A bit of distance…
was needed for me to talk rationally about last week.
On TUE after Memorial Day, beast’s thermometer decided to take a trip to H land and unless beast was moving (a.k.a. being air cooled) it had an alarming tendency to want to keep going back. I got through my commute ok (heater on high, windows all rolled down; luckily no steam emitted from the hood.)
Got home, called pet mechanic who said “Don’t drive it unless you want to buy a new engine” and other things such as “mumble mumble mumble head gasket mumble mumble” and other deeply alarming things. So, I left a message with the boss that I needed to either be a bit late into work or just arrange for the rental car and work at home.
Did so on WED, and thought, ok, weird week. hope it settles down.
Then THU morning, I staggered into the kitchen to get Bunny food (I am not a morning person you see) and I noticed something weird. It sounded like it was raining. It tends not to rain here in the summer.
I didn’t figure it out right away, but after a few seconds (about the same amount of time it took Martin Blank to figure out the explosive in the microwave was a bad thing) I realized the raining was coming from the ceiling IN MY KITCHEN and was getting water (filthy water run through a hundred year old building’s guts) all over the computer, monitor, keyboard, external drives and all the frightfully expensive stuff that doesn’t like to be dunked in the water.
Mad dash to move EVERYTHING while simultaneously turning it upside down/dry it carefully and not die by electrocution.
I let everything dry for 5 days while snarling politely at my landlord about what we later determined was a terminally stupid 3rd floor neighbor (no, I have not gone up there, I lack restraint at this point) who left the sink running while the drain was “slow”…apparently it isn’t the only slow thing in that apartment.
Long story short, I don’t know that the APC battery backup survived, but so far everything else has. I got a rolly cart for the components so they can live under the table that has a totally classy waterproof table cloth on it and also am puttting a REALLY long monitor cable on it so that it dips onto the floor and will keep water off of at least the computer end of the whole setup. The monitor might not be happy, but its a 5+ year old 15″ monitor that only goes well in one place and I can have replaced… the other stuff not so much.
I got through last week repeating the mantra “Bunny is fine. Bunny is fine.”
Fixed beast (bad thermostat and gasket), returned rental car (didn’t spend as much as I thought I was going to have to spend) and am typing on the computer formerly known as wet.
Now I am sitting here, with a lower blood pressure level transcribing the horrid events of last week here vaguely avoiding doing the second to last weekend of “HouseFlop! The Musical…” eating steel cut oats from the crockpot and a mug of orange juice as I read that they might be a superfood combo [Food Combos More Nutritious Together than Separate].
Just got to clean out the living room and prep it for the big furniture move I have scheduled for tomorrow.
TTFN posterity.
I’m either getting sick (again) or I’m PMS’ing
Lights are too bright and the human race needs to be extinct.
Tex said “Sounds like PMS to me.”
Bah.
Every 3rd word I’ve said tonight is some variant on fuck.
So, I made spaghetti sauce (its percolating in the crock pot) and petted the Bun who is plump and perky and rather sweet (aside from all the biting). Tonight she stood on her table next to my office chair (office being a 6′x5′ corner of my living room denoted by the dark wood furniture abutting the back of the couch which is the ‘living room’) and she put her paws on my shoulder and meowed in my ear.
She’s awesome. I’m so lucky I get to have her around more…
Also, I noted earlier in the day that the hoodie sweater I have on (of fine gauge stockinette stitch) has elbow pads of cable knit.
That charmed me.
All the rest of this week?
Hell.
(l’enfer, c’est les autres.)
Oh Fred you are such a cynic.
No, honey, I’m a realist.
One thing I hate about people is the act of building something/someone up to ridiculous heights, expect miracles and then, when reality happens they act all hurt and angry that promises were broken.
This is what I am afraid of with Obama.
Granted, he hasn’t promised miracles (no really, he hasn’t-look at his speeches.), and yet, people look at him and weep in gratitude that he is in the Oval Office.
(Well, I ‘m relieved that Bush is out, but I’m also trepidatious because the people who put the shrub in the office FOR A SECOND TERM (Seriously people, what the hell were you thinking?) after it was proven he has no skill at managing and destroyed a country based on a bad bit of info and still refuses to admit it was a bad idea… are the same booger-pickin’ morons that Obama has to deal with now.)
But, we have a crap economy which has its nasty little roots based in Reaganomics, a war debt that is absurd and problems with the future that won’t just go away (and promises to get worse and worse as my grandparents and parents age and use up the money set aside for all of us (also, if you think you are going to see a penny of that social security that you are paying a good chunk of your yearly salary into, you are seriously delusional. My ‘retirement’ choices are based on it being my primary support system as I will probably need to have a part time job until I die or can’t work anymore to pay for insurance and day to day doodles.)) Not only does Obama have to deal with the current mess we are in, the mess we have coming… he also doesn’t have absolute power.
Think back to junior high social studies, kiddies. There is a bi-cameral legislature and the president.
A system of checks and balances.
So, anything that Obama wants to do pretty much has to be approved by the other guys.
..and this is a good thing.
I remember watching the overwhelming YES vote to the patriot act (with a small, small incident of dissent asking for a discussion of some of the stickier bits) based on scare tactics that hearkened back to the McCarthy era.
Gah.
Our government caved and fell to cheap scare tactics (If you aren’t for us you are against us! If you questions me you aren’t patriotic! and all that bully crap.)… which lead to years of our basic rights, as listed in the constitution, eroded slowly and surely away… and the smug, arrogant looks on Bush & Cheney’s faces as they said it was “for our own good” disgusted me.
I WANT our congress folk and senators to have cojones (and brains while we are wishing for things).
I WANT them to say “Hang on a minute…” and look at what they are signing.
Hopefully, Obama has a bit more honor than the shrub. I don’t know the man, I have heard speeches, but other than that, he’s a politician and that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a good person.
It just means he’s a successful politician and a handsome, convincing speaker.
(Case in point, Kennedy… good lookin’, died early, left a pretty corpse and everyone loves a martyr…but great leader? Maybe not so much.)
I just know that 1. there will be missteps 2. that Obama doesn’t have absolute power (and even if he did, I don’t know that he could clean up this mess that quickly) and 3. he has to get the right legislation/decisions approved by the selfsame fussy, bitchy pile of politicians that is in D.C. and that he might not be able to get this working very quickly; the U.S. is a great lumbering beast, it isn’t known for cunning shifts in direction.
So, no, I am not weeping in gratitude that Obama is in the Whitehouse.
I am more pleased that McCain ISN’T in there (because if you thought the shrub was bad, McCain would have been worse. And even though Palin could have charmed the foreign dignitaries, any socialite wife can, but they would have dismissed her as a moron and asked to sit at the grown-up table…). So I’ll reserve my happiness and stay cautious for now.
We’ve got a shitload of hard choices and heavy lifting for the next 10 years.
Gird your loins, girlies.
(oh, and fair warning bloggers/tweeters: if I catch wind of you weepers doing a 180 when something gets wonky, I will shred you. I know who you are.)
Sony VAIOs… dead to me now.
Will Danaher: Feeney, get your book out.
Set down the name, the one Sean Thornton.
Will Danaher: Feeney, have you written the name I gave you?
Feeney: I have.
Will Danaher: Well, strike a line through it.
That´s for him. Sean Thornton…
That’s how I feel about Sony right now.
Providing that they nut up and provide customer service and honor the extended warranty I bought (a goddamn 3 year fucking warranty); I’ll be mollified.
If not, you can be damn sure that I am disgusted and angry enough to write LONG rant (provinding communications word by word and in excruciating detail so that Google will pick it up and spread their misdeeds far and wide) and then NEVER buy another VAIO again.
I agree with kottke.org
CA to gays: no marriage for you
Today is bittersweet…Obama got elected but it looks as though Proposition 8 will pass, banning gay marriage in California. Fuck you, California.
Kottke.org
I agree.
Completely.
You know, I have to think that the people who fought and died for rights of people, such as those who voted for this proposition (you know, the one that eliminates rights for people), are wondering if they made the right decision to help out people who just turn around and shit all over other people…
Apparently, y’all are now in a good place…good enough to screw those who are being discriminated against… and I am done defending anyone who turns around once they are comfortable and takes away others’ rights.
Notes on Prop 8
Here’s their wording on Prop 8:
“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and consider that they might try to explain why they are bigoted shitheads….
If they are trying to use logic to defend that, then they use the argument that “marriage is to produce children.”
What about couples who can’t reproduce?
What if a woman had a hysterectomy or a man is sterile? They can’t have children.
Does that mean they can’t get married because, really, what’s the point in your mind? They aren’t going to be popping out any sprogs, so its a waste of time? Right?
Doesn’t matter they love each other and want to protect each other (financially and otherwise) not to mention they want to declare to the world that they are for each other.
Its clearly a waste and just for nasty purposes.
Next.
Or they try to say that it would warp children because they would be teaching kids in school that “Prince Charming and Prince Charming-er” are getting married.
I don’t recall being taught about marriage in school. What the fuck does school have to do with this?
Bah.
Or even that they would be forced to marry gay people in their churches? (Like they follow the law… puh-lease.
They claim their god is their ultimate law…why do they fucking care? And frankly, that bible only precludes to men getting it on, doesn’t say anything about women getting it on…no really, go look it up smartass.)
The court decision regarding equal marriage rights already said “no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.”
So, how would this affect the opponents of marriage between two PEOPLE? It wouldn’t… well, it would offend their RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, but last time I checked there is this thing called separation of church and state.
I don’t want my government making decisions based on religious groups..especially not their religion…
Also, this is so very clearly, obviously discrimination.
We’ve worked so hard to make certain that people (notice I didn’t say men, women, white folks, brown folks, pink folks, purple folks, black folks, plaid folks, xtian folks, wiccan foks, muslim folks, etc) aren’t judged, not hired, fired, sent to jail because of their age, gender, religion or number of body piercings.
Saying who can and can’t get married because of a religious tenet (that not even all religions give a fig about) is against everything we have worked to get rid of over the past however many years.
OK, so lets try this one… this is my test for legislation in terms of discrimination in general… if you can replace the folks in the sentence with another group and not have it be offensive, then it is a bit more equal…
“Only marriage between a christian and a christian is valid or recognized in California.” (yeah, sure, that would go over well)
“Only marriage between a white man and a white woman is valid or recognized in California.” (oh wait, we already fixed miscegenation…)
“Only marriage between a republican and a republican is valid or recognized in California.” (I wouldn’t be surprised by this, they try to get all the tax breaks for themselves…)
Nope, doesn’t work.
All of those preclude two people a right that other people have.
Remember when Virginia tried to outlaw the civil union/partnerships that gay folks were using to protect each other? They wrote the wording so vaguely that it ended up making lots of partnerships, such as two men owning a business together, illegal.
The whole point of the law is to protect all American people. Not make some people more protected than others… if you tried this shit in a job situation, you’d be smashed to bits.
Try not hiring me because I am female.
You can NOT hire me because I am a pain in the ass and can’t code PHP for shit, but that is reasonable.
Not because of my boobs (well, you couldn’t really hire me because of them either.).
Churches are not taxed and therefore should stay the hell out of government policy… you want to be part of the judicial process? Pay taxes and be a business. Write off all the shit you do and the donations you make and the poor unwed teenagers that are pregnant because you said “Just don’t have sex” that you end up taking care of off of your taxes.
Fine; write it off…get a really good accountant and pay your fucking federal and state taxes… but this shit about “I believe in invisible things that tell me all of you are going to burn in a construct that didn’t exist until the Romans beat the hell out of us and we decided to say “We’ll show you! We’ll win when we are dead!”" isn’t going to cut it here.
You can lobby all you want when churches pay taxes and don’t hide behind their status while being political anyway. You will be subject to the laws we all are. This is not the same age as when the church ran the world and ran rampant over things that they have no reasonable jurisdiction over… like me and my own religious beliefs (and my dang uterus.)
Why the hell am I so worked up over this?
I don’t even want to get married. You want to fuck up your life and get married? Go ahead. I don’t care. I think gay as well as straight people should be able to screw themselves by getting married equally (just don’t make me ever do it again.) I am, after all, an equal opportunity pessimist.
What I really object to is RELIGION and churches getting political and inflicting themselves on me.
I don’t belong to your religion, those are NOT my prejudices and frankly, the whole point of this fucking country was to get away from persecution based on your religion….
Guess who’s doing the persecuting now?
Yahoo! News Story – Foo Fighters tell McCain to stop using song
Why isn’t the RIAA doing anything about this…? isn’t this what they say that that’s what they do-protect artists against unauthorized usage of their music? And why is Dave Grohl having to file the suit?
So a baby can’t jam to Prince (barely heard and not even any sort of quality) and McCain broadcasts full quality sound over national airwaves… and nothing. NOTHING.
I haven’t heard a peep from them…
Palin Problem comments
choice paragraphs and some commentary by me… please read the whole article though.
Palin Problem
She’s out of her league.
By Kathleen Parker
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
You know, I totally get that people are sometimes put into jobs or situations that are beyond what they are used to dealing with, and that is part of how we learn.
HOWEVER… when you are just taking the training wheels off, the oval office (or one good aneurysm away from it) is NOT the time to do this.
I don’t trust her.
I don’t trust anyone who claims that god talks to them directly and that they know exactly what god wants.
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, babycakes.
(You can bet if she was wiccan, then the republicans would be talking a whole lot more about keeping religion out of the government….hypocrites.)
Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”
That’s not even a coherent sentence. “And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both”…. umm, huh?
My Mercury in Virgo mocks her!
McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.
Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.
See now, I disagree. I would criticize her. I would say “Why the hell didn’t you say no when they asked you? Or are you used to bowing out when the going gets tough our you take a little criticism and then blame it on your family needing you?”
She absolutely CAN’T use her newborn (hers? really? they are going to stick with that story?) as an excuse to step down.
If a man did it it would be construed as family-centric and noteworthy, and it would actually be unheard of. When a woman does it, they think, oh well in any crisis a woman will not be reliable because she has to take care of her family. We can’t put a woman in a position of power (like the presidency) because of ovulation or lactation concerns.
And while I think babies are important, if we use them as an excuse for a woman doing anything then regardless of gender equality (snort) that exists (snort) then it will just be used as ammo to prove that women can’t do this kind of work because of the mommy factor.
As much as I think that Sarah Palin is SO NOT ready for prime time, despite the fact that she charmed the pants off of heads of state (and frankly, many socialite wives could do the same thing… charm is handy, but it doesn’t mean you can successfully get this country out of the mess that the last 8 years of Bush bullshit inflicted), if she plays the mommy card then no matter what kind of charm she oozes, then the world at large will think she will use that card again when the going gets tough.
Unreliable.
She needs to really realize that this job that she is interviewing for is going to kick her ass and take up her time.
So she’ll need to NOT use that excuse if she decides to bow out.
And please don’t ever let her cry.
Too many negatives to women if she plays a girlie girl in this election.
…and frankly (yes this is a snotty comment) but her kids need more focus from her than they are apparently getting. A knocked up teen when mommy is an “Abstinence works!” kool-aid drinker makes me thinks she’s not going to be able to handle the country.
some fun comments by Richard Reeves
from here: [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucrr/20080908/cm_ucrr/isobamaalreadypresident]
Mon Sep 8, 10:01 AM ET
“Romney was a hoot. My favorite. He must hate the media more than most of those who were in St. Paul, because he spoke as if he has not read or noticed anything for years. It is hard to believe he said:
“Is Washington now liberal or conservative? Let me ask you some questions. … Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle Eastern tyrants? It’s liberal. Is government spending, putting aside inflation, liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It’s liberal. … Throw out the big-government liberals and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin. … You know, it’s time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother.”
The big-government liberals he’s apparently worried about are the reigning Big Brother, Vice President Cheney, and the reigning borrow-and-spend budget-busting president, whom I had been thinking was named Bush. “
and
“Oops! This just in: George W. Bush is still president and has been for more than seven distressing years. I guess I was fooled by the fact that his name was almost never mentioned in St. Paul. A computer count indicated that Bush’s name was used 12 times as often at the Democratic convention in Denver than in St. Paul …”
and
“The conventions were fun and games and a bit of fantasy this time around. But except for introducing the country to Gov. Palin of the Yukon, “Caribou Barbie” to the bloggers, I doubt these rock concerts did much beyond holding the contenders in place. This race will still be about Bush’s record, Obama’s race and McCain’s age. “
yep.
“I am not the only fat person in the world. Surely I will not be the only fat person in attendance at the wedding. (I hope. Always, I look for people Fatter Than Me. In that manner I am an Asshole Supreme.) Still, I cannot shake my shame. It is deep-rooted and has grown in me ever since I was five and my father called me “Jenny Jelly Belly”.
My father makes fun of fat people with aplomb. In fact I don’t know who he loves more, fat people or Barack Obama for filling his life with sick mirth. Suddenly, though, he has stopped making these stupid jokes around me. I know that this is in deference to my girth and it shames me even further. He pays for me to go to hypnosis sessions and then cringes when I eat anything other than salads. It’s gotten to the point in which my stomach actually hurts when I see him. My mother tells me to eat small meals and then bakes cupcakes. My mother is a size four. She speaks about fat people in a low voice, as if they have cancer.” [TranceJen]
How I deal with noisy upstairs neighbors
(who seem to have spawned a noisy, stomping and screaming rugrat).
I put on my Broadway list on iTunes (loudly) and warm up to such delights as Les Mis, Rent, Phantom of the Opera, Anything Goes, Guys and Dolls, etc.
And as I am dreadfully out of practice, I am off key and have a lovely howling quality to my voice of late.
GFY
They didn’t acknowledge a lot of legislation that California does so I really don’t think it is a matter of them really worrying about their recognizing the marriages…its the fact that the religious people who have been ignoring the whole “separation of church and state” thing are finally having to acknowledge that “traditional marriage” means “marriage defined by a religion” and not a union between two people.
Ten states urge Calif. court to delay marriage ruling
Friday, May 30, 2008
(05-30) 10:48 PDT San Francisco, CA (AP) –The attorneys general of 10 states are urging the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize same-sex marriage.
The states involved are Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.
The attorneys general say they have an interest in the case because they would have to determine if their states would recognize the marriage of gay residents who wed in California. They want the court to stay its ruling until after the November election, when voters likely will decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office originally argued to uphold the state’s one man-one woman marriage laws, is urging the Supreme Court not to grant the stay.
Gas Prices
I’ve been seeing article after article about companies who either allow their workers to stay at home one day (or more to telecommute) or give gas subsidies to keep their valued workers who can’t afford to pay $4.15 per gallon for a 70 mile a day round trip commute to work…
but I know of one specific company that has, as of June 2, canceled all work at home days. No more telecommuting.
Such timing.
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Thursday Whinging
I haven’t been this angry since that asshole I divorced showed up on my doorstep (I wouldn’t let him in) and then he proceeded to tell me that I was the one who did everything wrong in our marriage and that he was the injured party.
About that time I threatened him with a restraining order, detailed in excrutiating detail what he lied about for 4 years, what delusions he harbored and that if he ever showed up at my door again, I would have him put in jail and I would press charges to the extent that I could… and maybe more. (Plus, I know all of his and his fucked up family’s secrets, so he hasn’t been back since. I can’t even tell you how happy I am to be rid of that nest of snakes.)
Good.
But he isn’t the issue right now, someone else (two someone elses are), and I haven’t been this angry with people since then.
Last night, I watched the last installment of Micheal Palin’s Himalaya.
I’ve owned the series for quite a while, but strangely I don’t think I ever finished it. I’m a total sucker for just about anything travel documentary-y and doubly so with anything Michael Palin. Yes, I’m crushing a bit.
He’s pretty well suited for this job. He’s a dear person, funny, likes people, pretty patient and, in short, has made himself generally beloved… or at least he has managed to uphold the facade well.
I’ve followed him around the Sahara, the Himalayas, the 30 degree mark from Pole to Pole and Around the World in 80 Days. And soon, I will see a New Europe.
But what I want to talk about is his segment in Bhutan.
A couple of things struck me about that.
1. The Bhutan-ese national costume looks like a very comfy stripey or plaid cotton bathrobe and leggings. Great, where can I get a few?
2. The hiking there looks FANTASTIC. Great, when can I go? (but the $200/day tourist fee? Hmmm maybe not so much.) Mom would dig hiking with ponies carrying all the gear… but mostly she’d just want to play with the ponies.
The whole country looked beautiful and the people pretty chill.
I think right now I need a little of hiking in a beautiful place in my bathrobe… with or without ponies.
Anyone been to Bhutan? Is it all that *and* a bag of chips?
Solio experiment is over for now. I charged my nano, my bluetooth headset and my Treo exclusively from solar power since last Friday afternoon. I probably could have gone longer if I wasn’t indoor or getting out of work so late every evening. But, even though I wasn’t fully out of power when I ended the experiment, all my batteries had been at or below 50% for several days and that isn’t good for longtime battery health.
I think it was pretty successful actually. If I was on the trail I’d be able to keep my nano topped up and my Treo would last a lot longer since I wouldn’t be using the data radio or the headset much so I could get by much longer, not to mention I’d have actual sunight with my Solio on top of my pack rather than UV filtered and greyed windows to charge it from. (Plus I found PowerHero to manage the on/off aspect automatically when I normally am not using it… ~12-7am each weekday and 1-7am on weekends. I’ll take that into consideration on the next experiment.)
I listen to Pattern Recognition as a bedtime story a lot. It helps my brain to focus on that instead of going at 3 bazilion miles an hour and festering over unpleasant things that will take place the next day at work. In the story, Cayce wears a Buzz Rickson’s MA1 replication jacket. When I first read the story, I Googled the jacket and liked what I saw. Then I eBay’d a knock off of a knock off for super cheap. I now call it my Pattern Recognition jacket and it is a bit of a comfort blankie on days like today.
Good thing the Bay Area is nice and cool or I’d roast.
The Customer Ain’t Always Right
[link]
I know people who regularly ask for things that they know are not allowed or things that are specifically not offered because they think the rules don’t apply to them-or even just because they try to try. What I don’t accept is when people get pissy when they don’t get their way even when they know it isn’t an option.
What I do think is that both sides need to figure out what the customer needs and either provide that service to the benefit of both or find another service provider who can provide that service (without operating at a loss regularly) for that person. Or use them as a guinea pig to see if you can offer that service reasonably. If a customer wants to just put you out of business for sport, they should be put out of my misery. That’s unacceptable behavior.
If a customer is having a bad day, fine. But don’t take it out on a service provider. It doesn’t make you right to be an asshole just because you are a customer.
When I was working at Apple in tech support I got the occasional rollover customer service call. People treated this phone number as a place to spew their blackened, evil souls over someone who had to sit there and take it and be gracious about it. Quite frankly, I wasn’t hired to be abused (although some people would argue that being on the phones at all should be covered by the Geneva Convention) I was hired to solve peoples’ problem with their Macs. And I generally did (draped temporarily in the pelt of a customer service rep) the person went away happy with their problem fixed. And truly, 99% of the time it was a fixable problem, but the outsource vendors who originally took the support call couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag and probably just sent these cases to customer service out of sheer laziness… so no wonder these people were pissed. Incidentally, this was 10 years ago, so I don’t know what the state of Apple tech support is now. But back to the point, if I was going to have to sit on the phone and take those vitriolic calls all day, I told my manager I would go look for another job. Thankfully, he didn’t make me do too many of them and let me groove on what I really excelled at… and I did excel. I *closed* 40+ cases per day with high satisfaction ratings. People went away laughing (I had them do the “printer dance ” with me, I had them reminding their printer that they loved it and lo and behold, it printed again! I jollied people through their issues. I gave a shit.) and we were fine.
But force me to say I’m wrong because some cheap bastard wants a freebie and he knows that behavior that would have gotten him a spanking when he was 4 but now gets his ass kissed is not acceptable.
Forget it.
“One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.
She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.”
So reading all of that, why the hell did this woman fly SWA? That’s exactly what they are known for. It would be like her going to Chuck E. Cheese’s and bitching about the noisy atmosphere interfering with her dinner… and why isn’t there veal piccata on the menu?
Grow up America.
Stop behaving like petulant children.
Employers, start valuing your employees and invest in good ones. We are not disposable… and on the other hand, employees, get off your ass and start focusing on your job.
If you ever wonder why things are being outsourced its because employers are not seeing the value of an on-shore workforce.
Help make us an asset again.
