(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

Well. The Sales Meeting is dying down. The Sales meeting is a big annual event at my company where all the distant, remote and iconoclastic, ruggedly individualistic salespeople are called back to Cleveland to be trained and achieve compliance. It comes once a year and this year they got me a hotel room to take everyone’s computers in and perform maintenance and updates. And to install new software and so on. It’s kind of a hard thing to do- and all along these guys are banging on my door and not taking no for an answer because they can’t be without their computers for even one minute. Last year we did some larger scale deployments and set up two new machines. This year, only one new computer was issued – but our one software piece has some really shitty aspects that make installing it a huge bastard of a job – so I sat through conferences and so on and plugging away on this goon computer and consulting knowledgebase articles and being generally very tired and hungover the whole time.

The big thing this year was iPhones – they all got them, I took back their shitty blackberries and issued all new phones and was given about 20 minutes to do training on them – which is not enough time but I’m told that it is more important that the Customer Service team be allowed to put on their comedy sketch than to train these guys how to use their phones- I guess, whatever, I’m available to take calls later, if they can figure out how to call me.

Of course I wake up stupid early when the bag of blackberries in my room all start in with their alarms – 12 different alarms between 5:18 and 6:44 – I wonder if the interface is just a nuisance and that’s why you end up setting a 5:18 alarm, or if you really have to precisely be up at that time? I don’t even know. Anyhow- down at the hotel in the suburban wasteland – a complete hole in the RTA’s coverage of the region, I have to beg rides off of people and end up leaving my many computers, and phone bags and personal effects in the backs of my coworkers cars. I get home after midnight last night, nice and whiskeyed and stumble down to sleep, wake up and am sad/mad that I can’t get at my book because I really want to finish it now – or at least check in with it. Kafka on the Shore- not disappointing. I’ll definitely be sad to see it go when it’s done.

Comments

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I guess which is to say that I recommitted myself to a hatred of traveling, staying at hotels and being away from home, and that I remembered again that it turns out that I like things to be a specific way and don't enjoy it when they are not - which is something I didn't think would happen to me.

[sholanda.livejournal.com]

i like that murakami

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Did you try the Wind Up Bird Chronicle? I really, really liked it.

[fordmadoxfraud.livejournal.com]

The ringing bag of blackberries is a pretty comical image.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I stumbled around undressed in the dark mumbling like an idiot.

[rasa.livejournal.com]

Yes! I came here to say specifically that. It's kind of a priceless mental image. It made me think of my dad, too. He set an alarm on his watch, one day, for some reason he has now forgotten, for 1:14 pm. It goes off every day at 1:14 pm and if we're all together my mom and I will stop and yell "OH, IT'S 1:14 PM." He's getting a little hard of hearing (just a tiny bit) so sometimes he doesn't hear it (it's right on his own wrist?) and we'll point it out to him. He can't remember how to un-set it. And I also myself have a watch I set a long time ago for 11 am, but it's somewhere in a dim corner of my room, so I only hear it if it's very very quiet which it is not often with a baby, and it also doesn't seem to go off every day.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Oh now I totally know who you are at your company.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I'm the guy who has the patience to do frustrating tasks and read instruction manuals.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Well yes but also I mean; when we have sales conferences, there is a guy like you, there, too! In a room tutoring people & fixing their laptops.

[kromelizard.livejournal.com]

I fucking feel this.