Average Tuesday Shenanigans

Lawd hep me, I hate doing the sales. Yuck. I am HORRIBLE with rejection. Horrible. This one time, about three months ago, I stopped going to my newly-found, much-appreciated, humanist, awesome, god-free church because I had told this boy that goes there, too, that I liked him and he showed up at the Delft with this wretched thing called 'Alison' two days later and the rejection was so off-putting that I stopped with the church and anything else which maybe would have caused me to face said rejection and accompanying embarassment. It's okay now...I can have a delightful conversation with him, but he's still with this 'Alison' and whenever they are together, I am again mired in my psychological rejection quicksand. Fortunately, he likes to go for drives and celebrate Proposal 1, so that gets us some quiet, 'Alison'-free time.
On to my first point today. I had some good luck with sales today, and it's made me unsually chipper and hopeful. Granted, it's in support of our 30 Days of Christmas Promotion, which is the coolest annual thing we do, quite frankly, and you'd be an absolute idiot of a business owner to NOT do it if you have any faith in advertising whatsoever. I sold three days of it, and perhaps four to five, which is WAY above and beyond what I normally try to do. I'm happy and proud and emboldened, but here comes point #2:
Bill is the most worthless effer who's ever walked the earth. He's SUPPOSED to be our sales guy. We fired the greatest Sales Manager in our history in order to give him a shot, and he shows up maybe two hours a day, maybe three days a week. He has the bulk of the accounts, the bulk of the commission, and has folded under the responsiblility like an accordian in a trash compactor. The reason I am busting MY ass to sell this thing is because Bill is not. A list of his multiple work failures, alphabetically for convenience:
*Chronic, unexcused absenteeism
*Complaints from clients (many, many complaints)
*Creation of a hostile work environment
*Disrespect of co-workers
*Excessive use of work time for personal matters
*Foul language in front of clients
*Ignorance of company mores, practices, policies and procedure
*Insubordination
*Misappropriation of funds
*Misuse of company property
*Poor job performance
*Repeated disregard for chain of command
*Unprofessional attitude, dress, and demeanor

Now, let's make a list of reasons why he hasn't been fired yet:

*His dad owns the radio station


And....that's it. Tah-dah!
Any successes we're having are in SPITE of him, and any problems we're experiencing are BECAUSE of him, either because he's NOT selling and making us money, he's effing up the stuff we have already, or his grossness is alienating potential advertisers, not to mention what he does to morale around here. Jesus. We should pay him to stay home!! Oh, wait...we do.

Issue #3
Filing a Homeowner's Claim

Sucks ass. Here's what happened: for a few weeks, I noticed a distinct and advancing 'gurgle' in the pipes. Thinking it was the wet ground and etc from the autumnal advent, I ignored it. The drains were draining, the water was running, the toilette (french accent for fanciness) was flushing, and with the exception of the candle I accidentally melted and with which clogged up the whole of the dishwasher workings, all was good with my wastewater disposal mechanisms. Until last week.
I got out of the shower and noticed that my slow drain was at a dead stop. No tinkling of soap and skin-y water down the old cast iron intestines was heard at all. So, being a maverick of home maintenance, I plunged.

Terrible, terrible mistake.

The pressure of the plunging on top of the completely backlogged (though I didn't know that THEN, did I?) pipes caused the main drain off of the shower to DISENGAGE from the shower itself, and gravity pulled my shower water down onto the wall of the basement and made a sort of grody plywood cascade down there. The only reason I knew that was because the floor is rotting out behind the shower itself and I am somewhere in the process of turning that space into a linen closet, so from the hole in the floor that looks down into the basement next to the shower, I could HEAR said waterfall. I ran down to the basement and lo and behold, not only was there a waterfall, it was practically an entire park down there, with a wave pool, bog, and (I think) a critter or two. The pipes had been blocked for...oh, say...three or so weeks, and all of the excess, plus the weather water, was flooding my basement. I couldn't step down into it, in fact, from the bottom step of the basement stairs, because it was up to the top of the bottom step. Gah-ross-ah.
Being the me that I am, I hoped it would heal and babied it for a few days. I didn't run unnecessary water, didn't flush every time (ick.), but did shower freely, since that was just running down the wall anyway. Well, Sunday came the reckoning. I started the dishwasher, and shortly thereafter had a piece of beet come up in the bathroom sink. Then even more foul came up in the kitchen, and I stood at the ready with latex gloves, old towels, shopvac and mop in hand in case the toilette decided to vex me as well. Thankfully, it did not, but I did realize that my house's digestive tract was not about to heal, and that someone needed to root out the polyps in the system. Where the eff is THAT money going to come from?
"Oh, ho! Insurance!! Insurance will SAVE me! This is what it's for!" And I called Cindy, the Savior Insurance Lady, who calls you two days before you're cancelled and covers your payment if you need to post-date your check, and left a message. Well, as great as Cindy is, she is only my agent, and the independent adjuster hired by Hastings Mutual is not as prompt, courteous, or sympathetic as Cindy, and here it is Tuesday and I am just having the drains rooted out today. Then the adjuster comes tonight, tells me what the deal is, and I can file my claim. I still have to pay for the drain cleaner, but now can have the basement sanitized, the water removed, and the plywood wall replaced, but the detached pipe, aforementioned rooting, and any other charges are mine. Does that seem fair? So here I interject the celebrity part of my blog title and charm my way into impromptu commercials for the drain-rooting fella in hopes that he will charge me less and my insurance company more.

Wish me luck. Otherwise, it's poop-rink ice skating in my basement this winter. Yay!