Work and Unknown Avenues

Hi - well I made myself a promise that I would try to blog everyday - so here I am - the next day after I made the promise actually doing it! Today is a work day as are most Monday through Fridays. I work for a small family based pallet manufacturing business. Most days I love my job and find it very fascinating and to tell the truth pretty darn easy after all the horrible and stressed jobs I have had in the past. Well today is a stressed idiot day! My boss, one of the owners of the company is on vacation and the rest of the family is attempting to work at things without him. Since it is a customer relations based business, my feeling (maybe I'm wrong here but it was the way I was raised as well as the way I was taught in every job I have worked so far till I moved here to Tennessee) that the customer comes first! Well today I took a phone call from one of larger volume customers asking for a quote on a pallet. When I gave the information to the other two family members they said what do you want us to do? They said they don't know how to give quotes - how can a company do that to the customer? Just because someone is not here the rest of the business is to shut down? Am I the only one who feels this way? I'm totally confused about this concept. You have to give the customer an answer at some point - you can't tell them to wait? Can you? How inappropriate is that? I feel totally. So I'm a bit ticked off because they expected me to call that customer and tell him to wait for my boss' return!!! How can that be done? I look like a fool saying that and so does the company as a whole. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion - maybe they have done this before - I don't know - but this is downright ridiculous! Sometimes I wonder about this place and other times like this I wonder why I am here. I love doing a good job and it is impossible sometimes to do that when you are surrounding by people who think the world can wait on them to answer!!!