This post’s got nothing at all to do with Walt Whitman, mind you, other than that line is running through my head at the moment.  Well, actually, it’s running through my head in my preferred alternate version, which is “I sigh my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”  Why I think it’s okay for me to rewrite Whitman I don’t know, but that’s how that line always goes in my head until I remember it’s wrong, and for some reason I really prefer the sound of my version better.

I think he’ll forgive me.  He’s dead and famous and I think it’ll be okay if I mangle his immortal poetry a bit from time to time.

Today kinda sucked, speaking of barbaric yawps and the reasons for same.  Two members of the sales team/management staff are out of town, a critical warehouse guy is at National Guard training for two weeks, and… well, that’s actually more than enough given that the size of our staff isn’t that big to begin with.  Plus my printer stopped working for the entire day until an hour before close when it decided it was the right time to print every single document that I’d either deliberately or accidentally sent it for the entire day.  That meant that every invoice I wrote today meant I had to make at least one trip to the other side of the store.  Our store is big, and this is annoying.

Oh, also we hired a new fourth delivery guy last week for like the eighth time, and then today…

No, we’re not allowed a second delivery crew no matter what we do.  Even when they get hired they disappear.  Woohoo!

I had two interactions with customers that burned my ass today, too, and I’m going to gripe about them even though I’m certain I’ve griped about other versions of them before.

1. The customer who actually had the gall to get pissed when I told her we’d be able to deliver her stuff to her in three days.  This never ever happens, and was only possible because we had a couple of cancellations last night.  I tell every single customer I have to expect a 7-10 day wait for delivery until we get that second crew in place, and I put it on the invoice.  And you’re bitching about three?  She actually asked me if I was kidding.  I should have told her to go to hell.
2. One guy (this one wasn’t mine) who got all kinds of pissed at me because his bed wasn’t in.  It was day 8.  I tell my customers to expect their stuff to be in the store within two weeks; I’ve heard people say 7-10 days, which is usually true but is not true frequently enough that I tend to just round up.  He went on a long rant about how if it wasn’t here by Thursday he was going to cancel.  Oddly, the fact that I told him several times that it was highly unlikely that his stuff would arrive by Thursday (if it ain’t on a truck on Monday, it’s probably not going to be here by Thursday) did not actually lead him to cancel– just to continue to threaten to cancel.  Like, are you literally just bitching at me to hear the sound of your voice?  I don’t care if you cancel.  I really don’t.  You’re not my customer and I’m only putting up with your shit because you’re bitching at whoever answered the phone instead of asking for your salesman, and I don’t have the energy for that when I’m the only person on my entire half of the floor and my printer doesn’t work.  Fuck off.  Other days I may have some patience for you; today is not that day.
3. Same guy, in an entirely separate sin, made a big deal about how he’d already paid for his furniture and we’d “cashed his check.”  First of all: fuck you for writing a check.  It’s 2017, goddammit.  Second of all, find me the retail place that gives you shit before you pay for shit?  There are literally none of those.  Granted, some places give you your shit quickly after you pay for it, but every single retail establishment on the planet makes you pay for your stuff before you get it.  Third, the staff doesn’t get paid until stuff is delivered.  So nobody has gotten the– wait for it– $15 commission on the bed you bought, which is literally the cheapest bed we offer in the store.  Piss on fifteen dollars.  Okay, there’s $300 in a company account somewhere that used to be yours, assuming the check’s actually cleared by now.  So the hell what?  We’ll give it back if you cancel.  So please cancel?  Thanks.

Just not in the mood for dicks today.  I was running from the second I got to the store until maybe half an hour ago.  I picked the boy up from my parents at 8:30, already half an hour past his bedtime, and came home and fed the pets and changed the bed and made him put his pajamas on and got him into bed and wrote a blog post and now maybe I can read and relax for a bit before I go to sleep.  Will I be any more tolerant toward entitled assholes tomorrow?  No, I will not.

(Note, because I feel like I should: the vast majority of my customers are really nice people.  I interacted with way more than two people today, but damn if I wasn’t surprised that I got through those two interactions without blowing my stack.  It was a really long day.)