Just gave clients bottle of Champagne and a note congratulating them on their one year anniversary in business. He said "will probably sell this. How much should I sell it for?"

Conversational Possum

I just made that up, but it is a phrase I have been needing for ages. I have often, and of late increasingly more often, found myself in a situation where I am being either enraged or bored to tears by a person who is holding court on a subject anout which they clearly know nothing. 

Mostly this involves me being around a bunch of strangers, or worse- clients or friends of clients. 

My strategy is to feign ignorance, deafness, or nature's call- anything to get out of further engagement, especially when I know that correcting these jackasses or in any way disagreeing with them will likely cost me business. 

At least now I have a spirit animal for these occasions.

I have this client. I'll call him bill. Bill and his wife bought a wine shop in the suburbs last fall. The first time he contacted me, just prior to the large portfolio tasting that my company held, I was a little suspicious.

He was vague about exactly what he was doing, and he wanted me to meet with him and show him as many wines as possible. It turned out that he had not completed the purchase of the shop, and the people that were working there were not aware that it was being sold. All very logical, but when someone contacts you and wants you to spend hours opening hundreds of dollars worth of wine for them to taste and you have no idea whether or not they're actually going to buy any, well, let's just say there is some hesitation.

Once I figured out what was going on. I did set an appointment with him for a Friday afternoon. When he arrived at our office, he was quite disheveled, with half of his shirt untucked and a stain on his tie, which was longer in the back than the front. He proceeded to talk loud enough for everyone on both floors to hear, and during our tasting spit at least half of the wine he tasted down the side of the spit bucket and all over the table. He also proceeded to take three phone calls, sitting in front of me loudly and animatedly speaking to both his wife and his daughter (the latter twice) as if I we're not there and we were not in the middle of a business meeting. The whole experience was bizarre, and I was relieved when he left, and also convinced that he would never be a business owner. 

I was wrong, as it turned out, and they made the transition in early November, in time for the holiday season. His wife is a lovely woman, and what she lacks in general disheveled mess she makes up for in general oddity. They are very nice people, and things seem to be doing okay for them so far. I stop in at least every other week, and I usually do a tasting there every other month. There have been many repeat experiences with Bill's odd behavior and general slovenliness, but I have come to find it mostly charming.

Last week, I stopped in to see Bill with so gorgeous Italian wines. I could see from across the room that something was off, but it wasn't until I was directly in front of him but I realized he was wearing his shirt inside out. It was a purple polo, and there was a tag sticking straight up from his right shoulder waving at me well I tried to concentrate on the task at hand. I also noticed that he had one pant leg tucked into his sock- not because he rides a bicycle to work, but because he apparently lacks any sort of mirror anywhere in his house.

I sent a text to the BH when I left:

"Leaving suburban wine shop now. Be home in forty minutes. Bill wearing shirt inside out."

BH: "He probably has a stain on the other side."

(Note: apparently, every edit and subsequent repost here means the date changes. This was more timely when it was originally published. I bugger it up because I was obsessing about a small error.)

Yesterday at the office, we were tasting wine with a delightful Frenchmen from Alsace. At the end of his presentation, Bernard turned to us all and asked

"Does anybody know what today is?"

We all answered that it was the anniversary of D-Day, because of course the anniversary was marked by the President and every other politician, and various ceremonies were being covered by national media so we had all been reminded en route to work in one way or another. 

He said to us "I wasn't there of course, but my grandfather made sure to tell me about it every year. The day when the Allies came... It changed everything," he said, a tear coming into his eye and then mine. "So thanks for that." 

And then he raised a glass of the amazing Cremant that his family has been making for generations and said "Vive' Liberacion!" (I'm sure I've butchered the spelling, as I was a student of Spanish in high school and not French, but you get the idea.)

It is good to be reminded on occasion that we were not always the world's destructive toddler. 

I just got a text from a client. It is 7:30 PM on Friday of a holiday weekend. In the past two weeks, I have sent this client no fewer than three emails detailing exactly what they carry from our portfolio, and what they need on their shelves. They had a very large turnover of staff recently, and the owner is now running his own wine and spirits department.

The owner, I should mention, is a very wealthy young guy who, despite having absolutely no experience in the industry, decided to open a restaurant and grocery store.

The text reads "hi heybartender – Sean so-and-so from such and such business here. Do you happen to be around this weekend and have a few cases of XYZ Wine handy?"

And some people wonder why I drink and cuss so much.

Today was one of those days when I had to convince myself not to quit my job. 

The really difficult/beautiful thing about this particular job is that no one is actually looking over my shoulder. I could conceivably just go fuck off for an entire day, or hell an entire week, and as long as I put the orders through at the end of each day, nobody would notice. Unfortunately I have an actual work ethic, so the likelihood that I will ever take advantage of that is remote. 

Four more weeks until the BH and I have a four day weekend. We have zero days off together right now, and that has been very difficult. He's not very happy with his job either, and there's really no way for him to change his schedule right now, so were kind of stuck where we're at. 

I'm certain that I failed to mention the excruciating trips I have recently taken to the chiropractor. I injured myself a couple of months ago when I fell on the ice outside the house, and I pretty much ignored the pain that I was in until I started to wake up every morning with my left arm completely numb. I haven't even gotten adjusted by the chiropractor because I'm in such terrible shape, but I am doing physical therapy and things are getting better. I feel 100 years old.

Goddamn I am so boring.

Now you see why haven't been writing.

I'm having a hard time feeling motivated to write. It's not that I don't have anything to say, I think it's just that with Twitter and Facebook, I feel like it's already been said. Blessing and a curse, those two additions to modern life.

We haven't had a holiday of any sort in a while, and the BH and I are planning a trip to Nashville at the end of May. A much needed respite, and he can't come to soon.

Wyatt is having a terrible time adjusting to life without Kilgore. When he's left at home for any amount of time by himself, he howls and cries. This of course is going to be a bigger problem with the warmer weather coming, since we will have windows open. As long as the weather is cool, I can take him with me. He loves the car, and he's an easy companion. The problem will come when it gets too hot to leave him in the car during my sales calls. I'm trying to get my head around the idea of getting another dog. Not ready for it in so many ways.

Still not seeing much of anyone, but we are getting out more. Happy that the playoffs and started, though it this rate they do promise to be the death of my liver.

Gods I'm boring.

Homesick

I know I'm technically home now, but most of the time it really doesn't feel like it. I love the feel of the city, the fact that I can essentially have any kind of food or entertainment on any given night. Recently the b.h. And I have been making an effort to get out more and try restaurants we haven't tried, maybe get a drink somewhere different. It has been fun, and we have found some great places and revisited some if my old favorites- dive bars to bakeries. 

All of this is great, but we aren't seeing much of our friends. I don't really even see my family. I don't feel any sense of community here. I'm sure that's largely our own fault. For the first year we didn't have any money and found it difficult to get out, and once we started making money we really didn't have any time. Your money or you life, they say, and it was never more true for me than in the last three months. 

History Buff

So I'm at a client's retail store. It's the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's, and I am pouring a selection of wines, plus one type of spirits. The idea is that people are more likely to buy if they have had a chance to taste. My job is to show them the stuff, talk about attributes and origins, and, in some cases, justify the price. ("Yes, there is a difference between the ten dollar and the fifty dollar Cabernet")

So this particular day, the spirits have an interesting origin. Made in one if the country's oldest distilleries, recipe passed down for generations, same family making it in New Jersey since 1780. There are opinions expressed, questions asked, and one woman, standing in the back of a largish group of tasters, exclaims with wonder and obvious skepticism 

"There were people in New Jersey in 1780?!"

Negative. 

The weight of the word was compounded by both the discomfort and distaste with which it was uttered and the shock of the realization that a person with whom I had always felt so comfortable, been so candid, and felt so close to didn't really understand me at all.

You're so negative. 

Wow. Has this been brewing long? Has it been there the whole time? Are we not as close as I thought we were? Will we ever be? And, perhaps most importantly, will I ever truly be myself with you again?

The answers to those questions have yet to play themselves out, but in the time since they were uttered, I have certainly censored myself, and there have been multiple occasions on which I wish I had. It took me until tonight to realize that this is the place where I can safely put the things that I can't always put out in the world. 

For the record, I don't consider myself negative. I guess that I have often used this as a space to note things that are negative, and in my walking, talking, non-digital life, I note these things as well, to certain people. But talking it out is the way I deal with negativity. I think shitty experiences shared become less shitty somehow, and often take on a comical aspect. I think I've always been this way. At least I have for as long as I can remember. Only rarely have I felt completely misunderstood about it, and only three times can I distinctly remember being shocked by another person's response to it. 

I feel quite shaken by the whole experience. I've been meaning to get back here anyway, but now I feel it is a matter of need more than desire. I'm hoping that getting back to writing will keep me off of the therapist's couch, because frankly I have better things to do with my money.

Apologies for the abrupt seriousness. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as I've gotten some sleep. For now, I'll just go ahead and slip the mask back on...

Well, it seems that there are actually a few of you still out there. Fabulous.

Apologies for my crappy lack of keeping up. I have only just published comments for the first time in months because for some reason they don't appear on my phone. Huh. I learn something new that makes me feel like an idiot every day.

Anyway, Christmas was fine. Christmas eve was ridiculous, with the store staying open until 7pm and us having to chase out customers at 7:20, but the b.h. and I managed still to get out to my aunt and uncle's house to spend some quality family time. I have no idea who these people are that wait until not only the last minute, but frankly way past the last acceptable minute to get their shit together for the holidays. The nice thing is that most people in a panic are fairly willing to trust my recommendation and just feel relieved that I am there to help. I did have one customer who asked me first if we had

"A wine called Chocolate, from California?" I replied that we did not, and she repeated the name, this time adding "Chocolate Rouge. It's from California. It is so Amazing. You won't believe it." I was sure that I wouldn't, I told her, but I had no such wine, nor anything with the word chocolate in the name (because honestly, who would?!). I asked her if she knew what kind of wine it was, or where in California it was from, thinking that perhaps I could perhaps help her find a suitable alternative. She had no idea, and she wanted that particular wine, so she was going to go top a competitor's store to find it. Okay, then, let me know if there's anything else blah blah blah, I was saying, as I walked away.

"Oh WAIT," she said, nearly shouting across the department. "Do you have one called Sexual Chocolate?!"

Every two months we have a new Big Dumb Wine promotion, and at this time I am shipped a metric fuck ton of mostly shitty to mediocre wines which I am responsible for placing around the store on large displays. Often these wines are not popular with my clientele and so do not sell very quickly.
As an example, there was a promotion in June with a has-been band from the late nineties and early part of this century. This mediocre band named after a mode of transportation had a couple of catchy pop tunes that went high on the charts, prolonging what should have been a quick flash in the pan and adding to the general suffering of people with discerning musical taste who nonetheless fall victim to the constant repetition of shit and get it stuck in their heads - me, for example. Anyway, this band, having more money than sense, decided to get it the wine business. They therefore invested what was likely an assload of money into the production of crap wine and marketing to push it. My company, in all of it's hip, knowing what's "now" wisdom, signed a deal with the band to be the exclusive purveyor of said shit juice, and set about foisting large loads of it on every single store.
And so I found myself one morning in my first month of work last June staring down the barrel of fifty eight cases of it. Mine is a very small store with almost no area for backstock- I know people with walk-in clothing closets as large or larger- so I was really, really not happy. It was a day that I wished I could quit my job. But I didn't, and we put the wine out and there it sat. Even now, six months later, it haunts me still, mocking me from the discount bin, all flabby, buttery oak and sinister fruitiness.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Promotion. The current Promotion is called T0p Ten. We do this twice a year, apparently, the last time being just prior to my arrival at the store. There are, inexplicably, twelve wines in the TT Promo, and a couple of them are actually pretty good. So good, in fact, that sales have gone way beyond our original projections and supplies have run out. When this happens, I am left to figure out how to fill the holes at a moment's notice (sometimes less). The understanding is that whatever I use to fill said holes will immediately be pulled from the shelves when the TT wine is available again, regardless of how much I have, and it will be up to me find storage for it and eventually sell through it all. This week, in addition to being incredibly busy, I was forced to find a replacement for one if the TT wines. It would be at least January, I was told, before we would have access to more. So I found a great wine at a fabulous price to put in it's place. I jumped through hoops and plowed through red tape to get it in, put it on sale, and request proper signage. It would take until Friday for this to go through, because hey- we're a huge corporation! We can't get anything done in less than a week. Anyway, I have to explain to The Mustache, my Manager, that the display in question will be a bit thin until I can get all of the pieces in place. He is not happy but he understands.

The wine is delayed until Wednesday. I get in on Thursday and it is waiting. I have an order to put together so I plan to put it out in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I get an e-mail from a higher up saying that twelve cases of the TT wine will be sent to me automatically on Friday morning. I inform The Mustache, telling him that I don't want to waste time putting out the good wine only to take it back down on Friday when the TT wine comes in. The display looks terrible, but he agrees. Comb it over, he says, until the TT arrives.
When I get to work on Friday, the TT wine is nowhere to be found. It never arrives, in fact, and I end up building the display with the emergency wine that I ordered, which I am happy about, because the quality is better and the price double.
What I'd like to know is how could a distributor not know that a French wine was coming until the last possible moment? Shouldn't they at least have been aware of when the truck was leaving New York? Why do we reward this kind of fuckwittery by paying them for such shitty service?
And what do you want to bet the TT wine is waiting when I get to work today?

In other news, I sent out a résumé last night to a company I would really like to work for. Fingers crossed.

*UPDATE The TT wine was, in fact, waiting when I arrived at work on Monday. Of course, the special weekend sale pricing was over, as was the contest (with monetary rewards involved) to see who could sell the most, so I will probably still have some if any of you would like to holiday here this summer. 

In a stunning display of Corporate Assholery, Whore Foods rewarded us for our record breaking sales week by cutting our hours. Seriously.

What Fresh Hell is This?

Today began the cycle of Christmas music.

That is all.

We sold almost seventeen thousand dollars worth of wine on Wednesday. I worked for nine and a half hours. Now I am very seriously looking into a bar job. I asked around and a friend of mine told me his brothers own a sports bar not too far from my house. Madness? Perhaps. A bad idea? Possibly. But I can't shake the feeling that I am being had at my current job. The corporate fuckwittery is bad and the pay is worse. I'm going to meet one of the guys on Wednesday and see what it looks like. If they will give me a shift or two a week to start I will take it. If I am forced to decide between knowing how much money I will make every paycheck and hoping for enough, I'm going to have to think very hard about it. Also, my health insurance just kicked in.
I don't know what to think. Wish me luck.

The rules are very clear. There are a lot if them, and there are a lot of employees at my National Natural Grocery Chain, so everything is cut and dry: skirts, dresses, and shorts must be of a length that is no more than three fingers above the knee. This is an enormous relief to me after my last job, where young women (girls, really) would come to work wearing the equivalent of a diaper and scream to the union that they were being unfairly treated if anyone dared to suggest that they might want to cover themselves a bit more while working in food service.

I never really take much notice of what my co-workers wear. We have people from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as all ages and levels of fashion sense, so it really takes something extraordinary to catch my eye.

The girl in question is not small. She is not short, nor thin, and she was nowhere *near* to fitting in the dress. Add to that the fact that her tights were sheer and purple, as opposed to a more sensible (and flattering) thick black pair, and my eyes could not help but be drawn downward when she walked past and bade me good morning. I bid her one also, and then immediately fired off a snarky text to Pat, the beer buyer, who was due in later that day.

"You might want to bring an extra pair of pants for your not girlfriend. She seems to have forgotten hers."
His response was a shudder. They had been out on two pseudo-dates some time ago, and he had since been keeping her at a polite arm's length. (He felt guilty about that and I occasionally had to remind him that on both occasions she had gotten drunk and loud and spent all of his money.)

Within ten minutes I saw her leaving the building in tears. Management had sent her home. I did feel slightly bad for her, but at the same time I think that by the time one is in their late twenties one ought to be able to dress oneself.
Pat came in an hour later. She had called him, crying, on her way home. So many ways in which she doesn't get it.

Yes!!!!

Cautiously optimistic as polls close in the East and results trickle in. That douchebag in Indiana lost his Senate seat, which is a relief. Aghast at how many co-workers did not bother to vote, but not surprised. I'm hoping this night doesn't turn into a nail biter. Scary to think what might happen if this thing is close. Fingers crossed, beer poured. Wish us well!

The woman looked just like the bus driver from the first season of SOuth Park. She was wandering through the aisles like one of the zombie extras from a bad movie, shuffling along and sort of grunting to herself. Next thing she has taken a sample from a demo that my co-worker is doing, bites into the baguette smeared with onion jelly and cheese, and breaks a tooth.
First she says she doesn't need any help, doesn't want to talk to a manager.
Then she stands around with her fingers in her mouth for a few minutes, and then she charges back over to the demo table.
"You're going to have to pay for this. My modeling career is ruined."

A manager is summoned. A very long conversation ensues, during which the woman demands that he take a picture of the rotten stub of her tooth- he does, with his cell phone - and tells him that she is going to call the company that makes the jelly that was on the bread and tell them what we've done. I am on the periphery of this entire episode, trying to commit her words to memory while fantasizing about eavesdropping on that phone call. This kind of crazy doesn't happen every day. Not since we left Vermont.