Ugh! Mondays!

Mondays are a shitshow around here.  And the nicer the weather on the weekend, the bigger the shitshow on Monday.  It’s entirely The Viking’s fault too because if he wasn’t so good at his job, we wouldn’t be in this pickle.  If your problem involves a motor, The Viking is the guy to call and they do.  Call, I mean.

We start Mondays desperately slurping coffee and listening to the disjointed, muffled, almost inarticulate mumblings on Voice Mail.  We both squint our eyes and lean toward the telephone hoping that proximity will help us understand what….

‘skoihknlm;oij 96 mlhwedsnpglas forkwejhrolj 403hus54okn thanks’

….means.  What are these people doing when they leave a message?  Bowling?  Jogging?  Sex? Eating a hot pizza?  It’s always the men, too.  Women call and clearly enunciate their words, explain the issue concisely, leave an audible phone number and thank us for our time.  I have never not been able to understand a message left by a woman.  Also, women call weeks in advance of when they need a machine fixed.  Men call two days before they need the machine serviced or repaired and get cranky when I can’t fit them in the schedule before their big family vacation at the lake that they’ve been planning for months.

The Viking is already slightly annoyed that he isn’t independently wealthy because he hasn’t won the Lottery yet and having to face customers at 9:00am on Monday doesn’t improve his mood.

And then the phone starts ringing.

Since the weather was beautiful, everyone was out with their ATVs, PWCs, Dirtbikes or Streetbikes and they broke them.

“Hi!  I broke the winch on my Polaris Sportsman this weekend, trying to pull a buddy’s massively big Jeep out of a ravine.  Can you have it fixed today?  I told the guys we would go out again tomorrow.”

Ummm….no.  Sorry.  My first available appointment is 3 weeks from today.

“What?!  But I told the guys……blah, blah, blah.”

Listen man.  The Viking is only one man and you aren’t our only customer.  People booked appointments three weeks ago and I’m not pushing them so you can keep a promise to your buddies.

“Good morning!  Can I talk to The Viking?  He fixed a flat tire for me 6 months ago and now I’m having trouble fixing my oil pump and I wanted to pick his brain for solutions.”

Sure!  He lives to help people fix their machines over the phone.  He’s happy to stop, in the middle of the paying job that he’s currently working on, to help you, for free, because you’re special.

Usually, around noon, I get phone calls from the Mumblers who left incomprehensible messages at all hours of the day on Sunday.

“Hi.  I left you a message and you never called back.”

Probably because I couldn’t understand a single word from your message.

“Oh!  Really?”

Yes.  Really.  What were you doing when you left the message?

“I was eating a hot pizza.  Anyway, I need my motorcycle fixed because I was burning a wheelie and the bike got away from me.”

Wow!  That’s gotta hurt.  Sorry, but my first available appointment is 3 weeks from Tuesday.

“What?!  3 weeks?!  It will take The Viking 5 minutes to fix the bike!  It’s not like it’s complicated.”

First of all, I doubt that.  Second, you aren’t helping your case by getting condescending.  My next available appointment is now 4 weeks from Tuesday.  Ass.  AND…..your middle name in our database is how ‘Fuckhead’.  Doe, John Fuckhead.

“Let me talk to The Viking.”

Sure!  As soon as he’s finished working for the guy who booked his appointment 3 weeks ago.

“Well, I guess I’m taking my business elsewhere.”

OH NO!!  Whatever will we do?!  How will we afford food?  We could starve to death!  Okay, man.  You win.  I’ll book an appointment 5 weeks from Tuesday.  Ass.  Doe, Fuckie Fuckhead.

“You know he’s my best friend.  We’ve known each other since the 80s.  He’ll fit me in.”

The 80s you say?  The Viking didn’t arrive in Canada until the 90s, so I call bullshit.

“Well then book the appointment, but if I find someone else who can do the work before then, I’ll do that.”

Excellent!  What did you say your name was?  Fuckwad, Fuckie Fuckhead?

By 6:00pm, The Viking and I are both annoyed and looking for booze.  And yesterday was such a shitshow that I couldn’t actually get the blog posted until Tuesday.

We’ve created a new ritual to celebrate the end of a bad workday – a beer.  We survived.  No heart attack happened, no customer was harmed during appointment booking, no one called the police to complain about excessive cursing and household items being thrown around.

Skål, Baby!! 

NOTE:  You must be very careful in the spelling of ‘skål’.  I spelled it ‘skole’ and that means something very different from ‘Cheers!’  From Urban Dictionary “Skole is a danish word meaning dick sucking teachers who like to spank their students with sticks.”