Tag Archives: mail house

I am the Queen of Everything that is Nothing!

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I am the Widget Queen!!!

I was in a meeting this morning doing some training on Quoting (you know telling our customers how much stuff will cost them etc). 

Yeah…  it really was as fun as it sounds. :S

Anyway, in this meeting was … the General Manager, the Customer Service Manager, two Business Development Executives and four of my contemporaries (Account Managers) and Me!

We were having a discussion involving some hypothetical companies, one of which was called ABC Widget Co. … which elicited a doey eyed…. ‘what’s a widget?’ from one of the Account Managers.

Errr….. I thought everyone knew what a widget was – it’s just one of those things!

So the GM , who was chairing the meeting, explained “It’s one of those things in the bottom of your beer which aerates the drink or something when you open the can…”

Errr… like yeah…. kinda right … but no bonus points for you!

Then one of the Business Development Executives (now these guys are glorified salesmen… you’d think they’d know something about widgets) pipes up with “Really?  I thought it was one of those little things you put on your desktop that tells you the weather or time and stuff”.

I am sitting here with knitted brow at this point, wondering how I am the only one in the room who knows what a goddamn widget is!

“Well actually   😉  … a widget is both of those things ‘now’.  But they were likely called widgets because they didn’t know what else to name them.  A widget was traditionally a term used in Economics as a hypothetical undefined product… it’s just a ‘thing’ when it doesn’t matter what the thing is.”   Etc Etc Etc.

Sigh…
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Monkey see, monkey do.

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I dont know how it happened, but I found myself down in the production warehouse today stuffing envelopes in the handline standing next to the Production Manager, the National Human Resources Manager, the Regional Quality Assurance Manager and the General Manager of the entire company! I have no idea how this came about. One minute I was upstair answering emails, and the next they had drafted everyone who wasn’t screamingly busy to come down and do some training monkey hand work – stuffing envelopes on the PDS line for a massive mailout for a large superannuation company that was falling behind and not going to make it’s deadline.

Actually it was kinda fun. We were all standing around in our nice work clothes … stilettos on some of the office women, and ties on the Business Development Executives, laughing and stuffing envelopes. It was an okay way to spend a few hours, but I certainly wouldn’t want to do it full time or anything. Stuff that! On your feet all day, doing the same thing over and over…. you’d go absolutely brain dead. And never mind the noise when the DLX machines start running… omg. No thanks…. don’t ever want to go there.

I’m gonna get so fit here!

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Well that’s done – Day Five and my first week is over.

The most enduring impression I have of this place so far – is ‘oh my fucking God !!! the trees!!!  the trees…!!!

I’ve never seen so much paper in one place in my life… and nearly had conniptions over the sheer quantity of it that seems to be in the massive recycling bins around the place for all the ‘spoils’.   And it’s got a secret code… white paper for something printed by a machine automatically… yellow paper for something printed by a human… pink paper for proofs… I’ve yet to ascertain what the green is used for, but something tells me I don’t really want to know.

reduce waste paper trees
Today has been mostly a day of putting out fires.  My first job was to be lodged (read: put in the mail – pretentious wankery if I ever heard any!) by end of business today, and it’s run afoul of a few little problems today.  First – when I came in, I found that Fernando (yep that’s his real name) one of the laser printing guys had put my job on hold, because he thought it was missing a field – but it wasnt cos I’m nothign if not thorough 😐 … unnecessary delay there.  Second – 2,517 of my documents were being sent out in plastic wrap heat sealed bags (the Annual General Report that no one ever reads that was being inserted was too big for A4 envelopes) but we discovered as we were about to start wrapping them that the die cut fly sheet thingies that the client sent us had the hole in the wrong spot, so now you couldn’t see the barcode that associates with the address… big boo-boo from Nigel (yep that’s his real name) the client – that just cost them an additional $1220, cos they wont get bulk mailing rates on that.  So sad, but too bad!   And just now, I’ve been told that the printers didnt send us the right number of usually-discarded-before-being-read Annual General Reports, so we are seven short… seven out of 2517.. .eejits. 
*insert big sigh here* 
So I’ve been up and down the stairs all day… running to IT, Laser, Mailing, Plastic and the Warehouse (still ain’t going anywhere near DP! 🙂  and in spite of my best efforts, and due to circumstances beyond my control, ‘Ay dunna thienk weyrre gonna make et Cap’t !!’  ….
We’ll be seven short  😐
Update:
Hooray for suits with nothing to do!
I now have the world’s most expensive courier bringing me the seven missing Annual Reports to go into my mailout.  Yep, the client has found that their Chairman was out and about in our area and has convinced him to swing by our way and throw us seven copies of the missing report.  Now I’ve just got to go and pace the lobby and keep my eye out for a self important stuffed shirt type….   😛
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