A snake in the grass gave me a speeding ticket yesterday. It was a sting operation. Three motorcycle cops were literally hiding in the bushes behind a fence just past reduced speed sign. They were lighting up the evening sky catching one innocent speeder after another.
I was totally caught by surprise and unaware that my foot was pressing harder on the gas pedal that it should have been. I was talking on my cell phone (hands-free of course – it’s the law), eating an apple, and trying to dig something out of my briefcase when, to my complete surprise, I saw the flashing blue and red lights behind me. No telling how long he’d been following me.
I figured I could sweet-talk him out of the ticket because that’s worked a time or two before, but he was Mr. Business-Policeman.
“Why, officer,” (spoken with a thick southern accent), “I can’t imagine why you pulled me over.”
“You were doing 52 in a 35,” he said. “License and registration, please.”
“Surely I wasn’t going that fast,” I said like a damsel in distress.
“Don’t call me Shirley. 52’s what I clocked you at,” he said, and walked back to his motorcycle.
I started begging the good Lord to let me off of this ticket, but before I got to the part where I would have starting making promises, he appeared beside my window and handed me a computerized ticket as long as a scroll.
“Here’s your court date,” he said, nodding somewhere toward the middle of the thing. “Everything you need to know is on there.” Then he handed me a business card. A BUSINESS CARD! As if to say, “It was a pleasure doing business with you, if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to call me!”
I wish I’d had one handy to give back to him. “Here, Mr. Officer, er, I mean, Mr. Thorsen, did I pronounce that right? If you ever feel the urge to give someone a ticket, be sure to call me first.” Or perhaps, “Here’s my card – let’s do lunch sometime, but you’ll have to buy since I’m, umm, $190 poorer since we met just a few minutes ago.”
His card has the lovely seal of the City of Portland, plus his name and badge number and all his contact information. Lovely. I can call him at home at 3:00 a.m. and tell him what I think about his ticket.
Now you’re thinking, “She was speeding, she deserved the ticket. What’s her problem?” Yes, you are thinking that. I can read minds. But admittedly, not always, or I would have read that policeman’s mind when he was thinking, “Here comes another sucker with a lead foot. I’m gonna surpass my quota of tickets today. What idiots. We can’t pull them over fast enough.”
I did deserve the ticket. I was speeding. I’m not contesting that. I’m not even contesting getting caught, although it would have been a lot nicer if I hadn’t been. I’m just marveling about the personal card. I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do with it?
So next time you’re speeding down the road and see those lights in your mirror, fish a business card out and hand it to the policeman and see what he does. I’d do it but I don’t plan to be pulled over again. I can’t afford it, and I can’t even guess what my insurance is going to do...
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Attack of the Wiener Dogs
My girlfriend, Laurie, called and left this message: “I got attacked by a pack of dachshunds.” I pictured a bunch of cute little wiener dogs jumping on her legs, trying to get close enough to lick her. I laughed when I heard the message.
Her supervisor also laughed when Laurie called to say she’d be late for work, and the doctor laughed when she called him to see if she needed to come in because there were several wounds and the bleeding wasn’t stopping.
When I finally got a hold of her, she said she had many wounds, her pants were torn, they practically tore off the end of her little finger, and one managed to bite her in the armpit, probably as she was bending down trying to knock them away with her purse.
Turns out these are forty pound dogs bred to be badger hunters. I was telling my daughter about it. She said, “Why would anyone breed a dog to bite and attack?”
This is, I think, a very good question. Why turn a sweet little wiener dog into an attack beast? I don’t think I’ve seen many badgers here in Portland, and if there were any, wouldn’t it just be easier to shoot the thing if you wanted to get rid of it?
Badgers are nothing to mess with, I can tell you that. They are foul-tempered and vicious. I’ve seen them out hiking a couple of times when I was way out in the middle of nowhere – like in North Dakota. I think it would be extremely rare to be in a situation where you’d come across a badger and need the services of a badger-attacking dog right at that time. A badger will go back in his hole if you just mind your own business. At least that’s what I observed. Keeping a biting dog around for years just in case this contingency came up is like buying an air conditioner in the Arctic – just in case one day got hot.
The doc didn’t stitch Laurie up because it might keep the infection in the wounds, though he said a few of them were certainly deep enough. He made her stand on a pad in his office because she was bleeding on the floor.
Another thing. You have to wonder why a person would breed dogs whose peckers drag the ground every step they take. Those things are like kickstands – getting hung up on cracks in the sidewalk and taking the dog aback. No wonder they want to bite.
I love dachshunds, but these forty-pound bullies are an accident waiting to happen, and my friend happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is not a funny story, but I thought I’d share it because it’s unusual. And as a warning that little dogs have the potential to be bloodthirsty killers given the right circumstances. Just ask Laurie.
Her supervisor also laughed when Laurie called to say she’d be late for work, and the doctor laughed when she called him to see if she needed to come in because there were several wounds and the bleeding wasn’t stopping.
When I finally got a hold of her, she said she had many wounds, her pants were torn, they practically tore off the end of her little finger, and one managed to bite her in the armpit, probably as she was bending down trying to knock them away with her purse.
Turns out these are forty pound dogs bred to be badger hunters. I was telling my daughter about it. She said, “Why would anyone breed a dog to bite and attack?”
This is, I think, a very good question. Why turn a sweet little wiener dog into an attack beast? I don’t think I’ve seen many badgers here in Portland, and if there were any, wouldn’t it just be easier to shoot the thing if you wanted to get rid of it?
Badgers are nothing to mess with, I can tell you that. They are foul-tempered and vicious. I’ve seen them out hiking a couple of times when I was way out in the middle of nowhere – like in North Dakota. I think it would be extremely rare to be in a situation where you’d come across a badger and need the services of a badger-attacking dog right at that time. A badger will go back in his hole if you just mind your own business. At least that’s what I observed. Keeping a biting dog around for years just in case this contingency came up is like buying an air conditioner in the Arctic – just in case one day got hot.
The doc didn’t stitch Laurie up because it might keep the infection in the wounds, though he said a few of them were certainly deep enough. He made her stand on a pad in his office because she was bleeding on the floor.
Another thing. You have to wonder why a person would breed dogs whose peckers drag the ground every step they take. Those things are like kickstands – getting hung up on cracks in the sidewalk and taking the dog aback. No wonder they want to bite.
I love dachshunds, but these forty-pound bullies are an accident waiting to happen, and my friend happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is not a funny story, but I thought I’d share it because it’s unusual. And as a warning that little dogs have the potential to be bloodthirsty killers given the right circumstances. Just ask Laurie.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Miss Misery
Miss me? I have been working my patootie off! Seriously, I’ve lost 5 pounds. I’m on the “Hard Work Diet.” Very effective.
I think someone is trying to tell me something – like I should be getting away from electronics and getting back to nature or back to bed.
Here’s what’s been going on in my life:
1. No internet again at my job. I did get it up for awhile but then it went down. I wonder if there’s Viagra for wireless connections?
2. I have a tech who is charging me $100 per hour so that he can explain to me the reasons I don’t have internet and he’ll have to come back tomorrow to fix it.
3. My Mac computer at home, the really nice and expensive iMac 24-incher, has dark streaks on it like it’s a worn out Etch-A-Sketch. I tried to rub one off but it’s under the screen. This does not bode well – and they’re growing like a ghost is using my screen to make lines and boxes.
4. The printers at work don’t work. Actually, all of them work except the one everyone wants to use. Everyone blames me.
5. Yesterday I spilled water on my daughter’s cell phone and it started going haywire. She ran through the house screaming, “Where’s the rice?” She buried the phone in a bowl of dry rice and it worked today. The rice absorbs the moisture. This is an old geeks’ tale but it does seem to work – the only thing working electronically around me – probably because it wasn’t mine.
Okay, that’s all except that I brought some work home to print and I got it half done and my toner went out. It’s been saying it would for weeks, but I didn’t believe it. Now that I really need these copies, I can’t get them because Xerox isn’t open at night and I didn’t plan ahead. Those “toner low” signals start about 2 weeks after you put in a new cartridge. How was I supposed to know tonight was the night, after all these months, that the toner actually did need to be replaced?
Yes, I’m as bored as you are about all this technical stuff. And since I must drive across town in the morning and meet that pricey tech at 6:00 a.m., I will bid you goodbye.
Oh, and I just watched Tosh.O again. Such a fun show. That’s what I needed tonight - to see how miserable the rest of the world is. Not that it takes any of my misery away, but you know the saying, “Misery loves Tosh Point Oh!”
I think someone is trying to tell me something – like I should be getting away from electronics and getting back to nature or back to bed.
Here’s what’s been going on in my life:
1. No internet again at my job. I did get it up for awhile but then it went down. I wonder if there’s Viagra for wireless connections?
2. I have a tech who is charging me $100 per hour so that he can explain to me the reasons I don’t have internet and he’ll have to come back tomorrow to fix it.
3. My Mac computer at home, the really nice and expensive iMac 24-incher, has dark streaks on it like it’s a worn out Etch-A-Sketch. I tried to rub one off but it’s under the screen. This does not bode well – and they’re growing like a ghost is using my screen to make lines and boxes.
4. The printers at work don’t work. Actually, all of them work except the one everyone wants to use. Everyone blames me.
5. Yesterday I spilled water on my daughter’s cell phone and it started going haywire. She ran through the house screaming, “Where’s the rice?” She buried the phone in a bowl of dry rice and it worked today. The rice absorbs the moisture. This is an old geeks’ tale but it does seem to work – the only thing working electronically around me – probably because it wasn’t mine.
Okay, that’s all except that I brought some work home to print and I got it half done and my toner went out. It’s been saying it would for weeks, but I didn’t believe it. Now that I really need these copies, I can’t get them because Xerox isn’t open at night and I didn’t plan ahead. Those “toner low” signals start about 2 weeks after you put in a new cartridge. How was I supposed to know tonight was the night, after all these months, that the toner actually did need to be replaced?
Yes, I’m as bored as you are about all this technical stuff. And since I must drive across town in the morning and meet that pricey tech at 6:00 a.m., I will bid you goodbye.
Oh, and I just watched Tosh.O again. Such a fun show. That’s what I needed tonight - to see how miserable the rest of the world is. Not that it takes any of my misery away, but you know the saying, “Misery loves Tosh Point Oh!”
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Why I Feel So Stupid
I realize we are in the dark ages when it comes to technology. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING works like it’s supposed to. I have neglected this blog for three days because of technology. That I can write this blog and you can read it because of technology is neither here nor there.
I have been sold technology that does not function, and the techs representing the people who sold it to me don’t know any more about it than I do.
You are thinking I’m about as dumb as a screen door on a submarine. Yes you are. I can feel it. You think, “How could that ditz fall for all these people making all these promises that are apparently all lies just to get her to purchase technology that will not only solve her problem but will make matters worse?”
I feel like someone left a bag full of crap on my front porch and lit it on fire, and I ran out and stomped it out and then realized I’d pounded crap into the ridges in my shoes so deep it would take a sandblaster to get out, and then the doorbell rang again and I ran out and stomped the fire out again, and then the doorbell rang again. Right now I’m sitting here with crap I’ve tracked all through the house because I’m too exhausted to take off my shoes. Figuratively speaking, of course.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the internet where I work is gone, thanks to a smooth salesman from the phone company that rhymes with PEST. Then I got wireless internet and OH BOY it’s so fast on ONE of my computers. Unfortunately, I’ve got EIGHT computers that need to be on the internet.
I was told the new device would serve eight, and silly me, I believed it. When I could only get a signal on one, I called the tech support people at a company whose name rhymes with PIMP except their name has a “t” on the end. They said, in the first place, it could only provide internet to seven computers at the same time. In the second place, everyone would have to log in and out all the time. I kept saying, “Are you serious? We can’t just turn on our computers and go on the internet?” Nope. We’d have to go through a convoluted process that I kept making her repeat because I just couldn’t believe it. She started getting a little cranky, like not only was I a stupid oaf, but I had no memory and why did my call have to end up with her?
I’m pretty tech savvy about most things. I can set up wireless networks and troubleshoot computers. I know my way around Macs and PC’s. When I talk to these people, I ask all the right questions, specifically, “Now exactly how do I access the printers that are on our wireless network? This wireless internet still lets me access all my printers, right?”
“Oh yes, you’ll still be able to access your printers. No problem!” Well, it’s no problem as long as you don’t use your wireless printer and wireless internet AT THE SAME TIME. One interferes with the other. It is virtually impossible, according to the hour-long conversation with that tech woman, to print something off the internet. Hmmm, that’s not what the salesperson told me, and you’d think he would have known that.
I’m convinced that all salespeople nowadays must first pass courses titled, “Principles of Unethical Salesmanship 101,” “How to Sleep Like a Baby Knowing You’ve Made A Commission on a Product that Will Keep the Customer Awake at Night Worrying About How to Make It Work,” and “How to Speak Very, Very Fast When Going Over the Fine Print,” and let’s not forget, “How to Fool Even Smart, Tech Savvy People, Especially When They Are Desperate for a Solution.”
I would write more, but honestly, I have many, many tech support people to call today. If you don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know I’m still on hold while they check something (tech speak for “while I consult the manual that will tell me what ridiculous answer to give this woman so she’ll hang up and leave me the ef alone!”)
I have been sold technology that does not function, and the techs representing the people who sold it to me don’t know any more about it than I do.
You are thinking I’m about as dumb as a screen door on a submarine. Yes you are. I can feel it. You think, “How could that ditz fall for all these people making all these promises that are apparently all lies just to get her to purchase technology that will not only solve her problem but will make matters worse?”
I feel like someone left a bag full of crap on my front porch and lit it on fire, and I ran out and stomped it out and then realized I’d pounded crap into the ridges in my shoes so deep it would take a sandblaster to get out, and then the doorbell rang again and I ran out and stomped the fire out again, and then the doorbell rang again. Right now I’m sitting here with crap I’ve tracked all through the house because I’m too exhausted to take off my shoes. Figuratively speaking, of course.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the internet where I work is gone, thanks to a smooth salesman from the phone company that rhymes with PEST. Then I got wireless internet and OH BOY it’s so fast on ONE of my computers. Unfortunately, I’ve got EIGHT computers that need to be on the internet.
I was told the new device would serve eight, and silly me, I believed it. When I could only get a signal on one, I called the tech support people at a company whose name rhymes with PIMP except their name has a “t” on the end. They said, in the first place, it could only provide internet to seven computers at the same time. In the second place, everyone would have to log in and out all the time. I kept saying, “Are you serious? We can’t just turn on our computers and go on the internet?” Nope. We’d have to go through a convoluted process that I kept making her repeat because I just couldn’t believe it. She started getting a little cranky, like not only was I a stupid oaf, but I had no memory and why did my call have to end up with her?
I’m pretty tech savvy about most things. I can set up wireless networks and troubleshoot computers. I know my way around Macs and PC’s. When I talk to these people, I ask all the right questions, specifically, “Now exactly how do I access the printers that are on our wireless network? This wireless internet still lets me access all my printers, right?”
“Oh yes, you’ll still be able to access your printers. No problem!” Well, it’s no problem as long as you don’t use your wireless printer and wireless internet AT THE SAME TIME. One interferes with the other. It is virtually impossible, according to the hour-long conversation with that tech woman, to print something off the internet. Hmmm, that’s not what the salesperson told me, and you’d think he would have known that.
I’m convinced that all salespeople nowadays must first pass courses titled, “Principles of Unethical Salesmanship 101,” “How to Sleep Like a Baby Knowing You’ve Made A Commission on a Product that Will Keep the Customer Awake at Night Worrying About How to Make It Work,” and “How to Speak Very, Very Fast When Going Over the Fine Print,” and let’s not forget, “How to Fool Even Smart, Tech Savvy People, Especially When They Are Desperate for a Solution.”
I would write more, but honestly, I have many, many tech support people to call today. If you don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know I’m still on hold while they check something (tech speak for “while I consult the manual that will tell me what ridiculous answer to give this woman so she’ll hang up and leave me the ef alone!”)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Beware of PEST
This is going to be short and lazy tonight because I’ve had one heck of a day.
It was the best of days and it was the worst of days.
The good part – we got those freaking phones fixed (see the last two blogs full of saucy griping).
The bad part – we lost internet service. By that I mean we no longer have internet at our office, and it was MY FAULT. Kindof.
A telephone company whose name rhymes with PEST called and said they could get us fast internet (we’re in a dead zone and have the slowest internet known to man). I said, “Sign us up!” I authorized them to switch our phones and internet via Fax, then never heard from them again. I kept calling the number they gave me, then finally called a number I found on PEST’s website. “We can’t find any order. I guess it didn’t go through when they discovered that we can’t provide internet there.”
“We can give you cheaper phones, though,” they continued, and I said, “I’ll think about it but I have to make sure my old company can do internet without the phones and I’ll get back with you.” That was about a week and a half ago.
Today we didn’t have internet, so I did all the troubleshooting stuff and then called out internet person. “You are no longer our customer,” he said. “PEST took over your service today.”
So I called PEST and they said, “Oops, we don’t know how that happened but we can’t give you any internet. Too bad, so sad.”
So I called our old company back and they said, “Sure, we can hook it back up but it will take ten to fifteen business days, AND we’ll charge you $99 to hook up the internet plus $45 for each of your phone lines.”
So I called PEST back and said, “You have to get me internet somehow or the other.
Two hours of holding and transferring got me this: “We can set you up on dial-up which will cost $1,050 to set up and you’ll be up and running in two days.”
When your business does everything on the internet, dial-up is not an option. Neither is waiting two to three weeks to get your old, slow internet back - and pay a boatload for it.
Just so you know, I had already called every internet provider in town a few weeks ago trying to get faster internet, and no one had service in our area. We’re like the black hole of internet service. Like no life exists in our little cubbyhole of industrial Portland. We’re a virtual dessert of internet. The Bermuda Triangle of internet.
I tried tears on PEST but their hands were tied. They were very sorry. There was nothing they could do. They were very sad they had stolen our phone lines and internet but there wasn’t anything they could do except try to expedite us getting back to our old service, which, as I mentioned earlier, said it would take an eternity even if we expedited. They wished me a great evening.
So I called Sprint. I can say the word Sprint because I think they are the good guys. They have 4G in our area. They can get us internet in two days. They will not charge us our collective arm and leg to start the service. I guess I didn’t call them before after being told over and over that we had no service from so many other companies and I gave up, plus in the meantime that “PEST Winback Program” guy called me with his empty promises of faster internet.
After 6 hours on the phone, not leaving the office until 8 p.m., a splitting headache, and a burning ear that is still red, I hope the problem is solved. If I can bear the resentment, scorn, dirty looks, sighs of disgust, chagrin of my co-workers, complaints from our customers, and possible firing from my boss, I may survive this fiasco for the next two days until the alleged internet thingy comes from Sprint.
If I had a giant can of RAID I know a big PEST I'd use it on - those lousy internet thieves.
PS PEST claims the guy who sold me my new internet – the company I faxed the order to with the PEST logo on it – was not from PEST but from an aftermarket provider. Yeah, right. It’s like my kids pointing to each other – “he did it!” “No, she did it!” Who can you believe when everyone looks guilty?
It was the best of days and it was the worst of days.
The good part – we got those freaking phones fixed (see the last two blogs full of saucy griping).
The bad part – we lost internet service. By that I mean we no longer have internet at our office, and it was MY FAULT. Kindof.
A telephone company whose name rhymes with PEST called and said they could get us fast internet (we’re in a dead zone and have the slowest internet known to man). I said, “Sign us up!” I authorized them to switch our phones and internet via Fax, then never heard from them again. I kept calling the number they gave me, then finally called a number I found on PEST’s website. “We can’t find any order. I guess it didn’t go through when they discovered that we can’t provide internet there.”
“We can give you cheaper phones, though,” they continued, and I said, “I’ll think about it but I have to make sure my old company can do internet without the phones and I’ll get back with you.” That was about a week and a half ago.
Today we didn’t have internet, so I did all the troubleshooting stuff and then called out internet person. “You are no longer our customer,” he said. “PEST took over your service today.”
So I called PEST and they said, “Oops, we don’t know how that happened but we can’t give you any internet. Too bad, so sad.”
So I called our old company back and they said, “Sure, we can hook it back up but it will take ten to fifteen business days, AND we’ll charge you $99 to hook up the internet plus $45 for each of your phone lines.”
So I called PEST back and said, “You have to get me internet somehow or the other.
Two hours of holding and transferring got me this: “We can set you up on dial-up which will cost $1,050 to set up and you’ll be up and running in two days.”
When your business does everything on the internet, dial-up is not an option. Neither is waiting two to three weeks to get your old, slow internet back - and pay a boatload for it.
Just so you know, I had already called every internet provider in town a few weeks ago trying to get faster internet, and no one had service in our area. We’re like the black hole of internet service. Like no life exists in our little cubbyhole of industrial Portland. We’re a virtual dessert of internet. The Bermuda Triangle of internet.
I tried tears on PEST but their hands were tied. They were very sorry. There was nothing they could do. They were very sad they had stolen our phone lines and internet but there wasn’t anything they could do except try to expedite us getting back to our old service, which, as I mentioned earlier, said it would take an eternity even if we expedited. They wished me a great evening.
So I called Sprint. I can say the word Sprint because I think they are the good guys. They have 4G in our area. They can get us internet in two days. They will not charge us our collective arm and leg to start the service. I guess I didn’t call them before after being told over and over that we had no service from so many other companies and I gave up, plus in the meantime that “PEST Winback Program” guy called me with his empty promises of faster internet.
After 6 hours on the phone, not leaving the office until 8 p.m., a splitting headache, and a burning ear that is still red, I hope the problem is solved. If I can bear the resentment, scorn, dirty looks, sighs of disgust, chagrin of my co-workers, complaints from our customers, and possible firing from my boss, I may survive this fiasco for the next two days until the alleged internet thingy comes from Sprint.
If I had a giant can of RAID I know a big PEST I'd use it on - those lousy internet thieves.
PS PEST claims the guy who sold me my new internet – the company I faxed the order to with the PEST logo on it – was not from PEST but from an aftermarket provider. Yeah, right. It’s like my kids pointing to each other – “he did it!” “No, she did it!” Who can you believe when everyone looks guilty?
Tomorrow Has GOT to Be a Better Day
Oh my goodness what a day. Things unraveled like the world’s largest ball of yarn being rolled down Mt Everest. Like the hem of a skirt when that one thread gets pulled and all of a sudden the whole hem starts coming loose and hanging down about three-quarters of the way around and the little thread drags on the ground as you walk down the hall. That’s the kind of day it was.
First, the phones rang non-stop. For the most part, each phone call was someone wanting something in the tiniest, most exacting detail, so that the receptionist was tied up and couldn’t get the other calls. The other calls called back which caused more phone calls.
Then the copier ran out of magenta toner and went on strike. It refused to produce even mundane black and white copies, like some diva who wanted everything just so or she wasn’t going to go on stage. No problem, because there was a nice pretty box of magenta toner sitting under the yellow and cyan boxes. I moved those and picked up the magenta. It was so lightweight I thought, “This feels empty.” It was!
I’ve only been at this job for about a month, and how was I to know that the previous person stacked two full toner boxes on one empty one to produce the optical illusion that there was, in fact, plenty of toner and no one should worry their pretty little head about it running out? It looked like we were set for a long time.
Come to find out, the toner had to be ordered online, and that takes a while to be delivered. No one would admit online how long it would take to arrive. One company said it usually ships in two days, but if you continued reading you discovered that it was two days AFTER the 1-2 days it would take to process and the 1-2 days it would take to process some more.
I didn’t let this waste of a morning trying to find toner get me down because I had the phone company trainer coming in the afternoon to teach us how to use the phone system. It is so complicated and no one knows how to program the phones, that we were all pretty excited. But the guy who came was over an hour late for his appointment, and he was determined to explain all kinds of phone programming things to us that we had no interest in learning. This phone has its own website, and there are about 150 pages of options that make absolutely no sense to anyone who is not a technician trained in the operation of the phones, and even this guy was scratching his head with the dumb vacant look of a man looking at an Einstein equation on a blackboard. He cocked his head from side to side like a dog.
I finally said, “We just need the phones to ring and go to one voicemail area, AND we want to change the message to say, “Leave a message after the beep,” instead of saying, “if you want sales, press 108, if you want accounting, press 147, for customer service, press 896, if you want cream with your coffee, press 9432, if you want….” Customers had to listen for about 4 hours in order to leave a message, and then, since no one knew how to operate the phones, the messages just went out to space. This is a very convenient way to do business if your end desire is to lose all your customers, which I’m beginning to suspect was the former manager’s intention, or drive his replacement crazy - how else would you explain that dummy toner box?
The phone tech guy told me the instructions and I wrote them down, but before I could test it he had to leave because by now he was 3 hours late for his next appointment. We tried to record an outgoing message but the phone wouldn’t let us. So we called our phone company and they gave us the same instructions, and were baffled when the message wouldn’t record. Then they promise to call back and did not.
Meantime, I tested the phone by calling it from my cell phone, and I got the long, long message but after waiting for 20 minutes for it to cycle from beginning to end, it said, “That is not a valid mailbox,” and started the whole recording all over again.
I abandoned the phones because it was back to school night for my daughter, and I ended up being a little late. We were supposed to go from class to class and meet the teachers for about 10 minutes. I got on the wrong schedule somehow and was going to the right teachers but at the wrong time. I discovered this when one teacher kept looking at me oddly as he was going over the course (he knows me from my daughter’s track meets). Finally he started saying stuff about this Advanced Algebra class and I thought he was off his rocker. This was supposed to be Calculus, except I was one period off.
There were many more tragedies and mishaps today, but if you’ve stuck with me this far, I’d say you’ve been through enough. Tomorrow HAS to be better or there will be some phone and copier assassinations at work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
First, the phones rang non-stop. For the most part, each phone call was someone wanting something in the tiniest, most exacting detail, so that the receptionist was tied up and couldn’t get the other calls. The other calls called back which caused more phone calls.
Then the copier ran out of magenta toner and went on strike. It refused to produce even mundane black and white copies, like some diva who wanted everything just so or she wasn’t going to go on stage. No problem, because there was a nice pretty box of magenta toner sitting under the yellow and cyan boxes. I moved those and picked up the magenta. It was so lightweight I thought, “This feels empty.” It was!
I’ve only been at this job for about a month, and how was I to know that the previous person stacked two full toner boxes on one empty one to produce the optical illusion that there was, in fact, plenty of toner and no one should worry their pretty little head about it running out? It looked like we were set for a long time.
Come to find out, the toner had to be ordered online, and that takes a while to be delivered. No one would admit online how long it would take to arrive. One company said it usually ships in two days, but if you continued reading you discovered that it was two days AFTER the 1-2 days it would take to process and the 1-2 days it would take to process some more.
I didn’t let this waste of a morning trying to find toner get me down because I had the phone company trainer coming in the afternoon to teach us how to use the phone system. It is so complicated and no one knows how to program the phones, that we were all pretty excited. But the guy who came was over an hour late for his appointment, and he was determined to explain all kinds of phone programming things to us that we had no interest in learning. This phone has its own website, and there are about 150 pages of options that make absolutely no sense to anyone who is not a technician trained in the operation of the phones, and even this guy was scratching his head with the dumb vacant look of a man looking at an Einstein equation on a blackboard. He cocked his head from side to side like a dog.
I finally said, “We just need the phones to ring and go to one voicemail area, AND we want to change the message to say, “Leave a message after the beep,” instead of saying, “if you want sales, press 108, if you want accounting, press 147, for customer service, press 896, if you want cream with your coffee, press 9432, if you want….” Customers had to listen for about 4 hours in order to leave a message, and then, since no one knew how to operate the phones, the messages just went out to space. This is a very convenient way to do business if your end desire is to lose all your customers, which I’m beginning to suspect was the former manager’s intention, or drive his replacement crazy - how else would you explain that dummy toner box?
The phone tech guy told me the instructions and I wrote them down, but before I could test it he had to leave because by now he was 3 hours late for his next appointment. We tried to record an outgoing message but the phone wouldn’t let us. So we called our phone company and they gave us the same instructions, and were baffled when the message wouldn’t record. Then they promise to call back and did not.
Meantime, I tested the phone by calling it from my cell phone, and I got the long, long message but after waiting for 20 minutes for it to cycle from beginning to end, it said, “That is not a valid mailbox,” and started the whole recording all over again.
I abandoned the phones because it was back to school night for my daughter, and I ended up being a little late. We were supposed to go from class to class and meet the teachers for about 10 minutes. I got on the wrong schedule somehow and was going to the right teachers but at the wrong time. I discovered this when one teacher kept looking at me oddly as he was going over the course (he knows me from my daughter’s track meets). Finally he started saying stuff about this Advanced Algebra class and I thought he was off his rocker. This was supposed to be Calculus, except I was one period off.
There were many more tragedies and mishaps today, but if you’ve stuck with me this far, I’d say you’ve been through enough. Tomorrow HAS to be better or there will be some phone and copier assassinations at work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Funk and Wagnall Get Their Hackles Up
At work we have a phone system that none of us can figure out. The phones are so complicated we can barely answer them, much less program them.
I’m the oldest one in the office, and I rely on the young whippersnappers to figure this stuff out. However, they’re pretty happy to ignore the phones altogether and plead ignorance.
I rooted around in the file cabinet until I found a folder labeled, “Phones,” hoping I could read up on the instructions. The manual is bigger than a Funk and Wagnall dictionary. Not really, I just wanted to say the words Funk and Wagnall.
Can you imagine what it would be like to go through life with a name like Funk? When we were kids my dad wouldn’t let us say the word. He thought it was nasty. “I don’t want to hear you saying that nasty word again,” he’d say.
So if my best friend were the daughter of Mr. Funk, I couldn’t introduce her to my dad without getting my mouth washed out with soap.
“Dad, this is my friend, Stacey Funk.”
“I told you NOT to say that word, and now I’m getting the soap. Will you excuse us a minute, Stacey?”
This would have been very awkward. Sure, my dad was quirky, but there were probably other dads around the country who found that word offensive. What would that have been like to have a name that raised dads’ hackles?
BTW, what is a hackle? Spell check must know because it did not underline it. I’m going to ask Funk and Wagnall.
Well, they don’t know because they’re deceased and their progeny sold the encyclopedia and it went out of print in 1997 according to Wikipedia. I did find out that back in the day people used “Funk and Wagnall” to get laughs on such TV shows as Laugh In (“look that up in your Funk and Wagnall”) and Johnny Carson, (Johnny Carson, when he was playing Carnac the Magnificent on The Tonight Show frequently said the answers he was reading with his mind through a sealed envelope had been "hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar under Funk & Wagnalls' porch since noon today.")
As interesting as that is, it still doesn’t answer the pressing question: What is a hackle? I’ll have to ask Google again since Funk and Wagnall can’t respond from the grave.
Oh my gosh, you want to hear something nasty, look at these definitions I swiped directly and intact from The Phrase Finder when I looked up hackles: NOUN: 1. Any of the long, slender, often glossy feathers on the neck of a bird, especially a male domestic fowl. 2. hackles The erectile hairs along the back of the neck of an animal, especially of a dog. 3a. A tuft of cock feathers trimming an artificial fishing fly. b. A hackle fly.
Boy, you never know what you’ll find on the internet. A seemingly innocent word being defined with words such as erectile and cock. It’s shocking. What is this world coming to?
Funk and Wagnall are probably rolling over in their graves. And my dad, his hackles would definitely be in an erectile position and he’d be taking soap and washing Google’s mouth out with it.
And still, after all that, I don’t know any more about answering the phones at work than I knew an hour ago when I started this. Why do they build all those features into things if they make the manuals too big to lift out of a file cabinet? The whole thing is one big Funked up mess if you ask me, and I think Wagnall would agree, and so would my dad.
I’m the oldest one in the office, and I rely on the young whippersnappers to figure this stuff out. However, they’re pretty happy to ignore the phones altogether and plead ignorance.
I rooted around in the file cabinet until I found a folder labeled, “Phones,” hoping I could read up on the instructions. The manual is bigger than a Funk and Wagnall dictionary. Not really, I just wanted to say the words Funk and Wagnall.
Can you imagine what it would be like to go through life with a name like Funk? When we were kids my dad wouldn’t let us say the word. He thought it was nasty. “I don’t want to hear you saying that nasty word again,” he’d say.
So if my best friend were the daughter of Mr. Funk, I couldn’t introduce her to my dad without getting my mouth washed out with soap.
“Dad, this is my friend, Stacey Funk.”
“I told you NOT to say that word, and now I’m getting the soap. Will you excuse us a minute, Stacey?”
This would have been very awkward. Sure, my dad was quirky, but there were probably other dads around the country who found that word offensive. What would that have been like to have a name that raised dads’ hackles?
BTW, what is a hackle? Spell check must know because it did not underline it. I’m going to ask Funk and Wagnall.
Well, they don’t know because they’re deceased and their progeny sold the encyclopedia and it went out of print in 1997 according to Wikipedia. I did find out that back in the day people used “Funk and Wagnall” to get laughs on such TV shows as Laugh In (“look that up in your Funk and Wagnall”) and Johnny Carson, (Johnny Carson, when he was playing Carnac the Magnificent on The Tonight Show frequently said the answers he was reading with his mind through a sealed envelope had been "hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar under Funk & Wagnalls' porch since noon today.")
As interesting as that is, it still doesn’t answer the pressing question: What is a hackle? I’ll have to ask Google again since Funk and Wagnall can’t respond from the grave.
Oh my gosh, you want to hear something nasty, look at these definitions I swiped directly and intact from The Phrase Finder when I looked up hackles: NOUN: 1. Any of the long, slender, often glossy feathers on the neck of a bird, especially a male domestic fowl. 2. hackles The erectile hairs along the back of the neck of an animal, especially of a dog. 3a. A tuft of cock feathers trimming an artificial fishing fly. b. A hackle fly.
Boy, you never know what you’ll find on the internet. A seemingly innocent word being defined with words such as erectile and cock. It’s shocking. What is this world coming to?
Funk and Wagnall are probably rolling over in their graves. And my dad, his hackles would definitely be in an erectile position and he’d be taking soap and washing Google’s mouth out with it.
And still, after all that, I don’t know any more about answering the phones at work than I knew an hour ago when I started this. Why do they build all those features into things if they make the manuals too big to lift out of a file cabinet? The whole thing is one big Funked up mess if you ask me, and I think Wagnall would agree, and so would my dad.
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