Life is Good!

I do have the best job regardless of all my gripes!  I get to try new products, talk all day, people watch, schedule my own hours, and not have to deal with the internal politics at the stores.

Outsiders may think I just stand there and look pretty.  But that is just the window dressing.  If you scratch the surface, you'll find me spending time coordinating all the demos a month in advance. If one works for more than one company, then it takes some practice to skillfully plan your month's work efficiently and try to please each vendor by rotating the busier days to suit their promotions.  Then waiting for the emails from various stores to confirm the dates you've requested, and if they aren't available then switch stores and demos.  Then there's storing the demo stock for the various companies.  My home becomes a warehouse at times.  

I used to work for a broker where I was actually making $60 and sometimes $80 per hour.  But that wasn't all gravy because I had to pick the flavours of each product I wanted to demo based on whether the store carried it, order the demo stock from the distributor and then pick it up in Burnaby and Richmond.  Then the usual scheduling of the demos, storage, and frustration of dealing with staff that didn't ensure there was stock at the stores for the demo.  There were times I actually called the stores to ensure there was stock and then relaying the message to the sales rep, but then was asked not to do so cause it wasn't my job.  True, but why couldn't they do theirs when the demo is booked a month in advance?!  They still get a pay cheque, but I don't if a demo is cancelled due to lack of stock.

This particular company fell behind in paying me months at a time, so now I was actually working for free!  They didn't care that I had to borrow money to meet my mortgage payments.  I was finally paid in full, but I often wondered if the accountant was skimming cause I was shorted on every pay cheque.  She was the most anal accountant around, and all of a sudden she was making errors and excuses about misplacing my reports.  I'm not the only person she had to cut a cheque for, so why was it so difficult to organize?  She was also planning to retire, which is when my cheques started getting misplaced or missed entirely.

It seems to be the local companies that fall behind in payments.  I have worked for American and Ontario companies that paid every week.  But the smaller companies, especially based in Vancouver take a month to pay.  It's ludicrous!  One company I work for has only one signing officer - the owner!  He insists that he will continue to be the only one.  It doesn't matter that he travels regularly for long periods of time.  It's a good thing this company isn't my main source of income ;)