Customer service is dead; long live customer service!

Call me jaded, but customer service is dead.

How often do you walk into a store or restaurant only to be ignored? Not a single “Howdy, can I help you within earshot.” (I’ve worked in retail so I feel that I can complain about such things – kind of like making ethnic- or religious-toned jokes when you are a member of the ethnicity or religion you’re poking fun at.)

I’ve always believed that even if you’re doing a crappy job, you might as well smile. Smiling makes it seem less crappy. Lying to yourself makes the job more bearable.

It’s to the point now when, on the rare occasion, I stumble upon a smiling someone who is good at their job and glad that I chose to patronize their place of work that I’m taken aback. Such was the case the other day at the Palm Beach airport.

My breath turns rotten when I fly. I think it’s a result of Cinnabon and stale cabin air. I always try to carry gum, but forgot to this time. Not wanting to make a poor first impression on my host meeting me at the airport, I stopped by a mid-hall kiosk.

“The airport is a gum free zone,” the smiling woman told me, “but we’ve got some mints over there.”

I picked up a pack of Certs. I didn’t care what type of mints I bought; I just wanted them to be minty. That’s not too much to ask from a mint, is it?

I approached the register to pay.

“We have a special on Breathsavers today.” She reached behind her and grabbed a small dish. “The Certs are $1.25. These are only a quarter.”

She made my day. She saved me $1 and I could have given her a hug.

I seriously considered telling her how much I appreciated the great service, but she had a job to do – there were others to be helped – and she was damn good at it.

Expecting

The other day Annie and I went to church with her parents. Their preacher performed our wedding ceremony that took place in my parents’ backyard. He appears briefly in “Where Am I Wearing?”

I tried to pay attention to the preacher, but I couldn’t stop staring at the approaching storm clouds. There wasn’t a plan B. If the storm arrived, we would have to move into the garage. I pictured Annie, makeup running, hair flattened, dress drenched, standing between Dad’s air compressor and workbench. It wouldn’t have been pretty, especially considering that the outdoor wedding was my idea and the only one I contributed to the day. “Don’t worry,” I had told Annie. “September is the driest month of the year.”

I found that it was a lot easier to pay attention to his sermon when we were indoors and weather was not about to doom our wedding, especially when much of the sermon seemed directed at Annie and me.

His sermon was about expecting. He spoke about how Christmas is a time of expecting and compared the expectations of the season with those that expecting parents have. He had a long list of things parents don’t expect: the mother gains weight, the pain of child birth, the lack of sleep, the lack of free time, etc. He must have gone on for about five minutes listing the things that new parent’s don’t have a clue about.

Annie is nine months pregnant and mid-sermon he turned to Annie and me and apologized. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting us.

Overall, the sermon was interesting, well thought out, but par for the course when it comes to people addressing expecting parents. Because when you are an expecting parent, the one thing that you can expect is people who are parents delighting in telling you that you don’t know what to expect.

When we were engaged we got a similar thing from people, “Enjoy your last days of freedom.” Now it’s, “Enjoy your last days of piece and quiet.”

I expect that I don’t know what to expect when it comes to how the daily ebb and flow of our lives will change, but there are many things I expect I’ll experience while being a father:

I expect to understand the world better. For awhile I’ve suspected that much is done in the name of our children. When I was in China I saw parents working 100 hours per week with the hopes of sending their children to school. While I’ve see children’s futures being the motivation for all sorts of people all over the world, I know that I don’t know the full magnitude of the motivation. I will soon. I look forward to knowing. I know it will change me as a person and a writer.

I expect that leaving the country for my next book will be more difficult, but the homecoming much sweeter.

I expect for Annie and I to become even closer.

I expect to laugh more.

I expect to cry more.

I expect to have my heart stolen.

Annie’s official due date is 12/31. Soon I’ll be a dad, and I expect that when I talk to expecting parents, I won’t talk about the struggles of being a parent, but the joys.

Some folks are really passionate about their disposable underwear

Today, someone left this comment in response to my OneDerWear piece on WorldHum:

This is about as stupid as the author.

I don’t mind being called stupid, but I would have much preferred for the commenter to have expounded a bit more.

But alas, this isn’t the first time I’ve been attacked for my stance on OneDerWear. (See In defense of OneDerWear). And it probably won’t be the last.

As John Cougar Mellencamp said, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’re going to fall for anything.” It just so happens I stand firmly against OneDerWear.

Here’s a shot of me demonstrating the one good thing about OneDerWear: You can decorate them and not worry about ruining a perfectly good pair of underwear because they are neither perfect nor good.

A Contest: The R.A.N.Ties

I’m not sure if The Rant is a literary or comedic form or if it’s just straight bitching, but I love the rant.

In fact, you may have read some of my rants, including the one about Mrs. Butterworth’s boobs.

To me, a perfect pitch, well-timed, rant is a work of art. We should cut them out and frame them. We should make wallpaper on which the text of the rant is the design. There should be an awards ceremony the R.A.N.T.ies:

Raging
Angry
Name-calling
Treatise

Nominate your best rant of the year in this comment thread or write your own. We’ll have a vote and the winner will win something – maybe a copy of WAIW?, if you’ve got one of those, maybe something else.

I would like to nominate Timothy Egan’s rant about the craziness that is Author Joe the Plumber (Painful note of reality: Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream as of today at 9:30 AM EST currently has a higher Amazon ranking that “Where Am I Wearing?” Someone please talk me down because I’m jumping!)

A sample:

The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet.

I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate.

Dude, I’m a dude

I don’t mind someone thinking that I’m a woman because I’m named Kelsey. But I DO MIND when that someone, after talking with me for a few minutes and surely discerning that although my voice isn’t deep and booming it isn’t the least bit feminine, calls me Mam.

Even if I needed more credit, Mr. American General Guy, I most definitely would not be getting it through you!

(A related Post from blog’s past: A Boy Named Kelsey)

A rant: Peeing Calvin

Allow me to go off.

Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame IS a rambunctious boy with an overactive imagination.

He IS NOT, nor has ever been depicted as, someone who urinates on things that rednecks don’t like.

Calvin never peed on a floating Chevy or Ford or John Deere or Case symbol, nor a floating (pick a Nascar number). The only thing I could imagine Calvin actually peeing on is a snowman, in an effort to slowly kill it. But everyone knows that rednecks like snowmen. If they didn’t they would surely have an adhesive on the back of their pickup truck of Calvin peeing on one.

So, if you want to piss me off put one of them there stickers on the back of your vehicle.

Yesterday I pulled up behind a truck with a demonic, grimacing Calvin peeing on the words “Anti-hunters” and “Animal Rights.” (Surprisingly these words were spelled correctly.) First, I never knew that there was an anti-hunting movement organized enough to be pee-worthy.

Look, just because you’re a hunter doesn’t mean you have to be against anti-hunters. From deerhunting.ws:

Why do we support anti-hunters?

The true anti-hunter has passed the litmus test that one must take not be a hypocrite.

They are one that can take the pulpit with a true conviction and transparency in their total life and environment. They take no life of any sort in their daily survival or existence. They do not judge which life is worth saving and which may die for their needs. Their protection of “life” extends to all living creatures regardless of them being “in the wild” or on a farm.

Example: If a preacher was to give a sermon on Sunday morning and then leave the church with his crack whores, we would call him a hypocrite.
Don’t know about you, but I’m anti-hypocrite and anti-crack whore just like these fellers.

Second, Animal Rights!?

Most hunters that I know aren’t against animal rights. They find sport in the game while connecting with nature. It’s not like they grab their rifle and holler to their wife, “Honey, I’ll be back this evening. Just going out to torture some animals.”

But this guy in this truck, he wanted nothing to do with animals having any of the rights. He doesn’t use any cleaning product or makeup unless it has been extensively tested on and resulted in the death of litters of animals. He doesn’t buy firecrackers larger around than a cat’s butt. He plucks the wings off of flies. He makes his coon dog watch him shower. When he watches those gnarly scenes filmed at slaughterhouses with madcows being slaughtered, he laughs so hard that he farts in his cat’s face.

And yes, he does have a cat and a dog, in fact, he has five of each. He likes being surrounded by living, breathing beings that aren’t twice as smart as him.

There I sat at the stop sign seething, with my meanest if-I-only-had-a-gun scour. After 10 seconds he turned right, a moose-sized plastic scrotum dangling from his hitch.

Don’t even get me started on moose nuts!

I turned left.

A flash from blog posts past: Don’t mess with Hummels

Two-and-a-half years ago, no more than 60 some posts into what is sure to be a lifetime of blogging (yes, this is a cry for help), I posted a rather mundane tid bit about Hummels. Since then, the occasional Hummel-o-phile (that’s what we’ll call them, sounds nicer than weirdos) stumbled upon the post and asked me for advice and then berated me when I did not get back in touch with them in under four hours:

Posted by Anonymous…

this web site is ??? i have had no response to my question, i don’t think you have anyone inquire about anything here since 2006, so i’ll move on, thanks for nothing

Thanks for nothing! And that means a lot from a person who has actually received a hummel as a gift. Anyhow, this was my response…

You are ???? What kind of ??? leaves a comment on a travel blog about Hummels and expects an answer within 4 hours? If you visited the site’s homepage, you would have seen that it has moved. Good luck pricing your ??? Hummels. I’m sure they’re worth more than you could have ever dreamed and you’ll be like one of the guests on Antique Roadshow — all ??? your pants with excitement and joy.

If you are a Hummel lover and you are offended by this post, please don’t comment here. If you do, there will be repercussions. Namely, I’ll drop whatever I’m doing in my life and hunt your Hummel collection down and smash them into little bits. In turn, if you would like to pretend to be a Hummel lover and go way over the top with your adoration of the porcelain figures, please do so.

A Petition: Make “Coming Home Barbie” Available to Everyone

If you haven’t been following the recent discussion in the archives about “Coming Home Barbie,” you are missing out. In that discussion, Cindy Sue points toward this unbelievable petition:

To: Mattel Corporate Office

To: Mattel Corporate Office
333 Continental Blvd
El Segundo Calfornia 90245

We the undersigned, parents, grandparents, relatives and friends of children adopted from China and Asia, offer this petition to you and ask that you reconsider the decision to offer the “Coming Home Barbie” exclusively at the White Swan Hotel in China.

Many of us traveled to China and Asia to adopt our children prior to your introduction of the “Coming Home Barbie” available exclusively at the White Swan Hotel. Therefore were not given the opportunity to obtain one of these dolls for our child(ren).

We would like to have the opportunity to purchase one of these wonderful keepsake Barbies for our children, grandchildren and friends. We feel confident that allowing the “Coming Home Barbie” to be sold here in the United States and other countries would generate substantial interest in the product as well as awareness to international adoption in general.

Please reconsider and make the “Coming Home Barbie” available to everyone.
Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

There are so many causes that one can take up (world hunger, poverty, AIDS in Africa, genocides) and there’s actually a group of people petitioning that a company make a specific toy for their children. As if Mattel is imposing upon their rights as a consumer and not sufficiently meeting their needs to spoil their children. Capitalism has let them down, and by God they aren’t going to take it any more.

I’m thinking about petitioning Mattel to produce a “Ken doll” in my likeness. I’d buy it.

In defense of OneDerWear

I never thought I would live to see the day someone came to the defense of disposable underwear. Today is that day. (And here I expected there to be peace on Earth.)

Morgan in response to my post on OneDerWear
:

You must take shower at night otherwise how do you get enough time to dry your washed underwear. I may start with a 10-pack disposable briefs, but I’m not occupying the same amount of space as the trip goes on. That regained space may be good for taking home a souvenir or two.
Nobody is tossing the underwear in the woods. The disposable is made of 100% cotton. Cotton is a biodegradable and renewable material. How is that not environmentally friendly? It is at least no worse than the detergent you flushed down the drain that pollute the water.

Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. Do ya work for OneDerWear?

In your comment you don’t say anything about how comfortable OneDerWear is. If you are in the underwear business, you should know that comfort is key. No one gives a hoot about the environment compared to comfort. Even so, your argument for the environmental-friendliness of OneDerWear seems a bit of a stretch.

The production and shipping of a single pair of disposable underwear probably does not use any less energy or resources than the production and shipping of a single pair of non-disposable underwear. Yet non-disposable underwear may be worn for years and the energy/resources consumed per wear are far less.

You talk as if it would be impossible to have a clean, dry pair of underwear waiting for you post-shower. That’s why I travel with three pair – one pair being washed, one drying, and one clean.

What I’m saying, Morgan, is that your arguments are weak and your underwear are uncomfortable. And if I ever see someone wearing OneDerWear, there is a good chance that – in the name of Mother Earth and not being lazy – that someone is going to get an atomic wedgie.

Undemocratic disasters or Let’s invade Myanmar

Myanmar, 100,000 killed by cyclone

China, 10,000 killed by earthquake

Myanmar, China, cyclones, earthquakes – all undemocratic.

I’m not saying that disasters struck Myanmar and China because of their lack of democracy. That would make me no different than off-the-wall preachers claiming Hurricane Katrina was the price New Orleans paid for its “celebrations of sin”, or 9/11 a result of fowl coming home to roost. But I would like to say, these uncontrollable disasters are an opportunity for nations, not to capitalize on, but to reach out to the people of Myanmar and China.

The scale of the disaster in China, although massive, is much smaller than that of Myanmar and the Chinese government is probably more capable of responding to a disaster than the U.S., so I think heaping them with moral support and funding will be enough, but Myanmar is whole other story.

The Myanmar government will not allow the full wave of international aid into its country. This could result in 100’s of thousands of preventable deaths as disease and starvation set in. This is the kind of country that should be invaded, not by dropping bombs, but by dropping food and supplies. Why not have an air raid on Myanmar? What, are we afraid of their air force? Do they have an air force?

Excerpts from a CNN piece on the disaster in Myanmar:

Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, was on the first of three U.S. aid flights allowed into Myanmar this week.
He described meeting with a Myanmar three-star general who opened up a map of the country and pointed to the areas worst-hit by the cyclone.
“[He] characterized activity there as returning back to normal — his words,” Keating said. “[He said] people are coming back to their villages, they’re planting their crops for the summer season, the monsoon will come and wash all the saltwater out of the ponds.
“His manner, his demeanor, his attitude indicated something less than very serious concern.”
A former Yangon resident now living in Thailand told AP that angry government officials told him that high-energy biscuits rushed into Myanmar on the World Food Program’s first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Speaking on condition of anonymity over fears for his safety, he told AP that the biscuits were exchanged for what officials said were “tasteless and low-quality” biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry.

Why would a government stand and watch as its people die needlessly?

(Insert lengthy critique of U.S. government during Hurricane Katrina here, which pretty much erases the footing of the rest of the argument)

My theory: They are afraid of exposing their people to democracy and compassion, which breeds more democracy and compassion, which erodes at the fear and power that these jackasses hold over their countrymen.

I guess what I’m saying is…Let’s invade Myanmar!

Who’s with me?

Time magazine is.