Caterwauling

So I’ve been thinking there was something wrong with the car (other than the driver). My regular mechanic failed to catch it because they’ve hired a bunch of lazy assholes and the service has been rapidly declining, and my recent trip there was no different.

On Saturday, I tried five different mechanics. Five. One place was OK, just backed up and asked if I could come back Sunday, so I said no. I tried another place, a dealership that has several prominent locations, and I sat in the waiting area for 20 minutes with not a soul coming out to talk to me. Bastards. So I tried a Shell station (I’ll give you the name because I love to bitch, but I also don’t want to talk about where I’m spending my weekends in this public forum).

Anyway, there’s a reason the base word in Shell is HELL.

It was 11:30 a.m. and I had to hunt down the station manager, who didn’t look the SLIGHTEST bit busy. I purposely went to this never-busy station so I could get help. But alas, they close at 12, which was the first thing the asshole told me. I looked panicked, so he said, “Your car will be fine for another couple of days, right? Nothing’s going to fall off or you’re not going to get in an accident, right? Because we close at noon.”

KILL.

I knew the car needed work. Expensive work. But I wasn’t giving his miserable ass the business. I said, “Fuck it, I’ve already tried four places. I’ll try five. But you may want to step out of the way when I pull out — wouldn’t want my car to lose control while I’m driving at, I mean PAST, you.”

He said, “Well, that answered that.”

I pulled out at 100 mph and he stayed out of my way. I flipped him off as I left.

I forget where I went next, but I finally ended up at another prominent dealership. Where I did get help. Go figure.

So the guy at the service desk asked to see my license so he could copy my address. I said it’s not a current address but he didn’t care. So he says, “You’ll just go home and wait till we call?”

I said, “I just told you I don’t live there. However, I will go hang out at the coffee shop up the road till you call.”

So an hour and a half later, I get the call that the car will need several hundred dollars’ worth of work and they’ll need another 2 1/2 hours. Christ.

I said fine, as I was desperate. And I proceeded to figure out how to waste a whole lot of time, as I’d surfed the Internet and listened to the iPod in my phone enough that the battery was halfway gone after a mere two hours of using it.

Anyway, I thought terrific, I’ll grab lunch. So I go to the restaurant next to the coffee empire, and I couldn’t even get waited on there. The cashier actually grabbed a mop and started cleaning while I read the menu. I finally pulled out some money and stood there, looking pitiful, and the idiot kept his back to me and the other four non-busy employees managed to never turn my way. Morons.

Seriously, the next time I’m picking a mechanic, I’m finding one next to a goddamned movie theater.

The car’s all better, and by “all better,” I mean that I had to save another round of repairs for a time when money starts growing on trees, as the latest batch ensured that I will be missing the next car payment and probably part of the rent. (The rent check I wrote yesterday is RUBBER.)

Blah.

It kills me how HARD it is to spend money, and lots of it.

Don’t think I don’t have visions of burning down half of these establishments. I’m someone who not only goes the proverbial extra mile for my job, but I’ll go the extra goddamned DAY if that’s what it takes to produce quality work. Sure, I’m possibly paid better, although judging by the fact that the car parts cost next to nothing and the labor alone was well above $300, I’d say I’m not impressed by anyone else’s work ethic right about now. Why can’t everyone be as fabulous as me?!?!

I took my car down to my old mechanic in Alexandria today because I needed an oil change and because the stupid thing is making weird noises. So I go into the waiting area and stood at the desk, where the girl proceeded to ignore me. She even left and went outside to rearrange the doormat. I’m not kidding. I was livid.

I made some snarky comment to the hot guy in the Steelers T-shirt who was sitting next to me that I’ve never been ignored when I go into that place. And finally the girl said, “Well, you’re IN the computer.” Well, DUH.

At that point, I had already decided not to go back, but I went outside to talk to my mechanic about the sound. So he said he’d change the oil and take it on a road test and he’d check back with me. So 20 minutes went by and the bitch at the counter tells me, “Your total is __.”

It was the total I usually overpay for an oil change and I asked what the mechanic had to say about the noise. She looked confused and rang me up. I went outside to see my car and couldn’t find the guy who worked on it, so I left. I ran some errands (the Harris Teeter across the street sells wine. Guess where I went). The car refused to start when I picked up my delicious bottle of King Estate Pinot Gris, but as I did get her started again, I left town.

So an hour later, I hear the same fucking noise I’d complained about. ARGH. At that point, the shop was closed and I was already in D.C. again, so fuck me on that. I really need to find a local mechanic. This is the second time I’ve left that shop with more wrong than I took it in with.

But hey, at least they’re not Comcast, whom I cannot escape because they’ve got the goddamned monopoly in this region. *sigh*

So, Comcast. When I moved in the spring, my bill went up to $120 for basic cable and Internet. It was $100 before the move, and I’d made no changes to the service. So I called a month ago, telling them we need to do a deal before I go to RCN, it’s kid-brother competitor. RCN can run cable over Comcast’s wires, but admittedly, Comcast has the better Internet service. And because my job is 100% time-consuming Web-based, well, sick days become work-from-home days and now I have a shiny new laptop so I can work from home more, so I can’t settle for less than broadband.

Anyway, they said they couldn’t do anything about the price, but they could kick in a digital converter/DVR thing. Great. Sold. So the guy said they’d have to deliver it to my place, which I said wouldn’t work because I spend my life away from here. He says, “No problem. You don’t have to sign for it. They’ll just leave it for you.”

Awesome. Really, I live in a very safe, secured area. I wasn’t worried about it getting stolen. So he gives me the UPS tracking info and that was that.

So I let a week or so go by before I tracked the package. The shipping info didn’t work. So I called the idiots in India — er, customer care — and gave them my tracking number. The girl says, “Oh, that’s our internal order number. That’s not the UPS number.”

I’m like, fine, when’s the package coming?

“Oh, it was delivered early last week but it says no one was home so they couldn’t leave it.”

*headslam*

So I’m like, uh, that’s not what the previous jagoff had told me would happen. I asked if I could just come and pick it up in person, and she said of course.

Which I finally just did, a month after the fact.

I have yet to hook it up because I have to call when it’s connected. And I HATE calling there.

I lost my username/password when I moved from Virginia to D.C. because the idiots weren’t competent enough to TRANSFER my service and I had to lose my good username and get one randomly assigned. So I tried their online live help the other night, which was EVER so helpful.

I start out as number eleventy billion in the queue, and when I was second in the queue, I suddenly became third, then fourth, then second, then next. Because apparently second and next are different things. And the girl gets on and tells me that their systems won’t let her tell me my information right now. I said, um, is there a better time to check back in, as I’ve just killed an hour waiting for nothing? She said she wasn’t sure.

Anyway, I’ve had just about enough stupidity for one day. I’ll save hooking up my new wireless router and my new cable box for tomorrow. If every day has to contain misery, I’d like to spread the wealth instead of adding more shit to the already-steaming pile.

I was in a sales meeting where everyone was bragging about some successful promotion some other company did, in which it enticed people to buy their products with a coupon, but if the customer didn’t use the coupon, the discount wasn’t deducted. They claimed the customers who basically got screwed didn’t even complain/notice. And that those who did call in to ask WTF, still didn’t get the coupon honored because they were too dumb to fill out the form correctly.

And some people thought this was a brilliant idea because, wow! Look at all the “extra” revenue they got! We should try that, too!

Yeah, sure. And when it comes time for a refill, guess what? Customers aren’t going to go back because they got screwed and they KNOW it.

Which means we should rent their mailing list.

Seriously, though. If a customer comes in through a certain promotion, even if they’re too lazy/busy/oblivious to take that action step that gives them a reward, it should automatically be configured to reward them anyway. Whether it’s a big reminder that, hey, we need you to check this box or whether we just automatically tabulate it on the back end, it wouldn’t kill anyone to send an extra note to say that you forgot to take advantage of the special offer and we went ahead and did it for you because we love you so.

I have been ordering crap from a company for the past 10 years. At least monthly, I throw $50 (usually more) their way for a product I adore and need in the house at all times.

They have an ongoing special in which, if you spend $75 or more, you get a free gift. It’s usually decent stuff, too — a hairbrush, a makeup bag, a travel kit for toiletries, etc. But my order never quite comes to $75 because I can’t justify spending that much in one fell swoop. It comes close, like today it was $60, but I just can’t eke out 15 more bucks at this tiime.

So, guess what? They send me the gifts anyway! Amazing, huh?

I’m an active customer. I review items and provide testimonials. I even write to say good job when they impress me. My account must be flagged accordingly, because I have more free gifts sitting in my travel suitcase (as I use all the stuff they send) than you can imagine.

And guess who keeps ordering from them?

It’s hard to find loyal customers in this day and age when we can just go online to find it cheaper or even just wherever strikes our fancy. I used to order my stuff straight from the manufacturer, truth be told, but they were a bunch of fucking morons and it made more sense to go to a third-party distributor — I got my orders faster and the third-party guys don’t LOSE my orders or overcharge me, like the manufacturer did more frequently than I care to recount. I let the middle man deal with the dumb shit and I’m a happy girl.

Anyway, I just say all this to all of you who are making decisions about how to screw people like me out of money. I will part with it on something I want, but be warned — I’m paying attention. Even if I don’t raise a fuss about it. You’ll know it when you don’t hear from me again. Just like that company that made all kinds of dough by making people pay retail price on a so-called discount promotion.

I mean, how do people live with themselves? We all have sales goals to meet, but I’d rather develop a relationship with a customer and get their continued business instead of a quick boost to the bottom line. I’d rather take the hit upfront and have them trust me enough to come back and not go to a competitor for the same thing. People will pay for quality, and quality service is just as important as — and maybe even more so than — a quality product.

Just like with that company that couldn’t ever get my order right. Now they’re getting less revenue from me because I’d rather pay it to the middleman, who gets a nice big cut, too. I get the quality product and the quality service — and all from the same place.

The customer always wins in the end. And the company that lets them win, ends up being a winner, too.

Note to applicants: If you’re going to lie on your resume — like, say, fudging employment dates (or establishments) — be careful when mass-blasting your rez to prospective hiring managers.

In particular, don’t claim you (still) work at Company A when you might just have its sister company in your broadcast rotation. Because if Company B likes your resume and goes into the universal address book and doesn’t see you there (when, according to you, they SHOULD), well, try not to wonder why they don’t give ya a call.

Just sayin’.

I just don’t get the expectation that, if I walk into a restaurant and place an order to go, that I should tip. If I were getting it delivered, I’d tip the driver. If it were coming to the table, I’d tip the server. But if I’m standing around dealing with rudeness and incompetence, NO TIP FOR YOU!

Stopped in at my favorite Italian restaurant the other day. And by “favorite,” I mean the food and not the atmosphere, hence why it’s a pickup job only. The girl behind the counter disappeared in the back (as I learned later, to put in her own lunch order and chat with the cook) for five minutes. Then she came out and proceeded to stare at the walls while I stood at the register where, gee — I don’t know, I was waiting to ORDER.

Then when she somehow became aware that she wasn’t the only person in the room, she acted surprised and grudgingly helped me. (Why I waited that long, I don’t know. Probably because it was raining and I wasn’t going anywhere else.) And the brightest bulb in the box, she wasn’t, as I ordered cheese fries and a sammich, and she said, “You need fries with that?”

Was this McDonald’s? Jesus. I said, “I already ordered fries.” And she said, “Yeah, but do you want plain fries, too?”

*thunk*

The funny part of all this is that the owner came by to charge her for her lunch order. Ironically she had ordered fries for herself and he got mad at her because fries aren’t part of the deal for employees. (I wondered whether she wanted me to order them and donate them to her.)

I guess she had to pay for her lunch, and she started whining that she was working a double shift and NOT ONE PERSON had tipped her. (She looked just past my head when she said it.) Annoying, insolent little brat — is it any wonder nobody wants to give you an extra buck for your oh-so-sunshiney demeanor?

To my delight, one of the servers happily chirped, “You might want to try being nice to the customers if you want tips!”

I don’t know. I remember working those shit jobs where they tried to make you feel lucky for busting your ass for THEM. The wages sucked, the customers sucked and the management sucked even worse. I get that. Really, I do. But even though I used to go above and beyond, when I could, I never got or even expected a tip.

I could have used tips, don’t get me wrong, but it’s sort of a rite of passage to work crap jobs so you can appreciate a good one when/if it ever comes. I used to tell an old boss that I couldn’t wait to get a “real” job. That showed up on my review every year.

Anyway, I’m not above tipping. I appreciate my servers, the drivers, the cabbies, the guy who hails the cab in the rain, the clerks at curbside check-in at the airport, the people who help me with my luggage. I’m not an asshole — we’re all wage slaves. But not only am I not overly compelled to tip the person who merely talks to me 20 seconds to type my order into a register, but I’m sure as HELL not going to reward you just for showing up at your job and not giving me the time of day.

I don’t expect you to remember that you’ve taken my order 20 times in the past year (in the same surly, dismissive manner). I do expect you to get my order right (which is usually hit-or-miss, truth be told) and maybe even take it in a courteous and — gasp! — friendly way.

If you can’t even manage that, and you have the nerve to complain about it in front of me, well, I’ll come back because I like the food. But I assure you, there’s never going to be anything extra in it for you … unless it’s a kick in the ass. And there’s ALWAYS more where THAT came from!!!