The End of an Era

My boss made me take down The Mouth of the South board. Not out of any malicious management type power trip or anything. We had a couple of big wigs from corporate in today, affectionately called the Bobs, and it had also become too well known amongst the rest of the company, and therefore had become a little too dangerous from an HR disaster standpoint.

Ah well. Its good to quit while you are on top.

The Mouth of the South

Sales manager says to me, "You know what we imagine when she says, 'Sounds good!'?" Guy on the other line saying, "BBQ Platter."

Quote of the Day: "My family ran liquor through Hazard County"

I still haven't come up with my own nickname, although they do call her "School Bus" on the sales floor.

The Telemarketer

I've created a little excitement at work, some people other than my immediate circle of IT coworkers discovered my large sheets of paper with the tallies and catchphrases. They're sales people. Sales people who sit in her immediate vicinity. They thought it was pretty funny.

I think I am going to write a small app to record all of her catch phrases and then generate a tag cloud and put it out on our intranet somewhere. That would be AWESOME!

I'm renaming her from "The Telemarketer" to something else though. Thats probably my worst nickname ever. Maybe "The Mouth of the South" or "t-mos" for short. "Belly of the Beast" has also been rattling around in my brain.

We'll see.

Quote of the Day: "My ancestors used to run shine"

*yawn*

It dawned on me tonight that I don't post about work much. There's really nothing to post about. It is incredibly b o r i n g.

There is however this woman who works on the sales floor. I can't ever remember her name. It's Sue Bob or Sammy Joe or Mary Lou. I can't remember. Anyway, to me, she is just The Telemarketer. All day long cold calling people. She is heavyset and has a big booming barrel laugh.

When someone talks on the phone all day and their voice is louder than a wrestling announcer, you tend to pick up on words and phrases that they repeat ad nauseam. You also tend to get really annoyed too. I decided to find some humor in it.

She really puts her weight behind some of her words too. A simple "Awesome" becomes "THAAATS AWESOOOME!"

Anywho, three words (phrases) that she uses constantly jumped out at me. Touch base, awesome, and cool.

I got a big sheet of paper from my ideasel® (i just made that up) and tacked it to the wall and I've been keeping a tally for the past couple of weeks of each time she says one of those words.

So far, "cool" is way in the lead, followed by "touch base" with "awesome" a disappointing third. Her awesomes are AWESOOOMME and I wish that there were more, but I know why there aren't more. I'll explain.

She uses "touch base" when she is calling a contact back for the second time. Makes sense to me. Cool is reserved for when she gets shot down by a prospective client. An d she will use it three or four times whilst closing out the conversation.

Awesome is reserved for when she makes a deal. Sadly, she doesn't seem to do that very often. She will say it occasionally on a Friday, i.e. "It's FRIDAY. I'm doing AWESOME!" which to my simple brain probably doesn't endear her to the sales manager who will be working all weekend.

How I imagine a typical conversation:

The Telemarketer: "Hi this is Suzy Joe form SuchAndSuch, how are you today?"
Sales Man: "I'm fine. How are you?"
The Telemarketer: "I'm AWESOME! Today is Thursday! Which means tomorrow is FRIDAY!"
Sales Man: "Ah yeah, listen, I'm busy"
The Telemarketer: "Ok, cool. Can I call you back later?"
Sales Man: "I suppose"
The Telemarketer: "Cool. I will talk to you next week then."
Sales Man: "Alright"
The Telemarketer: "Great. Cool. Bye"

Unfortunately, I am getting bored at keeping this tally and will be ceasing operations soon. I have a new better idea which I started last week. Why limit myself to just keeping track of "awesome" or "cool"? This woman is a veritable geyser of goofy words and phrases that she blasts out all day. So, I've been writing down each individual phrase that she says on another sheet of ideasel® paper. Here's a sample:

Here's the kicker
'preciate it
Shoot you a phone call
Are you stoked?

More later...