Orders, Voicemails, and Whines

Today was one of those days. Questions, additional work, voicemails, emails, etc. filled my day with what seemed to be an overabundance of work for one day. Don't get me wrong. I do like to keep busy but at a reasonable pace. There were several times I wanted to charge my stupid fee. But prevail I must and prevail I did. When the time came to bolt like lightening, my rear end was out of there faster than two jerks of a sheep's tail.

The day started off innocently enough. There were a few orders left over from yesterday and I proceeded to take care of them first thing. After my co-worker arrived, the newer orders started coming in at a fever pitch. After working together for a while, I sent all orders to him because my manager asked me to key in a few semi-large orders for a few of our customers. As I was doing that task, my phone kept ringing and my co-worker was getting more and more inundated with work. Once I finished with the orders, I listened to all the voice mails and before I could delete them all, more were waiting for me. In addition to all of that, the internet at work was slow today causing us to take more time to order parts and ask questions. I ended up going to lunch 30 minutes later than I normally do which put my co-worker later as well. While he was away, I tried to catch up as much as I could, but I never could stop my tires from spinning in the mud of the day.

The icing on this cake of a day was when a customer in Mississippi had called in looking to see if a certain part was available. There was a big note on the slip that said the "customer was waiting". I usually ignore those notes and put them at the bottom of the pile in the order that they arrived. They are no more important than the people that called in before them. When I finally got around to looking for the part's availability, I found out that it was not at the online location and had to call in. It was available at the supplier and being armed with the facts, I called the customer back. She proceeded to tell me that she had already waited an hour and that she had gone ahead and ordered it on the online system. I about crawled through the phone line to ring her jaw. Why in the world didn't she just order it from the very beginning instead of calling in with a demand and wasting my time? Obviously the answer was at her fingertips the whole time and she didn't need to call it in. People like that drive me absolutely crazy!

Another issue was the a particular Midwestern DC. This DC nitpicks everything and is always calling in the ask why we did such and such or why we didn't do it that way, etc, etc, etc. It seems to me that this DC and several others have given up what little customer service they had and have "transferred" it all to Raleigh. They expect us to do everything just like they did before the change. How can we, being up to 1500 miles away, know what is going on in their area and how to service their customer better than they could there?? Their excuse is that they are low on staff. So what? We aren't fully staffed for all the work we have to do, but we do it anyway. They need to keep in mind that they are still working in customer service and that taking care of the customer, no matter how trying, is important. Quit passing if off on someone else.

Thanks for reading. I had to get that off my chest. I could go on and on and on, but you would fall our of your chair with boredom.

Until next time, have a blessed day!