Life proceeds apace...
Sep. 15th, 2006 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI'm home early-ish tonight, and as a result there will be early bedtime for Phnee. Yes. Early early bed. I may watch a DVD first, but the odds are good that, just as I did yesterday, I'll be nodding off in front of the tv anyway and just give up and go to sleep.
Work is no longer absolutely fucking insane. It's just insane. The backlog created by SWMNBN is slowly but surely diminishing, and I am on top of all the work that's come our way since I've started there. The good news is that, because I have a pretty good memory for this sort of thing, I'm able to keep track of my own work. The bad news is that, if it's someone else's work, then I have no idea what people are talking about when they ask me about it.
SWMNBN, may her soul be devoured by the Great Old Ones when the stars are right, did everything half-assed. There are incomplete payment records, files that make no sense, client files that haven't been updated properly, and it's basically a giant mess. It's less of a giant mess now, but I'll be cleaning up for a very long time to come, believe you me. I am displeased.
However, Office!Boss has not freaked out once about my work in the past two days. Up until Thursday, there were serious fireworks because I was constantly in a position where I'd have to say: "I'm sorry [Office!Boss], I just don't know. I'll have to get back to you." For two days now, I have been completely on the ball, and I am pleased as punch.
To say that Office!Boss is pleased would be a freaking understatement. Yesterday, he bought me a Tim Horton's coffee. Large double double, just the way I like it.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashforestwalker tells me that this is Significant™. Apparently it's Office!Boss' secret code for "Welcome aboard, I now consider you officially part of our team." I am very very pleased about this. I'm extraordinarily glad that after less than two weeks on my own I have proved my worth as an asset to the company.
I also cleaned out our message box today. We get our faxes and voicemail at the same number, and there were about twenty faxes sitting in there, taking up valuable message box space. The advantage is that you can check your faxes on an internet site and then save them as a file on your computer. Saves paper and having metric assloads of paper files all over the place. So today I went through all the faxes, saved them all in the right places, and deleted them from the mailbox.
Monday's project is doing ALL my client follow-ups. Now that I'm getting pretty comfortable with the whole work and quote scheduling system, I'm a lot less stressed about calling up clients. Before I was always super super stressed about the phone calls because I was afraid I was doing it all back-asswards, but I've taken so many new leads (that's what we call new jobs that get called in) in the past two weeks or so that it's pretty much a breeze now. I'm still making the occasional mistake, for instance I double-booked someone by accident yesterday, but I caught it today in plenty of time and left the customer a message to call me back to reschedule. No biggie.
So Monday and very like Tuesday and maybe even Wednesday will be devoted to client follow-ups. There are a LOT of clients to call. This isn't even all SWMNBN's fault: we get tons and tons and tons of new online requests every day, so they pile up quickly. My quote schedule (appointments that I give out so that someone will go and do a free estimate for the client) is filling up almost faster than I can keep up with. This is both good and bad, obviously. We're probably going to lose a fair number of clients because we just don't have the time to do their renovations right now, and they won't be willing to wait for what's now likely over a month before they get their work done.
I also have a metric assload of estimates to type up and send out. I may ask my father if I can borrow the car on Monday and A) go into work early, and B) leave work late, so that I can just get all my stuff typed up that needs typing. The problem with my "regular" working hours is that I have next to NO time whatsoever to type up quotes and new leads and what have you. So that always gets pushed back, and that's bad. So if the car is available and not broken (it was having problems, last I heard), I will ask to take it into work that one day. One more really long day might get rid of the Giant Pile Of Things To Be Typed. All I need is two or three hours of uninterrupted time to work. If it's more than two hours I will be very surprised, but I'm willing to give myself some wriggle room here.
Maybe in a few months I'll invest in some sort of inexpensive desktop computer (a PC) so that I can take some basic typing work home with me. That way I won't be stuck at the office until all hours and can just f*ck off at 4pm the way I'm supposed to.
Okay. Going to go veg in front of my DVD player for a while, then collapse and go to sleep.
On an unrelated note: Apocalyptica's version of "The Unforgiven" could very well be mistaken for a piece by Ennio Morricone in places. I am absurdly pleased by this. I think I'll be listening to that when I next write "Beyond the Pale."
Work is no longer absolutely fucking insane. It's just insane. The backlog created by SWMNBN is slowly but surely diminishing, and I am on top of all the work that's come our way since I've started there. The good news is that, because I have a pretty good memory for this sort of thing, I'm able to keep track of my own work. The bad news is that, if it's someone else's work, then I have no idea what people are talking about when they ask me about it.
SWMNBN, may her soul be devoured by the Great Old Ones when the stars are right, did everything half-assed. There are incomplete payment records, files that make no sense, client files that haven't been updated properly, and it's basically a giant mess. It's less of a giant mess now, but I'll be cleaning up for a very long time to come, believe you me. I am displeased.
However, Office!Boss has not freaked out once about my work in the past two days. Up until Thursday, there were serious fireworks because I was constantly in a position where I'd have to say: "I'm sorry [Office!Boss], I just don't know. I'll have to get back to you." For two days now, I have been completely on the ball, and I am pleased as punch.
To say that Office!Boss is pleased would be a freaking understatement. Yesterday, he bought me a Tim Horton's coffee. Large double double, just the way I like it.
ashforestwalker tells me that this is Significant™. Apparently it's Office!Boss' secret code for "Welcome aboard, I now consider you officially part of our team." I am very very pleased about this. I'm extraordinarily glad that after less than two weeks on my own I have proved my worth as an asset to the company.I also cleaned out our message box today. We get our faxes and voicemail at the same number, and there were about twenty faxes sitting in there, taking up valuable message box space. The advantage is that you can check your faxes on an internet site and then save them as a file on your computer. Saves paper and having metric assloads of paper files all over the place. So today I went through all the faxes, saved them all in the right places, and deleted them from the mailbox.
Monday's project is doing ALL my client follow-ups. Now that I'm getting pretty comfortable with the whole work and quote scheduling system, I'm a lot less stressed about calling up clients. Before I was always super super stressed about the phone calls because I was afraid I was doing it all back-asswards, but I've taken so many new leads (that's what we call new jobs that get called in) in the past two weeks or so that it's pretty much a breeze now. I'm still making the occasional mistake, for instance I double-booked someone by accident yesterday, but I caught it today in plenty of time and left the customer a message to call me back to reschedule. No biggie.
So Monday and very like Tuesday and maybe even Wednesday will be devoted to client follow-ups. There are a LOT of clients to call. This isn't even all SWMNBN's fault: we get tons and tons and tons of new online requests every day, so they pile up quickly. My quote schedule (appointments that I give out so that someone will go and do a free estimate for the client) is filling up almost faster than I can keep up with. This is both good and bad, obviously. We're probably going to lose a fair number of clients because we just don't have the time to do their renovations right now, and they won't be willing to wait for what's now likely over a month before they get their work done.
I also have a metric assload of estimates to type up and send out. I may ask my father if I can borrow the car on Monday and A) go into work early, and B) leave work late, so that I can just get all my stuff typed up that needs typing. The problem with my "regular" working hours is that I have next to NO time whatsoever to type up quotes and new leads and what have you. So that always gets pushed back, and that's bad. So if the car is available and not broken (it was having problems, last I heard), I will ask to take it into work that one day. One more really long day might get rid of the Giant Pile Of Things To Be Typed. All I need is two or three hours of uninterrupted time to work. If it's more than two hours I will be very surprised, but I'm willing to give myself some wriggle room here.
Maybe in a few months I'll invest in some sort of inexpensive desktop computer (a PC) so that I can take some basic typing work home with me. That way I won't be stuck at the office until all hours and can just f*ck off at 4pm the way I'm supposed to.
Okay. Going to go veg in front of my DVD player for a while, then collapse and go to sleep.
On an unrelated note: Apocalyptica's version of "The Unforgiven" could very well be mistaken for a piece by Ennio Morricone in places. I am absurdly pleased by this. I think I'll be listening to that when I next write "Beyond the Pale."