For more than an hour and a half.
I have no control over my schedule, of course. They tell me when to be there; my job is to be there when I'm told to be there, and do what I'm supposed to do, and try to do it right. Part of that means trying to sell service plans to people, which is not at all a surprise considering that's how the company makes money: selling products and services. I'm not dismayed at having to sell service plans, particularly when a one-time repair on one computer costs as much as a year's worth of service on up to three machines.
But I can't sell service plans if there's no one to sell them to. And when I spend a significant fraction of my shift standing around and trying to avoid terminal boredom because no one is picking up or dropping off computers, it tends to depress my numbers just a bit.
This morning, then, I managed to sell a single 1-year plan. I could have sold a second but the client in question had an issue with his credit card that required he call the bank and straighten things out, which kept me from garnering that second sale.
They've just started tracking sales numbers this past week, and already I'm on the bottom; I'm typically scheduled to work the least-trafficked hours and my numbers reflect that. Someone has to be there to man the counter even when there's no business, and I don't mind it being me, but I just worry that six months from now someone's going to tell me, "Well, your sales numbers being what they are...sorry."
*sigh*
On the other hand, these are not stupid people. One thing that's impressed me about this job is that my coworkers are all intelligent, and that definitely includes the people above me. I have to believe that they know when the store's busy and when it's not; that being the case it would make sense to put the least experienced guy in those hours in order to let him gain experience doing the job in a relatively low-pressure environment. (And that one time they guessed wrong, I did a great job anyway.)
The other factor comes from the fact that we handle phone repairs there, too. If a client has an issue with his cell phone and needs to send it out for repair, we handle it--and there's no selling a tech support plan to a phone customer. That's 100% after-sale support and if their protection plan has expired there is quite literally nothing we can do about it.
I handled one inbound computer today. I handled two outbound computers today, and then I did two outbound phones and one inbound. Would have been two inbound if that woman's protection plan had been up to date, but it wasn't. There was also the abortive attempt by one guy to buy tech support. And of all the customer interactions I had today--which was not a very busy day anyway--exactly two of them were sales opportunities; the rest were all post-sale transactions. (And I did nail the sales opportunities, even if one couldn't be completed because of factors beyond my control.)
How do I sell things?
* * *
GOP caves on fiscal conservatism because they really aren't interested in cutting the federal budget. Somewhere I saw a graph that illustrated the difference between the budget with and without the sequester.
Ah, it was here. Ace FTW:
You see that teeny, tiny difference in sequester and non-sequester spending? That little difference is what we're now reduced to fighting over. That insignificant bit.I'm not surprised or shocked by the Ryan "deal" that gives the Democrats everything they want and eliminates the sequester, because I expected it all along. I thought it would happen sooner, in fact, and I'm surprised that it hasn't.
Even that pittance of savings is too much, too controversial, too politically dangerous to touch. So even that ludicrously small amount of savings must be undone by the Republican Party, because we just can't win elections when we're making draconian cuts like that.
But once the GOP is in control of all branches of government, then they'll start getting serious about putting the government on a diet.
Swearsies!
I predicted this.
* * *
IRS is still being used to punish Obama's enemies. Of course it is! Why wouldn't it be? It's not like there have been any consequences for the illegal use of the IRS! No one's gone to jail or even lost his job over this shit, so why wouldn't it continue? No one's going to jail, either, because the press is strangely incurious about the political use of the tax agency as a certain political party's SS.
* * *
I've got just a little while before choir practice, so I'm off.