Random Story Shared for Reasons Unknown

I went into Rite-Aid this evening to get a bottle of wine for my mother. It took just a second, and I was pleased to see that there was only one person ahead of me in line. Oh, if only I'd known ...

I guess Rite-Aid has those newspaper circulars with coupons in them right when you walk in. Well, the woman in front of me was one of those coupon ladies. Like, hard core! And then the worst part was, most of what she was buying were multiples and the coupons could only be used once. The customer was a good sport, actually (she had a Louis Vuitton bag, so I'm sure the coupons weren't necessary ... or maybe that's how she got her Louis Vuitton bag, by clipping coupons). Anyway ...

The cashier seemed rather excited to get in on saving this woman big bucks. She went and grabbed a stack of the circulars. And then--I swear this is true--took out a pair of scissors and started cutting out each coupon the woman needed and said, "I'll just ring them all in separately."

Now, this woman had a cart full of stuff. Full! I'm standing there with a bottle of wine that isn't even for me, and this is clearly going to be a lengthy procedure ... But then the customer, who seemed to find the whole thing amusing, said to the cashier, "Why don't you let the lady behind me go? It looks like she's had a long day." (I might have groaned a bit at the arrival of the scissors ... maybe that's what she was referring to)

Anyway, I bought the wine (twenty-eight seconds start to finish--yes, I counted) and went home.

I don't know why I'm posting about this, but I have a very strong urge to. It's odd. Is it because the customer was so decent? The cashier so dim? I don't know ... what do you think? What about this little exchange made me feel compelled to share it?

Experiences with Dumb Employees

Sometimes, with the sheer stupidity of some people, you just don't know whether to laugh or cry ...

So I just went into VIP (it's an auto parts store ... I'm not sure if it's a national chain or not) to get a bulb for my mother's car. Now, you need to understand that my mother is rather odd about certain things, for lack of a better way of putting it. Her car, for example ... she takes it to the dealership for, like, having a blinker bulb changed, gets charged over fifty dollars, and doesn't realize how asinine that is. Andy said he'd change the bulb for her, that it'd take him, like, five minutes if that, and he wouldn't charge her anything. She thought that sounded like a good plan and, since she's in Florida with Belle, I told her I'd make sure it got done before she got back. Yeah, they're getting back tonight ...

So anyway, I went to the service desk at VIP and said, "I need to buy a left rear blinker light for a Ford 500." The guy looked at his computer for a few minutes and replied, "It's not listed." I kind of looked at him blankly for a minute ... I mean, this is an AUTO PARTS STORE! Then, as so often happens in my life, it perpetuated. He called over a couple of other employees and they looked in the computer and basically said that, since it wasn't listed, they couldn't help me out. One said, "If you have the car with you, we can take out the old one and try to match it." Well, I didn't have the car with me because driving my mom's car makes me nervous enough already because with my luck I'd total it, plus it's (no offense intended to anyone) kind of an old lady car, plus it doesn't have a left rear blinker at the moment.

Anyway, I called Andy and told him they "didn't have it listed", and he said, "I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I'll call a Ford dealership and get right back to you." Approximately two minutes later, Andy (who was at his own work, I might add, and certainly not getting paid for being an auto parts specialist) called me back and said, "Tell them you need a 3157." That simple. Two minutes. One phone call.

Obviously, I don't expect them to know the exact parts for every car in existence, but
a) We're talking about a Ford here, not a Maserati.
b) Three VIP employees stood around looking on the computer for the same thing.
c) It didn't occur to them to explore other options (Andy said there's some book that VIP should have that gives all that information).
d) It took Andy two minutes to get the information ... it certainly couldn't have taken them any longer than that.
e) After I left, I googled "blinker light Ford 500" and the information was RIGHT THERE. I don't know what the heck they were doing on the computer, but I could have figured it out on my CrackBerry in less time. Uh ... I could have figured it out on my CrackBerry PERIOD.

When I took the Praxis II exam to be certified as a high school English teacher, I was really nervous because the test covered the entire body of literature, from pre-Homeric writings to the relatively recent genre of "chick lit" and everything in between. I needed to have a working familiarity with Moby Dick, but I also needed to know about iambic pentameter and gerunds and so on. Trust me, I know better than anyone about having too much material to know, and you can't possibly be an expert at everything, but at the same time, it's okay to stop and look something up and, in this day and age, there are a vast number of ways to do that!

Okay, rant over. Am I overreacting here? (I have a tendency to do that sometimes ;)) What experiences have you had with incompetent employees?

Cracked Technology

Okay, I have to state for the record that I love my BlackBerry. I mean, my friends and family accurately refer to it as my "CrackBerry" (I know that terminology isn't unique, by the way, but it is apt), and there's even the occasional joke made about how I'm married to it.

That being said, though, there's a part of me that misses the simpler world. Don't get me wrong, I love being able to hit IMDB when the name of an actor is on the tip of my tongue or check the weather as needed or scroll through status updates on Facebook. It's just that I can't remember what it was like before the answers to the world's questions was at the tip of my fingertips. I'm even a welcome sight at times as in, "Oh, good, you're here. Can you Google how much it costs to make a penny?" (The answer, by the way, is 1.4 cents ... but that's a post for another day)

This realization has hit me hard the last few days as my beloved BlackBerry is having a nervous breakdown. I need to go to the Verizon Wireless store and get it straightened out, but suffice it to say that I'm having a hard time making calls (it starts chanting, "Enter a voice dialing command. Enter a voice dialing command. Did you say, 'Call MOM'?" It's really kind of funny, except of course that I also miss calls and don't receive texts until I take the battery out and reset the whole thing.

Technology is great when it works. Trust me, I enjoy it (revel in it is more accurate ;)) as much as anybody. However, when it flickers in dependability, it's a harsh (and frankly kind of frightening) reminder of a simpler time ... and that makes me sad, for some reason.

Hun, I Have a Pet Peeve Here ...

I am the first to admit that I get irritated by really stupid and insignificant things. Among the stupidest and most insignificant of my pet peeves is the word "hun" as in, "Oh, don't worry, hun, it'll get better soon."

Does it matter in the great scheme of things if someone uses "hun" in written communication? Nope. Does it drive me freaking batshit? Uh ... YEAH!

I use the word "hon" (as in, short for "honey") all the time, both to my daughters and my students. I assume that this is the intent when people write "hun". According to Wikipedia, huns were "a group of nomadic pastoral people" who played a role in the collapse of the Roman Empire. The most famous, of course, was Attila the Hun, known for "cruelty and rapacity" through western Europe.

Yeah, that's a fabulous term of endearment. No, when I see "hun", it just screams out ignorance. Does that make me a linguistic snob?

Speaking of which, did you know that "funner" is in fact a word? One of my students used the word today, and I of course tried to correct him by saying, "No, hon, it's more fun." At this point, I was informed that "funner" is actually in the dictionary. I didn't believe him, of course, so I went running to look it up. It was there. Man, did I feel stupid :)

Anyway, here are a few other things related to the English language that bring out the worst in me:

1. Ect instead of Etc. (for et cetera, Latin for "and the rest")
2. When people pronounce the word supposedly so that it sounds like "supposably"

Okay, I feel much better now : )

Button Pushing (or "Going out of your Way to Tick People Off")

Have you ever noticed that there are some people who truly seem to enjoy pushing the buttons of other people? I mean, it's fun for them to see how aggravated, irritated, or upset they can get someone else. It's ridiculous!

My current "button-pusher" (well, the main one ;)) is not a person at all. No, it's my golden retriever, Mollie, who has taken the fine art of pissing people off to new heights. She's an ambassador of annoyance.

Here's a picture for you:



Just a ball ... pretty harmless, right? Hahaha! Not where I'm sitting. No, Mollie uses this circular piece of rubber as the equivalent of a medieval torture device.

Let's say you get home from a long day at work. The idea of taking the dogs out for a run sounds pretty appealing, right? Even more fun--since they're both retrievers and have a natural love of fetching--would be a nice game of ball.

Hmm.

What usually happens is that Mollie picks up her ball, charges outside, and starts running laps (the Invisible Fence concept is a great invention, by the way). Sonja usually joins her, and it's great that they're getting their energy out plus it's pretty cute to watch. At some point, however, Mollie comes running up to you and starts saying, "Would you throw the ball, please? A nice game of fetch sounds like fun." (Anyone who says dogs can't talk has never had a dog) So you tell her to drop the ball so you can throw it--and she just gives you this look of defiance. Sonja, who's generally laying under a tree at this point, comes over because heck, fetch is a great game and she wants in.

And then Mollie won't drop the ball. She'll sit there dancing around with it in her mouth, sometimes dropping it then snatching it back up before either myself or Sonja can reach it, but she will not put it down. At some point, I usually try to take it out of her mouth just because the whole thing is so aggravating and poor Sonja clearly wants to play fetch even if Mollie wants to be a twit (and yes, we have multiple balls ... you can probably figure out what happens when we try that). Yeah ... she draws blood when you try to take her ball away. Not pretty.

But in the great scheme of Mollie as a Master of Masochism, that's nothing. No, she has far more devious devices for that freaking ball.

Although she WILL NOT drop the ball for you outside, she somehow thinks that inside the house is just the perfect location for playing fetch. She will drop her ball--slimy with dog drool and smelling unbelievably bad--into your lap and, if you don't throw it, will take it out of your lap and then drop it there again. Over and over and over again. If you do throw it, she'll fetch it perfectly and bring it to you to throw again, the very behavior you want her to do outside. Here's a visual of the great ball drop according to Moll:



I saved the best for last, though. Mollie's latest and not-so-greatest trick is that she will push her ball under a piece of furniture and then scratch at the floor, whine, cry, and otherwise drive you bonkers until you get the ball out. Doesn't sound too bad, right? I mean, how hard is it to lift the end of a couch end up or use a yard stick to swipe under a hutch? Well, one would think so, but only if that person didn't know Mollie ...

No, Mollie has figured out which furniture cannot be lifted--and that's where she focuses her energies. I have had to empty out my bureau twice since I couldn't lift it any other way and, when the yardstick doesn't work with the hutch (it's all about angles--definitely not my forte), that's an adventure too. Furthermore, she has started a new habit of hiding her ball under Belle's bed and then scratching all around it, jumping all over it, and just being in general a loud, obnoxious nuisance when Belle is asleep.

The thing is, that dog is smart. Like, ridiculously smart. She gets ample attention, has people around happy to play with her, and went through extensive dog school training. She knows right from wrong--she's just a button-pusher, and I've never met one of the canine variety before. If it wasn't so darn annoying, it would be really funny. And there's not a lot to be done--I mean, we tried moving every single ball outside, and ... well, you can probably imagine what the door looked like after that.

But smart as she is, conniving as she is, Mollie is a dog. I also have to say, to be fair, that I love her dearly and that she's wonderfully gentle with Belle and Addie (especially Belle--Addie is not a fan of dogs in general and Mollie in particular). Belle is the only person Belle will play fetch appropriately with outside. And, of course, there's this:



So how do you deal with human versions of Mollie?

Communication Conundrums

I think the entire idea of communication is just fascinating. First, the fact that even tiny cells communicate (okay, they're little messages related to replicating, but still ...), wild animals, pets, all the way up to humans. Communication rocks.

It gets more complex when dealing with humans, of course; we're not just little cells sending out a sex signal (well, there are exceptions to every rule **cough** Paris Hilton). People have various means of communicating, and it's interesting to note the communication choices people go with.

I hate to talk on the telephone, for example (I'm sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating). I think AIM and Facebook are just the most amazing things--I can communicate via a computer in writing. I always sound far more intelligent when I'm writing than I do when I'm speaking. However, I know people that spend the greater part of their lives on the telephone. Then, of course, you get people like my daughter Addie that talks on the telephone, AIM, MySpace, and to the friend she has over all at the same time. I'd be so confused!!!!!!

The downside of communication between human beings, however, is undoubtedly the misunderstandings that crop up from time to time. I don't know about you, but if somebody says there's a "tone" in my voice that means I'm starting to get an attitude with them, it really bugs me. If there's a "tone" in my voice, it's usually because I just dumped a can of Coke in my lap while I was driving (you'd be surprised how often this happens ... I'm kind of a ridiculous klutz) or sped by a police officer going twenty over the speed limit.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's important to put things into perspective. If somebody sounds "off" on the phone, they might have a migraine, they might have an enormous amount of stress, they might have just received horrible news, they might be trying to do the dishes, and so on and so forth. If one of Addie's friends calls, for example (and this is an example that really doesn't happen since Addie has her own phone, but it's the closest example I can think of to what really happened, which is what set me off on this tangent), and asks to speak to her at ten or eleven when Addie has just gone to bed and I say, "Yeah, I'll see if I can get her up again" in probably not the most patient way, this has much to do with the fact that this phone call was the fourth in ten minutes, that I'm the person that has to wake Addie up and therefore suffer her wrath, and that my irritation isn't with the person that called but with the whole big picture.

Some people are so egocentric and narcissistic that they aren't able to see anyone's big picture beyond their own. The scope of their universe is solely on how everything impacts THEM. As far as they're concerned, if it's convenient for them, well then, hell, it had just better be convenient for everybody.

And God forbid you don't see things their way ... that's where the hard-core nastiness comes in.

Communication is at least a two-way street. That puts a lot of variables into the equation, and anyone that doesn't see that is at best short-sighted and at worst a selfish, spoiled, childish, ignorant moron.

Not that I'm talking about anyone specific, mind you ;)

Let's Talk About the Weather ...

I hate summer. I just hate it. I know this is an unpopular opinion, that everyone in the world seems to be desperate for the heat to arrive, but I'm just holding onto the cool and comfortable while I still can.

I live in New Hampshire. One season of the year--fall--is a veritable paradise. The mornings and evenings are cool and crisp, there are not words to describe the joy of long walks through gorgeous autumn leaves, and it's just so picturesque and peaceful that I find myself smiling all the time. Spring is much the same (other than I know what's right around the corner, so ...). Winter in New Hampshire is an adventure--snowy, often icy, temperatures averaging in the thirties ... but I've lived here my whole life. I enjoy the winter, even driving in snow. Yes, I think it'd be fair to say that my home state comes through for me three quarters of the year.

Then there's summer.

My biggest issue with summer, I think, (besides the fact that I'm deathly afraid of thunderstorms and we sometimes have a lot of them in the summer) is that it's just impossible to be comfortable much of the time. No matter how cold it is in the winter, you can always put on another sweater or add another blanket and you'll end up warm at some point. Even if you walked around naked in the summer, you'd still be dripping with sweat much of the time ... and there's not much you can do about it.

Yes, we have air conditioning. I guess that goes without saying, or else I'd probably have been assassinated by now since I'm such a witch when I'm sweaty, sticky, and uncomfortable. It's just that I like to be outside, and sitting in an air-conditioned room is just not fun. Expect excessive blogging this summer : )

What bothers me the absolute most, though, is that so many people here in New Hampshire spend the entire winter complaining about being cold and miserable and wanting summer to come ... and then when the temperature starts to warm up, all they do is complain that it's too hot to get anything done. I just don't get it.

So what's the weather like where you live (you can be general)? Do you have four distinct seasons? Which is your favorite? Do you find that most people enjoy the climate where you live? Does it bother you when people complain about the weather ... after complaining about the weather?

Welcome Home

Okay, I'm in kind of a foul mood. Bear with me.

In many ways, Pythagorus is a really great guy. He is. Unfortunately, however, the best parts of him are often intentions. Grrrr.

Now, I realize that having a wife in the hospital is unquestionably stressful. We have the added stress of a daycare fiasco, so he had Belle with him while he worked from home Monday and Tuesday. Four days straight of "all Belle all the time" is also pretty stressful--kind of borders on insanity-inducing. I get that. I do. And his job is extremely stressful. I'm the first person to admit that, I really and truly am.

However, I've spent my "day home recuperating" folding laundry that I did before I went into the hospital and doing more. I cleaned the microwave (which seemed to be growing something ... please don't go there) and counters in the kitchen because I didn't want my children to contract something. All of this (and I can just now see the floor of the laundry room) has taken me less than five hours. I mean, in spite of all the stress (and again, I get that there's been a lot lately), wouldn't you think that he could find five hours between Saturday morning and Wednesday night to do some of this really basic stuff?

Pythagorus is currently on my crap list not because of this, though, but because:
1. He is not answering his phone and/or e-mail. This drives me crazy!!!! I have been trying to get in touch with him for over two hours to figure out when we can go to the hospital to pick up the other car. I have Belle home with me today, and she was not enthused about the lunch options (they were minimal) ... since he almost always comes home for lunch, I thought he might be willing to stop and get something at the store (or even McDonald's or something) for her. Instead, though, I can't get him to acknowledge my existence. I realize that he's at work, but how many seconds does it take to hit reply, type "I'm really busy", and press "send"?
2. I went to take a shower with Belle, and there was no shampoo. Before I left to hit the ER Saturday morning, I took a shower and used essentially the last of the shampoo. What the hell has he been using to wash his hair all week? And even worse, I went dripping down the hall to Addie's bathroom and her shampoo was on "E" too. So my husband is dirty, my children are dirty, and Belle and I spent a long time in the shower mixing water with empty shampoo bottle residue (and I kept dropping them and yelling, "Son of a bitch!" which made Belle laugh hysterically and me feel like a horrible mother) to get moderately clean hair. We also have no trash bags. Or all-purpose cleaner. Or food.

Okay, I hate nagging wives. I try very hard not to be one, although Pythagorus might disagree with that. There are enough real things to get upset about without bitching about shampoo or not responding to e-mails. Still, where does that line of minor irritations unspoken turn into the dreaded term "marriage problems"?

Deep breath. Out of my system. Vita e bella. Teeth clenched. Smile forced.