selling tractors and such...

it's been two days and i've created four ads to sell tractors, hay balers, backhoes, ATVs, and other pertinent things with specials like 0% for 36 months. here's how these days have gone...

monday i arrived to fill out two little forms, see how the timeclock works, and clean off my desk. then i organized what little office supplies i had in my area and acquainted myself with my computer. then i installed a trial version of Adobe CS3 that my boss downloaded over the weekend for me. i altered an ad to include our info and tagline (like they've been doing) and went to lunch. that afternoon i redesigned the ad to be double the size and completely new art. i worked on that until the end of the day. my boss took one look at it, said it was good, and handed it over to another guy. he made a couple little changes, said it looked good, i fixed them, and then was given approval. the entire process took about 10 minutes and was very matter-of-fact.

i worked this morning for about two hours on new logo ideas. then i designed my second ad, with new artwork. that one was approved by one person, which included being looked at for about five seconds and then he said, "ok, good, send it to so-and-so. i like it." a bit later it was time for lunch. this afternoon i worked on two ads that were to be side-by-side on the same page for our Outdoors company. this one was the hardest so far because i was given much less direction and had to search longer for certain images. at ten minutes after 5 the manager of the Outdoors store came over to discuss the ad. so tomorrow morning i'll make those few changes and then send it to the paper.

also this afternoon, while i was waiting for feedback about the Outdoors ads, i got oriented with the inventory system and the website. i made a few minor changes that hadn't been made since July and learned a shortcut in Dreamweaver i didn't know about yet.

i've met about 10 people there. 10 out of 25+. people seem nice, but stick to their areas of work and tend to keep busy with actual work. the phone rings constantly. the receptionist answers the phone, puts that person on hold, then calls over the loudspeaker, "sales, line 5" and things of the like, ALL DAY LONG. it's weird. never been in this kind of environment before. it's just like a car dealership, except we're selling farm equipment. i never would have guessed.

i have my own cubicle with one wall. it's situated in the sales department. i have a window. it's warm in the mornings and cold in the afternoons. i have a good computer with a widescreen LCD monitor. i have as stapler and a pair of scissors and a couple of pens and paper clips. :-)

the owners are married, their kids are the managers (one at the regular store, my boss, who's basically just a kid (20-ish) and the other at the Outdoors store, also just a kid), the Outdoors' manager's wife is the receptionist. a lady in accounting is married to a service tech. and i'm sure there are other relationships i haven't learned about yet.

so anyway... just thought i'd share that overall it's good. :-)