Why is it I always think I am going to do these simple little blogs and end up telling a long story? So...where did we leave off? Oh with Christopher!
Okay, so when Christopher was just about 3 Brent got out of the Navy, we moved back to New Mexico and I went back to work. Since I had been out of the work force for three years I thought the best way to dive back in would be through a temp agency so I became a Kelly Girl. My first job was as a fill in receptionist for a car dealership. And that was my last temp job as well. It was supposed to be a two week gig while James, their head receptionist, was in Germany on vacation. Well then when James came back he had a lot of catch up work to do as he was also in charge of the Service Department's paperwork, so they asked if I could stay on another week. Then another. And then another. Finally Kirsten, the head of HR asked me to just fill out a resume. I did and she looked at my job history and my degree and pulled me off of the phones and into the office. I started as the AR/AP clerk and worked my way to Deal Processing for Honda then to Office Manager for Infiniti then for Mitsubishi.
My time with the dealership was an experience and a half. The work load at times was unbelievable. Sales people get paid twice a month, and the more deals they get through the more commissions they make. There are two finance people and 15 sales people, so you can see where the bottle neck occurs. Well, as deals would get hung up in finance and time to process commission checks would hit all of a sudden finance would put on a push to get the deals through which then meant we would go from 5 or 10 deals in the office to enter to over 100. I can remember hauling home boxes of deal folders to code at the kitchen table just so I could pretend like I wasn't at work. And it was like that twice a month every month for about a week at a time. So that's two weeks out of every month that is crazy busy, and two weeks that is just a little busy.
I also worked for a woman we called the Great Soulless One. She was the owner's wife and a CPA and brilliant. But had absolutely no compassion for anyone. She loved her dogs, Princess Diana and her sister, in that order I believe. She tolerated her husband (now ex-husband) and showed open contempt and disdain for anyone that wasn't of use to her. When Princess Diana died I thought she was going to lose her mind. We had to listen over and over and over to where she was when it happened, and did we all know that people always told her she looked like her (could be because you cultivated the look) and what was SHE going to do now? Like she was part of the family and this was a personal loss. It was weird.
The three biggest lessons from working there. First off, I really enjoy and am good at forensic accounting. When I first moved back into the office they had Honda and had purchased Infiniti about six months before. The person they had running the office for Infiniti was in over her head and things were not posted the way they should have been. There was also a lot of cross posting of things that went into Honda's accounts that should have been Infiniti's and the like. As I moved through the ranks of the office I ended up with ownership of finding and fixing all of those issues. It was really fun and satisfying. And something that I would use in my next two bookkeeping jobs as well.
Second, know when to quit. People were worked hard there. Too hard. And for some reason we all stayed. It was a miserable work environment. You knew the boss didn't appreciate you, you knew the job wasn't going to get better, but for some reason we all stayed. I can remember getting in my car at the end of the day and screaming at the top of my lungs just to get out the frustration before heading home. I don't know if it was because those of us in the office were so close that we felt like it would be letting down the other girls if we left, or if we were all too panicked about the job market to go. There was a little economic downturn happening right then in Albuquerque and jobs were not that easy to come by. But no matter what we all should have left. The biggest tip off was when someone would quit and then we would have lunch a month or so later and it was always, "You look Great!" and they would! So much happier and their color would be better and they just all looked great. When a job takes a physical toll on your appearance you need to get out.
The most important lesson was one everyone needs to know. Email was really new when I worked for the dealership. In fact it was only interoffice. Nothing could go out into the wide world yet. By this time I had given my notice as we were going to move to Oregon and so I was on my last few weeks. One of my closest friends in the office was just at the point of overwhelming frustration. She was (and still is) a really gifted CPA, smart and funny and an exceptionally hard worker. And the Great Soulless One used her for everything she possibly could. Worked her like she worked all of us. Well this particular day she was called into the boss' office and had a meeting with her about some additional projects that needed done, when she got back I sent her an email asking how it went. There was no reply function, you just had to start a new email to reply. We were in the same back office, just divided by book shelves and filing cabinets so we couldn't see each other, but I could hear her typing away furiously. Then it was silent. No email. Nothing. Okay, she wasn't ready to tell me what happened no big deal. Then our boss came to the door of our office. She called my friend down the hall sat her down and fired her. Seems that the email she thought she was sending to me, describing how horrible our boss was, went to our boss instead. Oh shit. The lesson? Always, always, always double check the TO line!
I say I learned those lessons, but the two out of the three that were mistakes I would make again at the agency! Oh well, sometimes you need a refresher course in lessons, right?
Okay, so that covers my first job back in the work force after having Christopher. Only four more jobs in my work history! Two more blogs you think? Any one taking any bets?
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