Always Low Expectations. Always.

I'm currently working for the largest private employer in America. I used to wonder why it is that people hate the company I work for so damn much. My current theory is that they actually hate themselves for not being able to stop themselves from giving me my paycheck.

The complaints that amuse me the most are the ones where people say that they're "forced" to shop at my store because they have no choice, that prices are so low that they can't afford to shop anywhere else. Such hypocracy really should be illegal. People, will you please have the courage of your own convictions? Nobody's holding a gun to your head and demanding that you make a mad dash downtown and gobble up that DVD player for $27.63 or else they'll splatter your brains all over the dashboard. I'm not the one who's single handedly driving the Mom n' Pop stores out of business. You are.

I spent some time a couple of days ago perusing a web site that includes former employees speaking out against the company with sob stories like:

"My supervisor asked me to cut some meat for a customer, but instead of telling him that I didn't have the training to safely operate the equipment, I tried to figure out how to work the meat saw on my own. Not only did I lose part of my hand, but I literally gave that customer a knuckle sandwich! It's all their fault!"

"I had so many tasks to accomplish that I decided to start taking my work home with me. I filled out supply orders while I watched TV and wrote my schedules during bathroom breaks. Since I never told my manager I was working off the clock, I never got paid for the overtime! Waaaah! It's all their fault!"

"I was working in the store overnight doing inventory when I hurt myself on the job. I was so angry at the managers for locking the front door and trapping me inside that I somehow completely failed to notice the 47 emergency exits located throughout the building! I had to sit around for six hours in horrible pain until the store opened the next morning, and it's all their fault!"

Just to be fair, I've got my fair share of gripes. In fact, when it comes to my job, I'm such a chronic complainer, both at work and at home, that even I'm sick of listening to myself whine. If I accomplish 28 tasks a day, my supervisors complain that I didn't get task #29 finished. I'm held to impossibly high expectations when it comes to keeping my merchandise in stock. I'm actually graded based on percentages, calculated to the decimal point, and so my daily thoughts are occupied not by being friendly or helping customers, but by maintaining my percentage each week. Just today, I was asked to come to work at four in the morning for the express purpose of checking my department for missing products, and not a single manager acknowledged the effort I made. Meanwhile, while the overnight stockers who actually receive and put away the freight have yet to be reprimanded for their inability to put my merchandise in the right area of the store, let alone on the right shelf in front of the right price tag. I bust my butt to do the best job I'm capable of doing, but I continue to be rated during my performance evaluations as merely "meeting expectations" because of one or two trivial ways in which I've failed to exceed. Nothing I do ever seems to be quite good enough, and lately my dreams have been plagued with visions of Godzilla-sized monsters or polar bears, insurmountable monsters who threaten both myself and my loved ones, clearly representative of the forboding, overwhelming odds I'm struggling with on a daily basis.

Maybe my perspective is different because I'm too busy doggy-paddling through a veritable tidal wave of anxious back-to-school shoppers who seem to blame me, personally, for their decision to wait until class has been in session for two weeks until they started venturing forth into the world for school supplies, and can't seem to understand how we could possibly have run out of 10-cent notebooks or 25-cent boxes of crayons. I don't have the luxury of propping my feet up on my desk at the office and pontificating about how multi-billion dollar corporations are responsible for low income levels and the steady decline of health care. To be perfectly honest, I usually don't think that big. (You could tell me that the planet Neptune exploded yesterday, and I seriously doubt it would affect my day-to-day life. I'll still have price changes to finish tomorrow and comparison-shopping that's due on Wednesday.)

I guess what I'm saying here is that despite my dissatisfaction, ultimately I'm thankful to have a job that pays reasonably well and gives me a mostly-predictable work schedule. I have time to spend with my girlfriend, get weekends off so I can see my kids, and have enough money to occasionally get silly trinkets off eBay.

Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with the world. Terrorists crashing planes into buildings. Hurricanes destroying people's homes. Children who grow up thinking their parents don't love them.

The fact that you can drive down the street at midnight and get a gallon-jar of pickles for three bucks? I really don't think that's one of them.

As the Pendulum Swings

Today, I was unpacking some new 2006 calendars that came in for my department, and among the selection was a wall calendar entitled "Men Are Like." It showcased such charming words of wisdom as "Men Are Like Shrubberies: every few months you need to cut them down to size!" or "Men Are Like $100 Bills: the first thing you need to do is change them!"

I happen to take offense at this. Now, I'm not just feeling insulted because I'm a guy myself. I believe in judging people based on their individual merits, not on their gender or upbringing or culture or the color of their hair/skin/toenail polish. For example, there's a Chinese restaurant in town whose mascot, appearing in gigantic three-dimensional plaster on the top of the building, is this pot-bellied, slanted-eyed caricature of a human being. He offends me every time I see him, and I'm not even Chinese. Anyway, my point is that I don't think it's especially civil to poke fun at any collective group of people, with the possible exception of used car salesmen.

What I find interesting, though, is that even though America has worked hard to create a semblance of ethnic and racial equality in society (I defy you to find me one Wal-Mart newspaper flier or McDonald's television commercial that doesn't showcase people of every conceivable color under the sun), the gender balance seems to have shifted significantly off-kilter. What I'm saying here is that if I were to publish a calendar with choice words of wisdom such as, "Women Are Like vacuum Cleaners: the best ones suck whenever you want them to!" the public outrage would be phenomenal. (Just so we're clear, I don't hold that viewpoint at all. Isn't it interesting, though, how you were mildly amused by the "Men Are Like" calendar page, but deeply offended by a similar, if slightly more risque, "Women Are Like" entry? Why is that, I wonder? Come to think of it, I can't think of any other single group of people that it would be considered okay for publishers to openly deride. Can you imagine the public reaction to a "Blacks Are Like" calendar or a "Cripples Are Like" calendar?)

At what point did male-bashing become politically correct?

Another example I've seen recently is a naughty little birthday card in which a muscular guy, ostensibly nude, is pictured on the front along with the text, "We've asked this sexy stud to write you a tiny little note wishing you a happy birthday." Inside the card, the guy is holding up a ridiculously huge "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" message, covering up all of his naughty bits and then some, with the added text, "Why can't men follow simple directions?"

Now, I won't argue at all with the fact that women have been treated wrongfully in the past. Not being permitted to vote, not being allowed to own land or property, forced by social convention to essentially serve their husbands as obedient slaves and shunned by the general populace if they hadn't entered into servitude shortly after coming of age... not to mention the old and tired jokes about dumb blondes and women drivers.

I will say that I don't believe in equality, at least, not as most people seem to define it. No matter how much some people wish it were otherwise, the simple, biological truth is that there are physiological differences between men and women. They have different brain chemistry, different hormones, different anatomy. You simply can't expect total equality between two genders who are by definition different from one another. I understand, of course, that women who desire equality aren't actually lobbying for stand-up urinals in their public restrooms, but rather are seeking the right to work the same jobs as men, the right to earn the same salary, that sort of thing. (As long as we're on the subject, though, I'd like to know when employers will start offering paternity leave as part of the benefits package. But I digress.)

Here's another one I saw recently. I came across a wedding cake topper, but rather than the traditional bride and groom standing side by side, or in a passionate embrace, or something similarly traditional, this one had the bride strutting off, dragging the husband along behind her by the shirt collar. Do you think this bride respects him as an individual, or regards him as little more than "shrubbery" and desperately needing to be cut down to size? (I suspect that if the roles were reversed, and the cake topper depicted a groom who was dragging his beautiful wife by the hair, it would be recalled from Wal-Mart store shelves so fast it would make your head spin.)

I've heard a few of the counter-arguments regarding all this, and to some extend I can see where they're coming from. Some might point out that women have been so badly mistreated for so long that the contemporary role-reversal is inevitable. I've also heard people say that the negative stereotyping of women is alive and well, and that they continue to be denigrated and misrepresented and trivialized by motion pictures and television and pornography. I've also been told by a very close female friend, for whom I have a great deal of respect, that perhaps I shouldn't be offended by the stereotypes that don't actually apply to me personally.

I tend to think that saying nothing about this phenomenon is the same as accepting it, though. I don't think that women or men should be denigrated by the opposite gender. Yes, we have our differences. Yes, I suppose that serves as excellent raw material for making snide little remarks, should you happen to be primarily motivated by making fun of anything you don't fully understand.

There's a lady outside who's trimming the bushes outside my building. For some reason, I really want to go out there and ask her to just leave the damn shrubbery alone.

Want Some Wine with that Cheese?

And now for a bitter, cynical little anecdote about human nature.

In my capacity as a customer service manager, it's my job to oversee the cashiers and help with any potential customer service issues that may arise. Most of the time, I deal with issues by parroting whatever another associate has already told the customer, but who really needed to hear the exact same words uttered by somebody wearing a differently-colored vest before the store policy will actually sink in.

Anyway, today one of my cashiers, Mark, calls me over because apparently there's some customer who's become quite agitated with him. She's buying some cereal and cheese, has insisted that Mark double-bag the cereal, since General Mills is putting free boulders in every box of Cheerios now. Well, actually they're not, and it's a pretty ridiculous thing to suggest, but so is double-bagging an item that weighs about as much as you'd expect a mostly-empty box to weigh. What Mark said to her was something along the lines of, "Well, you know, these bags are designed to hold up to ten soup cans without breaking, but I'll be happy to bag these however you'd like." Apparently this was just cause for this woman to come completely unglued.

This woman, and I use the term loosely, was wearing a black dress that looked to be about 100 years old, the sort of apparel you only really see in period dramas on A&E. She'd stuffed herself into a corset, which I guess is the only thing you can really do when you're trying to fit a size-six body into a size-four dress, and I think it was affecting her ability to function. She was swaggering back and forth a little, obviously having trouble balancing in the thing, and spoke in the same sort of breathless, over-enunciated manner that people sometimes do when they don't have any air in their lungs.

Anyway, she began ranting about the offensive treatment Mark had deliberately inflicted upon her, that his job was to be a servant and not to question her orders. I'm paraphrasing only slightly here. She's also buying these huge two-pound blocks of cheddar, and is insanely furious that Mark wouldn't match the 50% advertisement she saw at Food Mart-or-wherever. Now, we do honor competitor's prices when the price is listed in the advertisement, but store policy is that we don't usually match percent-off sales. (The reason for this is because, for all we know, Food Mart-or-wherever might usually sell cheese for twice as much as we do, so we're not about to give some customer fifty percent off our price.)

When I explained that the ad needs to have a specific price listed, she said in this haughty tone, "The advertisement SAYS fifty percent off, so it DOES specific a price. The price will be FIFTY PERCENT OFF."

Now, the situation is entirely in my hands at this point. I could stand there and cite the store policy to her again, or I could just go ahead and do the damn price match so Mark can help the other customers in his line and I can get back to the three-point-seven million other things I need to accomplish before the day is over. Generally, when making decisions like this, I try to go with the end result that's most likely to make the customer happy. Let me make this point again before I continue: I've decided to deviate from store policy in order to satisfy the customer's wishes.

I explain that we'll be happy to honor the competitor's price on the cheese, which she says is something like $3.78. I reach for the calculator in my pocket so I can split the price down the middle. At this point, she goes into haughty mode again and proclaims, "Can't you do simple arithmetic? Unlike the two of you, I have a high school education and a college degree, which is why I'm not working a menial job serving others." Wow. I mean, just wow. Putting aside for the moment that she can't possibly know what my level of education is, I really have to question the wisdom of verbally attacking the people who control the price of her cheese.

I could have chosen to take issue with all of this, but instead I take the high road, have Mark finish ringing up her items, and give her a total. Then, this woman, who's obviously leagues above and beyond the both of us on the social ladder... proceeds to pay with food stamps.

Now, to me, this is FUNNY. How can she possibly reconcile the two diametrically-opposed ideas that she's simultaneously a) superior to the wastes of flesh whom she deigns to allow to serve her and b) accepts welfare funding from the state government? I'm finding this very difficult to properly wrap my brain around. Apparently that college education of hers didn't secure her a job that pays her enough to be able to afford a block of cheese, huh? Now, for the record, I have nothing against the welfare system. My family was on welfare for several years, back before I had a full-time job, and I'm grateful for the assistance. It's just somehow bitterly ironic, though, that she was so quick to dismiss the both of us as human trash, when apparently I'm the one who's EARNING dinner every night and paying for it out of my own damn pocket.

I probably could have made a pointed comment to this effect. I probably also would have gotten a good laugh from Mark and the other customers in his line, who looked to be just about as fed up with this woman's tirade as I was. The fact that I took the high ground, though, and thanked her for her business and even wished her a pleasant day--I think that shows which of us is, indeed, the better person.

That's all.

Rest in Peace

One of Six-Pack's kittens died tonight.

I'm not sure what happened, exactly. Six has been busy moving her kittens around a bunch, lately. We'd had a maternity box set up downstairs in the laundry room (the same one Flea-Byte and Mystery had their kittens in), but Six gave birth under a chair up here in the living room, and she's been determined to take all three of them back upstairs. For the past couple of days, she's been living in the corner under the easy chair.

Tonight we caught her transporting her litter under our bed. This was clearly unacceptable, so I gently reached under and scooped up the kitten she'd just brought in. It was cold to the touch, but it was still moving about, so I figured it had just gotten too chilly because some of the windows were open. It was the smallest of the three, obviously the runt of the litter, and it was making movements like it wanted to cry, but it was too weak to make any sounds. We tried feeding it some milk in a medicine dropper, but it was too weak to eat. It died in my arms.

I don't really know why it died. Maybe Six inadvertantly handled it too roughly when she moved it, or maybe it was just too small and weak to make it. The kittens have only been around for a week or so, and this household has already gone through three other litters this year, so I wasn't really attached to it on a personal level. I still can't help but be pretty upset over this, though. Natural life cycle or not, I hate watching things die.

Runt, the little white kitten who's the last remaining one from Plank's litter, could have easily met the same fate. He was weak and tiny when he was born, looking underdeveloped, like he hadn't quite been ready to be born when he was. We cared for him and bottle-fed him, later making sure the three available mom cats were all taking turns nursing him after they'd come to accept him, and always stopped the bigger, stronger cats from picking on him or pushing him away during feeding time. Now, we've found homes for all the kittens from that batch except for him, and I've come to love him so much that I can't stand the thought of giving him away. He's such a sweet little thing. He mews for me, follows me down the hallway, and grabs onto my leg. Already, he recognizes that I'm one of the caretakers. He's had eye infections and litterbox training issues, but it's so easy to overlook that. I hate to think what would have happened if we hadn't stepped in and helped him.

We let Six say goodbye before we buried her little one, right next to Crosswise. She meowed at it and licked it and meowed some more, and then thought nothing more of it. Actually, I can't say that with certainty. I have no idea what goes on inside her head. We put her back down in the maternity box with her remaining two kittens and closed the door. She's turned into a very domesticated cat, and loves getting pets and attention, so I feel bad for relegating her to the downstairs. She's crying to be let out even as I write this. I recognize that I'm overcompensating, after the fact, for past events that I had absolutely no control over. I guess it's just what people do.

Low-Tech Solutions to High-Tech Problems

I really do hate my computer.

Don't get me wrong; it's a wonderful device. As a communications tool, it enables me to reach people all around the world instantaneously, and send and receive files and images that would otherwise take weeks to process by conventional mail. As a filing system, it can store hundreds of documents and pictures and songs for me, and grant me immediate access to any of them at the touch of a button. As an art tool, it lets me work with thousands of colors without ever having to mix paints or dig out my collection of withering Crayola markers. As a research tool, I can use it to look up any subject, no matter how esoteric, and learn more than I ever wanted to know without ever setting foot inside a library. It's a modern-day miracle that goes far beyond being a simple household convenience. I could get by without a can opener or a toaster oven, but I can't stand the thought of not having my computer.

At the same time, though, it's an infuriatingly delicate creature, fraught with problems at any given time, and I'm roughly as qualified to diagnose and repair its problems as I am qualified to perform open-heart surgery on my cat. (Which reads as "not at all," in case you didn't know.) I like to think I know a fair amount about computers, but they're making them so sophisticated these days that it's impossible to keep up without certified training. (As I write this, there are something like 32 independant processes running in the background. I know what two of them are. Bugger if I know what the rest are up to.)

There's no excuse for any home appliance to be this damn complicated. It would be like having to call tech support every time your refrigerator went on the blink.

ZOB: Hi, I'm having trouble with my fridge. It's not keeping food cold enough.
TECH SUPPORT: Have you tried replacing the light bulb?
ZOB: I did that last week when the light went out.
TECH SUPPORT: Go ahead and replace it again, and tell me the wattage on the bulb.
ZOB: Okay, I've still got one left in the package... it's a 40-watt. And that didn't help.
TECH SUPPORT: What condiments do you have in the door right now?
ZOB: Well, let's see... ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, soy sauce, and something that might have once been applesauce. Or horseradish. I'm not sure.
TECH SUPPORT: How many of those do you actually use?
ZOB: Just the ketchup and mayonnaise, mostly.
TECH SUPPORT: Okay, throw all the other ones away.
ZOB: Will that solve the problem?
TECH SUPPORT: No, but you don't need them, right?

It looks ridiculous when you apply it to anything other than Windows XP, doesn't it? That's practically a transcript of the conversation my wife had on the phone yesterday. The problem we were having was that AOL kept crapping out on me every time I closed down a web page. (It was impossible for me to simply circumvent the problem by getting into the habit of leaving windows open after I finished with them. I mean, geez, think of the air conditioning costs.) Apparently there was a corrupt file somewhere, but replacing and reinstalling AOL didn't do the trick.

Of course, my wife found this out after the tech support people told her to delete the program off the computer, including the filing cabinet containing all my saved e-mails, my bookmarks and preferences... yeah, I'm not pleased. They apparently told her that AOL keeps all this stuff on their online servers, which is of course patently false. (People, if you don't know the answer to a question like this, just say you don't know. Yes, I'll probably be irritated at your incompetence, but I'll be even more irritated if you feel me a line just to make it seem like you know what you're talking about.)

So, I decided to just back up all our personal files and restore the whole damn computer to its original factory settings. This, surprisingly, was not the insurmountable task I'd been expecting. I actually started deleting stuff that wasn't vitally necessary, knowing the small box of discs I'd bought forever ago would barely be enough to hold all the programs I needed, let along all the pictures and songs I'd collected. Then I figured I'd go ahead and start anyway, at least to give me an idea of how many more boxes of CD-RW's I'd need to get. As it happened, the four discs I had were more than sufficient. I stuffed all my songs on one disc with room to spare, and leisurely stored all my programs on another with plenty of room to spare. I'm baffled, to be honest. Media storage sure has come a long way since floppy disks.

The system restore went down without a hitch, and now I've begun the task of reinstalling all my programs (AOLPress, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, the driver for my scanner and digital camera, stuff like that). I'd thought that I could just drop the folders into the same spot I'd grabbed them from, but apparently that's not the case. Oh, well. It's tedious, but ultimately nothing I can't handle.

I will just say here that I sure am putting a lot of time and effort into getting this modern-day convenience back up to speed. Almost makes me long for the days of letter-writing and huge stacks of photocopied drawings.

I'm Just Marking My Territory.

Well, that was fun. I spent the better part of my waking hours (not including time spent at work, of course, during which I exist in more of a zombie-like state) washing out my kitbashing fodder. I've got this large collection of action figures and toy pieces that I've amassed with the eventual intention of creating new projects out of them, but I recently noticed that one of our former cats, the late, great Crosswise, had peed all over the storage bin I'd been keeping them in. Well... actually, I didn't notice quite that recently. It was more like about a month ago. Plus, the poor cat's been dead since October. (You can imagine, thusly, how little time I actually spend in my art room.)

It's a full moon tonight. I guess this is the part of our program where I attach all sorts of unholy significance to how people acted today and the way the stray cats outside are behaving and tie it directly to a visible celestial presence in the sky. (If you ask me, there's nothing supernatural or mystical about a full moon. Yeah, I suppose to some small extent, people/wolves/badgers tend to do all sorts of wild and crazy things when the moon is at its brightest. Know why? Because they can actually see what they're doing. Kind of pointless to go carousing through town when it's pitch black outside.)

That's "Mysspellyngge," With Two G's

Memorial Day weekend wasn't quite the hellish episode I'd been anticipating. I'd sort of assumed everybody was going to pick up their barbecue grills and patio furniture sets and trampolines and swimming pools, but apparently that wasn't the case. Of course, the weather's also been unseasonably cold, so perhaps that ended up working in my favor. (I am by no means a lazy person. I just don't particularly enjoy running around at work like a chicken with his cranial unit having been forcibly and irreparably extracted.)

I will just say that most everyone I dealt with was amazingly, phenomenally rude to me today. My current theory is that people had a three-day weekend, and now they're grumpy and bitter that it's over, so they turn around and take it out on all the people in the service industry who didn't get a three-day weekend because we were too busy catering to all the people having barbecue cookouts and pool parties in fifty-degree weather.

My current pet peeve is people whose names aren't spelled correctly. Yes, I am just obnoxious enough that I'm purporting the notion that you may very well be misspelling your own name. For example, if you tell me your name is David Peterson, and it sounds like David Peterson, it's only natural for me to spell it as I've done so here. It's not like this is some brand-new name that you've plucked out of the ether. If, say, on the off-chance it's really spelled Dayvydde Pedersinne, you have my permission to calmly correct my spelling. You do not have the right to launch into some furious rant and proceed to act as obnoxiously as possible for the rest of our time together on this Earth. It's not my fault that your parents decided to get all cutesy and bastardize a perfectly decent, traditional name and ensure that nobody in the known universe will ever be able to spell it the way you want them to. I realize you're jealous that I have a normally-spelled name that doesn't take gratutious liberties with assorted vowel sounds. Please don't take it out on me.

Sorry, that's been building up for a while now.

I'm slowly in the midst of revamping my web site. It's a long and laborious process, and I don't like it. There are parts of the site I have no interest in touching again, if I can help it. Maybe I should just stick with the kitbashes and fan fiction and get rid of everything else. (Ah, but that would require deleting everything else that's online, and that in itself would take forever. Okay, so maybe I'm a little bit lazy.)

I've got all this creative energy right now and no outlet for it. I have a day off coming up, but I have complete confidence that I'm going to spend the entire day fixing leaky faucets and various other repairs that have needed to be done for the last week or two. It's really rather depressing. I'd hire somebody to do it for me, if I actually had anything resembling money.