Work Work Work

I work at a university.

There is a certain aspect of my current job that requires me to "surplus" or sell items that the campus doesn't use or need anymore. I usually run the sale twice a week.

Two weeks ago, there was a mountain of couches outside of my warehouse that needed to get gone in a quickness via my surplus sale. First and foremost, the mountain of couches was a safety issue because it blocked some exit doors to the warehouse. Fire hazard! Second, the couches were piled on a landing dock for large deliveries. Third, they were exposed to the sun and rain therefore deteriorating the quality of the product.

There were two options in front of me on getting rid of these items.

Scenario 1 would require the least effort on my part and would be very beneficial to the university by clearing up the fire hazard really quickly.

Scenario 2 would require extreme effort on my self and my department -- I only had one worker that day -- but it would have been beneficial to the consumer.

Of course, naturally, I opted for scenario 1 therefore ELIMINATING further thought on planning out scenario 2. I decide to have a special $1 bonanza on the couches and chairs, in contrast to my twice a week sale. I did very minimal advertising. I set it up for a Thursday @ 9am - 11am. I figured that two hours would be sufficient to get rid of the couches and chairs.

When the day finally arrived, I went out at 9am. You WOULD NOT believe the amount of people that were waiting outside. I had no idea that many people would show up. The environment was not "controlled" so there were people coming from everywhere to pay for their stuff and I couldn't really tell who was taking what or even if it was paid for. By 9:20am ALMOST everything was gone! I mean folks cleared out the couches so fast, I didn't even blink and it was gone! Even with all the pandemonium and maddness, no one got hurt and I had only one complaint from a consumer, and my stated objective was reached -- to get rid of the fire hazard.

The one complaint that came in about me, came via Human Resources. This dude was so bummed that he didn't get the $1 chair that he wanted (everything went so fast), he went and complained to Human Resources about our "practices". Whatever! He harped on and on about things being totally unfair. From what I heard, he was in the HR office in tears. He said he wasn't complaining about not getting the dollar chair but it was the principle behind it. WHATEVER!! What a whining cry baby.

**sigh** Anyway -- what an adventure that was. He wrote a formal complaint to HR then submitted one to my bosses boss. So I wrote my rebuttal, totally ignoring his whining shenanigans and submitted, in detail, Scenario 2 mentioned above.... the one that services the consumer. Scenario 2 was my "solution" to his whining and complaining.

**rolling my eyes and shaking my head** What people do over a dollar chair. Yikes!!