miles away that has taken me 1-1/2 hours of hellacious traffic to drive to and back home, each way), and I’ve long since surpassed the point where I’d like need to stab myself in the eye.
It was led by Chucklehead.
“So-so-so-so-so, we’re gonna deep dive, right? so we can leverage our value proposition, right? and takeaway our learnings, right? And-and-and-and we’ll determine from the big pitcher [yes, pitcher] if our brandscape has headwinds or tailwinds, right?”
Yesterday, after I came *this*close to stabbing my eye with a fork, I took the opportunity this morning between 8:00 and 8:10 a.m. to draw hashmarks in my notebook to count the number of times the idiot said the word “right.” In that ten-minute period of time, he said it
47 times.
Today, I would have settled for any instrument, blunt or sharp, to do the stabbing, although if a steak knife had been handy I would have likely rushed the front of the room and stabbed him. (And I suspect I would have been met with hearty applause).
My fucking God.
Who knew this would be a snake-oil salesman’s 2-day sermon-on-the-mount for selling the likes of sketchy used cars damaged from Hurricane Sandy, even though what we market are professional services? (Well…I pretty much suspected…but I honestly wasn’t prepared for just how bad it would be).
I am spent, exhausted, disgusted, and reeling—and it’s not even Friday yet.
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Oh, and guess what? The insulators failed the inspection for the THIRD TIME. (My sweet demeanor is shot to hell this week, can you tell?) This time, John was there when the inspector arrived, along with the insulation company’s foreman. And when matters became clear, John ripped the insulation foreman a new asshole (in a professionally angry, teeth-clenching manner, since it wasn’t the foreman himself who had done the work, ALTHOUGH he was certainly ultimately responsible for it). Promises were made to right the wrong by today, and holy crap I sure hope that has come to fruition. John ran down there today after work and it’ll be interesting to find out what’s what.
He’d gone down Monday and came home Tuesday night and in between ripping new assholes, he worked on the little deck off the kitchen and the weenie walk.
He has spent a LOT of time and energy customizing everything, including the rails, which are (believe it or not) tongue-and-groove. He said, “I keep reminding myself that this is ‘just a deck,’ but I can’t help myself! I know that it’s as sturdy and quality-built as it can possibly be, even if nobody else notices.” He still has more to do on it (pickets, etc.) but it’s close. And these are the steps that now make it do-able to actually get down to the beach! We just circle down around the “box” and into the bottom of the gully to the beach and it is wonderful. (Although we’re now into the icky weather time of year so going to the beach won’t be happening all that much for a while).
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Update: John arrived home this evening, and GUESS WHAT? The insulators never showed up to FIX THEIR F-UPS! John then got on the phone with the OWNER of the company, and when it became clear that he was clueless (seemingly blasé) about the importance of the matter, he also had his asshole ripped out and made brand new. What the hell is it with these companies? Don’t they have a desire to remain in business? Do they not know that the internet is a powerful make-or-break tool for accountability? John told the guy, “My next phone call, if I have to make it, will be to my lawyer.”
So here we go: DON’T DO BUSINESS WITH “INSULATION NORTHWEST”.
I’ll be passing along that word. Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, you-name-it.
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Also? John cut his fingertip bad with his router while he was down there. A whole lot of blood, and he lathered it with Neosporin and wrapped it up with heavy bandages, but I’m guessing it probably should require stitches (no, I haven’t seen it, but he was rather shaken by the whole thing, which leads me to believe that it ‘weren’t no paper cut’).
Jeezuz what a sucky week.