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Monday Gripes, Review of The Namesake Mondays are always interesting around here. Feel free to go back an entry if you're looking for smut today. We still have the insanoid lady calling for our entemologist to identify which bugs are biting her in her sleep. She's been calling like 4-8 times a day for the past week now, and we are all sick of her. Personally, I have no pity for her. She's got a Ph.D. in chemistry (or something similar) but she refuses to go to the doctor until she knows what bug it is. As for myself, if I was waking up every morning with big red bites on my back, I'd go to the doctor first and enquire at pest control firms later. (Of course, she doesn't even have an account with us. She just needs information.) But no, she really REALLY needs to know what bug this is ASAP. Oh, and my personal favorite, she won't believe a lick of what I tell her. If anyone else in the loop on this tells her to sit pretty and wait for a call back, she's fine. If I do it, she calls back 10-15 minutes later and gets the same answer from someone else. Hella annoying. Then there's the usual round of old folks who can't seem to understand the idea of service sub branches. They almost always refuse to call another number and ramble on, puzzled, as to why their condo community gave them our number if all we're going to do is redirect them. (Mostly because the main line is all those management companies have and they won't keep a list of service numbers for each property, duh!) *Ugh* These people get massively annoying, especially the ones that really need some sort of hobby besides bug watching, and often make me swear to never grow old. Besides all the usual bullshit Monday provides, I've been doing pretty well. Both my bosses are gone today, the upper one on vacation for the week, and the direct one isn't feeling so well, *sniff*. I won't be trained until next week, which is fine with me, as it gives me one more week to do nothing but screw off and call back my leads. Well, I've got to study the pest control book for the exam, but they're giving me an additional two days next week to do that as well, so I'm not rushing to do that. I was able to read it over the weekend, and I'll admit that pest control is a little more complicated than anticipated, but a multiple choice/true false exam should be completely passable. I just need to take some notes on the non-intuitive information, and I think I'll be set. I've already made a few contacts last night, so I'm hoping my sales career takes off well. It should with all these theory books I'm reading. And no, I didn't know how complex sales was until I started reading sales theory. Its dry stuff, but the writers try hard to make it interesting. From the sounds of it, sales is a lot like chess. You try to anticipate problems, lead the client along, all with a sense of good humor to show how you're really helping them instead of leading them to the answer you already see down the line. Very tricky; a lot like trapping wild animals, but with slightly more psychology. Its weird really, when you think about it, but all this training is to sell to people so they don't feel like they're being sold. Very difficult, but worth it if you can master it. And yes, I am enjoying the occasional congrats from everyone around work and the other offices when they remember, though I am dreading some of the hard work. But, if hard work makes money, I'm willing to give it a go. As for The Namesake, I didn't like it much. It was nicely written, and a cute little story, but I have to agree with the harsher Amazon.com reviews. It was pretty stereotypical, easy to predict, and generally kind of blah. Some of the descriptions were really well done, as was the internal dialogue, but I really didn't empathize with the character's plight. Maybe that's due to my coping with an unusual name my whole life, though I often rely on other names as well, or maybe I'm missing the culture clash. Either way, I'm glad I didn't buy this book because it was too pedestrian for my tastes. Nothing much to add. With the hot weather, maybe I'll be lucky to head to the lake tonight. Willow is really taking to swimming these days, and she's so fun to watch chasing her little tennis balls around the boat. Daphne |