Creating the Illusion of Customer Service…

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I try to be nice to customer service reps – I’ve had that job before and I know that it sucks, but I still have little patience for those who don’t even try to walk the customer service walk.

The trick to working customer service is creating the illusion that you give a shit about your customer’s problems.

I called in because I’m having a problem with our home warranty – thing broke on Friday and repair guy said that it’d be fixed on Monday or Tuesday, and today is Wednesday. I talk to him and he says that his hands are tied until he gets the parts from the home warranty company because they insist on using their own. I talk to them and they say that they’ve just been ordered today and will arrive in 72 hours. So basically I’m out for a full week at this point.

The delay doesn’t bother me that much, though – delays happen.

What struck a nerve with me was when the home warranty rep told me, “I’m sorry about the delay, but things are kind of out of my control.”

“No, they’re not,” I countered. “You should have control of your own supply chain that you use to fix my stuff.”

It looks like there was a discrepancy in pricing, and it is what it is at this point.

Excuse me?!

My biggest pet peeve with customer service reps, or really anybody who works for a company, is when they shift from we to they when they’re talking about the problem that I’m experiencing.

We’re having a small delay in getting those parts to you…

They’re having a small delay in getting those parts to you…

You see the difference? The difference is that in the second one, the rep makes it sound like he’s on my side and he doesn’t know why my parts are being delayed, either! But as I tried in vain to explain to this dim-witted claim rep, when I call customer support to complain about an issue, you are the company that I’m calling to complain about.

That doesn’t mean that you personally delayed my parts, and I get that. But it does mean that you’re responsible for it – you, in the royal sense, meaning the company that’s paying you to take my call. And that’s where the illusion falls apart because if instead you say, “We’re really sorry about the delay, Mr. Sevener, but I can confirm that the parts have been ordered and should be delivered within 72 hours…” now you’re fulfilling your role as a customer service representative and I can go back to my day knowing that your company is trying to address my issue.

I’m not calling for a buddy to hear my pain about why my repair isn’t done yet, but when you say, “They had an issue getting the parts…” you’re shifting responsibility to somebody else, which is a no no because at the end of the day, I’m paying you. Sure, there are lots of moving parts and third parties that you use to facilitate this transaction, but at the end of the day they all report back to you.

…because if I was working with any of these other folks directly, my thing would’ve been fixed last Friday because the repair guy already had the parts on his truck – your process just wouldn’t let him use them!!!

So I have all of the sympathy in the world when good customer service reps have to deal with asshole customers, and I’ll even admit that I’m sure that occasionally I’ve been that asshole customer myself who calls up yelling and screaming and absolutely refusing to listen to anything resembling reason. But you have to try at your job – create the illusion that you’re concerned about my problem – because for the eight minutes that I’m talking to you on the phone, my problem is your problem.

Or at least my problem is your company’s problem…

An Old Man’s Debate and the Lesser of Two Evils…

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Sometimes I feel like politics is more geared towards my parents’ generation.

At least that’s how I felt about watching this debate – both of the candidates are around 60 years old, the moderators were older people, and just the entire presentation of the debate itself wasn’t anywhere near in a format that I would demand as a voter to actually help me make a decision as to who should be the next Governor of the State of Florida.

Sure, they had some questions from social media, but that’s not even in the same neighborhood as what I’m talking about.

1) It’s clear before the debate even starts that the moderator in the middle is biased towards Governor Rick Scott, and bias has no place if you’re chosen to orchestrate a political debate.

2) The exchanges at one minute are too short and don’t really give the candidates a chance to get into their actual opinions after they’ve spent the first 30 seconds positioning themselves without really saying anything, which doesn’t end up being a big deal because…

3) The moderators don’t hold the candidates’ feet to the fire and actually make them answer the fucking questions, anyways!!!

Sure, there were a couple where the girl on the end asked for clarification because “she might not have gotten an answer,” but fuck that – I want to see moderators who are actually going to grill candidates and who will sit there and say, “You didn’t answer the question – YES or NO, do you believe that the ban on gay marriage is discriminatory??? And we’re not moving on to the next question until you tell me yes or no.”

I guess I don’t understand why, after doing these debates for a long time now, we don’t have higher standards for them because at the end of 1:07 of watching this exchange, I can’t really say that I know a whole lot more about the two candidates than I already knew before…

I know that Charlie Crist is the democratic candidate and that Rick Scott is the republican candidate, and they’re both playing their roles in those political wheelhouses as expected.

I know that Rick Scott wants to continue running the state like a business, which I have huge problems with considering his numerous conflicts of interest already as our governor.

And I know that Charlie Crist doesn’t really seem to have the fight in him that I’d like to see of a political candidate who wants to run our state – neither of them do – because frankly this debate was really boring.

Oh yeah, and I know that Rick Scott was being really petty over a stupid fan … is that what I’m supposed to use to base my vote for governor on?!

This year’s election, and even the last presidential election, seems to me to be a perfect example of what’s wrong with the political process in this country because when I go to cast my ballot in the next couple of weeks, I can tell you right now that I’m not walking into that booth to vote for somebody – I’m walking into the voting booth to vote against somebody else. And that’s a terrible way to choose a leader.

I look at Rick Scott and I see a mini Mitt Romney, and after watching him govern us for the last four years, I’m ready for anything different.

I used to think that I liked Charlie Crist back when I didn’t pay much attention to the politics, but watching this debate reminds me that he’s just more of the same.

Neither of them are the candidates that we need to move our state forward here in 2014, yet I’m forced to cast my vote for the guy I don’t like because there isn’t one on the ballot who I do.

It’s sad when we have to turn to entertainment to get political discourse that’s actually worth its weight, but I also recently re-watched this debate between Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly from a couple of years ago, and I think the actual debates could learn a think or two from it. I know that, like The Daily Show, it was first and foremost meant to be a lighthearted comedy show, but there’s actually some good back and forth here because, well for starters, the debate format actually allows them to go back and forth! This whole you have one minute, you have one minute, next question! shtick may be the way our grandfathers used to debate, but what I want to see out of a debate is an actual debate where at the end of a given question, we actually know where each candidate stands on an issue. And if one of them is blowing bullshit, I want the other candidate to be able to call him out on that bullshit in more than just:

  • “During his term, my opponent did ABC…”
  • “No, I didn’t, but you did XYZ…”
  • “Yes you did…”
  • “MOVING ON!”

I want a debate to get heated. I want the candidates to argue. I want them to stand up their and fight for their principles in front of all of us so that at the end of it all, we know that we’re standing with the right candidate for reasons, not for partisanship!

You can follow a debate outline to address specific questions without sticking to this rigid, carefully calculated by a guy in a suit schedule that still manages to leave us empty-handed at the end of an hour-plus – maybe this formal, uninformative bullshit is what contented our grandparents, but it’s time to start gearing elections for a different generation.

And maybe part of that takes a younger generation of candidates, too – I don’t know. There are a handful of younger guys – some seem decent, some molded from the same as their grandparents – but with more and more career politicians, that’s how we end up with a President who’s 10 years younger than our Governor.

I don’t know if it’s an age thing, though. I’d like to think that older voters would like real answers to these questions, too, even though it begs the question of why haven’t they demanded it despite being around much longer than my generation has. Or maybe they have and politicians just don’t care because despite everyone having a political opinion, only half the nation can be bothered to vote during a presidential election and even less come out for the mid-term elections. There’s only so much of the same people can take before they throw their hands up and say, “It doesn’t matter, so I’m going to spend my time doing anything else.”

I think the bottom line is that the entire process needs an overhaul, from the candidates themselves to the people whose job it is to get information out of them for us, and while this particular debate was a horrible example of anything intended to actually help voters make their decision in November, hopefully it can garner more people getting agitated and demanding change rather than just growing old and cynical and giving up. 😕

Dream Journal : Alligators, Science Experiments, and Wine…

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Three dreams in one!!!

We were in a factory/laboratory-type setting and the wall is lined with giant fish tanks … but they’re not super-sized, reinforced fish tanks – just really big versions of the same fish tanks people typically have in their homes.

This is important because inside the tanks were alligators!

I was talking to one of the science guys when the first tank started to crack. He just turned to me and said, “Run!” an instant before the water … and its lizardy contents … came wooshing down the wall and rapidly towards us.

* * *

Sara and I were traveling and we were at the end of a long trip. Money was getting short, so I was looking over our balances trying to figure out where I could pull money from so we didn’t have to compromise before we got home.

Panic arose when after enjoying a nice dinner with friends in a random restaurant, the waitress brought the bill and it was $250.

We looked back over what we’d gotten and it didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary until she pointed out that the bottle of wine we had picked out was $180.

I went and talked to the owner, and asked if she would take a check, but she said because our card had been declined it would have to be a cashier’s check. (huh???) I told her that there was no way I could get a cashier’s check because we were traveling from another country, and she finally agreed to accept cash from an ATM instead.

I just had to find an ATM…

* * *

It was sort of like a return to high school – it started with seeing an old friend, but soon it evolved into some sort of weird chemistry/cooking class where we had to turn food into … something.

I figured that the teacher didn’t have very high expectations because it was only the first class, yet I started getting worried when everyone else but me starting producing results. One kid had this weird glowy electric man made out of french toast, another had turned a package of chicken fingers into a gourmet meal.

Much like the others, this one never really got resolved and the dream ended with me stumped as to how I could make something amazing out of the pile of food and electronics that had been laid out in front of me.

Reporting Ebola Right

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I’ll proudly admit that I’m usually pretty critical of Fox News and how their programming typically ends up doing far more harm than good, however I also believe in acknowledging when the bad apple does something right, and I’ve got to say that I was pretty damn impressed when I came across this commentary from Fox’s own Shepard Smith in which he addresses the reality of Ebola in America today and how all of the fear-mongering from politicians and the media is completely out of line with the science that we actually know today about such a horrible disease.

This is what news coverage is supposed to look like – factual and rational.

Final Fantasy Falls Short with All The Bravest…

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ffatb1

I stumbled across this game late last night thinking it might be kind of cool, but it turns out … it’s not.

The idea is simple enough – it’s just the heroes and monsters from the Final Fantasy series fighting and the more you play, the more characters you can unlock to put in your party. Except that you’re not really fighting in the sense that you’ve grown to expect from the various games in the series. To “fight,” you simply swipe the character and he does his attack action, then gets back in line to wait his turn again.

ffatb2

That’s all that everybody does, so it’s literally the equivalent of holding down the A button until the battle is over and XP is awarded.

ffatb3

The whole game is basically just a ploy to get you to buy DLC, except that even that is random and in the two $0.99 purchases that I made, I got two random characters from games that I’ve never played. Awesome.

I get that the game can’t be a little more complicated without being a lot more complicated – I would’ve loved to see a setup where I could build a party from FFIV and FFVI characters and then pit them against the four elemental fiends from the first game – that would be cool, and I think if the game auto-leveled them appropriately on the spot you could still get a balanced fight out of all of the characters.

But I want to control their actual actions, too. In this game, every character is one hit and they’re out, which is fine for a throwaway game but the Final Fantasy series is loaded with rich characters and diverse abilities – to whittle these guys down to a single move that defines what they do is insulting to the series that created them.

This could’ve been a neat game with a whole lot of nostalgia factor, but instead it’s just blatant cash grab for in-app purchases where the creative process both begins and ends at the Premium Character Shop. 🙁

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an evolution of identity

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musicI used to be WAY into music when I was younger, but now I’m kind of not.

I mean, I still listen to music in the car or whatever … it’s just that my passion for music doesn’t define me like it used to back when I was a teenager.

Over the weekend we went over to Epcot for the Food & Wine Festival and one of the features besides all of the food and drink are the random bands of yesteryear that they bring in to play throughout the month and a half that the festival runs. Even though a lot of the names used to be fairly popular, it’s never really been a big draw for me because it’s no secret when they list “Night Ranger – known for their song Sister Christian” in the program, that’s pretty much the only song that the group is known for…

…or at least the only one that anybody remembers anymore, anyways!

Case in point – a few years ago, we happened to be doing Food & Wine when Night Ranger was playing, and although it was kind of neat to be walking by when they were going into the power ballad that is Sister Christian, it’s not like I exactly stopped to take in the rest of their set, either.

So this year when we made an impromptu decision to do Food & Wine on Saturday after spending a few hours at one of the water parks, I picked up a guide book and sure enough, Sister Hazel was performing that night. I’ve always liked Sister Hazel, particularly after seeing them in concert while I was in college, and although they’ve been playing Food & Wine for a while now, I’ve never gotten a chance to see them just because we never seemed to go over during their three-day stretch of the festival.

I thought it might be cool, after having first seeing them live circa 2001 in the thriving metropolis that is Big Rapids, Michigan, but after not even half a dozen songs, I just wasn’t feeling it.

And it was weird because here after all of this time kind of mocking groups that settle on playing theme park gigs because they’re kind of yesterday’s news, here I was actually wishing that they’d just play that one song that they were famous for, too!

You know it’s not good when the singer actually introduces their next song as, “Now we’d like to play you one of our new songs … so if you could not leave and go back to eating and drinking for a while, we’d really appreciate it!” 😯

I hung around in the back for a few songs and we danced a little with the baby, who seemed to be more into the colored lights than the loud music, and then we proceeded on down our path to more desserts and drinks and by the time we had reached the Germany pavilion, the ambient music pretty much drowned out the band that we had left behind, anyways.

And the more I think about it, I guess that’s sort of what’s happened to me and music in the last decade or so, too.

Music used to be my everything – I wore the t-shirts and went to countless rock concerts, I had hundreds of CDs and posters on the walls, and for a while there I was even under the fun, little delusion that I could actually be a rock and roll star myself! But then it slowly started to fade away as I got more into writing, and publishing on the ‘net, and video games made a resurgence in my life, and then I moved to Florida and found me a wife and a family, and now when I look back at those live shows that I used to blow so much money on … I don’t really miss ’em all that much.

Every now and then when I hear that so-and-so artist is coming to town, I think for a moment whether maybe it would be fun and we should get tickets to go, but I just don’t have the drive that I used to, and then I find that tickets are way more expensive than they were back in the day, and frankly there are just so many other ways at this point that I’d rather spend my time and money.

It’s nothing against music, of course. Music served to give me one of my first identities during those teenage years when you’ll stop at nothing just to be you, and to figure out what that is, and for a while there, I was the long-haired, tie-dye wearing hippie guy who had way too many black light posters for the minuscule amount of weed that he realistically smoked and who lived through his guitar and emulating his rock heroes.

Now I’ve moved on and it’s a little weird to revisit that and find that I’m not nearly as into it as I used to be.

Which is strange in its own way when you consider how ridiculously nostalgic I am and you wonder why it doesn’t really carry over to music as much as it did some of the earlier stuff, but that’s another thought train for another day!  8)

Dream Journal : Driving the School Bus…

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So as the title implies, I was a school bus driver, apparently.

It actually wasn’t all that bad except that the bus I had to drive was a piece of crap and the brakes didn’t work very well.

Everything went smooth picking the kiddies up, but when I showed up at the school, something was going down and there was no place for me to park in the front parking lot, so after some careful deliberation I ended up driving my bus up onto the sidewalk so that the kids could just walk inside and avoid all of the random, unexplained chaos that was happening outside!

Just before I was about to open the door, though, I got a call from the principal and he said to hold the kids on the bus because he needed to bust two kids in the back for possession of marijuana. Or so he said because when he and a teacher came out to board the bus, he kind of got the crap beaten out of him by a couple of girls that were fighting near the front of the bus. I mean, they were fine for me, but when I saw him struggling to pull these girls off, suddenly his shirt was all bloody and it looked like he’d gone through hell!

The girls weren’t looking much better…

Anyways, once the drama had departed, I hit the button to open the doors for the rest of the kids and was waving goodbye as they got off when I noticed that the scenery around us seemed to be changing … in that my stupid bus wasn’t staying in one place despite the brakes being firmly engaged! Most of the kids managed to just roll with it (pun intended) and we got all of the kids off within a few feet of the school, so that was close enough.

On my way back to the bus garage, all I could think about was yelling at the garage guys for giving me an improperly maintained school bus.

Exciting stuff! 😉

movie thoughts … Transformers: Age of Extinction

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MV5BMjEwNTg1MTA5Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTg2OTM4MTE@._V1_SX214_AL_Good god, was this thing awful.

I mean, for what it’s worth, we both agreed that it was going to be terrible before we even pushed play, so I guess in that way it met expectations.

Still, if the universe needed a sign that it’s time to stop making Transformers movies, it should be pretty safe to say that Age of Extinction can go ahead and be that sign…

I mean, seriously – by mid-movie I was actually kind of rooting for the end of the Transformers as a race, until they revealed their actual “plot” and it just became one long groan that lasted the entire rest of the movie.

When it comes down to it, I think that by far the biggest problem with this franchise is that the writing is incredibly lazy. It bugged me way back to the second one where the title was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and they actually had a character named The Fallen. Seriously?! Because up until that reveal, it was actually kind of a bad ass title, and then you had to go cheapen it all up … was the Transformer naming guy sick that week and an intern was just pressured into coming up with something on the spot???

It’s that same laziness that in Transformers 4 brought us Transformium  … because the writers of a billion dollar franchise couldn’t be tasked with making up a name for the crap that makes up these things in the first place. I guess they figured it didn’t really matter because all of the new, human-made Transformers all looked like shit while they were “transforming” because they were just blobs of metal instead of actual parts moving around, anyways.

That said, the casting is equally awful in this movie, starting with “the new star” … and don’t get me wrong because I like Mark Wahlberg in a lot of his movies, but he just seems so out of place in this movie, I could’ve sworn that there were times that Sara could probably hear my eyes rolling during the movie. The action shots, the stupid lines, “I think we found a Transformer!”, the fact that never before have we really seen humans standing a chance against these things, and yet now Mark Wahlberg just picks up a Transformer gun and starts blasting them like he’s the Last Action Hero!

At least the other movies all showcased big scenes of robot boxing that could distract us from the ridiculousness of the actual plots, but this movie was hanging on by a thread and honestly the action scenes that we got really weren’t all that great.

Plus, how come nobody ever learns in this franchise?! Seriously, the only reference to the previous movies is how Chicago got all fucked up and we must never forget and these robot aliens are our enemies, yet the real plot has the government siding with evil robots to kill the good robots after the good robots defeated the evil robots in the last siege, and by the way, now we’re also going to try to make some new – probably evil – robots of our own?!

I know that this is fiction, but good fiction is good because the story is actually plausible. The plot for Transformers 4 was just stupid.

And yes, for what it’s worth, I do think that it hurts the franchise that Shia LaBeouf wasn’t in this movie. It was weird watching a Transformers movie without him and Megan Fox, and not just because Marky Mark was horrible as a replacement. The story seemed so forced to not even acknowledge anything from its own past – like there wasn’t some point where the Transformers would be sitting around and someone would go, “Hey, I wonder how Sam is doing … you know, the guy who helped us and who we swore to protect for the last how many years? The human who was kind of Optimus’ BFF? Whatever happened to that guy???”

They said that this wasn’t supposed to be a reboot, but save for a forgetful Optimus and Bumblebee, it pretty much was. New human actors – all of them, new Transformers that were terrible – sorry, but John Goodman was a lousy giant robot, a plot that forgets just enough of the past movies to make the same stupid mistakes all over again … and giant robots fighting.

I mean, I probably rolled my eyes at that scene more than any other, but Optimus Prime riding a Dinobot was probably the most worthwhile image in the entire movie. And they had already given it to us in the trailer.

I laughed afterwards when the TV jumped back to the menu after it finally ended and I saw that Transformers 4 had an 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It kind of makes me glad that I wasn’t more of a Transformers fan growing up or my nostalgia would be hurting pretty bad right now…