The one with the garage sale

So a couple weekends ago several houses in our community joined together to have a community wide garage sale.  The HOA kindly posted an advertisement in the local newspaper, I placed several ads on Craigslist in the days leading up to the affair and oh my Lord …. I had no idea.  I might remember my mom having a garage sale … maybe two, when I was young.  It could just be a vague memory of a dream I had when I was 5 as well.  Anyway, I think it safe to say that I found myself in completely new territory with no “real” garage sale experience.  Who needs experience?  Maybe in this case, ignorance was truly bliss.  An agreed upon time of 9:30 was set for the “opening of the flood gates”.  It’s good to coordinate the actions of all participating sellers, I think.  So, I gingerly woke up around 7 am, changed clothes, grabbed a protein drink and leisurely began carting our goods from the safe inner walls of our home to the wild and almost savage hunting ground, otherwise known as the front lawn and driveway. Not even 45 minutes later, which put me at 7:45 am, people started coming through the gates!  WAIT!  HOLD ON!!  My stuff is still IN the house!

My frantic cries to pause time and allow me to haul just a couple more things outside were blatantly ignored by the approaching herd of hard-nosed, deal-seeking, buyers who brazenly forced their campers, trailers and other hauling machines through our narrow tree-lined streets.  The rest of the morning will forever be remembered as a blur of craziness.  The important thing to note is that we sold off a bunch of crap!  Even better, we got rid of a ton of nick-nacks and other small items that are really hard to sell on Craigslist.  For the record, Craigslist seems to be the most productive way to get rid of  larger items and garage sales filter out all the small crap, especially if you’re willing to take 25 cents off the price of a $1.50 picture frame. 

After the garage sale we ventured up to Canyon Lake where I got to visit with my mother and brother for an entire week.  Interesting story there …  :)  My mom’s plans changed at the last minute and both she and Drew were able to stay with us for one more night.  Sadly, our house only had one working toilet, no functioning sinks and the number of days we reserved to stay at Canyon Lake were up.  As is typical with Silverleaf condos, each and every time you stay they “invite” you to come learn new, fascinating information about the rules and regulations governing your timeshare.  This is code for “we’re gonna try to sell you another timeshare” so on this trip I quickly and consistently replied with a firm “no” whenever approached to attend one of these meetings.  Many times we go simply to get the $75 or $100 they offer if you actually sit through the entire thing.  However, this trip was intended to spend time with my mom and brother and I didn’t want to spend 2-3 hours repeating “tempting, but no.”

However, back to the story.  So, my family could stay one day longer but our reservation was up and we don’t have a hospitable place to keep my beloved family members for the evening.  There’s always another solution.  I firmly believe this statement so as I stood at the mini-kitchen sink wondering what to do with my mom and brother, inspiration hit.  Hospitality had asked us three times to attend a sales meeting.  All three times I said no and with each “no” came another offer with higher amounts of money.   So, I turned to John and said “Why don’t you call the front desk and tell them we’ll go to a sales meeting if they let us stay one more night.  They have something we want and we have something they want.” An initial look of confusion on John’s face was replaced with a smirky smile.  10 mintues later we had our room for one more night (for free) plus they still gave us $100.  Finally, after 30 years on this planet, I’m starting to learn how to play the game.

Also during the week that my family came to visit our counter tops were installed.  I’m going to try to dig up pictures of the old versus the new.  Suffice it to say, having all the counter tops done is a HUGE to-do crossed off our list.

And finally the last big bit of news to note is a massive layoff in my old Division.  Even though I left a little more than 2 years ago and despite the fact that I cannot claim to know what even one of my laid off friends must have felt, I am so sad.  I feel like my family has been ripped apart.  Somehow, even though I no longer make the drive to SwRI and I am not able to see all my friends on a daily basis, I now see that I have found a certain comfort knowing that they were all safely tucked away in their offices and conference rooms, saving the world.  It saddens my heart to know that all those people (46 in total) now compete with each other for the jobs available in San Antonio.  It’s so sad to know that I’ll no longer be able to head down to SwRI and see everyone.  And it angers me to know that the people most responsible for the layoffs still have jobs.  I received a “speech” from my section manager over 2.5 years ago informing me and my colleagues that no matter who we were and no matter what our position, we were all responsible for marketing and bringing in new business.  That was the beginning of the end for me.  As soon as I heard that speech I realized that my section manager expected me to do my job in addition to his.  Now, 2.5 years later, he gives the same speech, no new business worthy of note has been obtained and yet all the high level employees in the Division are still employed.  The managers and senior employees whose job is truly to market, have produced absolutely nothing in the years since I have left and now that their primary cash cow has moved to greener pastures, those people who truly did work themselves to death trying to do their own job plus their manager’s job have been let go in a “staff reduction.”  Well at least it was only a “staff reduction.”  I’m sure these kind words put each of the 46 casualties at ease as they headed home, jobless.

This entry was posted on Thu, May 21 2009 at 22:22 and is filed under Vanessa's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.