Insanity on its way

You know, crazy people, or rather, people who are not very sane tend to laugh to themselves.

I always wonder what is so funny?

And I got my answer today.

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The morning started with mad rush, as usual, and when I thought it was going to be a fine day ahead (despite the crazy amount of work cos I felt I've gone accustomed to it), I got a phone call from a giant-ass customer today asking me why they've not received their orders. This customer, is in the drug industry and their orders are a huge deal and each delivery must arrive at their premises at 9.30am in the morning each time. It was already 10.20am when they phoned me up.

So I told then I'll check of course, although I already sensed that bad news was coming up.

Before I decided to yell at our vendor, I went into my company's big-ass complicated system and realised that their order had been blocked when they placed it on Friday, and I, had overloooked on unblocking it.

Which means, our vendor did not receive the order, and therefore no delivery.

Suddenly, my hands went cold, thinking of what would happen from here.

You see, had it been any other customer (except for those in the drug industry of course), it would have been fine. We'll just try to see if we could get our other vendors to make a last minute delivery.

But this vendor is particularly fussy and would only accept cargo that had been delivered by this particular transport company becos of ISO thingy, and blah blah blah bullshit. And i know it's nearly impossible to ask this vendor to do a last minute delivery cos a) it's a Monday which means it's mad rush to stock up at every other giant-ass company and vendor's schedule would be packed, and b) their equipment would have been used up.

In addition, becos this customer is so big-fat-ass (i can't stress that enough), they need to run production everyday and our inability to deliver as ordered could very well result in a shut-down in their production lines. Which means my overlook on my job can cause my customer a lot of money.

Thankfully, I have always restrained myself from yelling at said vendor even when they screw up because i know one of these days, i would need favours from them.

So I spoke to vendor coordinater and asked for afternoon deliveries to giant-ass customer and he tried (i'm giving him the benefit of doubt here, cos I really dont know if he really tried) to schedule an afternoon delivery for one load of order. My customer ordered 2 loads but coordinater insisted there was no way they would schedule another delivery. I had to phone up vendor's director and explained my situation to him and get him to help.

He managed to schedule one more load of delivery for me but all the deliveries will come in the late afternoon. My customer insisted that all deliveries must arrive latest by 4pm, but it looked like the second delivery wasn't gonna make it.

So my whole morning, up till lunch time, was spent making phone calls to customer, apologising, and to the vendor, pushing them to deliver before deadline. I lost my entire appetite for lunch by the way.

Then in the afternoon, every now and then, I would call up our plant to check if the vendor has arrived to collect the order so that I would know what would be the best time to advise my customer when the order would arrive. It's sort of a good customer service thingy to keep your customer updated when you screwed up their order. Hah. Talk about irony.

The second load finally left our plant at 4.10pm (even though they were supposed to arrive at 2.45pm so that they could leave around 3.30pm but what the hell). I left a voice message on customer's phone (which I did feel a bit thankful that she wasn't around to pick up the phone) that the order would be late by around 15min. After all, it doesn't take long to travel from Pandan to Tuas, does it?

So, the whole day was crazed, with endless adrenaline pumping throughout (I had other crazy situations with other customers at the same time).

I looked at my watch at 5pm, and my phone had stopped ringing.

No News is good news.

So I guess the order was delivered, somewhat late, but my customer had made do nonetheless, and it's case closed. The day is finally over.

I was about to shut down my PC at 5.35pm when giant-ass customer called.

"Eh! It's already 5.30pm and the second load hasn't arrived! Can you please go check with xxx (vendor)?"

Then she went on about how they could not accept late deliveries and people had to be specially engaged to stay for overtime to receive the cargo and do a sample testing before the parcel can be poured into their tank. Oh, it's liquid chemicals I'm talking about. And blah blah blah.

So, i had to call up the vendor and have them checked and they replied that it would be delivered within the next 5 minutes. I demanded to know the reason for the long travelling time, and person on the phone said in a most nonchalant manner ... "oh .... I think ... the driver was driving slowly lah..."

I nearly had a heart attack.

1) they knew this was a very very rush order and there is no cause for driving slowly

2) This is a damn bloody stupid excuse.

I made person-on-the-phone call up the driver again to enquire why the delivery was so late. He called up several minutes later and said, the truck had a punctured tyre.

I had no idea why, but at this comment, I burst out laughing.

Person-on-the-phone tried to convince me further by saying, "No no, this is original. I'm not bluffing you."

I laughed even more. Whether to believe him or not didn't matter. I mean, I needn't keep my customer waiting and could have come up with this story myself.

I didn't think my customer would buy this story, but she did. Then of course, she went on to tell me about their SOPs and blah blah blah. Oh, but she didn't yell at me. Thank god for that. I hate to be yelled at.

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So i realised that insane people don't laugh because it's funny. Maybe they experienced just so many shocks within one day or a short period of time that the big vein in their head had popped and laughing is just a way to express it. Better than crying though.

I'm not saying I'm mad.

I'm juz saying im on my way to insanity.

So, how was your Monday?



p.s. To those sons of bitches and assholes and bastards who thought I had died from the food poisoning, I am still very well alive and kicking. And i'm gonna kick all your lousy arses one of these days.