my fourth last chance

I was called into a meeting with my boss at the end of the day. Before my rear had even touched the seat of the threadbare chair that sits opposite his desk, he had launched into a full fledged tirade.

“You haven’t had a sale all month! I don’t know how you expect to keep your job around here if you don’t start pulling your weight!”

“Vince,” I tried to reason, knowing full well that logic was foreign concept to him, “since you put this new ‘support plan’ into effect, my primary responsibility is to set up sales calls for Lenny…you’re not allowing me to sell anything, any longer.”

“I never meant that you stop selling!” he screamed, veins popping precariously from his temple. “What I meant was that you are expected to set Lenny’s schedule and then, and only then, are you permitted to schedule yourself a few sales calls!”

This is simply one, in a never-ending list, of shifting expectations that exist at the office. My boss constantly revises expectations and increases quotas for no apparent reason and expects that his mind will be read. He becomes enraged when this doesn’t happen and his newly revised goals and aren’t instantly met.

I realized that the ‘new’ plan, having just been implemented a few short weeks ago, was now the ‘old’ plan and that a ‘newly revised new plan’ was now in effect.

“So,” I asked, “I’m now expected to not only set up Lenny’s schedule, but my own as well…and what is my new quota, since I’m really only going to be able to schedule myself for half the number of sales calls as I was last year when I didn’t have to set Lenny’s appointments?”

“In this new position, you will be expected to increase your numbers from last year by ten percent,” he told me.

“Vince,” I asked, “how can you expect me to sell more when you’re demanding that I set up Lenny’s schedule? There’s no way I’ll be able to see as many clients as I did last year because the bulk of my time is spent trying to get Lenny out into the field, so I don’t see how…”

“You’re just going to have to buckle down!” he interrupted. “I’ve decided to give you one last chance at keeping your position here at the company.” I’m given ‘one last chance’ every few weeks and, by my count, I’m already up to my fourth or fifth ‘last chance’.

“Starting on Monday,” he continued, “I’ve decided to have you ride along with Lenny on a few of his sales calls so that you can learn how to sell better.” He turned toward his computer screen and began checking his email, pausing only to tell me to ‘shut the door on your way out.’

I left his office, unsure what Lenny was going to be able to ‘teach’ me. He had been promoted to Sales Manager about a month prior…though his actual sales were never any better than mine. And unless Lenny can teach me how to bend time and space, I fear that this newly, new revised plan is bound to fail.

This too will pass, however. Because in another two or three weeks I’ll be given a sixth ‘last chance’ when a newly new revised new plan will be implemented.