All Or Nothing

Customer Suck-It

Selections from a customer service agent's training manual:

Section One: "How To avoid answering any direct questions"

Section Two: "How To speak broken English fluently"

Section Three: "How To quickly alert the customer to the fact that they have a much better grasp of the company's operation than you do"

Section Four: "How To quickly alert the customer to the fact that you have never been to, seen, or had any experience with the place of business in question"

Section Five: "How To avoid any kind of reasoning by repeatedly asking the customer the correct spelling of his/her mother's maiden name, regardless of what they have asked you"

Section Six: "How To get out of a tough spot by allowing the customer to thoroughly and intelligently explain his/her situation, and then immediately transferring them to an entirely different department"

Section Seven: "How To refer only to 'Company Policy' when fielding all questions about general procedures.  Note - Be sure not to explain 'Company Policy' to customer under any circumstances.  In order to make this step more streamlined, we will not explain 'Company Policy' to you."

Verdict:

I am too competitive. I always want to be The Best at everything I do, and then when I find out (gasp) that I'm not, I get all pouty and stomp my foot on the ground and squinch up my nose and eyebrows and cross my arms and frown and tell everyone that I don't care!! about whatever it is that someone else just succeeded so fabulously at. But I really do, I really care a WHOLE LOT. It's so silly; I should just enjoy what I enjoy, and enjoy it for that in and of itself. Maybe I'm going to work on that. Or maybe I'll just pick something to be good at that NO ONE ELSE HAS INVENTED YET. That'll teach everyone.

Ok, now to the Oh So Much More Important part of this post. Delurkers, delurk!! I need your help. I am sick and tired of all my music. I used to be so Awesome and Cutting Edge that I would offer music ideas to people, just knowing that there was little to no chance they would have ever heard of the band, that they would then listen to said band, love them, and attribute all the genius to ME. But now I am Uncool, and SO NOT Cutting Edge, and I need suggestions. Tell me bands you love, music you just discovered or have grown up listening to, music that makes you happy, music that makes you think, music that makes you just sit in awe, wondering how anything could be so beautiful. As I know you have at least one band you love with all your heart, how can you resist the invitation to share them?

iDumb

Dear People of the Internet,

Thank you so much for your very kind emails filled with such helpful advice. Most of you have been very reassuring and have said things like "not to worry. the mac will not delete anything permanently unless you actually go and empty the trash can, and i'm sure you haven't done that", or "you're probably just playing with the files too much - just tell Itunes where to look for the songs and it will retrieve them. they are somewhere on the hard drive, unless you somehow deleted them and then accidentally emptied the trash". WELL, as it happens, I DID empty the trash, you CAN be sure of it, and it definitely was NOT an accident. Here is what happened, in painful detail:

After much research, I finally figured out how to transfer songs FROM my iPod TO my computer. The iPod, as you know, doesn't have a built in function to do this; you have to download software to do it, which is really easy, and probably everyone ELSE already knew how to do it, but I didn't, and so once I learned, I was very Excited and Proud. Anyhow, it worked like a charm, and so not only was all my iPod storage of two+ years now on my gorgeous new Mac, I could also FINALLY check the option my lovely and loyal iPod always gives me of changing the link in my iPod and making my new computer my home computer. It was a very touching experience, all in all.

I should have just left well enough alone, and for what happened next, I blame my husband entirely (well. that's what he's there for). He kept bugging me about having iTunes with all the fabulous music only in MY username on the computer. Since he had set himself up his very own username and profiles, just like a Big Boy, he wanted HIS iTunes library to have all the music, as well. I didn't know whether this would cause my poor new computer to have to store all those songs twice or not, so I didn't really want to mess with it, but as he kept INCESSANTLY asking me about it, I endeavored to figure it out.

At any rate, I ended up putting iTunes in the share folder, and then decided to just put it in Cody's folder instead and be done with it. In the process of transferring the files back and forth, playing with my beautiful, gorgeous, marvelous Mac, feeling all synched up and One With The Universe, and getting over-confident and heady about the whole experience, I determined that I had saved too many iTunes music folders on my hard drive. I, in this mind-altering state, DETERMINED MYSELF WHICH ONES TO DELETE, AND THEN (oh yes) EMPTIED THE TRASH CAN. Why I felt obligated to empty that damn can so quickly is beyond me, but I did it, and then, as you already know, the rest of the story is history, except that part about me saying "oh.....shit." was a VERY kind glossing over of the actual reaction I had.

So, there you have it. I'm not only dumb, I make sure that I'm PERMANENTLY dumb. Not everyone can say THAT for themselves.

Wha?

I'm quite the stupid one today.
I just can't seem to get it together. For example, I've been sitting here for AT LEAST ten minutes trying to unveil the mystery of whether "choose" is REALLY spelled c-h-o-0-s-e (like noose? like loose? that CAN'T be right) and then I start to question whether or not choose even EXISTS as a word, and then I forget what I was trying to get across in the first place and resort to typing "He picked that thing there" and then hit delete when I could have SWORN my mouse was pointed at save.
I probably answer the phone at work a minimum of 100 times, every day, for nearly a year, and suddenly today I can't remember who it is I work for, or how to put them on hold, or what I'm supposed to tell them - there's at least a 10 second pause between when I pick up the receiver and when I actually emit a noise. Why are you calling ME, anyway? I've got nothin for ya, I promise you that. And if you're calling to reach a workplace full of holiday joy and goodwill towards men, then you are IN FOR A SHOCK. This is Divorce Law, people, not the Salvation Army.
I walk away from my desk for two minutes, get to the next room, wonder why I'm there, and come back, only to see the very document I needed sitting there, rolling it's eys at me. And, I heard my date-stamper and calendar discussing how they might stage an intervention to help me PLEASE admit that it is, in fact, DEC 16.
The mailman just came through and unwittingly tried to engage me in small talk. Small talk? Are you kidding me? I can't even spell on a fourth grade level today, ok? If you ask me whether I'm a "rose" then I'm probably just going to stare at you with a REAL dumb look on my face and NOT AT ALL TIE THAT COMMENT to the comment I made about moving to Tyler, THE ROSE CAPITAL OF THE USA. A rose? A freakin ROSE? What the hell are you talking about, man?
My boss asked me earlier about our transcription module, which has been malfunctioning. I was supposed to try and figure out what might be wrong with it, and then fix it accordingly. Seems pretty straight-forward, right? Well, when he asked me the status of said device, I said (and I am not kidding), "I talked called toey those, uh, umm...those, troubleshooters, and then plugged well, that icon on the side - it can the signals get real mixed - is not supposed to be blinking and that might be the whole problem, probably."
Perhaps I should walk drive myself, ummm, to the car and then steer the wheel until maybe home is where I will end up, probably.

Wal-What?

December 1, 2003
ORANGE CITY, Fla. (AP)

A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'"

Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued to rush for deals.

"All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.

Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.

She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials said Saturday they did not have any information on her condition.

"She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened."

Ellzey said that Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.


Oh WOW.

Embarrassment

I think that in honor of Adam's recent post and Graham's recent mystery story (that is is so cruelly keeping from everyone - well, at least from me) that I will open this blog to the most embarrassing stories we all have in regards to encounters with the opposite sex. Being the types of people who sit around and blog all the time, we all have to admit to some loser-ish qualities so I'm sure we've all got some fabulously awful stories. Let's see who has the best. Maybe we can even vote on them in the end. I'll even get the ball rolling!

The very first time I went to my ex-boyfriend's house in Garland to meet his parents (a relatively big deal, as we all know) we all ate dinner together. I was pretty nervous, wanting to make a good impression, but not wanting to try too hard and all that good stuff. Apparently, my digestive system felt like the best course of action to take that evening was to cause me to choke. On my cornbread. Which, as we all know, is very choke-able, because it's so dry. I must have done that whole cough-then-try-to-talk-too-soon-and-no-sound-comes-out-and-you-go-into-another-coughing-fit thing about five times. No lie. Then, when they were all asking me if I was ok for the millionth time, after the millionth coughing fit and millionth glass of water, I cooly replied "Oh yeah, I'm fine, that happens all the time to me". Cool, Elise. How does that salvage anything, telling your boyfriend's parents that you have chronic swallowing deficiencies? Anyway, it was not the dinner experience I had been hoping for, to say the least. Now, let me hear what has happened to YOU.

Cali Forni Huh?

Goodbye, and good luck to all of you. I'll be sure to let you know how California fares, and on a final, closing note to my Tech tyrade, (I think they topped themselves):

They dropped me, AGAIN, for no reason, AGAIN, from my classes on Wednesday.

AND

They sold me a book, from the Texas Tech Extended Studies Bookstore, that has chapters 5-11 missing. Yes indeed, the page numbers go 81, 82, 83, 236, 237.....Wow. The ridiculousness of that, I feel, cannot be outdone. And with that, I will leave you.

The Villa

First and foremost, I would like to thank all of you very kindly for giving me all sorts of insight and thoughtful answers to my recent question....They are all greatly appreciated. Especially I appreciate people who comment, re-read what they wrote, and then comment again on how awesome they are :) Now there's a direct assault against false modesty! And I'm all for it.


Secondly, I would like to inform you all that today I went to Taco Villa. Now this might sound pretty innocent, or perhaps you think I'm going to rehash the problems of the spelling-challenged clerks, but let me assure you that neither of these presumptions would be true. Instead, this is what happened:

I ordered my food, and no drink, but when I got up to the paying window, I decided that I would really enjoy an iced tea. So, me being the problem-solver that I am, I ordered one. Well, everything was going just fine on my drive from the window to the exit of the parking lot, but after that things got pretty iffy.

My first mistake was trying to turn left onto 19th at 6:00, which obviously wasn't going to work. My next mistake was getting annoyed and making a sudden right out of the parking lot, at which point my much-anticipated iced tea promptly spilled all over my lap, all over my seat, and even mangaged to totally fill up both of my cup holders with ice and tea. Iced tea is one of those aptly named drinks.

Well, as I am scrambling, trying to shift into second gear and turn the cup right side up and not run into anyone or anything and avoid sudden frostbite from ice all over me, I notice that handily enough, there is a cop right behind me. And, I can see that he is getting a little too concerned for his own good about what sort of driver I might be. So, I have to pretend that I'm not freezing, pretend that tea is not dripping into the inner-workings of my gear shifter and parking brake, and pretend like the tea is not STILL spilling all over my leg. And foot.

Mercifully, I get to turn right and get away from the cop before he does anything. Well, not so mercifully for my foot, which the cup of tea had by then fallen on, but mercifully for my driving record. Unless my foot wants to get a job and pay for the tickets I acrue for saving it from the tea, then it can just suffer down there, that's what I say. And that's what I told it, too.

Well, I decided that since I had such a narrow and triumphant escape from the cop, that I had better celebrate by eating one of my tacos. While still driving. Yes, my brilliance even astounds me sometimes. So, the eating-a-taco-while-driving plan worked out very poorly. I got hot sauce all over my t-shirt. Which, of course, was white.

Once I got home, got my car somewhat cleaned out, and got the stains out of my shirt, I sat down to eat my other taco in peace. I even made sure that I got a real plate and everything, so that I wouldn't drip anything on myself. But alas, the Villa outsmarted me again, once and for all, because just as I was counting myself the victor, I opened a little package of hot sauce, and it maliciously sprayed itself all over my just-scrubbed, still-wet shirt. Stupid Taco Villa.