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Not a Happy Customer

If there’s one thing I hate more than slamming my finger in a rusty door, or stepping on a squeaky nail, it’s got to be incompetence in customer service. When I’m in a store inquiring about a product, your sales staff should know the answers to all my questions. Whatever happened to training the employees on the merchandise they are selling? When I worked in the Wal Mart Photo Lab, I took time every day to stand there reading the boxes of all the cameras. I learned what the best features were on every one of them, and was able to effectively compare and discuss intelligibly the best options for the customer. So if I go into Best Buy or Circuit City, why can I not expect someone working in the television department to do the same thing?

There’s nothing I hate more than asking someone a very specific question and having them look at the damn tag. Dude, I can do that myself. And already have. For instance, yesterday, I was in Micro Center, picking up an IDE/SATA I/O controller board for my home PC. I’ve troubleshot the problem down and determined that the root cause must be a bad IDE controller on my mother board. And since the computer I built is around three years old now, it’s a little outdated. It’s still a bad ass machine. I have a Pentium 4, and a good amount of RAM. But you know how quickly technology upgrades and supersedes itself. So my point is that it’s hard to find a socket 775 mother board that still supports the type of memory sticks I have. DDR2 is the new thing.

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  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:6 mins read

The Coolest Places I’ve Worked

Being an unruly and independent sixteen-year-old means you don’t take shit from anyone. Or in the parlance of the age, you don’t take shit from no one. Ever. You do as you please. You wake when you want. You go to school if you feel like it. You listen to your parents if it suits you – because obviously you know better than they… How the hell should they know what it’s like to be alive in the 80s as a teenager? They were teens in like the 50s and shit. Trust me, Pop. You just don’t understand.

It also means you have to work in as many jobs as you can fit between your sixteenth and your nineteenth birthdays. Seriously. I didn’t quit because I got sick of places. Actually yes, I did. But I was going to say that I quit because I was ready for something new. I wanted to experience it all. And both are true. How long can you work at Skaggs bagging groceries before you begin to believe you could manage the store yourself? It can’t be rocket science, dude. That’s why you, Mister Store Manager, only make like thirty grand a year. When I grow up, I’ll make twice what you make in my spare time. I’m sixteen, all powerful, hear me roar.

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

The Secret to Success

Space & KineticIt was nice having Kimbre in town for a day – even though she had almost nothing positive to say about our fair city. I only got to see her for a few hours, though I’m betting she was at it for most of the duration of her stay – stopping only to sleep. I’m sure I’d notice a stink too, were I to leave for a time and return. But I’m also betting that I’d sneeze my ass off in ‘fresh mountain air’. Because where there are mountains, there are pines. And where there are pines, there are pine needles that make me sneeze like an angry Indian.

Speaking of Indians, I think I’ve finally found the way to make a shit load of money, expending as little energy as possible. It’s pretty simple, really. But let me first outline the other ideas I’ve had before. First of all, you want a business that doesn’t require disposable stock, like cups and hot dog canoes, because you have to order that shit. And our goal here is to do as little as possible, and make as much money as possible. Remember? Okay. So the first idea I had was a bowling alley. You buy all the balls and pins and equipment and people come use it. None of it really goes away, and you just pay for maintenance and upkeep. All you do is spray shoes while you sit on your ass.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

No Such Addressee…

Kimbre’s column reminded me of something that happened during my time in the military. I worked in the Logistics Group, in the HQ building smack dab in the middle of the base. High profile, dress blues, etc. So there’s typically a lot of high-ranking traffic breezing through those hallways. Well our shop code was (I’m going to make one up so as not to divulge the actual code) 7LGCX. The base hospital’s was 7LGXC. We took a delivery for the hospital.

It’s not that they labeled it correctly and the mail carrier dropped it in the wrong building. They labeled it incorrectly, so it was actually addressed to us. This happened quite frequently too, like once every few weeks or so. Anyway, we got a large cold crate one time, sealed and insulated with dry ice cells. Not the kind of shipment we generally receive, but we opened it. After the fog cleared, I pulled the sheet of insulation plastic off the top of the contents pack and stared aghast at a crate full of human body parts.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

The New Rules of Tipping

Seriously. Where did we get these rules of ettiquette for tipping anyway? It’s all a bunch of hogwash if you ask me. We’re told that fifteen percent of the total cost of the meal is a good standard. Twenty is better. Some people tip only the taxable amount, some people tip on the entire ticket, blah blah blah. All hogwash. Let me tell you my rules of tipping. Feel free to print this out and replace your tipping calculator with it. It will save you a lot of money.

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  • Reading time:5 mins read

Byron Nelson Breeds Breastviewing

It’s my sister’s birthday today. She turned thirty this morning around soap opera time. Thirty. You know how old that makes me? Damn. Because if she’s getting older, that means I’m getting older. It’s slightly depressing that half my life ago she snuck me into my first Ten Hands concert. I was fifteen then. A whole lifetime has passed since then. And that’s just plain crazy.

We’ve got Stella the Star Seeking Student trapped in ice this week, which is why she has been idle. Not to fear though. She said something really disturbing occurred to her last night, and she will be writing about it. I’m excited about it, as it’s a pretty good story.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

Men Will Be Men

I just got into a “heated debate” with a girl friend of mine about the essence of a men’s club. She can’t stand topless dancers, and has no respect for them. Thinks it’s a bad deal for men to go to them. Thinks lowly of the men who go to them too. Has no respect for them. Well who the hell said anything about respect?

While I can think of several other places I would rather have gone for my bachelor party last Saturday night, and several reasons for each, I didn’t have the great providence of being my own best man. Thus I didn’t plan my own bachelor party. And we went to a titty bar. I didn’t object. I am a man. I like titties. (Tell me you didn’t know that.) Plus, it was my party.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

I should really be moving.

We close Friday. We start moving Saturday. That is, of course, after the former owners of the house actually move out. They start moving on Saturday, so as per our contract, they will be leasing the house from me for one day. Would it not make sense to save everybody the time and money, and just move the hell out on the day of closing? I despise the thought of moving boxes in while they are moving boxes out. Therefore I will be waiting until they finish before I move my boxes in. Eff all that. My luck, they would be grabbing the boxes I just brought in and moving them out. So I’ll wait. The pain in the major ass is that that leaves me with only two full days to move everything from my apartment in Carrollton to my house in Flower Mound. Two days may seem like a long time to you, but I will present the following arguments in contradiction:

  • I have a lot of shit.
  • The second day of my two days to move is a Monday. No one else can or will get off that day to help. I will be moving by myself.
  • I have a lot of shit.
  • I still haven’t packed.
  • I have a lot of shit.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read

Tina Fey: The New Sex Object

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. Or if you don’t celebrate Christmas I hope you enjoyed your holidays. Of course, my opinion is that if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you shouldn’t get the holiday. You should have to work. Why give someone a free day when they don’t celebrate it? People always seem to whine about getting the day after or before Easter off, but they don’t even believe in Jesus. What gives? Anyway, I had a great Christmas. Glad to be back at work though, let me tell you. It sucks being away from work for so long. It’s like my oxygen. It runs through my veins.

You know who I think is sexy? Take it or leave it, but I think Tina Fey is on the rise. She is the chick from Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. I think those thick-framed black glasses and messy hair are in. The librarian type chick is definitely sexy.

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  • Reading time:2 mins read