Eight days a week

Phew, it has been a busy 2 weeks. Last week seemed like it would never end and in the same breath, I felt like it barely happened.

I was on night support for work and on the second night I came down with the stomach bug.  I was the first, then Emeline and then Amy followed.  In the middle of all of that my Dad and I had started painting our living room so by the time I had come down with the bug, we were fully committed to the living room and needing to finish it up.  On top of all of that, Amy started feeling bad a couple of days before the bug fully got her so any chance of napping was gone.

Needless to say it was a long week.

It has been a rough few weeks.  The girls have hit a new stride of "pushing" buttons and boundaries.  We still have the house up for sale and trying to keep the house cleaned is tough.  Interestingly enough, none of the showings have been very good.  I didn't think it would bother me, but it is tough to have people after people come and look at our house with nothing positive to say.   You feel like why did they waste our time?  As it would be, almost all of the showings have been fairly inconvenient and to get negative feedback is defeating.  We like our house and work hard to keep it clean and to have others not like it, makes it feel like a personal attack.

Understandably, it is not, but after seeing the comments, you wonder if people even look at the listing prior to coming to the house.  Our listing is pretty accurate and the pictures do the house justice.  Believe it or not, the price is even listed too! Probably the dumbest question that is being answered is "what do you think of the price?".  I must be missing something because to me, if the price was not in your budget, or too far over your budget, you would not be looking at the house anyway.

Evidently, I am in the minority, because 90% of the showings have complained about the price.  I'm just not cut out for the house showing business. I pray that we get a good showing soon and an offer.  I also hope that things can get back to 'normal' for a time and we can find some rest.

Until next week,


Josh

I've never heard that one before

You're the cashier, you are ringing up someone and the item you are scanning doesn't ring up.  If you have worked in retail at all, I bet I can guess what you are already thinking.  The customer saying "it must be free".  I bet you never heard that before...

I experienced an event last night that made me think of the concept of hearing the same thing a thousand times, but from a thousand different people.

Part of my job is phone support.  I looked this morning and I took a little over 600 calls last year.  Something else occurred to me as well.  I have repeated myself, a lot.  I've asked "Is it powered on?", "Are you even in the same location as the issue?", "Why did you restart it? I didn't ask you to do that" , over and over and over again.

However, as the customer who wants the free item, most of the time, the callers have not talked to me before.  They've never had the joy of hearing me ask them if the unit was turned on.  Knowing that, why do I act like they have?

It's like the artist that sings the same set list night after night, it is not the audience's fault they've played their radio hit a million times.  The audience paid good money to be there and they expect the artist to perform that song as if they are the only performance they will ever do.

Taking customer calls is a lot like that.  Even though I've sang the same song over and over, the caller has not heard it yet.

Something I have to do is to remind myself that each call is the "first" time and know that even though I'm tired of repeating myself, they are hearing it for the first time.  I think if I can own that concept, I will be a much calmer person.


Until next week,

Josh