Wrapping Up The First Week

Everything went smoothly for most of the morning until it came time for Terri and Charlie to leave for their trip. There was a conference call scheduled for 11 AM with the sales gurus from the region which started on time. It was a typical conference call, similar to those that I sat in on for more than 35 years in sales. There are 13 Communities in the region, and we had to sit and listen to reports from each of the other 12 during the call. I will never understand why management takes up so much productive time of so many people to waste with information that does not affect them. There should be one-on-one calls with each Community to discuss their sales. That would make a 1 1/2 hour conference call a 10 minute conference call and everybody could be doing what they are paid to do. Oh, well.

At noon time, with the conference call still in session, we had several activities occurring simultaneously: a couple walked in asking for information and a tour, Terri and Charlie had to do last minute things to leave, Josie and I had to do pour service for the meal and there was a resident that wanted to pay his monthly rent. It was mass confusion. We left Jamie (half of the other couple) to end the conference call, Rob (the other half) took the walk-ins on tour, Josie and I left to do the meal service and Terri and Charlie left without goodbyes. Somehow, the check from the resident was accepted and he was given a receipt.

There has only been one serious concern since we started and that is the effectiveness of my hearing aids in certain situations. I cannot hear conversations clearly in a crowded room, such as meal time, nor in meetings where there are several individuals speaking at once. The conference calls are also a problem since the speaker phones do not send out a clear message. The telephones are also difficult for me to use and that is one very important part of the job. I have an appointment scheduled with an Audiologist today to see what can be done to resolve those problems.

Other than that, our first full week is in the books. It has been a good experience so far and we are happy that we get a chance now to finish up some details on the apartment. We plan to go back to the fifth wheel today to pick up some miscellaneous items and to take back some that we decided we don't need. We also need to drop off some clothes at the cleaners for next week and we may go to purchase more dress clothes somewhere. It has been so long since we had to dress in business clothes that we got rid of most of that stuff over the last several years.

The weather has been perfect and we heard that the groundhog saw his shadow yesterday. We'll take the 6 more weeks of winter here...