"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

fireworks
2001-10-09 - 6:14 p.m.

it's about 4:15 and there's three of us on the floor, with one guy out. a call comes in. myself and dave are on the phone, business calls. jeff is on the phone, but bullshitting. the call get sent to jeff, who puts whoever he's on the phone with on mute and wants to know why he got the call. he decides to ignore it and call goes into his voicemail. the customer pounds outs and goes back to the recpetionist. the customer is then told that we are all on the phone and would they like to hold? jeff goes back to bullshitting and i get mad. i put my call on hold and yell over to jeff to quit dicking around and take the call. jeff bitches and moans, but takes the call. no managers were on the floor when all this started, but one happnened to walk by at the end, when i was yelling at jeff. nothing was said the but later steve calls me to say he hear what i said and that he was glad i did. he agreed, perhaps not with my choice of words, but with my intent. as i'm talking to steve, jeff says to me 'why did you get so mad, it was only one of tom's customers.' i told steve i had to go and hung up rather rudly. i need to call him tomorrow and apologize. tom's the guy who is out and that's just _not_ acceptable to say that it doesn't matter because it's his customer. i tore into jeff. this isn't the first time he's done this. he's done it before to my customers and i started yelling, as in loud voice...not 'scolding' like some poeple say when they say 'i yelled at him'. this time our manager was on the floor and he sat there kind of wide-eyed at the exchange. i don't think he's ever seen me mad before, in fact i don't think anyone there has ever heard me get that mad in two years.

you see, that could have been my customer. jeff's actions could have pissed that person off and they could have just called someone else and we lost the business. it makes me furious to think that when i'm not in that's how he treats my customers. it's very simply not acceptable. i've been present twice now when he's done it. if there's a third time either he is fired or i'm walking. i told our boss (who is also called jeff, so that's why i call him the boss) that i'm off jeff's backup list and i'm taking him off as backups for my accounts.

hell, i just picked up two new accounts that no longer wanted to talk to jeff. he's in the process of house shopping two. it's a shame, he's been here the longest. he should be the most in tune with handling customers.

i'm debating about tomorrow. i'm wondering if i should ask dave what he thought today while tom is around or not....so tom will want to know what happened....

my boss offered to take me to dinner, which we just got back from. he thought jeff and and i were going to thrown-down and tumble there in the office. i might have hit jeff, but he wasn't anything even near angry. he was confused why i was so pissed, why i got mad about his treatment of one of tom's customers. he just said things like 'it's no big deal, it's over with, calm down'. i was just a bit enraged and cussing at him. dave asked me if i was done, cause he wanted to make a phone call and didn't want to get my voice in the background.

anyway, that's my story for today. sorry it took so long. i feel kinda good that i went off on him though. it's good to actaully express things in person and not just type...