Hostile?

Today our service manager is back from his BKK trip. It was both a business & holiday trip for him. It is good to have him back for there are tonnes of matters which employees of my status cannot answer for. I briefly summarised the happenings of the past 2 weeks & going into details of the pending jobs.

As usual, his answers & instructions are very vague but at the very least he will point us in some directions. Then, my ex-boss stepped in. He used to own the company until he sold it to our principal & was made a senior sales manager.

Now sales & service people seldom belong in the same clique for some pretty obvious reasons. They are the front end guys who promote our stuffs, sometimes way beyond what our products can actually perform. We the service guys, on the other hand are the handful of poor souls who have to constantly keep up with their bragging.

At times I find it simply amazing that some of our customers actually believe the tales that my ex-boss spins. He is truly 1 of a kind. Perhaps that is what makes him a great salesman. But because of his ability to smoke the customer into believing, we end up looking incompetent because of our lack of skills to materialise his words.

Although I am the most junior in the company but I've had just about enough of cleaning up his shit. This morning he came questioning on a pending job that should have been closed long ago. But because this particular issue isn't on our products, I have been unable to provide our customer with a satisfactory answer. The vendor of this product has long ago claimed that he has fine tuned it to the optimum but the customer is still not willing to sign the buy-off. I explained it to him in layman terms but my ex-boss persistence in me giving him an answer to close this case greatly pissed me off & the only reply that came to my mind was "The vendor has said he has done all he could. He is the expert. Who am I to rebuke his claims? What more can I do?"

I think he was caught off guard by my reply & attitude that the conversation was abruptly ended by him just walking off. My fellow colleague commented that I sounded extremely hostile but I do not find it so. He is no longer signing my pay cheques so why should I bother? I may sound irresponsible to those who do not understand my work but I can only produce that amount of quality work. I cannot lay golden eggs.

I have been countlessly questioned by my customers when will parts that does not exist arrive at their sites only to find out that it was all empty promises made by my ex-boss. I had previously tried to play my part by trying to make it happen but I've had enough of that. The last customer who queried about his sand castle was pointed back to the asshole who gave him that dream. I distinctively told him that we do not have that particular product & it was never sitting in our warehouse. Please direct your questions back to that dickhead who told you so.

I know it reflects badly on our company but it sure as hell is better than making myself look bad! Am I being selfish, not sparing a thought for our company's path, not attempting to rally the rest of the company to make it come true? Or am I right to protect my own interest?

Whichever case it is, I am beginning to dread going to work everyday. It is a sign that it is time to change job but I am currently still under bond till Oktober 2008. Life has never been so miserable. I've tried looking for the pot of gold on the other end of the rainbow but instead I found a toilet bowl full of shit & it is not even my shit...