A New Journey on a Familiar Path

No painting this week, just a work rant. 

So, the avid readers of the blog know I vaguely mention work, a few trips, a "busy season" in the fourth quarter, and probably a few other random mentions.   

I've been working in an insurance sales call center for almost ten years.  I started as seasonal work, just trying to provide income for the family, job hired full time, and got a couple promotions along the way.  My boss for the first nine years, knew that loyalty and open communication to staff bred and equal, if not better return from the employees, and despite numerous attempts through senior leadership and marketing to torpedo our results, we always exceeded expectations. 

The one person who didn't focus on those values was our new Chief Sales Officer, who attempted to undermine morale with reductions in the commission plans and essentially ignoring my boss's years of input.  It was discouraging, but not surprising, to see my boss leave the company for a bigger title and better pay for a nationally recognized integrated health system.  

Once the powers that be realized how much he did, the search wasn't for his replacement, but for an executive title consummate to what he was asking for in the first place. 

Despite numerous applicants, the CSO hired an old crony from out of the area to take over, and immediately they brought in a consultant to review the entire sales department and every line of business we cover.  

After months of review, piles of documentation, and unnecessary travel expenses.  Two big decisions were made ignoring all input except from the consultant:  Our seasonal third party call center was chosen in spite of their incompetent presentation, lack of history in our insurance segment, and probable incompatibility of  systems with some shiny bells and whistles that other vendors had as well.    Second, out of all the inefficiencies within all these lines of business, the only staffing changes were the elimination of two managerial positions within my sales department.  To add insult to injury, my position and my fellow manager's spot would be replaced with a new sales manager, one level above us, but with less compensation.  

Did I mention the other manager, who would be best suited for that role, has been in constant communication with the VP with a developing and dangerous medical issue, then got this thrown at him, with a decision to be made a week after major surgery.  My level of disgust for the executive lack of tact and strategy (and sometimes basic grammatical structure on the e-mails detailing things) is at a level I didn't know I have. 

But what about me?  Today I've been forced to attend a sales picnic on the last day of my position, a last day which historically has big sales numbers, and the potential for big issues.  I do get the opportunity to sit with my new team in Operations.  Essentially the consultant found my position never belonged in Sales to begin with, and I was offered to transition over to Operations, conducting the same job duties, for the same pay rate, minus a few annoying things like payroll, performance reviews, and dealing with the VP.  A five-minute teams call with the Operations Director was far more productive in achieving positive and immediate results than hours of conservations with the VP discussing the exact same thing. 

One big positive from the new position is that two members of my staff will be transitioning over with me on Monday.  Corrine, my long-time coordinator, will perform the same job over in Operations, but without the pesky phone calls interrupting her work.  Abbie, a long-time intern, now full-time staff through all of COVID, finally earned her promotion that will look good as she finishes her Master's degree.   Now I'm frantically looking for better positions for the rest of my team, not because I want to create a scorched earth scenario for the sales department, but my staff's happiness always came first, and they are vastly over-qualified for the work they do.   There is plenty of room for error for this new sales team concept, and I'm quite certain Operations will end of bailing them out numerous times with some professional "I told you so's" interlaced within the conversation, but doing what's best for my side of the sales staff is what a manager does, not necessarily what upper management is doing.  

There's a bitter part of me that wants to mention that we've all survived three different Chief Sales Officers and six Sales VPs in my last decade on the job.  The ship has weathered every storm that's hit it, and I won't be part of intentionally scuttling it out of spite.  

Project 350: We continue to yo-yo around 450 outstanding posts, we've kept below 300 drafts for a bit, and sooner or later we'll break 150 scheduled posts again, only to have #RPGaDay clog up the queue for 31+ days.  Getting down to 449 (293/156)  from 451 (297/154) is a breath of fresh air.  This time last year, I was at 491 (324/167), and the anticipated backlog ballooning six weeks later with #RPGaDay2021.  

May was a bad month for gaming/painting/everything. I did get six Star Wars Campaign write-ups posted, but I still have five more to complete. The Georic Gazetteer seems to be better suited as a bi-annual project (if I can ever get around to doing the Argivian map).