What The Muffin?: Christmas Eve Madness (Complete with NORAD Santa!)

Just for kicks, let me tell you that I'm currently watching the NORAD Santa Tracker. He's in Durazno, Uruguay as of 9:31, and is heading to Melo, Uruguay. I laughed when I saw that Durazno was the name of a city. It's also the Spanish word for peach. And yes, I knew that off the top of my head. Yay for fluency!

So, today I worked what was supposedly a 5-hour shift. 7 AM until noon. I expected the worst in the way of madness and braced myself with five hail Marys and went on my merry way. Sure enough, it was the bad place on earth. Evil, evil Christmas shoppers. Excellent day for sales, though. Our goal was somewhere around $4500 and we got about $6000. I wasn't forced to push RSSP on people and was thrilled about this fact. I didn't want to manipulate people around holiday times. So, I sold a couple of cameras, some stocking stuffers, lots of toys, things like that. My boss and Cayla both got some GPS sales, and I sold a corded phone. Around noon, my ride (ahem, Dawn) had forgotten me, so I figured, "Oh, I'll end up staying about half an hour extra."

Oh, you silly sales associate. It's Christmas, don't you know? Nothing can be easy.

(PS- Santa is heading to Rio, in case you care. I'm waiting for him to get to Asuncion. If the Paraguayans have been good this year, that is.)

Anyway, at around 12:20, Dawn still wasn't there and the gold mine walked in. People looking at Sprint.

For those of you unfamiliar with comission-based sales at Radio Shack, you get comission for the sale of a phone, as well as a $15 bonus for a prepaid phone, such as Virgin Mobile, Tracfone, or Boost, and a $30 bonus for a contract or renewal. I have sold two or three prepaid, but our boss pressures us big time to get the contracts, and up until this point, I was in it deep because I was on a zero-wireless list. You don't want to be on this list, because if you're on the list for too long, people question your job security. So, I had never set this up, and Cayla started it for me so that I could help get some of the traffic at the registers out of the way, because she knew she would have to help me anyway. My boss comes in, helps me so that Cayla can take on some more customers, and gives me the basic steps to get everything set up. A processing error came up when applying the discounts (the one you get when renewing or upgrading a phone that make it free. Never, ever take that for granted. It's a major headache.) and my boss told me to call customer service to have them help me sort through it all. He then leaves me there. I type in my passcode and terminal number so that I can get assistance, and then I hear, "Your terminal is now in manual mode," and the phone goes silent.

I still don't know what manual mode is. I wait for someone to come back on the line, but nobody is there. I assume I'm being put on hold, and while irritated, I apologize to the couple buying the new phone, and tell them that I'm sure it will only be a few more minutes.

It wasn't only a few more minutes. It was about 20. Until the customer had to leave because he was late for something. At this point, I am about an hour and ten minutes over clock out time, and still have nothing resolved. Dawn has been waiting for about half an hour, and when my boss spots her, he tells me that I can go ahead and leave while he sorts the mess out. After asking about fifty more times if he was sure, I left, sure that I had lost a sale and that I was going to get fired before my last day, which is bad, seeing as my last day is January 1. It turns out that Sprint's server went down mid-activation. Good timing, Sprint. Right on Christmas Eve. In the end, the sales went through, so I'll have a nice little bonus on my next paycheck. Hooray for that!