Humpday Suckage

Today was one of those days, the kind that I have a deep dwelling need to vent over, but due to the lack of a significant other, well meaning friends or honestly.. anyone who gives a flying frog's ass, I'm blogging it.

The suckage of it all began when I spent three hours trying to fax a four page document to Uruguay.

That's right chil'ren.. Uruguay. For some reason, we're unable to send documents to international locations over the fax machine, other than those which are geographically attached to the continental United States.

Mexico, Canada... no problem. Uruguay.. no dice.

It was a WTF kind of morning.

I refused to be outdone. During the course of the three hours, I made six phone calls to other, more educated people within our company, one of whom suggested I call to have the machine serviced and another suggesting that perhaps Uruguay was blocked because he was pretty sure he'd heard somewhere that they were part of the "Axis of Evil."

I shit you not.

I got the manual for the machine and read it, cover to cover. I tried dialing "011" then the country code, followed by a "pause", then the phone number. I tried "011", "pause", country code, "pause" then the number. I tried every possible combination of "011", "pause", country code and phone number I could think off. At one point I think I dialed "666" "pause" "911".

As a last resort I went to PG and explained my problem.

"Why don't you just use the fax machine back in engineering? This newfangled thing hasn't ever worked right," he said.

Well duh.

I walked back to engineering, in the back office we lovingly refer to as "the dungeon." I knocked the cobwebs off the old machine. I dialed the number and fed the document. I waited.

"Buenos dias," was heard coming from the fax. Oh shit. "Hola? Hola!"

So THAT'S why it wouldn't go through.

And it went downhill from there.

Bubbles had a bug up her butt all afternoon. I assume she had her panties in a wad because she didn't get that job up at the elementary school. She got pissy with Bossman, not once but twice. I tried to stay out of her way, lest I get caught in the crossfire. She got all bent out of shape once because someone.. and I'm honestly not sure who.. screwed up an order for one of my customers when I was out last Monday. When she tried to leave me out of the decision on how to fix it, she became noticeably agitated when Bossman called me in on the meeting. When he told her what to do to fix it, she argued with his judgement.

Then he told her to do as she was told, which did not go over well. I got the stink eye as she left the office.

Why am I getting the go to hell looks? I wasn't even THERE when whatever happened happened.

She was later heard asking Louise to go outside with her, Bubbles said she needed to burn off some aggravation and annoyances.

(insert eyeroll here)

As it got later in the day and it became evident that I wasn't going to accomplish a damned thing, I thought things would calm down a little. But.. the phone rang. It was our one major customer. They needed a lead time on one item. I called Thelma, who's job it is to make such decisions and she said "Oh.. a couple days." So that's what I told the customer.

Within minutes, I had the order, which I entered. When I took it to Thelma she looked at it and explained that there was no way we could do that by Friday. Then, when I went to Tiny to try to work out a solution, Thelma.. who is my age by the way and way too old to be so sucky at lying.. said, "I said a few days. I guess they misunderstood," then looked at me like I had given the customer the wrong lead time.

Um.. excuse me but no. "Couple" means "two." She said "couple." She did not say "few."

Now, I have to spend tomorrow morning trying to get approval from One Big Major Customer to change the lead time on this one item... lest it arrive "late" and we end up paying a charge, resulting in our pretty much letting them have this one, rushed item for free.

Anywho...

There was a positive note today. I took my very first commission check from CafePress and used it to open a separate business checking account. I almost felt like a grown up. Oh and.. I got a free smoothie maker in the process.

So if it's actually Thursday morning when you read this, know that I'm probably under my desk, on the phone, in the fetal position, begging for mercy from One Big Major Customer.

Or shooting spit balls at Bubbles' Paula Deen hairdo.

Ya'll have a good one. Later Taters!