So last night I was enjoying a pleasant conversation when the on-call cell phone rang. I tried to keep it together when this happened, because after all, I am now officially half-way through this extra-long on-call week (I get the holiday and everything!) so I did what I had to do to assemble the information I needed to tell the customer they were having a phone issue.
I called the customer to let him know that one of his phone lines was down when he started calling me every name in the book. Because I’m in a family friendly mood today I won’t even resort to the number of asterisks required to represent his potty speech but nonetheless there he was screaming at me and being a jerk. I explained the issue, he freaked out and then I apologised for calling him and hung up, because he didn’t want to be bothered.
Two minutes later the fine man called the answering service, screamed at the friendly, barely making minimum wage operator and had me paged. The operator was nearly in tears when she called. He wanted me to call back.
So I did. He proceeded to ask me why I called him back and started with the asterisks and other random symbols that would make a sailor blush. I apologised again for calling him and hung up.
This morning I let his sales representative know what had occurred last night, verbally outlining what I had already documented in the company’s database. He said that’s the way the guy is and I shouldn’t let it bother me.
Here’s the thing. It did bother me. It bothered me all night long. When I awoke this morning I wasn’t looking forward to going to work because quite frankly I had had enough.
Once upon a time I made a decision to go into radio. I wanted to program a radio station. I wanted to make it sound really good. I had no experience in the industry; all I had behind me was enthusiasm and a lot of music knowledge in my head. I bugged people and called people and made demo tapes until I got my foot in the door at a radio station. Once there, I had a pretty good career going in radio until the station I worked for was sold.
The one thing that led me to that career was motivation. I was so motivated to each that goal that I would do anything to achieve it. And I did!
I am feeling that motivation again today. I haven’t felt it in a long time, but I feel motivated to do something about the way I have been feeling lately.
So even though last night I wanted to hunt down the man that verbally berating me and make his existence really uncomfortable, today I almost want to shake his hand and thank him for spurring me in the ass to do something with my life. I work hard, and I love the group I work in, but I don’t deserve to be treated like that and I won’t be.
I am motivated again. I know what I want and I’m going to go after it. Along the way I’m going to smile and be enthusiastic. As I look at the calendar, the “Scheduled Time Off” courtesy of my company’s workforce reduction is affording me a lot of free time over the summer.
There are many adventures ahead for me and I am going to enjoy each one to it’s fullest.
Life is good and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
