Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Things I've Done - Phone Related

As a work at home parent, sometimes you need to improvise. And over the last 5 years, I've done just that - especially in the beginning. I'm going to start with the first 5 things I think of that are phone related. [If I listed everything at once, you'd think I was crazy.]

1-Locked my self in a closet to get away from the kids in order to answer a customer's call. This I have done many times. [Whether now or in the past, I usually have the business phone attached to myself and phone calls NEVER come in when I am in my home office - Murphy's WAH Law?]

2-Ran out into the unheated garage in stocking feet and 20 below zero weather to answer a customer's call (the closet may have already been in use).

3-Taken a phone order using a color crayon to write on the bottom of one of my kids' puzzle boxes (probably while locked in the closet).

4-My 4 yr old answered the business phone. All I heard her say is "I don't know" and "I don't think so" and then she hung up. Luckily the customer called right back and thought it was cute. [Somehow, this has only ever happened one time in 5 yrs.]

5-Pulled off a 4 lane freeway onto a side road to take a customer's order when I realized they were going to call every 20 minutes until I answered and I was on a 3 hour trip. [I often have calls forwarded to my cell phone.] For this same call I had stood outside (because 3 kids were in the vehicle with me) and when a very loud tractor of some sort drove by, I claimed it was construction outside my open office window.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Getting Ahead - by Mark Twain

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." Mark Twain1835-1910, Writer