I'm blogging right now while I'm listening to the world's worst conference call.  Don't worry, I'm muted, so they can hear neither my groans nor my typing.

Why is it that so many companies (their sales managers especially) feel the need to talk and talk and talk....they DO love to hear themselves talk.  This particular company is in love with doing this via conference call.  We have one every few months.  About shipping problems, about mergers, about customer service, about new cards.  You name it, they'll conference call it. 

They're also trying to play in the same 'ballpark' as the Big Boys - Hallmark, American Greetings/Carlton Cards.  As a result, they're trying to be everything to everybody.  This call in particular is scheduled to be at least 1 hour long, about the new cards they're bringing out this year, which they've categorized in about 7 different ways and that you can look for in 9 different ways.  So far we're on Attachment C and we've been on the call for 1/2 hour now.  They've also separated the call/information packet into CHAPTERS.  Jaysus.  The attachments go to 'O'.  And usually whenever they send something out to all of the sales reps, they don't get everything out to everyone.  So a good 10 minutes of each call are spent with about 30 sales reps telling everybody that they don't have that particular sheet of paper.  Non-existent quality control.

And we can place orders for customers like 5 different ways!  I'm sorry, but there is such a thing as too many options.  Because you can order 5 different ways for each of at least 5 different programs.  And the worst part, is half the time if you call customer service, they don't know any of this.

Shoot me.  Kick me in the head.  Please.

Gawd I can't wait to knit tonight.