Tricked You

Let me share a little secret with you. You know the plethora of posts I managed to post this week? I wrote them all last Tuesday. Yes, all of them. There's this little thing called delayed posting that is my new best friend!

Well, not new, exactly, as I've used it before.

This week I had a killer week at work (I give credit to my posting-mania), and I am currently at the top of the food chain, which has never happened. I'm almost 50% to quota for my new service sales! And I've only worked four days! Holy crap!

And there's this new thing we're doing — again, it's an old thing but it's new that we're doing it in the store — called trade ins. Yeah, they've always been available online, but as of the middle of February we're doing them in store now.

Well, the point is when we first started doing it it was a grade-A cluster fuck. My boss was ripping out his hair because some people had access and some people didn't and some people had super access and some people didn't...and I said, "Look, I don't mind taking on some more responsibility. Let me do it. I'll be in charge and make sure this works the way it's supposed to."

My boss grabbed that offer with both hands and shoved me into that responsibility.

So I took it, streamlined it, made guidelines and educated my co-workers. It was going well.

Then this past weekend, corporate offered a $200 gift card to "Fill the Fridge" (buy snacks) to the first store to hit 50 trade-ins in the three days. I ramped up, sent emails, and encouraged my co-workers. We did it and my manager yesterday morning let me know.

Now, before I tell you what went on from there, I have to tell you that Sunday morning I bent over to pick up my running capris off the floor and my back went out. Not like full-on out, but definitely muscles seizing, full-on pain and I crumpled to the floor and thought to myself, "Crap, I don't know if I can get up and I have to leave for work in ten minutes. And Tyler's not home so if I can't get up I'm going to be here on the floor all day because my phone is all the way across the room."

I managed to get up, and I (stupidly) dragged my aching back to work to work all day. Bad call, physically, but good call professionally as I sold a bunch of phones and had a great day sales-wise. My boss said it was karma for managing to get to work and for staying after they offered to send me home and I said I'd stick it out as long as I could. Needless to say though, I cried myself to sleep with the pain and could barely walk yesterday. So when I got the good news, I was lying on my back on the floor with my feet propped in the most comfortable back-injury-pain-relieving position.

"We won the fridge contest $200!!!! Thank you Kristen!! Do you want to send a group text out?" my manager texted me.

"Sure!" I said and proceeded to do that. My phone bing-bonged and I checked my messages.

"Also, you should know that this was very much recognized as your project. Use it in any future promotions interviews," my manager told me.

That alone made me feel super stoked. Then, the responses to my group text came flooding in, many of which said, "Kristen gets first vote on what we get [for the fridge] as she's the one who made it happen!" Not just my managers, but my co-workers!

There I was, an invalid and upset because I couldn't make it to work (when I was having such a good week...I didn't want to break the momentum), and I was getting all of this support and kudos from my co-workers and management team. It's awesome.

Yet another perk to being good at my job.

Ciao,
kc