The Graham Saga: Prologue

I decided not only for posterity that I should record our experiences this summer. They're actually quite amusing. I think it might turn into an okay book that I shall someday publish when Graham has become imprisoned for being the world's biggest douche bag and then I shall profit off of HIM for a change.

I need to preface this a bit. First of all, I suck at blogging. It's become a well-known fact, and I apologize. I'm better at facebook. But the fact remains that I am a decent writer, and I can't move from decent to good until I write more. In an effort to move in this direction I have tabbed blogger so I'll see it every day on my row of clicky buttons, right after the fail blog.

Second preface: I have a small child. This means I probably won't be able to write very much at a time. Maybe that will keep everyone on the edge of his/her seat, which is, of course, my goal.

Third preface: I really hope I keep steam for this project so it doesn't just end with this post, as it well might.

Ok here we go.

Our story begins early in the spring of 2009 in the apartment of Jill and Richard Gwilliam. Things are a bit hectic as the couple prepares for a new baby, along with the excitement of Richard finishing his semester at BYU and Jill trying to find and train a replacement RS Secretary. Added to the pile of things to do (which never ends, as we all know) is the looming thought of the upcoming summer. Questions in mind include whether Jill should try to work as the office manager whilst caring for a small baby and if she doesn't, who will, as well as whether to return to Dallas with McKay or follow Burt up to Canada.

Burt has been working long and hard to put together a pretty solid region of techs up in Canada. He's assistant regional manager (assistant to the regional manager) up there and as he is Canadian and has no problems entering said country he is actually handling a lot more of the load than his manager. But that's another saga for another day. Since Burt and Richard are Canadian, they have been handed a special opportunity to make a lot of dough this year. Enter Graham Wood.

Graham Wood has been in the alarm sales industry for several years and through several companies. At this point in our story this is what Jill and Richard understand and believe about Graham Wood: He was a sales manager for Apex. He did a buttload of accounts last year in his region and is going to do close to the same this year. One of his managers, Caleb, has never slowed down in production, and promises 2400 accounts this season. And here's the problem: Apex lost money last year because of how many reps they had selling billions of accounts for them. In order to make money they put limits on some of their managers. Graham's limit was 3000 accounts for his entire region. That's four offices like Caleb's that planned to do 2000-3000 each, so that's quite a pay cut. Graham decided that sounded like baloney and thought he would trot over to Apex's competition to see what kind of sweet deal he could get for bringing his entire team with him. Now, Pinnacle has been trying for ten years to catch up to Apex. No one quite understands why, but they're always a few steps ahead and Pinnacle just can't seem to hit the same numbers. So when Graham came over with his Apex crew, the owners of Pinnacle were ecstatic. Now here's a guy who can produce. The records show it and he's here saying it. He's a pretty sharp looking guy and there's just no way around that sales-rep rhetoric (aka he's a douchebag and everything out of his mouth is a lie) so they said sure, bring your team. We'll give you whatever you want. You want Canada? You can have it. The whole country. Just run amok. Ok, that's not exactly what they said, but pretty close. Graham Wood has whatever freedom he asks for within Pinnacle. There is absolutely no way around that.

Here's the problem. Richard is a trusting person. And his office with McKay in Dallas last year did about 1300 accounts. I'm sorry, but 2400 is a lot bigger than 1300. My trusting husband and his trusting brother got in cahoots with Graham about this whole Canada thing, and it's just gonna be so great. The whole region is going to be number one in the company, and Richard's office with Caleb is going to be number one as well. Money all around! We're going to be able to buy a house when we get back, and affording the study abroad in Germany will be a cinch. And I apologize to anyone who didn't know about the study abroad. Like I said, I suck at blogging.

By March the plans were all set. Richard and Jill (and Rachel) are headed to Calgary. It was kind of a mess, but through much diligent work and several road trips Richard was able to get a really good (I just typed gut lol...I've also been dreaming in German lately but that's another story) tech crew put together. He was planning to have 25 techs for his office of 35 reps, and was pretty sure they were all going to get 4 a day. I mean, 2400 accounts is a LOT. And Richard was ready for it. He spent hours on the phone with each tech as well as with BUNAC about visas and passports to make sure all his guys would be taken care of. And they were, and it was great. Meanwhile Burt was up in Canada recruiting up a storm of techs to handle all the work Graham's region would be giving them. And I was busy trying to pack with a newborn. You need a lot of stuff to survive for 4 months, and I was doing my best to bring just the necessities. But it was still a lot.

Richard was on the phone with Caleb every single day in April trying to smooth everything out and make sure things were going to go off completely without a hitch. There was a problem with the office manager situation, however. Caleb's rule is NO FAMILY. Too bad Pinnacle's rule is ALWAYS HIRE WIVES THEY WORK FOR DIRT. Also a problem is the fact that Pinnacle likes to hire all the office managers, but Caleb wanted to hire his. Oh well, that's not really my problem since I decided I wouldn't be able to do it with Rachel. I'll let Caleb sort that out.

While Richard was on the phone with Caleb, I was on facebook chat with Kristy, a friend from a few years ago when we worked in Portland together. She brought up a lot of questions about the office manager position, and I was able to answer most of them from my experience and direct her to the proper department for the rest. After a few weeks of chatting Kristy decided she was going to do it. She got signed up as the full-time girl with a promise that since Caleb promised so many sales in that office they'd be hiring a second girl to handle scheduling. It took a lot of convincing to get Caleb to be okay with the idea of Kristy doing the office, since her husband was going to be a tech and that violated his NO FAMILY rule, but he was mostly okay with it since she wouldn't be doing the scheduling. He planned to find someone else to do that and promised to have her hired and set up ready to go once the office opened. Every time Richard talked to him he asked if he had found a girl yet, and the answer was always no, right up to and including the week we got up to Calgary. I guess what you can infer from this experience is that Apex guys don't do much pre-planning for anything. Just post-planning, I guess.

And so it began. We were headed up to the best summer of our lives. We'd be living in a town house in Calgary, right across the street from a park and just down the street from Walmart. We switched some apartments around and Richard's sister and brother-in-law ended up just a block away from us, so I had someone to hang out with nearly every day. Things were going to be great. We packed up all our things and dropped off what we weren't taking at my parents' house and we were on our way. Rachel didn't really enjoy the ride, but I was sure things would be just fantastic once we got there. Problems? Sure, they'd be there. But they'd be managable. I was very confident that my capable husband would take care of everything he needed to and that this would be a great summer. He had a great relationship with the sales manager and they were already working well together. Kristy has a degree in office management, so I wouldn't have to worry about that at all. And after a bit of a struggle Marilyn and Danny made it through the border. All in all, things were looking great.

Please stay tuned for the next installment of "The Graham Saga" coming soon!