Customer Service

Nothing feels better than to really harangue someone working in customer service or dealing with customers, making minimum wage or close to it, especially during the holidays.
It is like walking up to a sleeping wino, and punching them in the face, and then saying “HA I sure showed you”! And then of course describing in intimate detail, to all your friends, about how you had gotten into a fight and really beat some serious ass.

It relieves stress and makes you feel better than them, and bigger too, doesn’t it? This modern phenomenon is nowhere more clearly displayed than all the digital diatribes I routinely digest on our vast wasteland of the wild, wild, west of the World Wide Web.

People get very brave when carrying a gun against someone unarmed, or someone on the web, or someone on a telephone or maybe in a car if you don’t think they can get to you, face-to-face. When mano-a-mano, and not in a bar, most people still act fairly civil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano-a-mano

My wife called customer service at Amazon the day after Christmas and I told her “honey, leave those poor underpaid bastards alone”! Can you imagine anything worse than manning the return counter after Christmas?

We used to have a saying in the restaurant business “the customer is rude and stupid”. What it means in essence is when these overweight self-important, red-faced imbeciles are screaming at you, about some tiny thing you have no control over, they really aren’t mad at you, they are mad at life. They are screaming into the wind about their exalted Christmas that didn’t live up to their sky high expectations. Instead of getting the big present they hoped for, they got the medium present they never wanted. They are ready to burst at the seams with bile. Or maybe it just snowed like hell and they have a sore throat and cough now, (me). Anyway, they feel safe, even justified somehow, taking it out on the poor customer service/whipping post person. They threaten to “take their business elsewhere”.

By the way, when working at a retail establishment years ago, when someone demanded for detailed information, when we were manning a register, with customers standing ready to pay 10 deep, they would say “give me someone who knows what they are talking about”, we would say, “certainly sir”, then just set the phone down. When asked later who was on the phone, we would say “he is waiting for someone who knows what they are talking about”, then we would all laugh. One thing about those kind of jobs, you can have 10 of them tomorrow if you are so inclined.

This whole thing is even crazier because in most cases we have no real choices anyway. Sears or Wall Mart, is that a choice? Verizon or Comcast? Then of course there are things like the garbage pick-up monopoly, the PSE monopoly, the Microsoft monopoly. Is there any difference between Airbus and Boeing, I mean really?

But people have to let off steam somehow I guess, and screaming at people who have the misfortune to not be able to do any better than working in a call center during the holidays, is one way. Really showing them who’s boss, teaching them a lesson, getting your monies’ worth, is better than dressing up like Santa and shooting people. A little better.

Written somewhat in response to my friend: http://eatingmyworld.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/if-there-is-a-hell-its-calling-the-verizon-help-line-for-all-eternity/

Snowy Christmas

AHhhh the snow, I am so very tired of it.

My wife wanted snow, she got snow.

My dog is crazy for the snow, although it has gotten too deep now even for her. Oddly, we have more snow here in town in Duvall this year than anywhere else I have seen this year.

We from the Seattle area have seen the old pictures of Seattle at around 1920 and the snow was three feet deep and we wondered why it didn’t do that anymore? Global warming? Weather cycles?

As a kid it seemed that we got fairly deep snow almost every year to make a snowman. Of course I was smaller, and it probably seemed deeper. I do also remember one Christmas as a grade-schooler that was bright and sunny and warm. I preferred the snow back then of course.
One of the longest winters I remember was 1969, the big Boeing layoff, my father was laid off I think six months. He played cards, solitaire, everyday, all morning long, I got tired of watching him. This was when they put up billboards, “will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights”? We had compacted ice on our street for a month.

One time in high school, driving a 1965 Impala, I turned a corner on the way to school and slid into someone’s front yard. I went right up to their front door, at first I laughed and then thought…O SHIT, what if they come out,…amazingly, I was able to back out and continue and it seemed funny again.

Also in high school, driving the same road, I came up to a stop sign on a hill. I had to stop and then just sat and spun. I wanted to back down but my back window was covered with ice. So I got out with a scraper and as I shut the door the vibration broke the tenuous purchase the tires had on the ice. The car started sliding backyard downhill without me in it, the tires didn’t even turn! YIKE! As I chased the car downhill I fell down. Thank goodness no one else was on the road.

Living here now, on a hill, the kids always sled down the hill and make conditions worse than necessary. There have been several cars and four-wheel drive trucks stuck here within one block of the house. Two were stuck right across from our driveway. Things could be far worse though, we could all have no electricity.

Right now it is hard to drive around town because they have so many signs barricading with “road closed” it is like going through a maze to get to the local grocery store. We were going to have people over for Christmas Eve tonight. My mother in Kirkland can’t make it and we decided to go over there, but that seems silly right now. Lisa’s parents on Big Rock Road seem a couple states away.

I have noticed the last couple of years the very worst day of the year to drive, is in fact Christmas Eve. It used to be New Years Eve, because everyone would be so drunk and it was so late. The state and police have advertised against that so much almost no one does it anymore, it is verbotten. Christmas Eve, however, everyone feels obligated to go out and drive, and they don’t want to, so they are pissed off, and drunk as well. They are very angry drivers for sure and on top of it all they have snow this year. So I expect today to be really, really bad. All kinds of people will drive who haven’t driven the last few days. They will kill themselves for Christmas.

In This Economy

One phrase/thing I am getting really tired of hearing already is this: “In this economy”. It is the new great buzz-phrase and people just can’t say it enough. On a sports talk show today they said the NFL had laid off 10% of their people, some 120 folks. One person said why? They other answered well “in this economy”…blah blah…

I was thinking, why in hell does the NFL need 1200 people!? Anyway it seems the thing now is to look for a reason, any reason, a catch phrase of some kind, to screw over your fellow man like you always wanted to do anyway, but were afraid of the bad public relations.

When we had “frost in Florida” they jacked up price on all the tomatoes and produce…even though it comes from Mexico. With gas high as the sky last summer they went to profit town on everything, because somehow, someway, everything is tied to “gas price”.

Bush’s word was “terrorism”. He would find something he wanted to do anyway, and then just say terrorism a bunch of times and go. Like this; “terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, I am going to take your civil rights, terrorism, terrorism”. Amazingly, it actually worked!! The worst president since Herbert Hoover, got his country destroying, tantrum way. Remember this one? “terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, I think I will invade Iraq just for the hell of it and bankrupt our country, terrorism, terrorism”.

So now any employer who really wanted to cut his employee’s throats says this;“in this economy” and away we go. Of course you can’t have a Christmas bonus “in this economy” and you wouldn’t dare ask for a raise “in this economy”. The Sam Waltons of the world love saying “we have to buy everything we sell from China in this economy”….

People that watch a lot of TV seem to be prone to the buzz word sickness more than most. They seem to hypnotized by the daily disaster doses on FOX and CNN to the point they no longer think clearly. Just like driving a car and not remembering clearly every turn along the way it is a form of hypnosis apparently

Companies like Bxxxxx who want to punish their hourly workers say “in this economy we can’t afford to buy food for holiday celebrations so they must all be approved at the director level”. Meanwhile corpulent office workers go to the Bxxxxx boxes at a Silvertips game and blow $2000 for one party. It all makes sense somehow.

All over town fathers are telling their expectant children “honey, in this economy we shouldn’t put up lights this year”. Tightwads around the world rejoice about the endless possibilities this economy presents them.