Dear Lord make the decision an easy one again

My net pay for the past pay week was $218. My rent alone is $720. I have $36.50 taken out for health insurance each week. Is that a benefit provided by the company? That means I take home 65% of my gross. At $12.50/hour driving a "Metro Mobility Bus," with the same lousy insurance I'd take home $325/week and I can live on that if I have no purchases, repairs, days off, medical bills, etc. in other words I would be able to survive, barring acts of God.

My paycheck showed 46 hours worked, my minimum amount I'm scheduled to work. I always come in early. I went to HR and they said they take out 30 minutes a day for lunch. I never take 30 minutes for lunch, the thieves. 

WTF!

I just applied online for the Metro Mobility position. I hate this job. 

11:00am:

I'm walking with my new metatarsal cushions and my feet just might possibly show some discernible amount of decreased pain. Thank God for small miracles.

1:00pm:
I came home for lunch. Other than the cost of gas to get home it's a free lunch, compliments of the food bank. As a base I have some free macaroni noodles, corn and peas in a lovely tomato sauce base, making well over two quarts. But it was not too tasty so I added some food bank beef stew and it's delectable! I'm serious, it's pretty good.

Once I got home I asked myself if I took my noon dose of pills. I have to do something about my now deteriorating memory. Stress is definitely a factor, and deciding to move on vs. staying in the car business is stressful beyond all I'd imagined. I had just begun to feel my memory dysfunction was turning around after making changes in my meds but one of the side effects of virtually all the meds I've ever taken includes memory issues.

It IS denial that found me in this position with a week to go in the month. I'm on probation at work and have now applied for one job? If my numbers aren't much higher than they are now they have reason to get rid of me. Nothing concrete has been said in that regard but that's only because the sales manager that will be relegated to that task avoids confrontation at all costs.

3:00 pm:
I had a customer coming in who I sent a mass email to earlier. I had three people tell me to just get him out the door. Jon A had been kicked out of the dealership by the owner, is the most arrogant person ever, blah, blah, blah. He had a mailing that showed his current payment and a new payment if $509 for a new car of equal value.

I sat and smiled and listened to Jon regurgitate his life story, from multiple degrees to the different woodwind instruments he'd played, purchases, and refurbished. Then we got down to business.

"What can I do for you today, Jon?" I asked. 

"I want a new car just like mine for this payment," he said, handing me the flyer.

"I don't know that we can do that for that price..." I started to say.

"Why not?" he said. "It says right here that you can." The temperature was rising.

"Let's see if we have what you want," I said, going online to check our inventory.

"I had everything in it," he said. We found the most expensive one online and I put that stock number in the system. The sales manager I was going to work this deal with was scared of Jon A, literally. And didn't want him in here a minute longer than necessary. Jon just sounded bipolar to me, so I was never even nervous.

I decided to blame the new system we were implementing when I didn't smoothly get to the point where I could do a vehicle locate of a red one with all the buzzers and bells. "Let me see what I can do for you, Jon," I said.

I went into the sales office and the sales manager started out by saying, "just tell him we're too far off on the numbers." Scared! 

"Is this his actual payment on the flyer computed for him and his payments?" I asked her. "He said we told him we can do it for this amount because it's here on the flyer." 

She grumbled and fumbled and tried to find a red one. "There are none of those red ones coming into the whole region through September," she said. I had found out previously that when he ordered the 2012 he was driving now, and saw that the interior had tan and black when I did arrive, not just tan as he had requested, but with black parts, he tried to cancel the order. She was trying to avoid that aggravation and I was just showing her that I can handle the problem children. I was enjoying myself. The key to rapport with Jon was to listen and listen and listen... How timely was than exercise?

"Tell him the numbers don't work out, and maybe it'll make more sense in the fall," she said more than once.

She never did give me the monthly payment of an actual deal. Instead, I went back and told him we would not have a car like his anywhere in the whole region through September and that the payment quoted was based on the VIN, which on Nissans does not break down to the accessories, and that was that.

He graciously thanked me and said if we did get a red one to give him a call.

The punchline. It's in two parts. 1) when I returned to the sales office the sales manager was nowhere to be found, she went into hiding. 2) the owner had a long conversation with me about how it was only the second time in his career he had lost his temper, so I reiterated that Jon was pleasant.

Takes one to know one? It is what it is.