The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Well, la-di-fuckin’-da, Denver. I’m not even convinced you exist yet. On the plus side I’m apparently already The Guy Who Brought Painkillers, so everyone is coming to me for help since the air here isn’t fit for humans to breathe.
Dinner had better be delicious. I have been up since 5 am and it’s 7:48 my body’s time. I require something heavily potato- and beef-based, dammit.
I had a customer call me and demand to have her delivery scheduled on a certain day. I was able to accommodate her request, and did so nearly immediately. She then got mad at me and rather rudely insisted that I have her original salesperson call her back right away.
Uh. K. Sure.
I’d write more, but I’m trying to find a way to watch MSNBC so that Rachel Maddow can open Al Capone’s vault. At least that’s what I think she’s doing. I suspect watching it tomorrow will be more likely.
Occasionally I have reason to call customers that have been in my store but I haven’t actually sold something to. Sometimes it’s because they’ve asked me to keep an eye out for something for them and I’ve seen a piece I think they’ll like. Sometimes it’s because something they were thinking about buying has gone on sale and I’m hoping I can convince them to come in and buy.
Actually it’s pretty much just those two reasons.
So this guy came in two weekends ago with his two kids and his wife. He’d been in at least twice with one of the boys previously, and I’d talked to him both times pretty much by pure coincidence. He and his son picked out five thousand dollars worth of bedroom furniture. Five thousand dollars of fairly ridiculously ornate furniture.
For a fifteen-year-old. We’ll lay that aside for the moment.
At any rate, they didn’t buy. Dad said he’d be back “tomorrow” with cash and I sent them with a quote. And they didn’t show the next day, which isn’t entirely surprising. It happens. But I had his phone number, so when we had an “everything on sale” thing going this weekend I called him and let him know I could save him some money. Left a message. Today was the last day of that sale, so I thought I’d leave one more message for him.
He answered the phone. I said who I was and where I was from.
“I’m with a patient right now,” he said. “I’ll have to call you back.”
252-word leadup to this question: what the fuck kind of doctor keeps his cell phone on while he’s meeting with patients, much less answers it when he doesn’t recognize the number? Have any of you ever had a doctor answer a goddamn cell phone while you were with him? That’s fucked up, right? I’m not crazy here?
He didn’t call me back, by the way.
I am still not at all looking forward to my visit to Denver, which is now barely over a week away. The picture is probably overstating things, as I have nothing against the town itself other than not wanting to go there but whatever. My regional manager mentioned to me the other day that he’d see me there, and once I confirmed that was true he told me that “everything I’d heard about altitude sickness was true” and told me to expect a solid week of headaches, dehydration, sore throats and getting out of breath every time I exert myself a little tiny bit. This from the guy who wanted me to be excited about the trip.
Whee.
Apparently posting the book cover for the next Benevolence Archives book yesterday flipped some sort of Author Switch in me, because I made additional progress toward actually making Tales a real thing this evening. To wit: I emailed a Real Author of my acquaintance and asked him if he’d be willing to contribute a blurb to the cover. This was a bit of a Keanu moment, honestly.
I will, of course, report back if he agrees to provide said blurb. I can think of reasons why he might say no (all entirely legitimate and fair, mind you) but in the meantime let’s all cross our fingers.
So technically we’re supposed to wear nametags when we’re at work. In practice this almost never happens unless there’s a corporate visit coming; sometimes someone will put theirs on for the hell of it and then it tends to spread virally; if a shift starts with one person wearing a nametag, everyone will have theirs on by the end of that shift, but it usually doesn’t happen.
Our previous work nametags are pretty utilitarian; they’ve got the corporate logo on them and a space for your name (printed on a laser printer and slid into a little hole on the side) and that’s it. Recently for some reason corporate has decided that our nametags need to be more “fun.” And we have a visit coming by a Lord High Muckety-Muck next week, and so the new, fun name tags need to be at least ordered if not actually on everyone’s shirts.
They require that, in addition to our names, we reveal our hometowns and, and this is the kicker, a passion. Like so:
NAME:
Luther
HOMETOWN:
Chicago, IL
PASSION:
Butt stuff
Only it can’t say “butt stuff,” because, I dunno, reasons, and I also have to admit that I grew up here in Somewhere in Northern Indiana, which I find vaguely annoying. I should have just put Chicago and dared someone to correct it.
The problem is that “passion” part. One, I’m philosophically opposed to it. I’m a goddamn furniture salesman. I know that connecting with customers is supposed to be a great help in making sales and blah blah blah, but goddammit I’m at work and I’m doing my job and the fact that you want a chiffarobe does not entitle you to know shit about my life.
Plus, it has to be something that’s not intrinsically alienating to any substantial percentage of our customer base, and it has to be something that doesn’t lead to conversations with customers that I don’t want to have. So, for example: I could say politics! I am, in fact, passionate about politics! Only no, because the last fucking thing I want to talk to any of my customers about is politics for a wide variety of reasons. I could say writing! That is also a true thing! The only problem with that is that it leads to talking to people about my writing, which I really don’t want to do at work, and even if they happen to be sci-fi/fantasy people who might enjoy my work, handing them one of Luther’s cards would lead them back here, and that opens all sorts of potential cans of worms that I don’t really want open. I don’t badmouth my customers all that damn often and it’s incredibly rare (I can’t think of any examples, in fact, although I’m sure there are some) that I tell stories about specific individuals but still. I don’t need those worlds mixing. Books? Okay, but I don’t want to get into talking about reading (or the fact that my customers don’t read) with every jamoke who reads my name tag.
The other possibility is to make it a joke. I spent a long time considering just putting “Apples” as my passion, because hell, who doesn’t like apples? Another one I considered: extispicy, which is fortunetelling using the entrails of sacrificed animals. My manager shot that down for some reason, and pointing out that another staff member had chosen “charcuterie” did not gain me any points.
I ended up picking astronomy, which means that I’ll be explaining the difference between astronomy and astrology a lot. But it’s true and will probably not lead to obnoxious conversations. Fact of the matter is, once the muckety-muck is gone I will go right back to not wearing the nametag, so any amount of thought past the first five minutes that I put into this is probably wasted time anyway. But what the hell. I gotta do something when I’m not selling furniture.
I’ve said before that I regret not being able to see as many movies as I used to; there was a time in my life when I was seeing at least a movie a week and very frequently more than that. I don’t think I saw a single one of the Best Picture nominees (I say “I don’t think” because I can’t name more than two) and so therefore I haven’t seen Moonlight. Honestly I can’t even tell you what it’s about. I know nothing about the film other than it had a black director (who I can’t name) and at least a majority-black cast.
I wish to hell I had at least watched the Academy Awards last night, because Twitter’s reaction to the fuck-up with the Best Picture winner would likely have been the entertainment highlight of the month. It would have required me to be up later than I like to be nowadays, though. Unfortunately.
It’s pretty clearly tax refund time, leading to a couple of different fun phenomena over the weekend. First is people walking in, picking something out and then dropping a big stack of cash on the table to pay for it. That’s not exactly uncommon to begin with but it’s been increasing a lot lately. The second is people who deposit a check on Friday that is four or five times the size of their existing bank account and then come in on Saturday and are angry and startled that their debit cards aren’t working. And then they want to fight about it, which I suppose I sorta get, because it’s embarrassing, but goddammit I get paid for this shit and I’m not about to fuck with you so that you don’t get to have any furniture. So quit goddamn yelling at me.
There was something else but I don’t remember it. Oh well.
My kid’s school is cancelled tomorrow– not because of the weather, which is supposed to be absolutely outstanding, but because nearly 40% of the students in some grade levels and a not-inconsiderable number of teachers and subs have been sick lately. The email from the principal named no less than four different diseases that had been running rampant in the building lately, and apparently the janitorial staff will be boiling the building tomorrow.
It’s probably good that this happened, because the email also made reference to the “four-day weekend” that the kids were about to have, which made both my wife and I realize that he actually does have Monday off, which neither of us had really realized because we don’t have any idea how the hell to check a school calendar.
So here’s the cool part: I started the Current Occupation in June, right? And it’s mid-February now, as insane as that might feel. During all that time I have not missed a single day of work due to illness. I’ve come home and died a couple of times, and had some less-than-fantastic days, but I haven’t really been sick in months. And that’s after fifteen years of missing, usually, around a day a month every single year I was teaching. I was rarely if ever able to carry sick days across from one year to the next and had to dip into the sick bank twice. And not one illness worth any serious consideration since June, despite constant contact with the public throughout that time.
Add that to the pile of reasons I don’t miss teaching, I guess.
So I just found out this is going to be my schedule in the latter part of March:
Saturday, March 18: Work from 9-8
Sunday, March 19: Work from 12-6
Monday, March 20: Board plane to Denver– which, to make sure we’re clear, is not where my wife or my son live. Upon leaving plane, attend sales meetings.
Tuesday, March 21-Thursday, March 23: Lots and lots of sales meetings. Probably involving some sort of roleplaying, with my days and evenings full of the sort of alpha males who might attend these sorts of things. I don’t drink and will have nothing in common with any of these people and will probably be having to share a hotel room with someone.
Friday, March 24: Attend morning sales meetings and then fly back home.
Saturday, March 25: Work from 9-8
Sunday, March 26: Work from 12-6. I have been informed that I will receive my “average daily pay” for the days I’m in Denver, and that if I manage to exceed my average sales for an entire week over the 25th and 26th I will receive a bonus of… wait for it… fifty dollars!
Monday, March 27: Work from 9-8
Tuesday, March 28: Work from 9-8
Wednesday, March 29: Work from 9-2:30.
And then come home and die.
I’m going to need someone to badly injure me on the 19th. Anybody wanna get in on that? Is there a line already?