Potty Training Businesses

My son is 2 years old. Now when I say he's two years old, that usually brings to mind a 3 ft tall human who sprints around screaming for no apparent reason, has absolutely no bodily shame, (everyone knows, you can run much faster without the nuisance of clothing.)

and will cry at the drop of a hat over the fact that the object with which they want to move and or play with is over nine times their size and more than quadruple their body weight. I feel like my little monster gets a bad rap just because he's 2. Yes, he does do those things but he's polite to a fault, even in the midst of a huge tantrum, "NO THANK YOU MOMMA!" always follows the bouts of unintelligible screaming. His imagination is enviable; sometimes I don't exactly know what the story line is that we are playing but he always makes sure to tell me when I'm a T-Rex and when I'm supposed to be a duck. Or a robot. Or a carrot. (I didn't do that last one correctly. Apparently, I was NOT supposed to lay still on the floor.)

Amid all of this chaotic fun, my husband and I feel that full on toilet use for him is *just* around the corner. Some days, that corner feels like a huge labyrinth that we just can't get around.

It started innocently enough; my son would tell me when he had to go potty, eventually he would tell me when he needed to go "doody". He would wake up from naps and sleeping through the night with a dry diaper. And then... I got a little too excited. The thought of being done with changing diapers was too much for me to handle- I was ready to start making diaper-mache animals in celebration, throwing them insanely in the air and laughing like a crazed goon. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that my dear, sweet, whimsical child likes using his potty seat as a hat. In retrospect, I may have emotionally scarred my child by making him sit on his hat to go potty that day. I can still hear the heart breaking sobs, "My hat Momma! Itsss myyyy HAAAATTTTTT!" But, not all was lost but a few tears that evening. We ended it on a watery-eyed note with a little tinkle in the toilet.

Fast-forward to last month. We bought a little Elmo potty chair just for our son and some dinosaur big boy underwear. Within 12 hours of purchasing said items, little man had changed his mind. It wasn't just a hemming and hawing that could be persuaded into using the potty chair by candy or a cookie or taking a trip in the motor-home. (Yes. My husband is incredibly proud that our son is in love with our motor-home. As I'm not a boy, I fail to understand or comprehend this.) It was a full on NO. Actually, I take that back. His exact words to me were, "No thank you, Momma. I absowutewy not go potty." We tried everything, from putting Cheerios in the bottom of the bowl for him to "shoot" (Worst idea ever. If you choose to go this route, pick a cereal or food item your child DOESN'T like.) to letting him sit on his Elmo potty WHILE wearing his potty seat hat. We tried candy, popsicles, books, letting him play his Dinosaur Train game on my phone... all to no avail.

As I was trying to figure out a new game plan for reassuring my opinionated kiddo that going potty in the toilet wasn't something he should be afraid of; (even though it wasn't a necessity for him to be potty trained right now, it would be a necessity later in life) it struck me how similar this situation was to selling our product to businesses. 

Being in sales, it can be daunting to make cold calls into businesses; you in essence are selling a solution by fishing for a problem that often times is not recognized as a solvable issue. It is easy to "jump the gun" within the early stages of the sales process, much like I jumped the gun potty training my son. Push too hard too fast and you lose them. But what about those other customers who agree to the demo of our product, knowing they have a server storage issue but still show signs of fear in proceeding forward with purchase?

To me, its not that far of a stretch to see that if you have a server that has the capacity for up to 10TB of data storage and your business has used 5TB thus far, you may not need an archiving solution today, but you will down the road. I can throw bells and whistles to you as a means to entice you to buy our product but the fact remains, eventually you're either going to have to purchase server after server after server to keep housing your data or you're going to decide to find a solution that will enable you to never have to purchase another server again.

I liken the idea of purchasing server after server after server in my head to my son's pull-ups. Not big boy status yet, but slowly getting there; if your company shells out the money to buy another server, chances are, more rules and policies are set in place so as to keep that server from getting filled up again. While it's easy to see that if my son would just give in and start using the toilet regularly so we don't have to go through the hourly potty checks, could start wearing big boy underwear and not pull-ups that EVERYONE in our household would be much happier and feel more independent; its a little harder for companies to see that if they just used an archiving solution there would be fewer policies, fewer backup "accidents" if you will, and a much happier overall business.

I guess at this point in my life, I could truthfully answer the question, "Sarah, what do you do?" with: "I am a potty trainer." Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my job with Waterford Technologies. But I cannot lie. Potty training my son is way more fun than potty training businesses, though both lend me huge insight and awesome humor.

Accidental Genius (and the SSE Tool Download)

I'm pretty sure I just got off the phone with Jess from New Girl. Not Zooey Deschanel who plays her on the T.V. show, but the actual person that she was probably based off of. (In my mind, all television show characters are real somewhere in the world. Yes, Hogwarts is a REAL school and yes, Smeagol lives somewhere in a cave, probably in New Zealand... Should I also admit that I was disheartened that whenever I felt a moment would be more heartfelt growing up that it is somewhat socially weird for me to break out into song? I should just hire a pit orchestra to follow me around... that would make it more acceptable.)

Her name is Bamby. (Not kidding.) I think it startled me when she answered the phone in a sweet sing-songy way. Most IT women that I speak to are very brash, to the point, no nonsense women who often times are immediately put on the defensive when they realize it is another female on the other end of the line. Not the case with Bamby.

"Hellllooooo!"

"Hi! Is this Bamby?"

"It surely is! How is your day? I have just had the best breakfast of my LIFE. And I can only hope that your day is as happy as mine is right now."

"........." Looking back on our conversation, I should have realized right then and there that Bamby was not in fact in her company's IT department. But alas, I am a slow picker-up of social ques at times in person, much less on the phone. We continued to chit chat and finally I got to the point of my call.

"Bamby, the reason for my call today is that I noticed someone in your company had downloaded our SSE tool off of our website and I was just calling to see if I could offer any assistance or possibly set you up with a free demo of our software solutions for File Management."

"Oh yes! That was me! But I don't know who you need to talk to."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not a computer genius."

"Me neither. But I don't understand. Do you mind telling me why you downloaded our tool?"

"OH! Because I got an email from somebody in my company who IS a computer genius and he quite nastily told me that I had to delete all of my files off of the place where I save my files to because I had reached my quote thing that number that you can't go over and I didn't know where else to save my files... I NEED need NEED my files. All of them. Especially my music....oh my goodness I can't live without my music. And my pictures. I have a brand new niece. She is SOOOO cute. And of course all of my files from work and stuff. So I saved them to my computer itself but apparently that's a big ole no no because the computer people can't do the back thing up so it saves if my computer dies.... I don't really know how I got to you guys but I founnnnnd youuuuuu (She literally sang this to me which immediately made me start thinking of those stalker songs from the late 70's to early 80's such as Blondie's One Way or Another and The Police's Every Step You Take.) and then I downloaded it and had no clue what to do! But it says it downloads a bazillion files an hour! That's sooooooooo much! I just wanted it to tell me how much stuff I had and maybe it would tell me what to delete even though I KNOW I need EVERRYTHINGGGGAH."

I think my brain went on strike at that point. Part of me was in absolute disbelief that this was indeed a real conversation. Thankfully, as horrible as it sounds but I can't find the words to rectify it, my mouth went into autopilot and I asked her for the main number to the front desk to speak to an administrative assistant to get me at the very least to the IT department. Lo and behold, Bamby IS the administrative assistant.
 We talked for a few more minutes and after placing me on hold for what felt like an eternity, I was transferred to Darren. The gentleman who had emailed Bamby.

We were able to quickly establish that along with Bamby, several (majority) of the employees were saving files to the network, causing huge traffic flow and exponentially taking up space on the file servers. Per company policy, they highly dissuaded against saving files to their work computers as there was no way to ensure that those files would get backed up. (Unfortunately for my imaginary world, Darren did not seem to fit any character that I knew of. For the sake of this blog post, lets pretend he was like Indiana Jones's dad in The Last Crusade. That will probably make me feel better about his lack of personality.) 

This is when the subtle genius of Bamby shone through... probably almost like a divine light with choirs of baby angels humming and strumming harps. She knew there was a resolution to the problem she was facing with her files. The download of our SSE tool could now be utilized by none other than Darren. (I'm seriously having a musical montage run through my head right now. Its pretty epic.) 

After running the SSE tool against his file server, this is the report that came back: 

Darren was flabbergasted. Bamby wasn't the only employee who "NEED need NEEDED" her music. MP3 files were his top file space taker-upper and by simply implementing some sort of file archiving system or software for his specific server environment, everyone could be happy, many could keep their music (within reason) along with their ZIP files and pictures and personal files and Darren would save well over 80% of his server space.(Genius of the res-to-ration. Had to throw an Indy quote in there.)

Sometimes the SSE tool gains new business for us, sometimes we get repeat SSE tool download people who simply use it as a way to gauge how their file servers are doing. I can't lie, we had one customer who went through downloading it, going through a demo and then used his report from the SSE tool to purchase a competitor product. To each his own. All we want to do is help. And I can truthfully say that today, we did. And, I probably met the coolest administrative assistant on planet earth. You rock Bamby. You and your epic breakfast and my belief of your love of polka dots, and singing while you talk. 

An Open Letter to the Office Idiot

Dear Doody Head,

(Actually, that's not the verbiage I wanted to use, but for the sake of remaining professional, the term "doody head" will suffice. Already digressing from the point at hand. Awesome. Continuing on.)

Remember when we were "the new kids" and began learning all about the magical world of email archiving? It was like a cornucopia of technology gold; a  never ending labyrinth of software capabilities that neither of us knew existed: you can see EVERY email sent by ANYONE?!?! Somehow, around day 15, you got lost in the limbo land of Orange County Craigslist that managed to resemble Dustin Diamond attempting to score with Megan Fox.

I never really understood how you operated. I sat quietly and listened to you on the phone, at first making yourself sound like a used car dealer, demanding that those prospective leads you were trying to get a hold of call you back and then, just as quickly, it was like you were somehow a bipolar evil genius, having these amazing tech savvy conversations and setting up demos like you'd been doing this job for years. But every time we had a learning session, it was as if you had just started that day, asking the same questions, confusing the functions of products when asked to parrot back to our managers what they had just told us (and that you had just written down). I equated this to you having the brain capabilities of a moth. I won't lie. I seriously thought you were being erratic on purpose. Maybe you were onto how to be that golden child of the company, a true underdog story of the kid who came out on top. Turns out, you're just...severely lacking.... in common sense and quite possibly average IQ function of your brain.

That may have been wildly harsh on my part. But as I unfold this awesome adventure of yours down the rabbit hole and into getting a hands on lesson as to how our software solutions work at Waterford Technologies, I'm sure that you'll be able to understand my irritation towards you and that should, by all accounts, make it more palpable for you to digest this letter.

I believe that it was the constant clicking on your keyboard that I heard one day that clued me in as to what you were doing. Our cubicles were literally right next to each other. I could hear every phone call you made, just as you could for me, so I found it highly odd that you were making very little phone calls and typing, what sounded to be, the next installment for the 50 Shades of Grey series. Against my better judgement, I stood up, feigned a stretch and a yawn and holy shenanigans! your epic rearrangement of your work space (that was supposedly going to "motivate" you and increase your productivity) meant I could see exactly what you were typing. And you sir, became smut.

In retrospect, at this point, I had a plethora of options and choices. I could quietly send you an email and professionally let you know that what you were doing was probably for all intents and purposes against some sort of company policy or rule; I could ignore it and let whatever the fates decide happen; orrrrrrrrrrr.... I could become tattletale Susie, that girl in every elementary school with the stupid little Shirley Temple sausage curls and perfect little bow, who never spilled anything and was the teacher's pet. (No, I'm not still harboring any deep-seeded resentment from my younger years.) Yes, that sounded way more fun to me in the brief second of reasoning that I embarked upon as the obscene words were prominently displayed across your screen. I calmly asked a manager to join me in my cubicle to help answer a query that I had. You clicked out of the screen you were on. Picked up the phone and proceeded to make 3 or 4 phone calls. Then you assumed it was safe to resume the previous activity you had been doing. And your timing could not have been more perfect.

At this juncture in the letter, I think it is highly important for you to understand, my intent was not for you to get fired. I just wanted you to be held accountable. What I read that day was offensive, not just to the girl you were emailing FROM YOUR WORK EMAIL, but to me as well. You claimed that because I had a "great ass" that was the only reason I was excelling at work, got better equipment, and more learning time. No, I didn't take it as a compliment as some women would that you thought my hindquarters were great because you weren't and still aren't someone I even want looking at my butt. You have a lisp, you aren't all that attractive and you're shorter than my 5'4 stance. Oh, and another thing that's slightly more important in the ethics and morality of all of this. I'm MARRIED. I'm not even going to harp on you about YOU being married with a little baby at home, something you thought we could bond over coffee on our 3rd day which I promptly shot down.You're a womanizer, something I had suspected by the way you talked from our first day of work, but now, was something I had hard proof of.

(Side-note and word to the wise: Never accuse a prior female military woman of using her looks as a way of surpassing you at work. Had it been another woman standing in my shoes, you probably would have gone home that night with two black eyes and a broken nose from a single punch waiting for you in the parking lot that night.)

A few days passed without any telltale signs from HR or our managers that any action was being taken towards your less than suave attempts to meet girls on Orange County Craigslist using your work email, but then, our managers pulled several of us into the conference room, excluding you and held a meeting about the proper use of our work email and the websites that we were permitted to go to and the ones we were not. They presented us with a "mock" model of a fake employee who had sent and received over 1,200 emails in the past week to various craigslist accounts with the intention of developing an extra-marital relationship. Morals aside, this was an egregious misuse of company property – computer and email, according to the example we were being presented with. I can only assume that you, sir Doody Head, were the catalyst for such a meeting.

We found out after you had been relieved of the duties of your job with our company that your justification behind why you used your work email was your belief that Waterford Technologies did not employ the use of its own software that it sold. No one could comprehend where you had come up with that conclusion. Allow me to refresh your memory as to the solutions that were most likely used to catch you in your misdeeds, the same solutions you sold to people on the daily.

We sell a solution that collects all emails (ALL FREAKING EMAILS) within a company.
-This, RIGHT HERE, should have clued you in that EVERY single email you send or receive is still retrievable even after you delete it. You don't even have to understand HOW it works. Just by definition alone it should be wildly apparent that gmail should have been the route to go for your attempts at being the average guy version of Anthony Weiner. No, I will not refer to you as Carlos Danger. Although cabeza de pollo has a nice ring to it. Crap. You don't speak Spanish as you claimed on LinkedIn. Chicken head. You are a chicken head.

Another solution that we sell gives can show the manager the freaking attachments that are being sent. (you, realistically should be crapping your pants at this point if you haven't already.)

I'm fairly certain that Charlie Sheen at his drunkest would have been able to comprehend the bare basics as I just laid them out for you. For crying out loud, I'm fairly certain that my two year old could be reasoned into understanding all of that. You, though, were a special breed of impenetrable stupidity. And I'm sure that if this could happen at our company, where we both utilize and sell the software that acts as an "insurance policy" should such a situation arise, it can be quickly be taken care of per company policy. How many bone heads like you exist in a company that and have no way of seeing for sure exactly what their employees are doing? Maybe when you apply for you next job you should inquire their use of Email Archiving. If they say no then you've probably got a better shot at making that job last long term. Just sayin.