Super Selfish

So that colleague of mine who questioned my VM capabilities has strike again and this time, she isn't criticizing me for not doing a good job, but she is really showing how selfish and greedy she is as an individual, and kinda highlights why my boss decided to scrap the commission scheme when he started hiring the newer sales team (aside from trying to save money that is).

 So just some background before I get into what happened.

About 3 months after I join my current company, my boss decided to make me a "brand expert" for this particular customized wardrobe brand from Italy that we carried, the previous VM who was still with the company at that point was also a "brand expert" for it. Brand experts doesn't really mean we are experts of the brand, it's more like a title that was given to us because there is a software that had to be used in order to configure the wardrobe, and since the previous VM and I were probably the only ones competent enough to learn the software, we were made the "brand experts" that and also mainly due to our working experience in the Interior Design industry. 

So whilst the previous VM was still working at the company, if anyone from the sales team had a customer who was interested in the Wardrobe System, they will pull the previous VM into the project and he would talk to the clients to get their needs and prepare the drawings for them, since I was new at that time, I was never really pulled into such projects,  sometimes however, my colleagues will pull me into conversations they are having with their clients about the brand, and when there are questions that my colleagues do not have answers to, they will pull me and and have their clients direct those questions me, questions I don't always have answers to because I was literally only made the brand expert less than a month ago and have only been in the company for 4 to 5 months at that point, compared to most of my colleagues who have been in the company far longer than me, some even having been around for more than a decade, so if anything, I should be the one asking them. 

It's really quite ridiculous how they think that just because I was assigned as the brand expert, I would suddenly be an expert at everything related to the brand. It's just a freaking title, and most of the time, I would just be stuck in this awkward position of not really knowing how to answer the customers.

Anyways, after the previous VM left, I became the only brand expert and that's when my colleagues started approaching me to help them with the drawings. I have no problem with using the software, it's relatively easy to learn, not the most intuitive, pretty buggy actually, using it just makes me wish I was using Sketch Up.

I digress...

So this particular colleague of mine who had criticized my VM skills, whom I shall just refer to as Anne, approached me and told me that she has a client who is interested to do the custom wardrobe, she sends me the floorplan and starts sharing with me what the client is looking at, which is essentially just her telling me...

"They actually have no idea what they want, so you just propose first."

... basically sharing fuck all, can't even get their needs properly, she then informs me the client wants to do a sliding door and ask me if we had that option, so I tell her we do, but then the client only wants to do a portion of the wardrobe as a sliding glass door, which we can't do because we don't do glass sliding doors, she forwards me a picture of what the client had send her as an example of a sliding door as well as the overall message she was having with them. 

I look at the message and I find out that the client isn't talking about doing a sliding wardrobe door, the client is talking about planning to do a sliding glass door to separate her room and that sliding door will open towards the wardrobe, so what the client is asking is for us to leave a gap between the wardrobe for the sliding door! Like it's bloody written fucking clearly in the message the client send her, it's drawn on her plan, they even have a fucking picture of the sliding door attached they are looking to do attached, so I have no fucking idea how she could misinterpret it as the client wanting to do a sliding wardrobe door, I tell that to her, she then laughs it off and I just can't believe how dense she is. 

Anyways, I complete the drawings a few days later and she proceeds to arrange a meeting with the clients,, I sat in with her during her meeting with the clients, and as I was talking to them about the wardrobe and introducing the materials to them, she suddenly disappears from the store, she just went MIA and I ended up talking to the client for a good 30 to 45 minutes on my own, when she finally came back, she apologized and said she had a family emergency she had to attend to, my 30 to 45 minutes with the clients enabled me to click with them more than she did and it was kinda weird because every time she spoke to them, the husband would kinda look at me for my input.

So the client leaves after we were done and I updated Anne about what I had discussed with her client with regards to the wardrobe, she then ask me what I think of the client and I told her I think the potential to proceed is there but that we should probably only discuss the wardrobe again when the place is ready, so we can do a site visit and take measurements, to which she goes...

"The house isn't ready yet, so you want them to wait? Wouldn't that be too late then? I just want to close this sales soon, they already came by 2 months ago, now that they are here, I want to quickly get them to confirm the order."

... I then tell her that it's probably not a good idea to do that because there is a lot of risk involved if we don't do a site measurement and she just brushes it off, so I also didn't bother much after because we are still at the early stages of discussion, the project probably won't be confirmed so soon.

A few days pass and I update the drawings for her, she sends the drawings to her client and ask me if I am available the following week to meet her client, I then ask her if they were going to confirm the wardrobe and she said they are very interested and it's very likely, so I reiterated to her once again about the risk and she once again brushes it off, focusing just purely on closing the sales. The client however decides to postpone the meeting, so today at work, I decided to ask her again when the meeting with the client will happen, she says probably this week when I am around so I can sit in and pretty much do all the work, I then decided to advise her again ...

" I don't think we should confirm with the customer so quickly, we measure the walls for his wardrobe first then we get the customer to confirm the sales."

... to which she replies with a rhetorical...

"Measure what wall? The house is not even ready yet, what wall do you want to measure."

When she said that to me, she was also sort of expecting me to give her an answer, it's like one of those questions that people ask just to piss you off because they know you know the answer to it and want you to say it out loud to make you feel stupid, so I got very annoyed and I said to her...

"You are asking me? They are your customer! You should know!"

... and she just laughs it off and goes...

"No lah, I mean their house is not ready yet, how to measure?"

... which is my exact fucking point, you want to do a customized wardrobe that will be tucked into a wall niche, you will need to have the exact measurements of the wall, which we do not have because the house is not ready yet, and you want the customer to confirm the order? Are you fucking dense, or just a greedy individual who wants to get your share of the commission as quickly as possible? If the measurement is wrong, not only will the customer have to wait another 5 months for the amended wardrobe to be fabricated and shipped over from Italy, our company will probably also end up incurring a loss because we will definitely have to replace the client's wardrobe and absorb the cost! 

I mean the level of selfishness she exhibits is insane, no doubt if she gets the order confirmed and the wardrobe ends up not fitting the space when it arrives, she is going to throw me under the bus and put the blame on me because I was the one who did the drawings for the project, because that's the kind of person she is, I was warned about her by my supervisor pretty much during my first week into the job.

But I will make my stance very clear to her client as well as to her, that I am only in charge of doing the drawings based on the measurements that I got from the floorplan, that anything beyond that will not be within my responsibility anymore and any and all issues pertaining to the delivery and installation will be directed to my colleague Anne.

That means if anything fucks up, go and fuck her up.

Just to add on since I am ranting about her.

She has this habit of reserving furniture pieces in our store indefinitely for her customers and when the customer doesn't get back to her, she doesn't bother to follow up and check if they are still interested and what ends up happening is the pieces is just left on reserved for her customers.

I had another colleague who had a customer who was interested in this particular armchair that had been reserved for Anne's customer, and when Anne saw that the reservation had been swapped for someone else, she had the audacity to say to that colleague...

"You reserved for you client? Did you know I reserve that armchair for my client?" 

... a chair she had already reserved for 2 fucking months with zero updates, she thinks the entire store belongs to her.