Tonight's Festivities

Back to work today and it was quite a busy one.  No one had touched my office since I left on Friday and there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done.
1st and foremost I had to start looking for potential issues caused by people being lazy and cut them off at the path if possible and oddly enough there were a few and they were all right out in the open.

One of the fun things about the system we have at work is that a lot of our installed sales actually auto-fax to our installer.  However, you'll notice that I didn't say all of them.

Another fun thing is that we let the customer know that the installer has two business days to contact them (provided we aren't waiting for the product to arrive) and of course the customers only hear what they want.  So, take both of those things and add into the mix that good old uncle grrouch wasn't there over the last 3 days and what do you get?
Angry people.

We install water softeners and with those we have a special contract that needs filled out and faxed over (not in the computer, completely manual) and because of that these installs do not auto-fax.

So, I arrive to work on Tuesday to see that we have sold 5 of these since last I graced my office.  Two of them on Friday.  NONE of them were faxed because we can't actually expect sales people to follow through and do anything that they can to make sure that their customer gets taken care of.  No, the simple art of faxing a few pieces of paper over to the installer to help avoid any situations is too much to expect of a bunch of lazy, good for nothing specialists.  Instead - this is someone else's job and just leave it.  The great thing is I got to field a few phone calls from cranky customers wondering why in the hell they have not been contacted yet, etc.  Without saying "Your sales person doesn't give a fuck about the sale after they have your money" I get to come up with some lame excuse and then start calling installers asking for favors.
"Hey, I know that I just faxed this to you 20 minutes ago, but It really sold 4 days ago and my associates are lazy bastards.  Could you Plugheeze contact the customer today? This hour? As soon as I get off the phone with you?
I love it.

And then there I was, six minutes until I got to punch out and go home.  Manager walks into my office and hands me a phone and says "hey, could you be MOD while the Manager meeting is going on?"
grrouch: "But it's time for me to go home in 6 minutes"
Mngr: "that's ok - one of the department heads will be out in just a few minutes, they can take the phone from you."

1 hour 15 minutes later the Dept Heads leave the meeting. I know the receiving guy is going home so I don't say anything to him.  I approach one "Hey, I need you to take the phone and play MOD till the meeting is done"
"Sorry bro, I'm scheduled to leave right now so I can't"
I approach #2 "Hey, you - Phone - MOD - Now"
"Nope, I'm clocking out and going home"
And #3 "Yo baby pops, you wanna hold onto this phone and love it long time"
"I can't, they told me to go to lunch since I'm hitting my 6th hour"

So, not a single Department Manager cared enough to help out and take one for the team and instead the stupid grrouch gets an extra two and a half hours of work to make sure that everything runs smoothly on the phone while the Managers all sit in an office and stroke each others ego's or whatever the hell it is that they really do for 3 hours.

Good news is that I'll be leaving early on Friday.
Better news is that it's almost Beer Thirty.