the dumb days of summer

...but your name showed up on the screen! aargh! brains!

ah, august... august is the time of year all the stupid people come out of the woodwork to annoy me. i would say it has something to do with the dog days of summer, but it's been unseasonably cold this month and i don't see the stream of stupidity letting up anytime soon.

what do i mean? here's what i've gotten this week alone:

a large number of calls from people wanting uniforms who used a rep search feature on our website. next to each listing, it clearly lists each person's services -- "uniforms" isn't listed next to mine, but it is listed next to the area's apparel rep name. call me an insensitive bitch but i feel like, if you can read, you can clearly see i'm not the one to help you. what's weird is that my listing isn't even the first to pop up so it's not like they just didn't scroll down or let the page load. maybe it's just my magnetic personality that draws them to me, saying, "eenie, meenie, miney, mo... let's see: she sounds cute and bubbly. i'll call her." i guess my discomfort with the situation stems from my inability to tactfully inform the caller that they should really navigate their browser here instead.

in my inbox, there is also a steaming e-mail from a coach whose brand-new team had a bad time at camp... in june. didn't contact me before because she didn't have access to e-mail until now. curiously, this is not a new coach. never mind the fact that i have a toll-free number or that the head instructors at the camp would have gleefully tried to investigate and eradicate the sources of her complaints at the time of the camp. no, let it stew and fester. then, call me about it. good thinking.

or how about the rabid junior all-star parent sending me flaming e-mails asking for free poms and apparel because her kid's private camp ended early? never mind that the head coach made the executive decision to end the camp early and the staff simply did as they were told. to this woman, i've repeately raised my benevolent silver cross: "we respect the decision made by the head coach, and i will be pleased to investigate the matter further following a call or e-mail from her." nah -- useless. another e-mail of green pea-soup vomit appears in my inbox only moments later.

what else... call from a clueless marketing manager of a chicago professional athletic team, wanting to know if we want to help them with a half-cooked dance team competition [read "ploy to sell tickets to game no one wants to see"] they plan on hosting the same weekend as two of our own local events [for which we'll already be scraping staff together to run]. okay, no on that then? then can we advertise their event [again, conflicting with two of our local events] on our website? oh, that's a conflict with events from which your company actually generates revenue? oh, okay. how about just a list of all our customers and their contact info? wtf!

don't get me wrong: in some ways, i'm very fortunate to have the job i have, and i have come to know some amazing people in the twelve years i've been doing this. it just seems like august is like something out of return of the living dead: all the good, smart, normal people go into hiding underground, and all the mutants, starving for brains, are the only ones around.

one coach who falls under the category of amazing always tells me, "you have the best job in the world." maybe it's because, when i'm feeling really down and worthless, all i need to do is pick up the ringing phone or open my e-mails. then, i realize, "gee, i'm not a complete dumbass after all!"