9th Cycle - Covid

 I forked out $900 to rent a car 2 weeks before my Reservist started, I got my Condo to approve my Temporary Vehicle Pass a week before my Reservist started so I can park that rental car in the visitor lot for the entire two weeks. I was looking forward to going to my reservist that is meant to be happening tomorrow but then I decided to go have Hai Di Lao a few days ago with some friends and ended up getting Covid.

I have always believed myself to be very lucky when it came to my NS commitments, when I was in BMT, I was placed in a Company that offered great Welfare, when I got assigned to my Vocation, it didn't require me to do Outfield Training and I am able to book out 50% of the time as compared to most other vocations who are only able to book out on the weekends. When I ORD-ed and had to go back for my Reservist, it was also simply doing Guard Duty, so imagine my surprise when I got so royally fucked by the Covid Positive test result this morning.

The symptoms started showing yesterday night, I had a fever, I was having chills, my whole body was aching, especially my lower back  and when I first took a test in the morning, I was negative, in fact I took 4 ART test over the span of the entire day, 3 times at work, and they were all negative, I honestly thought I had some sort of immunity towards Covid because my entire family had it before all at the same time and I was able to come out unscathed.

If it wasn't Covid, if it had been a simple fever, I was definitely still going back for my Reservist just because of how much planning I had already done with the Rental Car and the fact that this is my 9th Cycle, the second last cycle left before I officially MR, plus I always had a reservist buddy with me throughout all my cycles, someone I had known since 2011, and if I were to defer this cycle, that meant that he will no longer be with me for my future cycles anymore.

I went to collect my car, the Honda Fit, first before I actually did the Covid Test this morning, I was semi-confident that if the results were still negative, because if the results are negative whilst I was in the worst of it last night, then it probably wasn't Covid, it was probably just a simple fever. And if it's a simple fever, I can just report to the medical officer tomorrow in camp, get slap with a 2 day MC, and probably still be able serve out the remainder of my reservist.

That is until one of my friend that I had met for Hai Di Lao on Friday told me she was Covid Positive, that was when I started getting worried, I tried to tell myself that my fever isn't due to Covid, that it had to be something else because I was already feeling slightly better, but then she persuaded me to just get myself tested again because it takes a while for the Covid symptoms to show on the ART Test, so I decided to do it right after I collect my car.

I reach the car workshop and did all the paper work, the car itself was great, it is a white model and not a black model that I had originally thought it would be , but I didn't care too much about it, as long as it could drive me from Point A to Point B, it's all good for me, the internal looks old for sure, but it was much better than the KIA Picanto I had loaned last year, the head room was sufficient, the car felt like it had more power than the Picanto and the good thing is that it still feels small enough for me to be comfortable driving it. It did take some time for me to probably get used to all the knobs and what not of the car, I mean it has almost been a year since I last drove a car, but after that initial drive home, everything sort of came back and driving felt natural again. 

I drove to the shopping mall near my home to get lunch for my sister, and I had planned to visit the clinic in the mall as well, but the queue was so long I decided to give up on the latter and just went straight home right after, parked my car at the visitor lot, and happily headed home with food in hand. 

I really didn't want to take another ART Test, I wanted to remain oblivious to the results because I had already gotten my car, it usage needed to be maximized by my Reservist, but then a part of me felt like I needed to make doubly sure, and if I am still negative, then it's all good. So I did, I took the test kit out that the government had given us a few months back and I really stuck that swap right up my nasal passage, to get all that nasal goodness, I did both nasal passage, swirled the swap in the liquid and then proceeded to finally drip that foamy goodness on the Test Kit.

I have never seen a second line appear of all my ART Test kits before, so when both lines appeared, I was so disappointed because now I have no choice, now that I know I have covid, I am not going to be able to report to camp, I am not going to potentially infect the rest of the ICTs there because that is the right thing to do.

I shared the news with my friend who was also positive and she was apologetic about potentially passing it to me and I can't blame her, getting Covid is something everyone will get eventually at some point, the only issue I have with getting Covid right now is the timing of it all, if I had gotten Covid a week before, that would have been fantastic, I could have taken a 7 day MC from work and then report to camp completely recovered, but I had to get Covid literally the day before.

My reservist friend was very bumped out about it and told me he wouldn't have anyone to talk to, I was also really bumped out, I then messaged another friend and asked him when his Reservist would happen, that maybe I can end up joining him for his cycle, this friend is a mutual friend of my reservist buddy and I, we were pretty close with each other when we were active, and I had always hoped the 3 of us could actually do 1 cycle together, and then he responded with...

"Tomorrow lol."

... like what the actual fuck! What the fuck?!?!?! The timing of everything could not be any fucking worst!

I am so angry at the entire situation. 

FUCK MY LIFE!

I ended up calling my Reservist Unit to alert them of my situation and since they needed an MC to verify, I had no choice but to go back to the clinic, I drove there and it was closed, turns out they close in the afternoon and will only reopen in the evening, so that was a waste of time. I did ended up going back in the evening and got my MC, I tried to ask the doctor if there was any possibility I could just attend my reservist and he was not very optimistic about it.

In the end, I ended up forking $70 for everything, I would have gone to a Polyclinic, but the waiting time for that is going to be insane since I hadn't make any appointment beforehand.

The only good thing that came out of this whole Covid shit is that my boss no longer has to talk to my Commander about giving me one day off to attend a brand training in the store. He wanted me to make sure I took time off from my Reservist to attend the training and he was very insistent on me making it happen and well, now it has happened, just not in the way either of us expected.

My MC is from 12th Oct - 18th Oct

The Brand Training is on 19th Oct.

Like what the actual fuck, the sheer fucking coincidence of everything just falling into place is scary.

I am secretly and selfishly hoping that my Covid result is maybe the Universe way of protecting me by making me miss this Reservist Cycle because it is going to be a really really really shitty cycle. 

And my Mum now has full access to the rental car to be used at her disposal since I will no longer be using it as often as I 'd like. I will definitely still take it for some joy rides but yeah, renting it and not being able to use it for it's main purpose is extremely extremely disappointing. Who knows? Maybe I will end up going to Phoon Huat one of this days to get ingredients for baking again, I mean I have 7 days MC and I am predicting that my results will be negative on the third day, so 4 days of doing fuck all is a great time to start baking again, or maybe I can download a story rich RPG and spend my time just being a fucking nerd.

Funny thing is I believe most people would be happy that they can get to defer their ICTs, so to many I believe my situation is one that would make most envious, but I hate it. 

Miscomm

So I got a call from a recruitment agent this afternoon sharing with me a new job opportunity that he thinks I might be suitable for based on my work experience.

During the first 5 minutes of the call, instead of telling me what the job actually is, the agent went on this questioning spree asking me about my current job and what I did previously, and I shared with him that I had been doing Interior Design previously but am currently working as an Interior Stylist, and the reason why I am actively looking for a new job at the moment is because my current role as an Interior Stylist is too sales oriented and I wanted a position that was more creative and design oriented. I think it was made very clear during the first 5 minutes of my conversation with him that I didn't want to do a sales related job at all, and this wasn't something I was telling him out on my own accord, this was information he was getting out of me from his plethora of questions.

And when he finally shares what the position is with me, I was just so fucking annoyed because it's a Sales Position in a shop selling sanitary ware. All the questions he was asking me at the start and all the replies I gave him, they were all just redundant because he didn't even bother to listen to what I was saying.

 

I said I do not want to do sales anymore and am looking for a design position, that should be a sign for you to then get to the point and tell me right away that the position is sales related, it's just all that built up he created and then I am presented with a job opening that is not even remotely close to what I am looking for.

Sales Associate in a Sanity Ware Shop.

Hello! 

I have a diploma in Interior Design.

I have 4.5 years experience as an Interior Designer

I have 1 year experience as an Interior Stylist (on my resume anyways)

How the fuck does all that experience in those design related field make me a suitable candidate for a Sales Associate in a Sanitary Ware shop? Are you fucking dense?

That 10 minutes call I had with the agent could have been a 1 minute call if he had just told me from the beginning what the job was instead of beating around the bush. I am really annoyed because I am genuinely looking for a new job at the moment and this moron gave me so much hope at the start by asking me so many questions about what I was looking for in a job, I genuinely thought the agent was ticking off the check boxes for me about the job, but nope.

I have gotten many calls from recruitment agencies before offering me a chance to interview for a position I am not interested in, but something but this particular call just got me really annoyed because of how dense the agent is. The level of annoyance I felt from this call is probably only second to this other experience I had with another recruitment agency who tricked me into going for an interview that I didn't want to go to.

Since we are on the topic of miscommunication, I also had the pleasure of attending to one customer via Zoom today for an Interior Styling Session. 

So just to quickly introduce what an Interior Styling Session is, it is essentially a service my company provides to customers who want to get furniture pieces from us but do not know where to start, so as the Interior Stylist, my job is to do Space Planning for them using furniture pieces from the brands we carry.

Most clients who understand what our service is about would usually understand why we would want to meet them in person in the Showroom, because we want them to physically try out the furniture so they can decide which one is the most comfortable, and then I can then do the furniture proposal accordingly to their preferred pieces. 

When the marketing team introduced the service via the company's Instagram page, we got about 5 customer leads. I contacted 2 leads and disseminated the rest to my colleagues. Out of the 2 I had, one responded and asked if we could do the meeting via Zoom and when she shared that request with me, I kinda had a feeling that she probably misunderstood what the service was about, but decided to agree to her request anyways and set up a Zoom appointment with her.  

The meeting starts and the first thing I asked the customer is if she knew about our company and what we do and her response was...

"I must have heard of your company, I mean I found you guys, but could I just check how you guys got my contact information?"

... so do you know our company or not? It's a simple Yes or No question,  What's "I must have?" and what's the deal with her not knowing where we got her contact information from? What have you been doing with your own contact information? Scrawl them on the walls of multiple public toilets and hope someone will save that number and contact you?  Should I say I got your number from the public restroom at Changi Village or MacRitchie Reservoir? 

I mean this first part was already a red flag to me because if you are not aware of my company, then you are probably not aware of the brands we carry and the prices of the furniture pieces form those brands. 

 

But I moved on from that and quickly introduced the company to her and told her what the Interior Styling service is about, which is to help her do a space planning for her space with the furniture pieces we carry. She just nods her head, so I requested for her to share her floorplan with me and what she is planning to do with her space.

She sends the floorplan to me via Whatsapp and then starts by telling me she wants to have a space dedicated as her study room, and that she wants to get a height adjustable study table as well as an armchair, I tell her my company doesn't carry height adjustable study tables and she then informs me that she will buy it on her own elsewhere, but that she needs me to help her decide where would be the best place to put that table.

I got a bit iffy when she shared that with me because the whole point of this service is to furnish your space with furniture pieces from our store, not to help you plan your space with furniture pieces you are going to be getting from another store. That's not a very smart move for us, it's like me going to Gong Cha and asking the workers there to recommend what I should get from Mr Coconut.  

After that, she moves on and tells me she also wants to do a glass for somewhere for her study room and that was when I decided to interrupt her and ask her once again again if she knew what our company sells and then repeat what our Interior Styling service is about, that was when it finally click for her and she goes...

"Oh, so you guys don't do carpentry works?" 

She thought she had signed up for a consultation session with an Interior Designers for renovation works. 

I didn't want to waste her time or mine anymore, so I introduce the price point of our furniture and that was enough to scare her off, she then requested to cut short the consultation session and I was more than happy to do that. I had jokingly shared with my colleague that the session probably will only last 30 minutes because the customer might have misunderstood about our service and I was half right, she did misunderstand what our service entails, but the session only lasted maximum 5 minutes. 

After that, I feedbacked to the marketing team that all the leads that we had gotten from their via their Instagram advertisement is garbage, but in a nice way. 

The way the Interior Styling service is being marketed definitely needs a lot more work.

Zero Fulfillment.

Nowadays, whenever there is "training" being delivered by my boss, I always feel extremely unmotivated right after and I am sure this is the opposite effect of what my boss has in mind for his employees when he does all this training, I'm pretty sure he is trying to inspire us and motivate us to do better, but sadly, because of how disconnected he is to how his floor staff operates. whenever I listen to him attempt to train us, I can't help but immediately question how feasible all his tips and tricks are and how much he actually believes them working.

He has given us multiple training over the past almost 1 year I have been with the company and  every other month, he would contradict himself without even realizing it. 

Just a few months back, he was telling us not to approach the customers and give them space to walk the showroom because people need time to familiarize themselves with the space, and only to approach them later and ask them if they require any help. But then fast forward to now, he is telling us to approach the customers the moment they step into the store because we have to guide them to the showroom, and that we should just stick to them like glue, this is also to pressure customers who are not really serious about buying our furniture to quickly exit the store from the sheer discomfort of being shadowed by a salesperson. 

It's very hard for me, or any of my colleague, to take his training seriously when he is constantly flip flopping around the SOPs every other month, sharing with us why his method works. I mean does it work if you find the need to be swapping them every other month and do you actually think any of the sales staff will take the training seriously when we are all very aware of how much contradiction is happening between trainings?  

Unmotivating and extremely useless sales training aside... 

When it comes to restocking furniture pieces for the Warehouse and getting new pieces to display in the Showroom, instead of asking the sales team what is actually selling and what the customers are asking about, he chooses to speak with the Merchandising team to get their opinion and what ends up happening is he will end up just restocking the same few sofas and armchairs we have been getting for the past few months, because based on the sales record, those items are selling, but then he doesn't realize that the only reason those items are selling is because those are the only items that we are showing on the showroom floor. We have customers coming into the store expressing interest in other designs that they have spotted online, but they don't end up getting those because they can't test out the furniture in the store, and the reason why they can't test it out is because my boss isn't ordering those in, and the reason why he isn't ordering those in is because he doesn't ask the sales team for suggestion, almost as if our opinions don't matter to him.

About 2 weeks back, I was preparing a showroom layout proposal for an upcoming collection that the store is planning to bring in, I took into consideration the overall look of the showroom, what colors I thought would look good in the space, what colors we already have that we don't want to repeat, what colors hadn't brought in yet that could inject some fun into the space that would work with our existing pieces and most importantly, what other furniture design the sales team wanted to bring in based on customer feedback as well as what some of the senior staff feel use to sell really well. I was so excited to share all this with the boss because it would be nice to actually show him that I am taking my VM position very seriously and I was hoping that I will be able to make a visible change to the Showroom, and actually move away from the previous VM's vision of the space,  but on the day of the meeting, I had to attend to a customer, so my boss and the merchandising team started the meeting without me and I figured I will just join once I was done with the customer.

Well, when I was done, I went towards where my boss was, expecting him to ask me to join the meeting, but when he didn't,  I thought maybe he thought I was still having a meeting with the customer, so I asked if he needed me to sit in, to which he responded with...

"I would rather you concentrate on serving the walk in customers, it is the weekend, the store is going to be busy and I would prefer all of you to be on the floor serving. you have already briefed the merchandising team so they will present your slides on your behalf. "

... I had only shown to the merchandising team very briefly what my proposal was, a proposal I had spend days doing, how did he think that the short exchange I had with them was sufficient? 

That is how serious my boss takes me as the store's Visual Merchandiser, so little fuck is given about my opinion that he doesn't even bother to let me present my proposal and instead prefers for me to focus on my role as a Sales Associate, a role he is very aware I did not apply for, a role I thought I would slowly gravitate away from after I became the store's VM, and sadly, a role that he will always sees me first and foremost. 

A Sales Associate. 

When I got shared the list of items that my boss had decided to purchase with the merchandising team, I come to find out that pretty much none of the items I had proposed were picked, and instead of getting the items that me and the sales team thinks will work with the space, he goes and get this huge modular sofa from a series that isn't selling well at all. I honestly do not know why he chose that because I am pretty sure the sales from the past year shows very clearly that no one is getting that series. We literally have a sofa in that series in the store that has been there since I joined and barely any customer has asked about it, but for some reason, my boss thinks it is a great idea to buy an even larger one. When I shared this with the sales team, everyone pretty much had the same response... 

"Why?"

... and this is what I mean by him being so fucking disconnected. You make purchasing decisions with the wrong group of people, and when the sales team performs poorly because of your poor decisions, suddenly it's the sales team fault for not performing. 

I so desperately want to quit my job right now because of how undervalued I have been feeling, despite actually doing design proposals for my colleagues as the Interior Stylist, I have been constantly updating layout proposals for the Showroom and making quality of life changes for the team as the store's VM, but my boss still continues to calls me out for not doing my job because I haven't been emailing him my correspondences I have been having with customers, customers I do not have because I am busy helping my colleagues with their customers design proposal.  

No matter how well I do my job as an Interior Stylist or the VM, I will never be performing as long as I am not doing well as a Sales Associate. My boss keeps telling me he didn't hire me just to do sales, he also hired me to do Interior Styling, but when I am doing Interior Styling work, he calls me out for being lazy because it's not my customer but my colleague's customer.

At the end of the day, I am doing Interior Styling, it's just not in the way my boss had originally intend, but it is still Interior Styling, but because he is so fucking narrow minded, he doesn't register me helping my colleagues as me doing my part as an Interior Stylist. I have to be doing my role as an Interior Stylist according to his perception for it to be considered me doing my work.

This narrow mindedness is also what makes the sales team have so little respect for him as a boss, the amount of shit we talk about him behind is back is honestly extremely toxic, but at the same time, it's inevitable because he is so frustratingly rigid, I mean he is getting his personal assistant to give us sales training on the days he isn't available, his own PA, who has no experience doing sales at all, giving the sales team sales training.   

Let that ridiculously unqualification of ridiculousness fucking sink in. 

Your PA have no sales experience, but you are making her give the sales team, who consist of individuals who have a combined sales experience of at least 20 years,  lessons on how to do be a better sales person. 

That's like me getting driving lessons from someone who doesn't have a driving license, but has taken a few basic theory lesson.

That's like me learning how to bake from someone who has experience eating Begawan Solo cakes.

That's like me getting a heart transplant surgery from someone who has watched every season of Grey's Anatomy. 

The pay is not good for the amount of work I am expected to do, I mean I was suppose to get a pay increment since March but that conversation has not happened yet because my boss kept postponing our KPI. I am very sure if he wanted to, my boss can make time for us, but the only reason he isn't is because he simply doesn't want to discuss our inevitable pay increment.

And instead of increasing the pay of his existing pool of floor staff, he goes and hires 3 new people for the team. 

1 Sales Supervisor and 2 Interior Stylist

The 2 Interior Stylist are now facing the same issues I faced when I first joined, which is an identity crisis. They came in fully expecting to do design related work, but then are suddenly required to do sales. no where in the new job description that had been put up did it mention sales.

You say the business is performing poorly, well, here is one very obvious reason why, you are hiring the wrong group of people! 

You want people to do Sales, hire people to do Sales.

You want people to do Design, hire people to do Design.

Don't put a job ad looking for a Designer, but then expect that designer to be able to do Sales as well. The main reason why I had originally applied for this role was because I thought I wouldn't have to do Sales, the 2 new Stylist who joined recently also came into the role becoming completely unaware that they had to do Sales and they remained unaware for almost a while until they started to realize that they were not doing more sales than design related work.

To be honest, I am very aware of the reason why my company doesn't want to put Sales in the job description, it's because they are not offering the main benefit of a sales roles, which is commission. Any experienced sales person would immediately lose interest when they realize there is no commission, so what my company does is they put the position as "Interior Stylist" to attract the more design centric individuals and when then make them do sales under the pretense that..

"You are not just doing sales, you are more than that, your job is to help customers create their dream home."

 

...it is a load of bullshit.

I have been doing just proposals for my colleagues for the past month, and I have been CC-ing my boss when I email those proposals to my colleagues because his micromanaging ass dictates that we CC-ing him in everything. 

Then during yesterday's meeting, he singled me and one of my colleague out for a lack of emails with our clients. My colleague has honestly been a bit lazy lately because she is getting ready to go for her maternity leave, but I have been doing my job as a stylist by sending him the proposals I have been doing for my colleagues and that doesn't get brought up, instead he is focusing on me not having any clients of my own. 

So yeah,  really really hating my job right now because of my boss , desperately hoping a new job opportunity will come along soon so I can actually throw in my 1 month notice for real this time. The only reason I am staying is because I can't let go of the monthly pay check. but the temptation to go back to doing Interior Design, despite the full commission salary, is real.

I am honestly wondering if I have to be stuck in this company until the end of the year because I am just feeling really dejected and depressed as the months go by, especially with how my boss has really ramped up on his micromanaging.

Entitled and Stupid.

I have no idea why, but lately, I have been getting more and more unpleasant experience at work. Today, I had a new issue to deal with and it came in the form of one of my PRC customer.

PRC Customers in general just don't have a lot of EQ, this particular customer of mine isn't a nasty individual, but there is just something about her that makes me feel like I am talking to a wall sometimes, it's like she is hearing what I am saying, but never really listening. which I would also attribute to the fact that my Mandarin is horrible and it's probably a struggle for her to listen.

So on the day she got a Dining Table from me, I told her that if she needed to change her delivery date, she has to tell me at least a week in advance and she just went "Will do, will do" in Mandarin, and then 4 days ago, when she came back to the store to window shop, I reminded her once again that her delivery was going to happen this coming Saturday and she just went "Yup, okay" in Mandarin. 

Speaking of her last visit, she had actually messaged me asking me if I was going to be around that day, I told her I will be in the store until 7pm, she comes to the store at 6.30pm , 30 minutes before I was scheduled to knock off from work, and then after she arrives, she was just completely unaware of how inconvenient her timing was for me because after briefly walking her around the Showroom, she plops down on one of our armchair and tells me her friends are coming, that she wants to get their opinion about this particular sofa she was interested to get, and then just waits there for a good 20 minutes. By the time her friends came, it was already time for me to knock off from work, but because of how oblivious she is, she just didn't care and expected me to follow her around, which I did and I ended up OT-ing for an hour. She also didn't end up getting anything, she did reserve a Sofa though, which she didn't end up getting as well, so it ended up becoming a waste of everybody's time, and when she left the store that day, she didn't even say goodbye, none of her friends did, even though we had been talking for an hour, an hour past my working hours no less, they just walked out of the store busy talking to each other even though I was walking them out. I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't even know my name. 

Her coming to see me at 6.30pm even after I tell her I will end work at 7pm just shows how insensitive she is, if a local customer came at 6.30pm and I told them I will end work at 7pm, more often than not, they will feel very bad and make sure to leave before 7pm so I can knock off on time, but Ms PRC being the PRC that she is didn't give a shit and her friends aren't any better, just 3 women talking really loudly in Mandarin about the comfort level of each sofa.

Anyways, her delivery for her dining table is scheduled for tomorrow, so I decided to send her a reminder this morning because I figured she probably doesn't remember, even though I had already told her about it during her last visit, to me, she just comes across as someone who is very blur, like if she was my colleague, (she actually look like one of my ex-colleague from ID4, so my initial impression of her wasn't great already) she wouldn't be someone I would find reliable, someone who is very stupid, but it's the kind of stupid that her family and friends find endearing.

She doesn't respond to my message until many hours later at around 4.30pm, and it just read...

"Sorry, my condo doesn't allow weekend deliveries, let's just get the table delivered on Monday instead!"

...  I had already told her that if she wanted to amend the delivery dates, she had to tell me at least a week in advance, now she is just telling me to move the delilvery date to Monday so nonchalantly, so I told her I can only schedule her delivery 2 weeks from now, to which she messages me back...

"That's not possible, I am moving into my new house on Monday, how am I suppose to have my meals without a dining table? Think of a way and have the table delivered by Monday! Thanks."

... and suddenly, that stupidity just wasn't all that endearing anymore. This whole thing could have been avoided if she had double checked with her condo about the weekend delivery restriction, she had a whole fucking month to do it, but only informs me about it the day before the scheduled delivery, and she didn't even think to bring this up on her own, she only brought it up after I reminded her about the delivery. That's the level of obliviousness I am dealing with here.

The entitlement she was displaying is also un-fucking-believable, there is no room for negotiation at all, she created the problem on her own, doesn't take responsibility for it and then expects me to resolve it for her. 

Luckily for this stupid woman, the existing deliveries on Monday are fairly straightforward, so my delivery guys are able to plot her delivery in, I have shared the good news with her but she didn't even bother to acknowledge the text.

I do hope she doesn't actually text me anymore and that the delivery on Monday will go smoothly. Just please have everything go smoothly so I can have one less shit to deal with. 

Officious - A new word I learned to describe a colleague at work

A few days ago, an old customer of mine came to the store look at the table lamps we had available that he could buy, unfortunately, because I was away that day, one of my colleague took the initiative to show them the pieces we had. I am not sure how extensive his conversation with my client was, but my colleague reached out to me and shared with me that my client had dropped buy and was interested in this particular lamp we had. 

I followed up with my client the very next day and that client then proposed to drop by this evening for us (me and my client) to discuss which light would suit his home.

6.00pm comes along and my client and his wife drops by the store, my colleague who had assisted them on my off day happened to be at the store today as well, so when he saw them, he greeted them at the entrance and the husband ask for me. When I saw them, I waved at them and proceeded to start a conversation with the both the husband and his wife, but I was able to build rapport with the husband much more quickly because this was my first time meeting the wife.

The wife then leaves mid conversation to explore the store on her own and at some point during her solo exploration, my colleague who had assisted them a few days ago suddenly got into a conversation with the wife, I am not sure if he approached her and if she approached him, but either way, that's when things started going to shit as the wife decided to bring my colleague back to where her husband and I were seated. I had been discussing with the husband and offering him advice about the lamp options at this point, but the wife started sharing the opinions my colleague had been sharing with her when they were having their separate conversation a few minutes ago, this then led to my colleague repeating the conversation he was having with his wife to the husband, all while I was seated there, mid-conversation with the husband, my colleague, being the officious individual that he is,  proceeds to overtake the entire conversation and started sharing his own advice with them, which was completely contradictory to what I had shared with the client, and I just sat there a bit confused as to what is going on because the customer came to the store looking for me to seek my advice, so why the fuck are you giving your advice with them when the original sales person that the husband is looking for and was speaking to is literally seated less than 5 meters away? 

A general rule of thumb when it comes to talking to someone else's customer while the original sales person is present is... 

You don't.

This is basic courtesy, you just don't talk to their customer unless the original sales person is asking for help, I clearly wasn't in need of any help, I can handle my own customers, back off. 

I can understand why the wife would prefer talking to my colleague, she feels more comfortable with him because it was the first time she was meeting me and my colleague clearly left a good impression when he spoke to them during their last visit. If the husband hadn't ask for me by name and my colleague took over the customer entirely, I would have gladly given them to him, but the fact that the husband requested for me by name and my colleague still felt the "responsibility" to engage with both of them even though I was present, it just made this whole thing feel really icky.

Anyways, I chose to disengage from the conversation when my colleague decided to parasite his way in because I know I won't win if I am competing with him for the customer's attention, he is an extrovert, I am an introvert, I need the customer to stay engaged with me if I want the conversation to continue, but my colleague is clearly hogging all the attention away from me, and even though I know the husband is trying to respect my presence, it's really difficult when his wife is clearly more interested in talking to my colleague who is talking much louder than me.

They had a very long conversation amongst themselves because that's what my colleague is good at, being long winded, and every time I hear my colleague laughing out loud in the distance with the client, I just want to shove a light bulb in his mouth. About 10 to 15 minutes later after all their "HAHAHA" and his "LOLS", he brings the lamp they have decided to buy over to me, tells me the customer has decided, and is all proud about it like he has just help me clinched a sales

I told him to put the sales under his name because I didn't want it 

He thought I was being coy about it, but when I reiterated that I did not want it at, I guess he could sense my annoyance and stopped pushing for me to take the sales, I then spoke to the husband and told him my colleague will prepare the invoice for him, sort of my way of telling him that my colleague will be completely taking over from now on, that he has successfully been poached away from me. 

He thinks he has done me a favor, but all my colleague has done is poached my customer, this isn't about this single sales that he thinks he has helped me close, I didn't need his fucking help closing the sales, this is about the long term relationship I am suppose to have with the customer that he has completely ruined for me because when they come back to the store in the future, they are not going to look for me anymore, they are going to look for him. The fact that he even gave them his own number when they left instead of asking them to contact me is what's so fucking disgusting about this whole thing.

I actually don't know how dense my colleague is, but the moment you offer your own contact number to another sales person's customer, you have to realize that you have overstepped your boundary right? Especially when the original sales person is literally just a few meters away from you. 

Gross.

Anyways, this isn't his first time meddling into my business, he did this to me before previously, at that time, he was also "trying to help", but all he did was undermine me in front of the customer. This is what one would call 越帮越忙. 

This whole exchange just really rubbed me the wrong way but I do feel really bad for the husband though because I could tell at the start he was genuinely asking me for my advice and not my colleague, the problem is his wife and my colleague started having their own conversation and my colleague, being the good-willed but extremely meddlesome individual that he is just fucked everything up. I was so upset at the whole situation I didn't even bother to say my goodbyes to the customers when they left, which, now looking back, I do feel quite bad about.

Lazy or Stupid for staying

My boss conducted his weekly store training with me and my colleagues at work today and the training is usually just SOP refreshers, like remembering to greet customers when they enter the store, making them feel comfortable and introducing ourselves as well as the brands that we carry to them, it's like the kind of Customer Service Retail shit that is constantly being repeated to us every week. 

Today is no different, however, today, we had something else to run thorough, and that was the latest Mystery Shopper results, unfortunately for me, I was the one who had been graded because I was the one who had served the last Mystery Shopper.

My boss was really firm when the training started, he was talking about how we are an extension of him because we represent his company, everything felt really serious and he sounded really upset, which was worrying for me because it was obviously related to my Mystery Shopper performance, after talking for a while, he proceeds to plaster the results on the projector screen for everyone to see and I scored about a 74%, which I though was not bad because I rarely approach customers unless they come to me, but in my boss's eyes, this is considered a fail, in fact, anything less than 100% is considered a fail to him.

He was visibly upset as he ran through the first part of the results, pointing out how disappointed he was that I didn't acknowledge or greet the customer when she entered the store and reiterated that this is something he has wanted us to do during multiple trainings, and he just stayed on that topic for the entirety of the training, which then segued into something else he was disappointed with me in, which led to him reprimanding me and one of my colleague for being "lazy".

I will admit, on a day to day basis, I am a very lazy person, but in this particular context, my boss is just plain fucking wrong.  We were deemed "lazy" because we didn't CC him into any email exchanges we have with our clients. 

The problem here is, we don't communicate with our clients via the fucking email, we communicate via WhatsApp because that is how people converse nowadays, through text, that's why we don't CC him because we have nothing to CC him in! I also don't have any emails to CC him in because I am busy...

1.  Preparing Multiple Design Proposals for multiple colleagues as the only Interior Stylist in the store! 

These proposals includes doing 

• Space Planning Drawings on AutoCAD, 
• Mood Images Compilation
• 3D Renderings on SketchUp
• Consolidation of the proposed furniture information including measurements and material finishes

2. Planning out the Layout for the Store, updating the Space Planning Layout on AutoCAD for the Showroom as the Visual Merchandiser! This also includes updating the Price List of the dozens of furniture we have in the space.

3. Liaising with customers via WhatsApp instead of email because once again, why the fuck would a customer want to communicate via email unless they are buying the furniture on behalf of another company for a commercial or office project.

And for my other colleague, he has proven again and again that he is the best salesperson in the store, he clearly has his own way of doing things and it works because he is consistently hitting $100,000 in Sales every month, just for context, everyone else on average would hit about $40,000.

 

And we are both lazy because we don't have any emails to CC our boss in. Are you fucking kidding me! Just because you are not in the loop of the things we are doing, *cough* micro-managing much*cough*  doesn't mean we are not working. I am wearing multiple hats for the company by doing Sales, Interior Styling and Visual Merchandising, but I am still getting the same salary as when I first started work whilst my colleague who is constantly able to bring in sales every month without fail and hitting $100,000 every month, choosing to stay with the company even though he could be earning so much more if he joined a company that offers commission, we are considered lazy. 

US?!?

We are not lazy, we are just fucking stupid for staying.

My boss's reason for wanting us to email the customers and CC-ing him in them is not only for him to keep track of what we are doing, but it's also to protect us so we have a record of our exchange with the customers in case they start complaining about us for not following up closely. 

For fuck?!

Our WhatsApp conversation can do the exact same thing, it's a back and forth text between us and the customer, just like an email, except WhatsApp is something that the customers would actually use on a daily basis, as oppose to an email. The only time a customer would request for us to converse through email is if they are purchasing furniture for us on behalf of another client or company and need to have an official paper trail, otherwise, no regular homeowners would choose to converse via email.

  

I will just move on with my Mystery Shopper results, so my boss was harping on about how bad service from us affects him because we represent the store and the store represents him. Well, I went to look at the report after the training was done and lo and fucking behold, even though I didn't do well for the opening part, I was given a glowing review by the Mystery Shopper who wrote, and I fucking quote word for fucking word...

The staff member had good sales skills and was considerate of my needs. I loved his services and I will also recommend the outlet to my family. I was very impressed by his service.

... Oh, so I guess me offering good service is a bad representation for the store and by extension, a bad reflection of him.

This is the main thing my boss has been harping us since day 1, that he wants us to offer good service, WELL, I DID, and what do I get in return? Get deemed lazy.

It is fucking upsetting. Now I know why my other colleague, who happened to be off today, is so unhappy at work, because he is constantly getting undermined by my boss for not doing a good job during our training. My boss called him a waste of talent because he is not performing at his best.

Well, he is a waste of talent because he has no motivation to perform, when we do well, we don't get acknowledged for doing a good job, but when we fall short in certain areas, that gets magnified and becomes our main trait. It's such a demoralizing and negative space for a sales person, how the fuck can someone excel  when they are constantly being taken down a peg.

Also just FYI, this colleague of mine scored full marks for his Mystery Caller results, 100%, and it didn't even get brought up at the training today. 

Isn't that just Fan-fucking-tastic.

My boss isn't one to shout and scream at us for not performing well, he is generally a nice guy who talks to us in a calmly fashion most of all time, but that doesn't make his management style and the work environment he has created any less toxic based on what I have experienced. 

Aside from what I have written down, another thing he does is he would create new policies for us to follow, but then a week or 2 later, just forget about it and tell us to do the exact opposite, for example, just a few weeks ago, his stance on how we should deal with walk-in customers is...

"Greet them when they walk in, but let them walk around the space and only approach them a later to give them some time to look around."

.. .but then during the training last week, suddenly he wants us to walk the customers through the space because we need to introduce the brands to them, he wants us to stick to them like glue because he claims that if the customer isn't sincere, they will get so uncomfortable that they leave. 

Like what the fuck do you want us to do?  If we do "A", he will say it's not working and we should do "B", but when "B" doesn't work, he will say it's not working and we should do "A" again, and he would always go back to the point and say it's because the sales team is the problem.  

I have never wanted to leave the company as quickly as I do now, like what the actual fuck! 

More cancellations...

So that customer who cancelled a bunch of stuff that she ordered from the store AFTER they have been fabricated and are at the Warehouse awaiting delivery has decided that she wants to cancel another item, and this time, it's a $10,000 armchair that she got. 

 I told her I can't let her cancel because we have no space for it in our store, it's not an item that sells particularly well because that particular piece she got is a larger version of an armchair that we already have surplus stock of and our customers usually tend to gravitate towards the regular sized one.

 Her response to that was...

"I have absolutely no need for the armchair because I simply do not have any space in my house for it."

... and that's suppose to be our problem? 

When she requested to cancel the first batch of items that amounted to $3,000.00 because they were "delayed", I figured I would just let her because it's a small amount compared to her overall invoice, which amounted to $90,000.

And technically, her item wasn't delayed, she ordered them from us in the second week of February, we had already informed her it will take 4 to 5 months to arrive, that makes July the 5th month, so she had absolutely no right to cancel her items, it was a gesture of goodwill on my end to allow her to do that. 

Then when she requested to cancel another $12,000 worth of coffee and side tables because of "delay" I allowed her to do it because the coffee table she had ordered was in fact going to be delayed due to production problem, the side table wasn't, but the reason she cancelled that was because she had already gotten another side table, which is once again, not our problem, that just sounds like poor planning on your part.

In total, she had already cancelled $15,000 worth of item, this is not only AFTER they have been ordered, but this is after they have been fabricated and are days away from reaching our Warehouse.

And now she wants to cancel another $10,000 worth of item. So her total sales went from $90,000 to $65,000 within a span of a week, she had months before that to bring this up, but only brought up all this cancellation on the 5th month when the items are already on the way. 

She claimed that she will get more items from us when her other house is ready next year, so when I brought this up to my boss, he agreed to take the armchair from her, but the condition is that instead of giving her a cash refund, we will convert it to store credit, that means she will be able to take that $10,000 that she can spend with us for the armchair and use it for other items from out store. 

If you are planning to get more items from us in the future, then this shouldn't be an issue for you, but when I tell her about the store credit requirement, she tells me she didn't see the point. But that's the whole fucking point of us even allowing you to cancel the chair, so you will use that money you paid for the chair to get something else from us you dumb bitch! 

I was really trying to be nice when I was texting her earlier because I didn't want to make her upset and potentially lose s huge sales when her next house is ready next year, but if she is able to pull this last minute cancellation crap on us right now, who's to say she won't do the same shit for her next house, which then begs the question, do we really want this type of person as a repeat customer. 

Right now, I am trying to convince her to get something else from our store because I don't really want to give her a cash refund, but I'm not exactly feeling very optimistic about it.

The most annoying thing about this whole annoyance is SHE IS NOT EVEN MY FUCKING CUSTOMER! She is my ex-colleague's customer who was simply thrown to me even though my official role in the store is Visual Merchandiser / Interior Stylist. I'm really trying to move away from the Sales aspect of the job but my company just keeps forcing that on me, even though it was something I have been telling them I am not comfortable with from the very beginning. 

I actually had an interview with Forty Two a few months ago for a similar position, a stylist role, but there is no focus on sales at all, it's mainly maintaining the Showroom and approaching the customer, even though the pay is lower, the jobscope was a bit more towards what I was looking for, the only issue I had then was the approaching customer part, but looking at the way things are at my current company, I shouldn't have express my disdain towards approaching customers during my Forty Two interview, because they might have given me chance to join them.

My current job had been falsely advertised to me from the start and I was made to work in a position that I had no interest in, which is sales, but now that I am finally given the job scope of the position I had originally applied for, which is a creative role, it is stacked on top of the sales role, so even though my responsibilities have increased, I still haven't gotten a pay increment, despite my boss telling me it is something that will be discussed during my KPI after he offered me the VM role, a KPI that has been delayed indefinitely until who knows when. 

The KPI was suppose to be done in May, the month whereby I had the highest sales out of everyone, which would have given me leverage to ask for a higher pay increment, but for some reason, the KPI kept getting postponed, and by the looks of it, I doubt I will be getting any sort of increment anytime soon. I will say though, my May sales performance was just a fluke because I ended up performing extremely poorly in sales for the month of June, so I kinda lost my leverage. 

Whilst I am grateful for having a job with a fixed salary, I am now wishing to look for another company that is offering a fixed salary. I have completely given up on the idea of going back to doing Interior Design, after breaking down how much I was earning in the last post as an ID, it's just not worth it, especially after reading my old blog post about how stressful I was when I had projects.

Like this... 

And this...

And this...

Among a few others that I have rant-blogged about sporadically...

The anxiety and stress of having to deal with a Renovation project back then is 10 to 20 times worst than the gnawing feeling of annoyance I have from having to deal with this dumb bitch of a customer right now who suddenly got "woke" and decided to embrace cancel culture, the stress I had from doing ID was so bad that I would break out in acne because of the stress, that I wouldn't be able to sleep, that I would sometimes lose appetite over because of how amazing I was at just overthinking things, and I was only earning an paltry $700.00  $1000.00 per month on average for it. (I had very little projects, so I could roughly remember how much each project made and I was actually earning on average of about $1000 per month, which is about $54,000, still extremely measly, but at least it's 4 digits per month) 

Whilst I am proud of how much I was able to learn when I was part of the industry and do miss the design aspect of it, it is just not worth it, period. But I do really want to find a new job though because this current one is really starting to stink, just not really sure there are currently any other furniture store looking to hire an Interior Stylist, I am almost hitting my 1 year mark with my current company, if I leave soon it probably won't look so bad on my resume.