The First Trip of 2013

I went to Edmonton with a colleague to visit a supplier yesterday. Such a tiring trip. I had to wake up at 05:45 AM to pick him up at his place which was at the other end of the city and I had a little difficulty at the end to find him. So I called and found the place after a few minutes of conversation and driving around the neighbourhood.

Then we got a little breakfast and hit the Queen Elizabeth Highway. I was fine and the vehicle was really comfortable except for a few times that we had issue with the heat. On the road a few times I had to slow down because of the thick fog. We reached our destination with almost half hour delay and another reason was the supplier's premises. I really like the guy who runs the place and according to the documents he has been doing that for quite a long time but when we reached where the company was supposed to be, we didn't see any sign or logo which says the company is here. Then we called the guys we realized that the were hiding in between may be two other businesses, one of them a distribution centre for Pizza ingredients and the other one, I don't even know what! It was a messy place, old with items all over. I realized the guy and his aids they all work in that rubble. It's quite understandable that this company is trying to save few hundreds or may be thousands every year but renting a dump beside a Pizza distribution centre! The funny thing is if you look at the company's website which is well-designed and then read the firms title, you'll say: Wow! These guys are good! But in reality all they do is they import shit from China, from many other companies like that and distribute it with a percentage of profit!

This time they screwed big time but I don't think it will such a big deal for them. What they had done was the order that we were supposed to checked comprises 4 major items and 5 less critical ones. 2 out of the first 4 types were found completely off! Apparently the guy just had picked up the telephone and told his toilet sub-supplier that he had needed 50 more of item C and 80 more of item D, not looking at the new drawings and knowing that there are slight differences in both items, in terms of one or two dimensions which change the items significantly! One of the items has a measurement of 21 mm in the old version of the drawing and 51 mm in the new version! This actually made our job much easier because we realized that we did not have to even touch those two items! The other 2 items were in kind of crappy like metal boxes and since we wanted to randomly select samples from the top of welded box, one of the guys, a receptionist/document controller/floor worker (Jack of all trades) had to use a grinder and cut the damn boxes open which was extremely noisy and irritating for us who had no ear plug or ear muff on, at the time.

Then it was lunch time but we were not very hungry. One of the guys, another multi-purpose fella, invited us to Pizza (It was not clear at the time if they wanted to get Pizza from the guy next door, it was a daily deal coming with the rent or lease or what!) I said I did not want to have Pizza and liked something a bit lighter like a salad. He said that he would get it for us. We were busy with work and I regretted that we accepted his offer because although I was not hungry I really didn't want to eat any shitty Pizza and that was what I was sure he would brought us!

He showed up after almost 45 minutes but before that we saw a squad of people all working for the great company. I saw guy with a large Pizza and a box or salad stepping in right after them. He opened the Pizza, and crap, it was white dough, Pepperoni and ham Pizza with most of toppings burnt or dried! I could imagine what kind of shit Pizza these type of fellas would it and it because a reality! The salad was not much better: a few leaves of a kind of vegetable (not lettuce of any kind), pieces of cut apple, fake dried cranberry, grated cheese and halves of pecan socked in some sort of sweet dressing! I took a few spoons and that was my lunch and the rest enjoyed the healthy food.

After the so-called lunch we got back to work and although we had planned to finish work between 04:30 and 05:00 PM, we realized that we were exhausted so much that we wanted get the hell of the shit place before that. Besides we had a long drive back home ahead of us. There was nothing special on the road when going home. My colleague drove. The big problem commenced when I had to return the damn car. It was after hours and nobody was in the office. I filled up the tank and drove around the block 2 times until I found the entrance to the parking! There's absolutely no sign for this rental's parking and the hassle does not just end there: You have to go up 7 freaking floors, park the car, write the information on a piece of paper and drop key with it. I only noticed after I drop the key. So I say screw it! I walked then to damn train station and it was really cold. I was barely able to walk. I got of my stop and again walked in the cold for about 25 minutes until I had my corpse-like body at home. I could not even feel my hands although I had a damn pair of Columbia useless gloves! Then I had to stay under hot shower for almost 15 minutes to be able to feel my organs! I was dead tired so I just laid down and tried to relax a bit.
(Photo: The new Dodge Dart was very comfortable and reliable in this short trip)