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Originally posted by Forever_frost
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I used to work with quite the pair.
One, who i will call Nostrils, was a 23 year old mother of two kids, which she had when she was 15 and then 17. Did lots of coke, x, you name it. Now the company was formerly based in Lake Havasu AZ, which is party city. Now with having kids, a GED, and her only job ever being at the company , she thinks she is hot shit. To be honest, she admitted she wasnt a "salesperson", and she really DID know the product, but thats not enough. I winced every time she would snap a "No, we cant do that" or worse "No, we WONT do that" to a customer.
Two, who i will call PruneJuice (or PJ for short) was a gray hair from Havasu who was so OCD and neurotic, she had to have EVERYTHING laid out exactly her way, or no way. She was so particular about her diet. If you can name a food, she can find a reason why not to eat it. This makes arranging company wide luncheons INCREDIBLY difficult. We arnt talking "oh she is a vegetarian" difficulty, but "she can only eat wheat harvested from the bowels of nicaragua that are BFE certified to be free of petacides" kind of crazy. No tomatos, no root vegatibles, almost all meat is right out unless prepared in very special conditions. PJ also had to wear black. ALWAYS black. She said it was "her personal branding". It would be 110 degrees, and she would wear black gloves,pants, blouse, and a scarf. Would not even come close to complying with Business-like attire, in a sales environment. Also, her daughter was over 350 pounds at age 15, and she was absolutely committed to having her either homeschooled, or in very VERY restrictive schools, schools which she specifically wanted to limit social access to other kids.
Nostrils was in charge of a small sales team, until word got around that they were bringing in me, a veteran of the umbrella organization but not the company. Someone with a college degree, and sales experience. She had a limited window though in which she was going to be boss, and run the show while i learned the ropes, and she made it as difficult as possible for me. I'm talking getting all the worst assignments, and worst territories. I dont mind being the new guy and taking my lumps, but its REALLY not smart to do it to someone who will soon be your boss.
I'm sorry, but you cant run a sales team, in which the structure fosters competition (rather than collaboration) and have one team member be in charge of the territories and accounts, cherry picking the good ones. Of course, if you are a mom who lost out on her youth by farting out kids, i guess you want to be a bit of a vengeful bitch.
Couple that with PJ being overly territorial about accounts which she hadnt followed up with in years, and our own supervisor making it her mission to get her husband a job, rather than run her team, and you have a disaster. My boss could sell, but she honestly didnt ever really do her job, and it became a "girls club" . The other management became aware of the problem of their own accord, and had a meeting about it once they saw trouble brewing, but any action items to fix the situation were never implimented.
Wasnt a big surprise that there was a huge "reorganization" not long after my round of layoffs happen, with the vast majority of upper management chopped....after they had chopped all us in a vain effort to save their own skins.
Long story short : I'll take a polite racist lebanese farter over Nostrils and PJ.
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