The Mono Tones

Every once in awhile, I have one of those mornings where everything seems to be flowing downstream.

On these mornings, things will just start off fantastically.

Somehow, I’ll manage to wake up with my alarm - no need to hit the snooze button my typical three angry times, wishing time would stop lying to me about having to be up 27-minutes ago in order to have a productive day.

These mornings, I pop out of bed as though I was a little kid, and it was pancake breakfast day.

I get out of bed, shave, and brush my teeth with a float in my step. Things are going to be good today.

I head to the gym and have an amazing workout. I love doing cardio on mornings like this. I can jump rope a little longer, go quicker on the stairmaster or treadmill. I’ll even look at the row machine and skip passed it with a little less hatred than usual.

My music seems to be in a good mood on these mornings. The playlist is set to random, but it is picking all the best songs, letting me get a solid stream of daydreaming in while I blow through an hour of cardio like it was 15-minutes.

A good workout always leads to a good shower. The water pressure seems better and the temperature is perfect.

After victoriously emerging from the shower and dressing for the day, I look in the mirror at my typical uniform of three-button collared shirt and pants. Somehow, I even feel like I look better. Same clothes, new man.

Maybe there is something to this “good night’s sleep” thing.

Even better, waking up on time means I have time to make coffee AND eat breakfast. It’s not a choice of one or the other.

I don’t have to eat dry cereal or a sad granola bar in my car while I drive, trying to drink my coffee when it hits the perfect temperature of not scolding hot but not grossly down to room temperature.

After I eat my breakfast, care-free and knowing this is going to be an awesome day, I take my coffee to-go and head for the car. Pep in my step the whole way there.

The hits keep coming on the drive to my first appointment. As I follow the directions from my GPS, I realize I’ll be heading opposite rush hour traffic: Bonus.

Thirty minutes later, I arrive 5-minutes early for my first sales call of the day. I gather my thoughts, my things, and know I am going to rock this sales call. I walk up to the door, knock, smile, and wait to greet my first client of the day.

When they open the door and we exchange greetings, I don’t even notice it. I am still too high on my awesome morning. I am firing on all cylinders as we head to the kitchen to chat about the job.

I start asking questions about their wants and needs, smiling and being an attentive listener when it hits me. Actually, it starts to slowly roll over me.

It is like the slowest moving snowball coming right at your face. My brain sees it coming but is paralyzed to move out of the way. I’m the girl in the horror movie who has forgotten how to run from the slowest monster ever. I just keep tripping and falling down. This is going to overtake me like The Blob.

I am speaking to the most boring people in the world. My energy was fighting it off at first, but they penetrated my forcefield.

Their monotonous voices and low volume responses are drilling me down like my high school history teacher reading from the textbook.

I struggle to understand the phenomenon of both people in this marriage speaking in the exact same manner. Their voices have become one after years of togetherness.

It is almost like their singular tone hypnotized me, or more likely, put me in a functional coma.

The more we talked, the more their spell wore on me. I was stun-gunned, walking and talking through a haze of intense boredom.

The sales call seemed to warp time and move in dream sequence.

I recall an elderly woman coming into the room. She just sat down in an armchair in silence.

The Mono-Tones called her Mom. Then, they disappeared upstairs for while, leaving Mom and I in silence while I plugged their data into the system.

They reappeared in silence, working together seamlessly to make Mom toast with jelly and coffee...in complete silence.

They disappeared again. I had to call out to them to lure them back into the kitchen.

I spoke as they sat with faces as bland as their voices.

I asked for the sale. They looked blankly at each other. They looked blankly at me. I waited in silence.

After painstaking silence one of them spoke (I couldn’t tell you who. The voice carried no gender from whichever bland face broke the silence). There would be no sale, as promised earlier. I must have missed this in my hypnotized state.

I gathered my things and headed to my car, feeling like I was shaking-off the cobwebs of sleep or as though I had suddenly boarded a boat and needed to get my sea legs.

It was about 42 degrees as I drove-off, driver-side window all the way down, trying to break the spell of exhaustion the Mono-Tones placed on me, simultaneously plotting a course to a much needed second cup of coffee.

The Conspiracy Theorist

One of my most recent sales, or sales in progress since I have yet to close the deal (and probably never will), is proving to be a huge pain in the neck.

I have had some skeptics, some reluctant purchasers, even some rude people, but this little lady takes the cake.

She is absolutely convinced I do not work for my company and am just going to run away with her money, but let’s back up a little.

She and her husband, proved to be colossal pains in the neck from the beginning of our appointment, roughly two months ago, and continued on the same path through this week.

To be fair, her husband stopped being annoying after I left the house because all communication from then on has been with the wife: Mrs. Conspiracy Theorist, who I’ll refer to as Mrs. C from here on.

When I arrived at the house, the couple and I went through the usual discussion about their needs and then began to pick a location for the unit. This is usually a short 2-3 minute decision - especially in the frigid temperatures of January, but it required about 15-minutes for this couple.

While in the house, they were adamant they wanted to spend as little money as possible - she could easily be Mrs. Cheap. They live in a half million dollar home and apparently barely scrape by.

The monologue describing their poverty as we sat cramped in their 4,000 square foot home was nonsensical and even more amazingly annoying in broken English.

After walking through five different locations with them, they finally settled on my first placement, which, as I had mentioned, was the cheapest place to install it.

I was finally able to start doing measurements and documentation for the site. I suspected a moment of reprieve from the The C’s, but no such fortune was in my future.

Husband and wife traded off like angry detectives. One would follow and badger me with questions for a few minutes, and then the other.

It was as if we were in a verbal WWF tag-team match. They would high-five and switch roles, as the exhausted interrogator would switch off with the well-rested partner.

Finally, I finished my presentation, which I knew would go nowhere since the entire opening act was a lesson in exactly how cheap they were:

“Our good friend got exactly the same product as we want from your company for $8,000 and 3-years of maintenance for free,” Mrs. C mentioned during our initial conversation upon my arrival.

“Wow, that is really interesting. They must have bought years ago.”

“Yes, they bought 4 years ago.”

“I had a feeling it was a while ago. Prices are not the same as they used to be, and we are not offering any free maintenance at this time. As I said, your job will most likely be around $10,000, or more.”

“But, our friends paid less and got free maintenance.”

“I understand. Unfortunately, this is not the case today. If that is a problem, and you are not willing to spend more than $8,000, I do not want to waste any more of your time.”

They were more than willing to waste their time and mine. The price came in just under $10,000 as predicted, yet they were not willing to buy. Times are tough in The C Mansion.

“We will not be making a decision until mid-February.”

I drove away from that mid-January appointment happy to be done with The C’s. At the time, they proved to be the most irritating cheapskates I had the pleasure of meeting.

As I sit typing this two months later, I am convinced there will be no one to take the championship belt from The C’s.

Mrs. C called me twice within a week from her appointment.

At first, it seemed like good news. She and her husband would indeed purchase in mid-February. Then her second call revealed her true thoughts of conspiracy.

She began to increase her angry broken English and ask for contracts from the company, not from me, a salesperson. As I tried to explain this to her, she continued to become angrier and louder.

I let her rant in circles for about two-minutes straight.

Once she was winded, I asked if I could explain this to her. I then pointed out the contracts all had the company name, address, and phone number on them. She would be mailing the signed documents and her check to the company.

Once Mrs. C actually listened and looked at the documents, she was understanding and almost, almost apologetic...in her tone.

She said she would be mailing the check the next day.

Four days later the office had not received the check. Unfortunately, I had to call Mrs. C and ask if she mailed it.

She loudly declared she had not and would not be mailing a check until I answered her questions.

I reminded her I was always available to answer questions; however, when we spoke last, she said she was mailing the check the next day, and had not done what she said she would. This time, there was no attempt at an apology in tone or volume.

It was obvious and intentional. She was not happy about her dishonesty being noted by the swindling salesman she knew was a liar and a cheat, yet she was the one who lied. The inner struggle must have been humiliating for Mrs. C.

Instead of apologizing for her dishonesty, this lead to 30-minutes of loud conversation in which Mrs. C would ask nonsensical questions in broken English.

I would attempt to answer them each time she paused to catch her breath, but by their nature, they made absolutely no sense, hence, answers were difficult to provide.

It is now mid-March. I know longer have phone conversations with Mrs. C.

I have defeated her the way a punching bag defeats your tired bloody hands. She doesn’t know I used to be a teacher. I am used to dumb questions and irritating voices.

Her nonsense was no match for me after 15-years in education.

I had a blackbelt in faking tolerance and speaking with a smiling tone while I vividly imagined quite the opposite.

She surrendered her anger and illogical comments to e-mail. In her latest, I was informed she would not be purchasing until mid-April.

This woman, who I have called once since our appointment, has initiated contact with me each and every other of the nine times we communicated, and she “will not be pressured.”

Times must be tough in the mansion of The C’s. Perhaps her mind is slipping. I feel so badly for their struggles. I may just have to revisit some of those educator strategies used with struggling students.

Perhaps, I should check-in on her weekly via email or phone call, just to be sure all is well and say hello.

The C’s will probably not be able to purchase until mid-forever-ever, but there’s no reason I should forget about my penpal until then.

The Extended Flunk

Apparently, we are in the slow season for my company right now, and, as the nomad of the sales force, this means there are not enough leads for me to travel.

I have no established territory. I go where the overflow is. No overflow, no go, no sales.

While I try not to let this cause me to panic, I am not particularly good at being idle. For a solid part of my career in education, I consistently held 3-4 jobs at any given time.

Therefore, I am trying to cope with this down time by focusing on the negative parts my last eight months on the road.

The best one, by far, was my first experience at an Extended stay in Orlando, Florida, during the month of August.

I know Extended Stays are not 5-star hotels, nor do they attempt to advertise themselves to be such.

I knew the realm of a hotel I booked, but these are not your typical hotel gripes about the complimentary breakfast or lack of fluffy pillows. These are low, even for “budget-minded” hotels.

Night 1

I successfully check-in and arrive to my room at about 10:00 p.m. I begin to unpack my clothes and see there are no hangers. I call the front desk and hangers arrive promptly - no big deal.

While I unpack, I decide to turn on the TV. When I pick up the remote, the batteries fall out immediately, as there is no back to the remote. Annoying, but not a shock for my hotel choice.

After unpacking all of my things, putting them in drawers, and hanging them in the closest where they will stay for the next two weeks, I decide to take a shower before retiring to bed.

It is roughly 11:00 p.m. when I enter the bathtub only to realize there is no shower head.

As terrible as this is, my first reaction was to laugh. Apparently, the previous guest must have truly needed one for their next destination and decided to take it with them - you know, like some of us take the leftover soaps and shampoos.

I quickly put aside my second thought of - How well could housekeeping have cleaned the shower if they did not notice a missing shower head? - and call the front desk.

The young man informs me there are no maintenance people on staff at this hour, but I can change rooms. I just spent 14 hours traveling and unpacked all of my things for my 13-night stay. I was about to go to sleep for an early morning. The thought of packing all my things, moving rooms, and unpacking was not appealing.

I let him know if he brought me a shower head, I could handle the installation on my own. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. I have the training down.

Unfortunately, this is not an option as the “concierge” does not have access to these items.

I decide to deal with the missing shower head tonight and tomorrow morning, as long as it is fixed tomorrow before I return from work. I am assured me it will be.

My two shower-head-less showers are definitely not environmentally sound. The water streams out from as if from a heated garden hose sticking out of the wall. One solid half-inch thick stream of hot water. I probably use ten times the amount of water a typical shower requires.

When I return the next night, I have a shower head. It is brand new and beautiful, but it is not the end of my troubles.

Night 5

The next three nights are normal, but Night 5 takes a turn for the worse in a big way.

Early August in Orlando is hot and sticky. When I return to my room at 8:00 p.m. after a long day of work, the A/C is not working very well.

I call the front desk, again.

Again, the maintenance team is already gone.

Again, the solution is to change my room. Hmm. Work 12 hours, pack all my things, move rooms, unpack; then, try to eat and bathe. No thanks.

Make sure they fix it tomorrow, please.

Yes, sir. It will be fixed.

I put temperature all the way down and leave it on full blast all night. I’m not paying the electric bill. They owe me this. It is a tough night, but I’m exhausted and sleep.

Night 6

I arrive back to the hotel room close to 9:00 p.m. The A/C maintenance man left a ticket on the table which says it was fixed, but the temperature in the room begs to differ.

Another warm night awaits.

Night 7

The next morning, I leave the hotel before the desk clerk’s shift starts. I call after 7:00 a.m. and speak with Ricky about my concerns. He tells me there is no maintenance employee working today, as it is the weekend, and the hotel is fully booked. He cannot switch my room.

I ask to speak to the manager because at this point I feel I am owed compensation for my inconveniences during my stay. He lets me know the manager does not work until tomorrow, and he will leave a note for her to contact me, but she gets very busy, so I may want to call her as opposed to her contacting me - the dissatisfied customer.

This is an amazing approach to customer service, even for a “budget-minded” hotel.

When I arrive back at the hotel, my room is unbearable. I contact the front desk and Chris gives me a room with a functional AC - which means Ricky lied about being sold out when I spoke with him.

Ricky, you seemed so trustworthy.

Ricky’s lie was distasteful and disappointing, but not as annoying as knowing I should have bit the bullet on Night 1 and switched rooms immediately.

In a more than obvious way, I have myself to blame for much of these discomforts.

My remaining nights at the Extended Stay were perfect. Through it all the staff was polite, even if Ricky was a liar - he lied about the manager’s next shift as well.

When I finally got in touch with the manager and explained the hardships of the first half of my stay, she quickly refunded those nights.

Revisiting The Extended Stay saga definitely makes sleeping in my own bed and waiting for leads to pick up a little more bearable...for a couple minutes.