Chapter 4: Moving...

Canadian entropy started with a stupid idea.

Graham had four offices. Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. They were all doing okay for the first month, except Vancouver. They were doing okay for the first week and then sucked. So Graham decided the best thing to do would be to move the office.

Wait, what? Really? You think that's the best solution?

There's a city between Vancouver and Calgary called Kelowna. It's a resort town right next to a huge lake, and Graham felt they could do pretty well there. The biggest problem with deciding to move an office in the middle of the summer is that the company pays out the entire summer contract in housing, so if they leave they've already paid for the apartments back in Vancouver that no one's living in. Graham doesn't really care. He had an agreement with Tyler, the manager out there, and corporate that they would sell a certain number of accounts in Kelowna before they'd be able to try moving again. I forget the number. Also they had to have pretty cheap housing out there. No biggie. Especially if this is the only office in the company this is going to happen.

Burt was the lead tech out there, and he wasn't to pleased with the idea, but it wasn't that big of a deal for him because he just had himself. It was bad for his office because a lot of his techs were local guys. This meant that a lot of them ended up with equipment and tools that never got turned in, not to mention being out of a job all of a sudden. They had to move like, tomorrow, so there were a lot of installs that didn't get put in and it was just a mess. Burt got charged for all the missing equipment as well, which was dumb.

So they were off to Kelowna. Not too shabby I suppose. What do I care, it doesn't affect me at all, right?

The second step to Canadian entropy was Burt going on vacation.

Burt was probably the only person who could talk any sense into Graham at the beginning of the summer. I don't know if Graham planned out the entire fiasco beforehand or if he just decided to stop caring about everyone after a few weeks, but either way he respected Burt for a few weeks at least.

Burt planned a trip with his buddy Matt across Europe for about two weeks. He can't really leave his office for two weeks without a lead tech, so he paid my brother an exorbitant amount of money to run things for him. We were all pretty shocked at how much he was going to pay Jay to babysit for two weeks. Well, all of us except Richard who knew the full story...the VancouverimeanKelowna office was moving again! and Jay was going to be the one to do it.

Graham had decided to move the Kelowna office, but not to where they originally planned. There's a city two hours north of Kelowna called Kamloops that's pretty big, and that was the plan for the office. But then Graham heard that Gabe, his arch-nemesis (who knows why) was planning to go to a city called Prince George. Gabe was residing in Grande Prairie at the time, which is about 5 hours east of Prince George. Let me back up a bit. The summer started with Gabe in Fort Mac, which is an oil rig city full of people with money who all want security systems. He's taken his crew up there for a few years and they always do really well. Graham found out about it, so he sent his entire crew up there at the same time Gabe was there and they destroyed the city in less than a month. Gabe was planning to be there for 2 months then Grande Prairie for the rest of the summer, but instead had to go to Grande Prairie at the beginning of May and was planning to finish the summer in Prince George. Graham found out he was planning to go there and got there first, the little stinker.

So Jay had to move Burt's office up to Prince George, which is about 8 hours north of Kelowna. They didn't have apartments up there, they were staying in dorms. ? I don't know. But the dorms were really small. Jay had to find a storage unit for all the equipment, and there were a couple techs who decided they weren't going up because they had families that wouldn't fit in a dorm room the size of a closet. Makes sense to me, but who knows.

Now when Burt left on vacation he didn't just leave responsibility behind...he gave Richard his phone and Richard took all his important calls from corporate and Graham and all that. So when Tyler heard that Miguel, Burt's best tech, wasn't planning to come up to Prince George, he gave Richard a call on Burt's phone to figure out what was going on. Richard explained to Tyler Miguel's situation and made a few suggestions of how to get him up there. He said since Miguel is the best tech he should be provided with a hotel instead of a dorm room, and that the money they'd pay to house him in a hotel would be made up through the work he would do. Otherwise Miguel can spend the rest of the summer working for someone else who will actually take care of him. Made sense to Tyler, but he didn't like the idea. So then Graham called Richard to figure it out. I think he started out the conversation politely enough, but when it became clear that he was not going to get his way on the issue he told Richard to pack his bags and head back to Utah unless he can get all the techs up to Prince George.

....?

Richard's not even in charge of that office, for crying out loud. Anyway Richard said something like "wait, you're going to throw your entire tech crew in Calgary down the drain just because one tech won't drive 8 hours to live in a dorm room?" and I think Miguel stayed in Kelowna doing service tickets for a few days before driving up to Prince George.

K let's count, Richard's been fired once by Graham.

Well, time goes on and Graham is still not seeing the numbers he wanted for his region this year. What can he do to boost his numbers? I mean, obviously his offices aren't doing well in the biggest cities in Canada. I guess the answer is to send them all to the smallest cities in Canada instead. Hey, that's a great idea! Someone tell Graham!

Someone must have told him, and the Calgary office was his next movable target.

Here's how I found out what was going on. I was at home, making rolls with Marilyn and Carol and probably playing American Idol on the ps2 while several small children ran around. My phone started playing Styx, signalling a call from my sweetheart, and I excitedly answered.

"Hi Love!"
"....I wanna go home."

Uh oh...

Richard went on to explain that Graham and Caleb had decided to turn the Calgary office into a moving office. For the rest of the summer the office would be moving to a new city every two weeks. I guess Calgary just got too knocked out too quickly, which is weird considering they'd only knocked in two parts of the city. But then again I'm not a sales manager and I'm definitely not Graham, so I must be missing some vital information on the subject. Richard told me there was going to be a meeting at 11 that night with all the reps and techs to discuss the new plan, and Richard wanted all the wives and children to be present to give Graham a good idea of how many people he'd be affecting with this stupid decision. The hardest part for me was going back inside and explaining to Marilyn and Carol what was going on without telling them anything. It proved harder than I thought since Marilyn immediately assumed there was a problem with immigration and her husband was going to get deported. So I probably should have just told her what was going on in the first place. Live and learn, right?

I spent the next hour or so texting all the married techs to make sure they brought their wives and kids to the meeting, and around 10:30 we all drove down to the office to get ready for the meeting. I was already in a bad mood, and all the kids were a few hours past their bedtimes. Richard looked like a family member had died the whole time we were there. We got there just before 10 and found out they had pushed it back to 11:35 to give the reps time to get there. Then they pushed it back to midnight, and we heard that the reps weren't actually coming, we were just meeting with Graham and Caleb. Yipee.

It was the worst meeting I think anyone had ever been to. I sure had fun, but that doesn't mean things turned out the way I wanted them to...