Category Archives: Human relations

Homeownership, Human relations

How to throw lightning bolts of consumer recompense

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In our modern society, we too often tolerate the standard responses from our vendors. “That’s just our policy.” “We can’t change that, sir.” “We apologize profusely, but do not plan to compensate you.”

Don’t take that shit.

Here’s how to get some compensation for what was done wrong. It won’t always work; I wouldn’t bet on it working on the Comcastards, for example, or Arrogant Twits & Torturers. But if you don’t believe it can work, let me blow my own horn a little here, and then maybe you will change your mind. Bear in mind that not all letters are negative; good work can and should be highlighted:

I wrote to the CEO of Seafirst Bank (children, there once was a Northwest commercial bank by that name) to praise the conduct of an employee. (Someone had found my lost paycheck, taken it to the nearby branch, the employee had not contented herself with just mailing it to me, and phoned me to verify that it was mine and would I like to come get it. Exceptional.) I also praised her manager, whom I respected very much. The employee got a bonus check. Before long, the manager had a new placard announcing that she was now an AVP. Put it this way: from then on, any remotely reasonable request I made at that branch was considered ‘very reasonable.’

I wrote to Jeff Bezos to straighten out the quagmire of getting my contributing author credits right on books sold at Amazon. I heard from a very nice young man who sliced through the red tape and solved it.

I wrote to Michael Dell about the idiocy of continuing to send me ‘refurbished’ CRT monitors that came up very short in the furbishing department. I got a call from one of his personal assistants, and in less than a week, I had a new monitor. I am looking at it to compose this post.

I wrote to the Benton County PUD (Public Utilities District; stop giggling, you infants) about a stupid policy regarding billing cycles. Simply put, I saw no reason why my billing due date should be tied to my meter-reading date. I wanted to pay promptly in full each month, and I just wanted my bill to show up conveniently. That one was tough, but after four years of campaigning, and one final letter to the commissioners, they did it.

Great Floors left my (at the time, vacant) house a mess. They replaced the carpet, but left shreds of it laying all over the property. Boxcutter blades on the bathroom floor. Dragged the carpeting over freshly painted wall corners, abrading the new paint right off. Tied up the drapes in knots and then didn’t untie them. Turned my heat off and then failed to turn it back on, in a cold climate, in winter. Left the extra carpet out in the winter weather, though there was a perfectly good garage handy. I wrote to the CEO, who tasked the local manager with fixing things. Said local manager tried to blame it all on a painting contractor who had no reason to be in most of the places that had damage, thus attempting to muddy the blame waters. Bad move. I wrote to the CEO again. One person was fired, one was demoted, and I got $500.

Frontier’s technicians were stupid. Not only did the company think I should have to change my email address because they bought the local DSL business from Verizon, but they had no one intelligent enough to figure out why I couldn’t access my email unless I wanted to use Outhouse Express. After a great deal of hellraising, I got them to give me $150 to pay for my new business cards and the headache of changing my address.

Centurylink, in defiance of several pointed requests, not only issued me a published phone number, but put me in the phone book. The Federal do-not-call list works about as well as most Federal anything, so that was no help. Every beg-a-thon in Boise dialed my number. In the end, I got them to give me a compensatory discount every month for a year, plus not charge me for an unlisted number in the future.

A Yakima Federal S&L loan rep promised me something, then failed to keep his promise when I’d gotten my paperwork together. “Sorry, program closed.” Not so fast, son, I’ve been at this a long time. I eventually called my way up to the chief lending officer. After a polite discussion where we got past all the usual fluff and were being fully candid, he said, “That’ll leave a lot of money on the table over the years.” “True,” I said. “And I will have all twenty of those years to tell everyone who will listen that YakFed is a highly principled bank that keeps its commitments.” He thought for a moment. “Done,” he said.

Bear in mind that if you call, you must follow the same principles as you’d follow if you wrote a letter. There are many more examples, but now do you believe me?

Good. Here’s what you do.

The Tale of Woe. First go through the normal channels. Sit on hold. Write down names and dates. Act like the typical dufus who can easily be blown off. You will spend a lot of time on hold, talking to foreigners who can’t solve your problem or compensate you fairly, getting annoyed a little more by the minute. Just take notes. The Tale of Woe gives you a story to tell about how you tried the normal process and were treated shabbily. There is also the chance–rare, but non-zero–that the normal channels may actually resolve your problem. That would be nice, too.

The Manager. Once you determine that the normal channels are a fail, call back and ask to speak to the manager. Explain that you are very frustrated and don’t want to tell the whole story twice, and that you don’t want to take out your frustrations on the person who answered the phone, as you know that isn’t fair. Try The Manager, who probably can’t solve your problem, but make a good faith effort anyway. (Stupid or unempowered customer service people are usually a reflection of middle management incompetence and evil, so I wouldn’t expect too much.) Continue to compile the Tale of Woe.

The Lightning Bolt. If you are not exceptionally articulate, find a friend who is. If you have no friends who are exceptionally articulate, then you should befriend some of us. We are helpful to have in your world. Find out who the CEO is, and find out how to mail him or her a letter–call the corporate office. Reassure them that you just want to write a letter and that a PO box is fine, lest in our modern paranoid day the receptionist suspects that you are headed over with a van full of bad things. Then throw the Lightning Bolt, which is a letter designed to persuade. Follow these principles:

  • You must have fairly paid all money that you legitimately owe. People with bad payment histories have no leverage. You must always maintain an exemplary payment history, even if your notion of exemplary is different than theirs–you must be able to articulate it, show that it’s reasonable, and prove that you live by it.
  • Do your level best to keep it to one page. Bear in mind that if you succeed, a minion will be assigned to investigate, so no need to take a ton of time.
  • Spell names correctly, use gender-neutral language where suitable, and say Mr. or Ms. (or Dr., etc.). Take the time to get this exactly right. ‘Ms. Lynn Smith’ may actually be Mr. Lynn Smyth. Spelling correctly shows respect.
  • Write respectfully. You are pleading your case to a busy executive, an important person whose time is finite. You want the reader to see you as a wonderful customer who has been treated odiously by the firm, and who can be satisfied.
  • Be reasonable. If your position seems in any way unreasonable, you will get nowhere. Do not unfairly malign any person involved, or present an unreasonable wish. The customer isn’t always right, and only fools think s/he is. Reality: the customer is as right as the firm can possibly make him or her without giving away the store.
  • Be satisfiable. If you offer no hint as to what would make you happy, there is minimal reason for someone to attempt to please you. Offer a path to full restoration of your confidence and respect.
  • If at any point in the Tale of Woe, you got frustrated and were too harsh with someone, fess to it in some way, and apologize.
  • The Tale of Woe needs to be involved enough for you to keep one key painful event in reserve, so that if you are asked if that’s all there was, it isn’t.
  • No matter how difficult this is, avoid statements that sound like telling the CEO how to run the company. Those will be resented. The way around that is:
  • Above all, frame it in the firm’s business interest. You are writing to a very successful businessperson who wants the company to do well. You must present the case for why the change you want, or the recompense you want, works in the firm’s business interest. Retaining good customers? Positive PR? Rewarding people who pay promptly and in full? To appeal to a politician, you’d frame it in terms of the support you can mobilize and offer. To appeal to a business person, frame it in terms of doing the best business for the firm.
  • Offer something in return. First, make clear that this would satisfy you, because one good ‘something in return’ is making you go away happy. I swore to Benton County PUD to physically drop off my payment each month, just to make dead sure that when they changed the due date to make me happy, I would never be late, ever. You read what I promised the YakFed lending chief; I went him one better, and brought him my business again when we bought a house in their catchment area. I promised Centurylink to endure a year of phone nags without complaining to them about it again.
  • Normally I would say you should make sure to assure the CEO that if s/he calls you, you will be polite and reasonable, but think about it. If the tone of your letter fails to convey that without having to specify it, then your letter is already a fail. Write in such a way that the CEO might actually like speaking with you.
  • If you get bought off, stay bought. If you make a promise, keep it in every particular.
  • Thank the executive for his or her time and attention.
  • Provide your full contact information, because you’ll be hearing back.

Sometimes the CEO will call you in person–this happened to me with a credit union–but most of the time you should expect the CEO to hand this off to an assistant and say, “Fix this.” Expect the assistant to call and check your facts. If you overstated your case, you will look terrible. If you were a complete jackass, you will look terrible. If you lied, you will look terrible. If you don’t pay your bills, you will look terrible. If the assistant smells bullshit, the CEO does not expect him or her to waste the company’s time and money on a liar or a deadbeat, and will back the assistant when s/he phones you with nothing more substantive than a verbal apology.

You had better have been factual, if anything understating the pain. If you got even a little frustrated, your apology for the way you vented the frustration needs to have been in that letter. If you craft your words correctly, you will seem like the world’s best customer and most reasonable person, just seeking to do high-quality business with the firm, and that your business was treated as though it had no value, but that they can make it up to you.

Then let them.

=========

If you can’t bear to read a long letter, skip this addendum.

Here I include a sample Lightning Bolt, plus the follow-up letter (always of value, especially when the business is smaller and more local. It reminds me that I got the story slightly wrong above, but that’s okay, because the truth as presented is even more entertaining. First, here is my letter to the Commissioners of Benton PUD, all of whom I researched for useful references that would help me frame my position. It couldn’t fit in one page, but here I had a protracted tale to tell:

—

June 18, 2008

  • Mr. Jeff Hall
  • Ms. Lori Sanders
  • Mr. Robert Bertsch
  • Benton P.U.D.
  • POB 6270
  • Kennewick, WA 99336

Re: P.U.D. account #[number]

Dear Commissioners:

We’re having a P.U.D. migraine, and we hope you can help us.

We are P.U.D. customers with service at [address], Kennewick. When we bought this home nearly seven years ago, we discovered that our P.U.D. billing cycle could vary as much as nine days, depending on when the meter was read. This concerned us (not the meter reading itself, simply the billing), for we are rigorously creditworthy people who pay all their bills—in full—on the 4th, 5th or 6th of each month. (Exact timing depends on weekends and holidays. We don’t even take vacations during that time.) Where necessary, we work with vendors to ensure that their bills show up in time to pay them promptly. As a result, our credit is excellent.

Unfortunately, the irregular billing meant that sometimes we had the P.U.D. bill in time to pay, and sometimes not. When we first saw the situation, seven years back, we phoned the billing office to seek a solution. The representative brusquely told us that the billing system couldn’t be changed and that we’d just have to live with it. We didn’t expect the meter-reading route to change for one household; we just wanted to get our bill at the same time every month, in time to pay it immediately. Evidently, that was considered unreasonable.

We didn’t appreciate the brush-off, and decided that if that’s how the P.U.D. felt, we would simply pay whatever P.U.D. bill(s) we had in hand when we paid all our other vendors. In practice, that meant that some months we had one bill, some months none, and some months two plus a late fee. Whatever was there, we paid. Having tried hard to repair the situation, we resented those late fees, but since one can’t really switch electricity vendors, we had no choice but to clench our teeth and pay them.

We operated that way for about four years. Once a year we would phone the P.U.D. office, again seeking a resolution, and each year we got the same answer. We still felt our request was reasonable, so we didn’t back down.

In 2005, the annual phone call finally paid off. The billing department put us on what we now understand is called a Protected Billing Cycle, and we in turn agreed to an unusual step: henceforth we would hand deliver the P.U.D. payment to the drop box, rather than entrusting it to the mail. As we saw it, since the utility had met our request, we had the ethical duty to ensure that we were never late (even by accident). We felt we had a mutual understanding, and it delighted us to keep our bargain—which our account history will demonstrate that we have. We subscribed to your Green Power initiative; given the evidence of good stewardship, we knew you’d use the money wisely.

With our May 2008 billing, we received a survey. We were pleased to rate the P.U.D. favorably in all categories, and included a special note of praise for the billing resolution. We included it with our payment.

Imagine our surprise when our next invoice came, and the due date was June 30! We’d like to hope that someone didn’t read our survey and hand it to a supervisor who said, “What special billing arrangement? Cancel it!” It looked as if the P.U.D. had abrogated our understanding without even so much as the courtesy of a notice, and without the slightest provocation by us. Most likely it was a coincidence; if so, its timing was awful.

Surely there had to be some mistake, so one of us (Jonathan) stopped by the Kennewick office to speak to a supervisor. We discussed it at length; the supervisor pulled our payment history and verified our claims. Her answer was that the P.U.D. was doing away with these Protected Billing Cycles, and our turn had simply come. We made most of the points we have made in this letter; she remained unmoved. She offered various justifications and suggestions, but the short version was ‘sorry, tough luck.’ She invited us to write to the Commissioners.

Very well.

Our position was and is simple. We are honest people who just want to get our bill on time and pay it promptly in full. We submit that we are your dream customers. What percent of your customers try to weasel out of paying? Probably more than a few. Those people harm us all; they deserve no accommodations from the utility. We, however, are the people who can and wish to pay.

All of you are successful businesspeople outside the P.U.D., so we hardly need point out that every business wants reliable customers who use the product or service, make no spurious complaints, and pay promptly in full. We believe you’d agree with this statement: any business practice that makes it harder for willing customers to pay promptly in full fails a fundamental test of good business.

What, then, do we ask of you? Simple as can be: assure that our monthly bill is mailed in time to arrive by the end of each month, with a due date not earlier than the tenth of the next month. That’s all. For our part, we will assure prompt payment in full each month: we’ll make sure you never regret it. In short, we would like a return to the fair and helpful understanding that resolved the longstanding awkwardness (for a couple of years, at least). We have made every effort to resolve this amicably over the years, to the P.U.D.’s advantage as well as our own. We feel we have earned an affirmative reply.

The representative at Kennewick did offer one creative idea for us to propose, and we wish to credit her for it. Perhaps, she suggested, the Protected Billing Cycle concept might be reinstated as a benefit available only to clients with outstanding payment histories. That makes sense to us. We would surely qualify, and it would reward the most responsible, honest customers. We’re open to any solution that puts our bill in our mailbox by month-end, due by the tenth of the next month, so that we have it in hand to pay in full.

We don’t think it’s too much to ask. We hope you’ll concur.

Sincerely,

[us, address, phone number]

—

The short version is that they did as we asked. To make them feel excellent about having done so, we followed up:

—

July 22, 2008

[the same people]

Dear Commissioners:

Today we received a call from [employee’s full name] about the billing cycle issue pursuant to our previous letter, and she informed us that the Protected Billing Cycle will be reinstated for our account.

We could hardly be more delighted. We want to thank you for a) taking our concerns seriously, b) recognizing our strong payment history in a proactive way, c) solving the issue to our complete satisfaction, and d) assigning Paula to the communication task. She made an excellent impression for the utility: professional, pleasant and informative.

We were confident that if we described the full situation, we would receive a fair and considerate hearing. Obviously our confidence was well-placed—and just as obviously, the public trust is very well-placed in the hands of the current commission.

For our part, you can be assured that our payment history will remain exemplary. The P.U.D. deserves that of us, and you shall have it.

Sincerely,

[us]

—

We never again needed to ask the Benton PUD for anything, but I suspect that if we had, a phone call to that employee would have obtained us the most favorable consideration. Note also that those PUD Commissioner slots are elective positions. While I wasn’t so crass as to come out and promise them my vote, be assured that they got the message. It spoke to their personal as well as business interests.

Anyway, that’s how it looks with live ammunition.

Human relations

Dealing with Liam

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I’m going to try and convey something in as balanced a way as I can.

Imagine someone had a child, but not quite a normal child. Let’s name him Liam, since everyone else is.

Imagine Liam, aged about four, did the following:

  • Went about nude most times, urinating and defecating in full view–outdoors if possible, indoors if necessary.
  • Considered it fairly normal to step in his own feces.
  • Cleansed his posterior regions with his bare left hand, without washing afterward.
  • If not restrained, would leap on all adults, wiping his left hand on them with vigor.
  • Made a significant mess while eating or drinking.
  • Was prone to vomit what he ate or drank, with minimal preamble.
  • Stank, and left his odor on everyone and everything he touched, which was everywhere he could arrange.
  • Had a primitive enough understanding of sex that he attempted it with all other children, no matter how public the setting.
  • Had breath that could–if he got close enough–make an adult physically ill.
  • Consumed vomit and feces at times.
  • Carried a small spiked club in his right hand, knew how to use it, and threatened its use when frightened.
  • Demanded constant attention and companionship, acting out when he didn’t get it.
  • Could and would, without apology or thought, pump out astonishing clouds of intestinal gas.
  • At the slightest sense of excitement, began to yell full throat.
  • Spat upon people as a form of affection.
  • Destroyed random pieces of valuable property and considered it a fun game.
  • Was immune to physical discipline, as a child, by anyone but his parents, who would be moved to violence should anyone smack Liam.
  • Would not learn much from being smacked anyway, even if smacking a child weren’t on the ‘stuff we don’t do’ list.

Now, suppose that Liam’s parents:

  • Adored him, thought he was the cutest thing, and did not know what they would do without Liam.
  • Talked baby talk to him, quite frequently, whether he understood it or not, in the middle of otherwise normal conversations with other adults.
  • Considered Liam an excellent judge of character, and disliked anyone who recoiled from him.
  • Told those who recoiled from Liam: “He just wants to love you.”
  • Let him frolic at random in public, heedless of his effect on random strangers.
  • Knew that Liam would never hurt anyone, ever–even when threatening someone with the spiked club.
  • Could not grasp why some people did not adore and embrace their wonderful Liam as they did.
  • Expected these people to adjust their inner feelings and desires to correct this failure to adore and embrace.
  • Carried out almost missionary-like efforts to teach them how they could learn to enjoy Liam, invalidating the true inner feelings of Liam’s non-enthusiasts.
  • Were incapable of grasping, on any level, the reality that the best thing for Liam was that he and anyone who did not enjoy him should not be caused to mingle without urgent need.
  • Without knowing or caring how many Liam-like children an individual had helped or been kind to in the past (in spite of the ick factor), condemned that individual simply for trying to avoid Liam and his smells and secretions.

Liam is a typical dog. The above is how this particular dog-phobe experiences him. Thus:

  • I grasp that you love your dog, and perhaps all dogs.
  • I grasp that s/he is a family member. I do not understand it, but I do not expect you to justify the logic. I accept it without debate, partly because I know it’s how you feel, and partly because I hope you will not reiterate it to me one more time. You do not need to. It is understood, not questioned.
  • I grasp that, to you, your dog is not dangerous, but is loving.
  • I grasp that you find failure to love dogs inconceivable.
  • I grasp that you think your dog is the special exception whose pure love and goodness can convert me.
  • I grasp that you think the cure is for me to change.
  • I grasp that you wish to help me change, so that I too can adore dogs.

Thing is:

  • I do not want to change how I feel.
  • It has gotten more pronounced over my lifetime.
  • I do not ask you to change how you feel, either.
  • The #1 thing that made it worse was uncomprehending dog owners who pushed dogs on me, or treated me unkindly, as if somehow my standpoint were fundamentally wrong and bad.
  • If that had never happened, so many times, who knows what might have happened to my perspective. But it did, over and over, adding conditioning and accumulated frustration to a fundamental aversion. It was cumulative.
  • Yes, my wife has dogs. I treat them humanely and endure them in my home. If you are absorbing this, you probably grasp that this is a supreme manifestation of my adoration for her.
  • I do not want your dog to suffer. If someone were harming your dog for no reason, I would stop them. If your dog got loose, and wandered onto my property, and I recognized it as your dog, I would make sure it was safe, and you got it back safe and sound.
  • I do not blame your dog for being a dog.
  • I am only trying to put distance between me and the dog.
  • I accept that this is not 100% possible.
  • When it is not possible, I try very hard to maintain.
  • Considering how I feel, that requires enormous discipline on my part.
  • If I am visibly uncomfortable, I would be grateful for your understanding and patience.
  • If I can maintain when I feel like most people would feel if someone threw a used diaper at them, I hope that you look on the positive side and see me as trying very, very hard to meet the situation more than halfway.
  • I accept that my aversion does not constitute urgency or requirement on your part.
  • I would value your kindness and understanding.
  • If I can humanely avoid your dog, and you can accept that I wish to without deciding to hate me, then we have a good understanding.

That’s all I want: the right to back away, to gently detour the dog with a foot, to avoid the feeling of being grossed out. And not to be judged a bad person, or someone in need of dog immersion therapy, which is the attitude that got me to this stage.

One dog owner once told me she felt very sorry for me, because there was a wondrous love and joy I’d never know. Fair enough, from her perspective. I love Stilton cheese, but if the fact that it smells like slippers worn too often with bare feet revolts you, also fair enough. I won’t pressure you to eat it.

After all, it smells like slippers worn too often with bare feet.

Editing/writing life, Homeownership, Human relations

Filtering referrals

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Today, I give myself a little permission to wander and reminisce.

Where possible, I think most of us prefer to select vendors and providers by referrals. There’s only one problem with that: motive.

Many years ago, I served in the trenches of the IBM/Microsoft War as the rough equivalent of a corporal. I did this in downtown Bellevue, Washington, about five miles from the Microsoft campus in Redmond. It was easy to tell a fully vested Microsoft guy, because he was likely to come in looking like hell, spend a few thousand dollars at whatever price you quoted, and do wonders for your numbers. I made $500 per month plus 15% of the gross profit on whatever I sold, which meant that if my margin (profit) stayed good and I had a good December, $30K per year was achievable enough. Like most sales-driven organizations, the sales staff ran the store, and functioned as the default executive committee. Whoever generated the most money for the company had the most say. As I look back, it was a sign of the owner’s wisdom that he took such good care of the non-commissioned support staff. Had he not done so, we would have been tyrants.

The owner was an American success story. As I understood the history, his family had fled the Chinese mainland for Taiwan with the Kuomintang when the Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists. They had killed his father. The family had emigrated to the United States, where young Chang Te-Lung–whom I would know as just ‘Telung’–became a Hoosier, and a Boeing electrical engineer. As he would remind me now and then, Mr. Chang had been an American citizen longer than I had. Sometime in the early days of the PC revolution, he and his wife Mei-O had started a retail PC business, which had grown through a combination of hard work and Mr. Chang’s technical understanding of electronics. By the time he hired me, I think he had about twenty-five employees, nine of whom were sales staff.

Mr. Chang had some eccentricities, including a certain amount of preachiness about his Buddhist beliefs, and was a man of his times in terms of mild general prejudices, but he was also a hell of a businessman and a fundamentally good man. When I decided it was time for me to move on, he offered to list my reason for leaving as ‘position eliminated,’ so that I could collect unemployment. Later, when I became a bookkeeper and began paying payroll taxes, I understood that this had been a very generous gesture on his part. Mr. Chang has passed on in recent years, and I miss him. I learned about a third as much from him as I would have had I been more mature and less selfish, but even that third made a difference.

In those days, for me, referrals had far less to do with “This provider provides excellent products and/or services” and more often meant “I see an opportunity to send some business this provider’s way.” You might say that I tended to be in referral debt, and was always trying to find ways to catch up. Now I’m in the same position, fielding the same referrals. I am gearing up to sell a house. Everyone I know has an agent s/he wants me to call. Almost none of those I have called have impressed me; most have just chanted the usual fifteen minutes of real estate bullshit, then seemed irritated when I asked anything of substance.

It was immature, certainly. I should have made referrals based only upon my perception of the person’s best interest seeking goods or services. And nowadays, in more mature years, I do. I learned yesterday that a typesetter has completely jacked around a client of mine. When you demand advance payment before releasing inferior work, full of mistakes, you do bad business. I don’t even know this typesetter’s full name yet, but I can tell you two things:

  • Nearly every new client asks me where to go for typesetting. I need capable typesetters to whom I may refer clients.
  • I will make sure I get her full name, so I make sure never to send anyone to her. She has also tarnished the name of her referrer.

That also is part of the dance: referrals reflect back.

So, the moral here is this: when someone tries to refer you to a friend, take a look at who that someone is. Is s/he in sales? If so, is s/he in a mode of needing to make sure one hand washes the other, in a way that could mean that s/he made the referral simply because they are in the same Leads Club (every Tuesday morning at Denny’s)? If so, then it’s questionable. Because with certain people in certain economic situations, it’s not disinterested. My home inspector tried to steer me to a listing agent. I heard nothing from that agent that would make me see why I should be impressed. I do know for sure that home inspectors get a lot of referrals from agents, and this inspector won’t get the chance to make any more money from me in life, so he must look to those from whom he can. That’s why the referral. It has nothing to do with actual endorsement of a blowhard part-timer who can’t even mail a damn business card when asked.

Have a great Christmas Eve, and remember: a lot of folks tonight will turn keys in cars when not in condition to drive. I hope that the ‘Lancer’s faithful will not be among them. Be safe, and ride only with those who also be safe.

Human relations, Privacy, Social comment

What we don’t do about phone scammers

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Are you a bit amazed that we still deal with phone harassment roughly the same as we did at the advent of caller ID, with no advancements? (We got caller ID in the 1990s, around the time cell phones were still big enough to use as bludgeons.)

If you think about it, our telephone providers in all forms could easily enable us to block calls from any number we wished. Yet they do not; it is treated as almost a constitutional right for any jackass, scammer, charity or freak to bother us at any hour, unless it rises above the considerable threshold for the law to pretend to care. And the only solution our precious government could devise was a new government program called the ‘do not call’ list, which doesn’t work well even on domestic harassers, and has zero impact on foreign harassers. Easiest thing in the world: a law requiring telephone providers to permit a phone number’s owner to block calls from chosen numbers. Wasn’t even up for consideration.

This is a good example of why whether something is legal or illegal is never a factor in my judgment of its morality. It always amazes me when someone confuses the two, as if law were moral. Morality is about behavior; the options we select. Law is about control, and nothing else. Conflate the two, and you let a bunch of people so stupid and/or evil they will not give you a way to block a phone number dictate right and wrong to you.

Human relations

A thought on outliving people

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As we age, there’s a terrible temptation to think in terms of outliving: our enemies, witnesses to our humiliations, those who know secrets. There are two problems with the mentality, both serious.

  1. The longer you live, the shorter-lived your pleasure with each outlived person/mistake.
  2. The more you adopt this mentality, the more the world looks forward to the years without you.

Have a good weekend, and think positive.

Human relations, Married life

Is the relationship a jail or a resort?

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My wife recently posted something about toxic relationships. Since she and I have both experienced those, we know a bit about why people don’t just leave them.

As I thought about the difference, I recognized that in broad terms, there are two ways to maintain a relationship. I think some people commingle the two. The paths are simple: one can either make it perilous, cumbersome, or guilt-fraught to leave, or one can give a partner incentives to stay because life is better.

In other terms, one can run a relationship as a jail, or as a resort. Some relationship jails are humane enough, just hard to escape from. Others are places of constant, brutal interrogation. I know people who, if their partner transgressed against them, would never leave the relationship–and not out of fear. “And miss the ability to punish him/her for years?”

If one manages one’s side of the relationship like a resort, giving him or her reasons to stay, one is a partner.

If one manages it like a jail, presenting mostly barriers to escape, one is a prison warden. And if the reason for confinement is to inflict suffering, one is also a terrorist.

Then again, the same could apply to much of life.

If a parent assures filial devotion through kindness, wisdom, support and gratitude for past sacrifice, that’s a parent.

If a parent commands filial devotion through browbeating, passive aggression, fear of disapproval, withdrawal of affection, and/or threat of disinheritance, that’s not a parent. That’s a jailer and and a terrorist.

If a supervisor retains employees through competitive pay, a positive environment, quality leadership and personal growth potential, the workplace is a resort.

If a supervisor keeps them through fear of starvation, gaslighting, constant dicking over, and changing expectations on the fly, the workplace is a jail. The supervisor isn’t a manager, but a terrorist.

If police spend most of their energy in the primary role of preventing harm to people who generally do the right thing, and helping them when they have problems, they are resort security.

If police are mostly occupied with reasons to catch right-doers in the occasional wrong, they are jailers. If the purpose is to intimidate, they are also terrorists. If the purpose is revenue, they are organized criminals. If the purpose is their personal gratification, they are sadists.

If a soldier points a weapon at your enemies, and blocks their path to reach you, s/he is your defender.

If a soldier points his or her weapon at you, to compel your obedience or submission, s/he is your jailer.

If government spends most of its energy figuring out ways to empower and help people, it is resort management, inspiring voluntary compliance for the common good.

If government spends most of its time inventing new reasons why people can’t go here, do this, have that, it’s a prison warden. If it does so mainly through bullying and fear, it engages in terrorism. Its minions who take pleasure in this are sadists.

Maybe if one spends a portion of one’s life in a virtual jail under intimidation and terror, it’s easier to accept that jail, intimidation, and terror are just normal life, the eternal state of humanity.

Maybe if we’re going to fight against terrorism, we should begin with our families, homes, workplaces, streets, and highways.

Adventures, Human relations, Social comment

A fairly typical shopping trip

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Like most mild misanthropes who work for themselves in home offices, I don’t make excuses to go start my truck every day. When I need to be out and about, I try to fit in as many accumulated errands as I can. Today was such a day. After I finished the first editing pass on a ms (that’s literary insider snob-speak for ‘manuscript’), I girded up my loins to face the surface friendliness and automotive overpopulation of the Boise metropolitan area.

Why don’t I just use public transportation? Because the Boise public transportation system amounts to an old guy named Fred with a van, and only goes from this one spot to that one spot, and only makes two trips a day. Every time Fred suggests expanding the route, his employer changes his schedule, cuts his hours, and reminds him that in Idaho, short of tying him up and torturing him in a manner resulting in permanent disfigurement, legally his employer can do to him whatever that employer wants. Jobs more than 25¢ above Idaho’s Federal minimum wage are hard to come by, so Fred doesn’t make waves. His second and third jobs are worse, anyway.

When it gets over 90º F, my truck isn’t that much fun to drive. I’m too cheap to equip it with air conditioning, making it a high priority to avoid long stretches at a complete stop. The drag: the most convenient/typical area for my errands is Eagle Road, a.k.a. Idaho Highway 55. It’s one of those horrible non-highways that still has a highway speed limit, even though development has turned it into a congested arterial street. Everyone expects you to compete for pole position in the Boise 500 by speeding up to at least 50 mph, then braking back for yet another red light. Turning left from Eagle Road into a parking lot, or onto it from one, is for Boise novices. One plans Eagle Road in terms of right turns and side-street escape routes.

The first stop was to get my mail and deposit an insurance refund check. Other than the giant peanut bus in front of the grocery store (what, yours doesn’t have that? Heart. Eat. Out.), I was bored already and would rather just have said a bad word and gone home, but then I got the inspiration to stop into the juice bar next to my mail place. The fancy juice fad began about thirty years ago, far as I’m aware, and I had never tried any before. I’m told they are a major thing–people say things like “I didn’t juice for two days,” as if juicing were a verb, akin to pooping or bathing. There’s a clause in my life contract that says I must turn my nose up at all fads until they become passé, so by my calendar, I was right on schedule.

The juicery offered a dizzying selection of tutti-frutti slushies, plus wheatgrass juice. “Okay. My kidneys aren’t too great, so how about a slug of whatever you think is detoxey, with some wheatgrass juice.” The young lady explained that the normal method was to have the wheatgrass juice on the side as a shot. “Oh, like tequila,” I beamed, happy to leverage my core competencies in a synergistic paradigm. I stepped over to pay ($8.65, most of which was for the fruit slushie…good lord), then sat down to watch what they might do.

The young lady went to the back wall of the juice bar and took down a small lawn. It resembled what I had mowed earlier this morning, only smaller. She extracted a bunch of live grass from the little yard, put it in some sort of machine, and out flowed about a shot’s worth of something you’d expect to see seeping from Spock’s spear wound when the Cowabunga tribe of Beta Testis 2 took exception to Kirk horning up on the hot princess. She brought it to me with an orange slice. “So is this going to be like Fear Factor?” I asked. “Not quite. You’ll only make it worse if you fool around.” (Translation: “Don’t be a wuss.”) Thus admonished by advice of competent counsel, I picked up the shot cup and pounded Spock’s blood. It was not nearly as disgusting as I’d expected; it tasted like a lawn, but with a note of sweetness. She encouraged me to munch the orange slice. “Ma’am, if I do that, I will have a beard full of sticky OJ. This is probably not a problem you’ll ever have to confront.” She agreed that this was so. The fruit slushie was fine, though I wouldn’t say it was $8 fine. Two hours later, nothing bad has happened to me, so I guess we’ll see if it does any good. If I have Saturn V-level colonblow later, I’ll know who to thank.

Off to Dick’s Sporting Goods, where my mission was one of retribution: I sought the nastiest, most ear-piercing whistle I could find. Of late, I have endured daily scam callers claiming to be from ‘Microsoft Support.’ They explain that my computer has a virus, and I should go to a certain webpage so they can fix it for me. After trying answering in Hebrew or Irish, bellowing bad words, claiming not to own a computer, even accusing their ancestors of frankly revolting sex habits, I’ve decided that pure pain is the way to go. I got a cheap orange boat whistle for $3. When I got into the truck, I elected to test the thing in a closed space.

We won’t be doing that again. I’m surprised my windshield didn’t shatter. I will actually need to cover my ears when I cut loose with this bad boy. Go ahead, suckers, give me a call.

The grocery shopping was dull, except for smiling young lady bagging groceries at Rosauer’s, author of the wrong kind of suspense. For some reason, Rosauer’s has a great grocery store with the worst baggers in grocery history. Blueberries? Broken open and dumped out due to careless tossing in sideways. Big chip bags? Stuffed together so that one couldn’t possibly lift that bag by the handles. Gods only know what happens if you get anything at the deli–they’d probably put the hot stuff right next to your ice cream. Not planning to complain, just bag my own in the future.

The conventional wisdom says that you are supposed to complain to the manager about stuff like that. But really, why? Why get in trouble a poor, rather dense minimum wage serf who really has no reason to give a damn about my groceries or her job, thanks to Idaho’s general working conditions and wage situation, which are in the category of ‘Enslaved Inca Silver Miners’? “Well, so that the manager can fix it!” But why is that my job, why do I think that will happen, and why should I even care? This manager has presumably had months to supervise and observe, and has made not one dent in the situation. Furthermore, I’m the customer. I’m the one who pays. Why am I to provide a volunteer service to a for-profit enterprise? Manage your own people, lady. I’ll just deal with it on my own henceforth. And if it slows down the register, oh, gee, well, sorry about that. Smile, smile, smile.

Boring things done, tried something new only thirty years after it was introduced, set myself up to start punching back at slimy creatures, managed to control frustration and not embarrass minwage serf. Was not rear-ended while braking for yellow light, harassed by bored deputies. Flipped off Hobby Lobby twice.

Around these parts, we count that as a good outing.

Human relations

Aging

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Aging is when:

You finally start to figure out what is baloney, and what is real.

It’s too late in life for you to profit much from that.

You look around for people who can, who have more time.

You learn that most of them just aren’t ready to absorb it.

You understand, because at their age, you wouldn’t have absorbed it either. How else did this take you so long?

You either make peace with that, or not.

If you do, you at least aren’t alone.

Human relations, Social comment

You’ve got fermented fish!

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Wouldn’t that have been a nice, amusing option for AOL’s mail announcement?

A long time ago, when I was in my fifth year of college and taking three languages at once, I had a part-time job delivering mail in Mercer Hall at the University of Washington. Mercer was part of what was called the South Campus complex of Terry, Lander and Mercer Halls. Mercer was smallest, housing perhaps four hundred residents. It was a quiet dorm with two separate wings, and had a high population of rather laid-back Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. In 2011, UW demolished it to make room for a larger dorm (scroll down, look for a short brick building).

The South Campus central mailroom was in Terry Hall (also now demolished), which also provided front desk services to all three dorms, so that’s where the mail landed. The gal who did the Terry mail had a great gig, and the Lander mail was also pretty good–you could get from Terry to Lander without being rained on, and there was only one mailroom to service. The worst job of the three was the Mercer mail. When the Lander job opened up, I asked to transfer, but the supervisor refused. Mercer had long been a source of acrimonious complaints about the mail and its bearer; my arrival had ended them, and he didn’t want to risk the complaints coming back. I learned an important lesson about management: they don’t care about rewarding you. Management does what is expedient for management, and if that means rewarding good work by keeping you in a worse position, that’s fine with management. This is why ‘loyalty to the employer’ means nothing unless personally earned by a given manager.

Doing mail in Mercer required sorting it by wing, carrying 1-3 plastic bins of mail about half a block through the rain, then delivering one batch while either a) closing oneself in a stuffy little mailroom, or b) leaving the top of the Dutch door open, enabling students to ask one to just hand them their mail, and having to tell them no. (Many thought it was asking too much to expect them to use their keys to unlock their own boxes, and felt I should just hand it to them.) Repeat for the other wing. Trudge back to Terry in rain.

Handing them the mail was an issue, because the management impressed upon us that we’d better obey the rules. Specifically, the rules of the almighty U.S. Postal Service, which gets to be a business when it wants to market itself, but a government agency when it wants its rules enforced. In particular, we were advised, we had better deliver every scrap of the voluminous junk mail that often burdened me with two extra bins of nothing but crap, lest we face hefty fines and potential imprisonment. I believed them, and I almost never just handed anyone their mail.

Thus, I delivered everything. For parcels, I left package slips. I checked the mailroom shelves, and if residents did not pick up their parcels, I made out reminder package slips. I didn’t know how to send anything back, nor if we could, and in any case I was more than a little intimidated by the warnings. As long as I kept attempting conscientious delivery, I wouldn’t be in trouble. No one expected me to be responsible for people’s refusal to pick up their care packages.

One autumn day, I believe, a padded hard-cardboard mailer arrived from a town I recognized as being on the Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon. I filled out the package slip and delivered it. For days, then weeks, the package was still there every time I checked the shelves, and I continued to prepare and deliver appropriate package slips. After six weeks, a brown and reeking fluid began to seep out of the parcel. At that point, I was pretty sure it was smoked fish of some sort, and that it was now well past the lutefisk state. I didn’t ask the boss what to do because I didn’t want to risk being accused of unwillingness to deliver the package, or of obstructing the mail. Seems stupid at this remove, but that was a good gig to have, and I was young. I didn’t want to lose it, or even to risk it. It was easier to just keep filling out the package slips, and for three months, I did so.

I also picked up some work substituting in at the Terry desk, and one fine day a young lady showed up with a package slip: she of the many notices. At last! I saw no point in mentioning anything about the past package slips. I retrieved the mailer, its leakage having dried up to a disgusting brown stain on the underside. She signed the slip, accepted her parcel, and began to open it as she headed for the elevator bank.

The expression on her face when she opened it was not one of pleasure. Seems she released and inhaled the full confined force of the goodness. I tried not to be heard or seen laughing, but it didn’t last long. She soon tossed the wretched mess into the handy trash can by the elevators.

The moral of the story is to check your mail now and then. What if someone sent you smoked fish?

Adventures, Human relations

Queen’s guard

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I once was, of sorts, for a day. And on that day I learned a great lesson.

Back in 1983, when I was in Army ROTC at the University of Washington, Reagan had invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit the Pacific Northwest. I suspect everyone was stunned when Her Majesty took the President up on his offer. One stop on the Royal tour was a visit to UW. She would do whatever else she did, put in an appearance and give a speech at Hec Ed (the basketball arena), then move on.

The word went out at the Husky Battalion in Clark Hall: no more than twenty volunteers were needed, with the duty of assisting the Secret Service and UWPD (or ‘U-Pud,’ as it was most often called) with security. A similar number were accepted from the AFROTC squadron and NROTC battalion, both of which also headquartered in Clark Hall: I think the Air Force was on the third floor, Navy on the second, and we were downstairs. A lot of us knew each other, especially through our Ranger FTXes (‘futtockses,’ or Field Training Exercises). The Marine Option NROTC midshipmen were most interested in joining us for fun-filled weekends getting soaked and freezing our asses off at Ft. Lewis, but a few Air Force cadets also participated.

The volunteer list filled up in record time, and I was fortunate enough to secure a spot. When the day arrived, we were to show up at some side entrance at Hec Ed, very early, in dress uniforms with white pistol belts. We would not be armed. One of our cadre officers, a captain in Special Forces, wore a pistol in a skeleton holster under the back of his dress jacket. If I recall correctly, a Secret Service officer at least perfunctorily searched us, or at least ritually asked us if we were carrying any weapons. We gathered around for a briefing from a Secret Service officer.

Each of us would be stationed at some specified point, shown on a chart with sections described by who would inhabit them. Mine was the Queen’s Tea Party, from whom no threat was expected, just in case you got the impression that I was about to have to do anything brave. The SS explained the pins worn by the various security contingents; a small enameled sheriff’s star pin would denote Secret Service personnel. A similar pin with the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) emblem marked those. Cheaper pins with one letter each would signal armed personnel, whom I presume mostly came from UWPD and were not in uniform, and others with varying duties.

In those days I was bursting with nationalism and patriotism, vastly honored to be representing my nation before an allied head of state, and even though the former have been beaten out of me by life, the latter honor hasn’t faded for me. It was the rarest of privileges. While the SS didn’t expect trouble, it had already been made clear to us (by the cadre) that in the gravest unforeseen extreme, we were to act toward a threat by sacrificing our lives if necessary. Not that I’d get much chance to, in such a case, since I would be facing away from the bleachers, but the point was made.

So we served at first as ushers, helping people to their seats, and that’s where the lesson came to me–but I’ll finish with it. Then we took our assigned posts, stood at parade rest, and stayed there while the royal entourage entered from my far right; I was too far from the center aisle to see anything without moving my eyes, which one may not do at parade rest. We came to attention as the PA played God Save the Queen. There were speeches; the Queen has a rather powerful speaking voice, and some University dignitaries said or did something or other. As you can tell, beloved alma mater’s administration left lasting impressions on me.

No disturbances occurred of any kind, except for the media overstepping the bounds of their designated kennel. The SS had put the NROTC Marine Option midshipmen over there for a reason. Meanwhile, at various times, SS and EOD team members would pass by. One guy had an attaché case; another’s arm was in a sling. One didn’t have to be a mental giant to figure out what that was about.

Then the entourage came back down the center aisle, and exited to my left–thus passing directly before me. There must have been twenty people, more women than men. The Queen herself wore a blue suit and a matching dog dish hat; she is shorter than I had realized. I am pretty sure I recognized a RAF officer’s uniform. Prince Philip stopped to speak to one of our cadets, who promptly promoted him to King by addressing him as ‘Your Majesty.’ I cringed inwardly. A tall officer whose uniform and bearing shouted ‘Colonel of Royal Marines’ came to a sudden, very military halt in front of me. He did a precise left face immediately, looking me directly in the eyes. I did not return his gaze, because I didn’t move, and he was taller than me, so I believe I stared directly through his nose.

One wonders why he did that. A little test of the military discipline of future officers of his nation’s most powerful ally? Simple puckishness? Did he see my last name, and think to himself–with the IRA supporters demonstrating outside–that he might have in (extremely remote and unlikely) theory had to trust his monarch’s life to this uniformed, unarmed teenager with a quintessentially Irish surname? I will never know. The entourage continued out, and the event closed. Consensus was that UW represented itself well, with those of us representing the armed forces doing our part.

But as we were ushering, and before we took up our posts, something interesting happened. An ancient lady, a bit heavyset and apparently about ninety years of age, was struggling up into the lower bleachers. I and a Navy midshipman were close to hand. We each took a side and half helped, half hoisted her into her assigned bleacher seat. As she was settled, she looked at each of us in turn. I don’t remember her face, but I won’t ever forget those clear, alert, intelligent eyes. She said, “Thank you, you young gentlemen. Someday someone will do this for you.”

It may have affected my nautical colleague as profoundly as it still does me, what must be at least two decades after she has almost surely passed on.