Lowes

Over the past few months, upper management has been handing down more and more work requirements to all the branches. Since numbers are down, we are being given more tasks which, in theory, will help improve sales. In reality, these tasks represent a legal grounds for the dismissal of employees, if necessary. Big companies prefer not to fire people for missing sales goals, but rather fire people for not performing the tasks they were given in order to achieve those sales goals. During tough times, if a company hands down a list of enough bullshit tasks that is impractical to complete, the company then has the safety of firing employees for not performing their given responsibilities, as opposed to not meeting sales targets. Anyhow, one of these new requirements is that PBSs need to be making outside sales calls. This has always been an option, but is rarely done by anyone I know.

The Buffoon hangs his hat on his outside calling ability. When he leaves for five hours each day, he claims he is making outside sales calls. We are all pretty sure he just visits his friends and picks his nose. When these new requirements were recently handed down, the first thing I did was inform the Buffoon that I was not very experienced at making outside calls and would like for him to take me on some of his calls and coach me along the way. I did this mainly to cover my ass because I knew he would ignore this request. He doesn’t want us to see that he dicks off all day. He knows that these calls take an hour tops and doesn’t want us to see that he lies when he is gone five hours. So, I have repeated my request for his help each week for months. Eventually, after a near shouting match about the pressure we are under, he took me out on calls the other morning.

We called on Lowes. We walked in and asked for the manager. He came out. The Buffoon stated that we just needed about 10 minutes of his time. The manager was annoyed, but, respectively stated that he didn’t have 10 minutes, was really busy and asked what it was we needed. I found this to be perfectly reasonable considering we didn’t have an appointment. The Buffoon proceeded to go into his 10 minute speal anyway but was cut short by the manager, who again asked what it was we needed. The Buffoon cut to the chase about the program we could offer in which employees of Lowes could open new checking accounts and get $100. The manager informed us that Lowes has a corporate partnership with Bank of America that offers a similar deal. We thanked him for his time and left, but, not before I noticed the Buffoon’s underwear sticking out. When dressing this morning, he had obviously tucked his dress shirt into his grey Fruit of the Loom briefs and now his pants were sagging low enough that the waist band of his underwear was visible from front to back on his left side. It was quite pathetic. Here was this total slob trying to sound professional and he had his fucking underwear hanging out. The other problem was that his pants were some how too big. He is a fat man and thus the waist of his pants must compensate for a considerable amount of girth. However, if the waist of his pants falls slightly off his stomach, it plummets down past his hips. He is constantly tugging his waist back up around his stomach like fat men commonly do. His belt is always buckled in the last hole and stretched to its breaking point, creating a look in which the buckle is always above the waist line of his pants. I can typically ignore all of that, but today, seeing his underwear hanging out, almost caused me to hit my breaking point. Whose underwear hangs out? Honestly, what kind of man is ever at risk of his underwear hanging out of his suit pants? It sounds like a problem a third grade teacher has with one of her “challenged” students.

When we left, the Buffoon had the gall to say that the manager was a jerk and wouldn’t even give us 5 minutes. I thought about responding to this comment but opted to keep my silence. Never mind the fact that we had no appointment, the manager informed us he was busy, and the Buffoon was standing there with his pants falling down. I actually thought more highly of the guy for blowing us off, since no one with any sense should have taken us seriously given that situation. I never told the Buffoon about his underwear and instead allowed him to go about his day looking stupid, or rather, more stupid than usual. I guess that was my passive-agressive way at striking back at him, or rather I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge I worked for a man who I had to remind to tuck his underwear into his pants.