Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Marriage


We've been officially married for a month and a day!

I loved our wedding day. I wanna have another wedding it was that much fun.

Plus, I want to wear the dress again because it made me really really really happy.

It took Tyler exactly 16 days to break his ring.

It's a two-toned band, the yellow gold band came loose from the white gold and had to be re-soldered, and apparently its something than can happen easily if you fuss with it too much.

I'm still having an identity crisis from changing my name.

Its weird to have been one thing your whole life and suddenly go by something different. Especially as I didn't do any of this "gradual" crap. I did the changeover (for the most part) all in one day, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! The Monday after the wedding I went to the courthouse to hand in our marriage license and get my certified copies, went to social security, DMV and the bank and changed everything over!

I love being married.

"Nothing's changed" as they say, but I feel more stable, and husband has this confidence that I've been seeing emerge the last nine months or so, kind of a sigh of relief and a straightening of his shoulders that says, "Aha! She's mine forever now! I can even hold her head under the covers when I fart and she won't leave me!"

Not that that's happened. But you can see he's thinking it.

And I love being married.

Ciao,
kc

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Survival

I did it. I survived my third iPhone launch. Technically it's the fourth I've been through, but one was missed due to Nana's passing and the NWM. Which I was totally okay with. Missing it, I mean, not Nana passing.

I have not left the office earlier than 8PM since Thursday night, and we close at 7. Thursday we had to set up for the launch and I was there until 8:30 or so. Friday I arrived at 7:15AM and didn't leave til 8PM, sprinting around like a crazy person and selling my heart out...it was actually invigorating.

Though try telling a normal looking woman with an iPhone-crazed look in her eye that, "Yes I know you've been waiting since 5AM, but we didn't get any gold iPhones and they are back ordered through November."

A person with good reflexes and street smarts needs to be prepared to duck in those situations. Never know what they might do.

Luckily the majority of people took the news with aplomb rather than screaming and either went with the "right now" option (Space Grey) or moved on. Only one or two screamed epithets and threatened to go to a different carrier.

I'm really not sure what the deal is with the gold ones. You put a case on the sucker and you can't see it anyways.

Yesterday was more hellish, because all the troubleshoots and bill questions that avoided coming in on Friday came in yesterday. I didn't get lunch until 6PM because the three hour waits that had existed on Friday perpetuated into yesterday and every time I went to the front to ask for a break I was met instead with, "So and so is the next customer, they've been waiting for an hour..." So I would race to the back room and scarf a cheese stick or a handful of goldfish crackers in between bouts of "okay, so which phone..." and "I'll go check on cases for you..."

All you can do with days like these is survive as best you can.

My back is killing me.

BUT I sold more phones than anyone in the store on Friday, with 6 new and 17 renewals. Second in the store for new, beat everyone out on renewals by about 7 devices, and was the only one to end the day with decent pull through, a metric that is calculated by how many new non-phone devices we sell versus new phone devices. I sold a home phone and an iPad of my six new lines, so my mix was right where they wanted it to be around 33%. Needless to say, it was nice to hear a few accolades yesterday before the shit hit the fan.

I promise, my next post will be less about phones and more about my life.

I got married, you know, and am now not technically kc anymore. I'm kb, but in light of the identity crisis of changing the name I've had for oh, almost 27 years, I'm gonna stick with kc. Husband still calls me that, so we'll go with it.

Ciao,
kc

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Bring Out Your Crazies

I'm not really sure what it is about cellphones in general, and iPhones in particular that make people especially crazy, hostile, and inane. Not insane, inane.

As many of you may know, Apple announced their new phones on the 10th, and one started preorder on Friday and they both officially launch this coming Friday. And tell you what, if I had a nickel for every crazy who has yelled at me for not having the iPhone 5S on preorder this week and a penny for every idiot who walked through the door demanding the new phone NOW...

Holy moly.

"That greeter girl at the front is LYING to people, you people better get your facts straight! She told me that the new iPhone isn't on preorder!"

"Well, ma'am, which iPhone were you looking for? Because if you were asking after the 5S that is correct, it is not on preorder. However, the 5C which is virtually identical to the 5 except in shiny polyurethane and color, is on preorder..."

Oh.

"Well, can't we just set everything up and pay for everything so all I have to do is walk in on Friday and pick up the phones?"

"Sir, without a phone present I can't ring anything up and that particular model can't be ordered at this time. The 5S will be available on Friday and is a first-come, first-serve situation."

"That doesn't make any sense. I just want to give you money and start the account, why do you need the phones to do that? I don't want to have to get here at the crack of dawn like everyone else."

Hand to face.

iPhone people are their own extra-special breed. Especially as the new iPhone is really just a load of hype and not a lot of change.

Where's the "extended battery"? Oh? It lasts for ten hours you say? Oh wait, so did the 5. And the 4S. And the 4. Weird.

Oooh, they updated the camera and now it's better? So more megapixels? Nope, still 8, but they added an extra piece to the lens to add clarity. Huh. Isn't every other phone on the market at a 10 MP or better these days? It is? That's too bad, because clearly, the iPhone is better.

And why would they want to add NFC (near field communication) like every other phone on the market, which makes transferring of data easy and wireless without any setup? That's for the peasants.

Oh! Oh! But they did add this really cool security feature where you can use your fingerprint as your password! Never mind that it didn't fully make it through beta testing...

So I really want the "new" and "improved" iPhone, don't you?

Ciao,
kc