Watch Company of America

Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 10:25am

I work for an American watch company. Not only do I work for a successful company, but it is still in its infancy. While it’s a baby, though, the clients they serve and have accounts with provide them plenty of wealth. On top of that, it is family owned. It isn’t publicly traded on the stock market and they don’t follow “corporate America” standards and rules. I come to work wearing nice jeans and collared suit-type shirts. I have my own cubical-like desk area with my own personal phone, computer and all those other things that accompany an office. I listen to customers call in every day asking if they can register the warranty on their watches for the next five years. Sometimes I comply, but most of the time I don’t. I follow the policy that they must mail in their warranty with a copy of their receipt. The ones that I’m “nice” with are the ones that supposedly claim that they are blind, bed-ridden or say that the warranty application did not come with the purchase of their watch. If I’m not doing those types of calls, I’m handling some customers that have sent in their watch for repairs. The thing is, though, sometimes their watches are un-repairable. So what ends up happening is that I get on the phone and let them know that it’s not fixable, but that we are more than willing to replace it with a watch of equal or lesser value to that of the watch that was sent in. When not doing any types of phone calls, I’m just cruising the World Wide Web sifting through the loads of misinformation that is out there. Some is believable, some isn’t. The news is a big thing during my down-time. I’m reading whatever catches my eye. Some interesting.. some boring.. but they’re all the same. They describe a world full of trouble and innovation.

I need to mention that although I do work for this watch company, they aren’t the ones that pay my salary. One of their clients pay them to have me there. Long story short, the watch company’s biggest customer was heavily complaining that the customer service department sucks. I won’t get into any details about what made the department whack. But, from what I’ve seen and from the little amount of time that I’ve been working there, there isn’t much to complain about. Why? Because the customers that call in with complaints and questions in reference to the biggest client are quite frankly ridiculous. I’ll get into specifics [about the customers] at some point later on.

The family that runs the watch company is Israeli. Although, I may be wrong! Their family history is diverse and a bit complicated. The CEO is the youngest son; he’s about 30-something. His father is the Senior Consultant; he gave his son the company. The older sister is the Vice-President of something and the CEO’s wife is in charge of the customer service department; she’s my main boss. I believe that another one of their sisters works there, but I’m not entirely sure of that information. Oh well, the point is, this family runs a successful watch company that competes with Rolex and the like. They don’t play games. By looking at their End of the Year photos they know how to have fun, too. Did I mention that the owner drives a Bentley? It’s fairly new, but his tires are almost balding. His solution.. buy a new FJ cruiser. His wife drives a fairly new Lexus SUV and his father drives a mid-nineties Lexus SUV, as well.

I got this job from the good graces of my future-wife’s mother. She happens to be good friends with the owners and she takes care of the owners’ Mother. She’s a blessing. An angel in disguise! She’s always there whenever we need something. Food, love and spirituality. She’s a whole ‘nother persona to talk about and I want to dedicate as much as possible to her. But right now is not the time.

My beautiful girlfriend works at a private hospital that is funded privately (whatever that means). She works in the Billing & Collection department. She sits at her desk and while she’s playing her Snood or doing her homework (similar to Bust-A-Move on Playstation), she’s on the phone talking to people and insurance companies that owe the hospital money. But, not only is she working full-time at this hospital, she just went back to school. She enrolled at a nearby community college to further her career and life. She’s only twenty years old, by the way. I must mention, too, that her boss, the owner of the hospital, is divorced from one of the sisters that run the watch company. The divorce was terrible. From what I know, he cheated on her.

The people I work with are fantastic. I am learning a great deal from them and by the looks of things, we’re all in our early twenties. I finally work in a setting where I get to sit down and stare at a computer! I know, I know, a lot of people do not like desk jobs. But, you don’t know what I was doing before, and, I’ll be honest, I loved my job in the past, but it got a little too stressful for the little pay they gave me. It was too much work! Starbucks was fun, but it wore you down and the countless amounts of unnecessary BS was not worth the headaches, stress, and no amount of pot in the world could cure the anxiety that was caused by drinking coffee and slangin’ it all day to drug addicted souls.

There are many things that I wish to accomplish, but for right now I’ll just take it one day at a time, but my philosophy is… CARPE DIEM!