The Ride Along

Today, my supervisor finally caught up with me to do that "ride along".
Needless to say, I wasn't very happy about it.

As Maurita predicted, his presence affected the atmosphere and the attitude of the customers I was servicing. He would just say things to them that I wouldn't say, and would even interrupt when I was talking to them.
It was on the second job he accompanied me on that I started taking matters into my own hands.

The job was at the airport for Saudi Arabian Air And Transport. They were having issues with being able to fax to New York and the Embassy downtown. I knew right away that this was going to be pretty tricky. I'll spare you the technical details.

I made sure to be as thorough as possible with my analyzing of the problem. I took a very long time going over every tiny thing. Hehe, after two hours, he'd had enough, and was telling me I didn't need to change out a certain piece of equipment.
He was getting mad. Perfect.

I told him, "Fine, you know that this thing isn't fixed yet, the customer will not be happy, but look, I'll do whatever you tell me to do."
He shut up.
I finished what I was doing, and whatdoyaknow?? It worked!

We went back into the customer's office and he was so happy that I had been "so thorough", he gave each of us a bottle of wine and a magazine written in Arabic.
He was happy.
I was thrilled inside because I KNOW how to make a customer happy. Now will you please leave me alone.

It worked out in the end because so much time had gone by that he had to leave... but not before he had me look over and sign my appraisal for 2008: "Exceeded Expectations" in every category.

I'm sure I looked a little smug.

I don't have time to tell you how he's been getting on my nerves lately, but today made it a little better.



KoP