Christmas Is Almost Upon Us

I was clicking around the various blogs I read the other day, and I came across one that had a countdown clock showing the days remaining until Christmas. I was somewhat surprised to see that the counter read 12. I mean, I knew that day I was surfing was December 13th, but it didn't click in my brain that we were less than two weeks away from Christmas. I still have some shopping to do, some of which I will be doing online as soon as my wife leaves the house (I'm buying for her), and some I will be doing on my next day off, which will be Thursday, the 21st.

Work is going very well. I'm still learning, and boy, is there a lot to learn. I've been trying to take on increasing responsibilities as I feel capable. Sometimes I take things upon myself, and sometimes I step back and let others lead. So far this approach is working fairly well, but sometimes I will overstep and have to back off a little bit. This weekend I will be covering the phones, which I don't like doing. The reason being is sometimes we get calls wanting prices and such, and I'm not prepared to handle that. My boss wants me to take their name and number, then call him or the owner and relay the message. I have no problem doing that, but people can get strange when it comes to giving out their phone number, and I know that if I call someplace for information, and no one there can help me and I have to wait for someone to call me back, that usually doesn't present a good first impression. Sometimes, if I think I can help them with questions other than pricing, I'll try. This is what usually gets me in trouble with my boss. I'll fill him in on the conversation and how I handled it, and he'll tell me everything I did wrong. Not that I did it wrong, exactly, it's just that I didn't handle it EXACTLY the way he would have, therefore it's incorrect. That sometimes drives me nuts.