We have "Summer Fridays" during which we rotate with other members of our respective departments regarding who gets to leave the office at 1:00 pm, and who has to stay until 5:00. One guy doesn't work on Fridays, another took today off, so that left three of us, with me holding down the fort. The saleswoman who thinks she now owns me works from home on Fridays (most Wednesdays as well), and is thus that much peskier on those days than when she is not physically in the office.

She called me and left a message after 1:00 pm. I ignored it.

Personally, I could not stand having a job that requires me to be on the phone half the time, and email the rest of the time, then waste even more hours logging my calls and emails for each and every client and coworker in a Word document, just to provide a paper trail for the CEO to cover my own ass, to prove I'm not goofing off, while I'm nowhere near the office. Sales people do that. But the rest of us will not cater to it, because our livelihood doesn't depend upon marching to the beat of their drummer, so to speak, especially if we are of equal rank on the corporate ladder.

I'm not going to let this woman suck me into her salesperson life. She doesn't outrank me; I don't outrank her. We are on the same corporate ladder rung. There's a reason--and a very good one--why I'm not in sales and client services. Fortunately, our CEO knows that I'm focused on doing actual work, along with my staff, and can be of limited use to the company in general, if my expertise is not used, at least minimally, to guide my staff, while I have free time between bullshit meetings, and pitch in to help them get the work done.

She has no clue which individual or two in my department is on duty on any given Friday afternoon until after Labor Day, so when she called me after 1:00 pm this afternoon, I let it go to voice mail and never even listened to it before I left the office.

Crabby Cows, if you'd like to rip this blog entry apart, please do so. It's not fiction. I know damn well that I can't write anything other than technical statistical methodology papers, so rip away!