willpowerthru

I’ve really got to go to the grocery store.

I keep putting it off for whatever reason.

Tomorrow night. Friday night. I’m going to the grocery store. There. It’s in writing. It’s on the internet.

So what did you do today?

I did this:

That’s what I do every morning so I can plan my estimates/sales calls in the most efficient way possible. I’m not the best with direction, especially since I’ve probably been to Knox, IN once in my life before I worked as the fambiz’s estimator. Yes, it was for a Klan rally.

Just kidding, Knox. You know I love you.

But really, Google Maps is my best friend when planning my day. It’s mucho efficient. Today I had a 9am and 10am appointment (B and C respectively) and the rest were untimed fit-ins.

I normally like to have one day in Michigan City, one day in LaPorte, and so on, but today there were valid reasons to go to all of these cities…still, it was a LOT of driving.

I like driving around doing my job, but it means you see some stupid people doing some stupid shit, and because you are in a company vehicle, you can’t give them the finger or even screw with them emotionally. Ok, I don’t know that I’ve ever screwed with someone in another car emotionally, but you get what I mean.

I guess you could hold up a sign that says, “Hey you are cute, give me your number” and then they look at you like, “what?” and you hold up another sign that says, “just kidding, you are very ugly and I do not want your number.”

That would be screwing with another driver emotionally. End Scene.

Hey Ben, you sure are saying a lot of words, but I’d prefer a picture of someone being stupid on the road.

Done and done:

Straddling the turn lane and my lane. 12-15 feet out in the intersection. Silly old person.

Sorry if that’s your grandmother.

Speaking of old people, I was on an estimate today, and this guy had to be 75 to 80 years old, and we’re talking about Jesus…just kidding, wanted to see if you were paying attention.

We were talking about the fact that my design *cough* of the gutter system called for piping the upper downspout into the lower gutter so the shingles on the lower roof don’t take a beating and he responded with, “Oh that’s cool”.

It’s not “cool” at all. But the fact that he used the word “cool”, made my day. It’s the little things, people. I wondered if it’s because I’m young and he’s old so he was trying to use my language, or if (more likely) he has grandkids and they use that for every positive adjective because they don’t know what “amazeballs” is yet.

Either way it was…well….cool.

The old dude also wore a ear protection on his head the whole time, like, propped up uncomfortably high on his head. I WISH I had a picture of that.

HERE IS A STORY ABOUT MY WORK THAT YOU WILL FIND VERY SOAP-BOXY….If you want to skip it…PLEASE scroll down to PAM FROM THE OFFICE BEING SEXY, WHICH IS JUST…NOT….RIGHT.

On the job front, we also sent the crew out to do an entire house only to find out that the homeowner got someone else to do it quicker than us and didn’t call us to tell us that information.

No big deal though, right? So someone else got to it first, there’ll be more jobs right? RIGHT? Or……….NO:

The problem is that we have to pay our crew for the time they wasted going to that house, we also have to scramble to find another job that they can do instead, which requires someone to be in the office to get that work to give to the crew (papa bear and I were both out doing estimates so he had to cancel one and drive back to the office). Also the guys had loaded into that color to do that job, meaning we would have to find a sold job, in that area, in that color, to minimize losses on the project. That didn’t happen either. So because someone couldn’t pick up the phone to say, “I need to cancel my job”, we lost money.

The really shit part was that I went out of my way to explain everything to the people, making sure they understood everything, and were very comfortable with it all. (My point being, I didn’t just measure and leave them a price, I met with them for about 45 minutes to address all of their concerns)

NOW, as a company, I have a signed contract that says we are to remove all existing gutter and downspout and put up all new. Clearly these are not the gutters and downspouts that I bid to take down and replace, these are brand new gutters and downspouts. The contract does not specify anything other than “existing gutter and downspout”.

I could have told the crew to go ahead and remove the gutter and downspout and replace it with ours, and sent them a bill for the work.

We don’t do amazingly awesome shit like that that makes us feel good but then later gets us into trouble. It’s like professional Ben is the opposite of personal Ben.

Besides, they probably wouldn’t have paid the bill and then it’s this long drawn out legal battle and our name gets sullied. Hehe, sullied.

Two saving graces about the entire thing. Our guys that went to the house noticed right off the bat that these were new gutters and spouts, and had the wherewithal to call and ask instead of actually just following the job card and replacing brand new gutter with ours. The guys that work for LaPorte Seamless Gutter are great. Especially our crew leaders. They do a great job and I’m never afraid of what they’ll say/do about something.

Also, the crew noticed two things right off the bat that we would never do, that this other company did do, that will cause the entire system to fail within the first year or two. So basically, these people paid around 1500 dollars to have us come back in a year and replace everything for another 1500 because they couldn’t pick up the phone…

That’s called JUSTICE.

See….I like it but I don’t like it.

Anyway.

I’m drinking beers tonight. Multiple beers. It IS THURSDAY AFTERALL.

Am I proud of it? No. Well…a little, drinking beer is awesome.

No, what I MEAN is, is it healthy? absolutely not.

Today was a little 1st world stressful though, so I’m having a few.

You know, first world stressful, like, you were at your job and ANYTHING HAPPENED EVER.

If you were in an area of the world known as the “third world”…having a job? hahahahaha how about, “having water to drink”.

Boom, perspective.

SO…now I’m constantly trying to balance the whole first world white people problems thing against feeling stress from my job… obviously I want some kind of justification for feeling stressed at my job, but I feel like I’m a complete asshole when I complain about anything because obviously people in other parts of the world are BEING RAPED EVERYDAY AND I CAN’T GET MY COMPUTER TO LOAD OUTLOOK ON THE FIRST TRY.

Wow. I AM a dick. So are you. Lighten up, everything is f*cking awesome.

Let’s make tomorrow, “Everything is f*cking awesome and I’m super lucky to be alive right now”….day.

Deal?

DEAL!