A Free Man

I’ve spent I don’t know how many hours at work lately revising a set of reports for a, shall we say, precise (pedantic) client. Every time I send it back to her, she comes back with 9,000 other new little problems that she’s discovered. I’m fairly certain that this is some kind of karmic just dessert for me being a stickler for spelling. This particular client has been my nemesis for several months now and every time I begin to lose it and get a burr in by saddle to tell her exactly what I think, I have to repeat - mantra-like - the customer is always right. The customer is always right. Except when they frickin’ aren’t.

Fortunately for my company, I have little direct interaction with the clients. I swore to myself about ten years ago that I would never work another customer service job and it’s thus far been a promise kept. The promise stems back to June of 1999, when I walked down Between the Hedges in a black polyester gown to pick up a piece of paper declaring me a Bachelor of Science.

It took me a while to finish my Bachelor’s degree, largely because I kept getting kicked out of or quitting various academic institutions. In fact, by the time I finally got my B.S. I was ten years older with five schools in four states under my belt. I had a little trouble with, well, a lot of things.

When, in 1996, I finally made the decision to go back and do it properly, I didn’t go back to college because of any innate desire for knowledge. I went back to college because I began to realize that a life in customer service awaited me if I didn’t.

Now, I intend no offense to the customer service workers out there. If the truth be told, I think that you guys deserve consideration for beatification. Getting up to go to work with a fake smile glued on your face and taking crap from often unpleasant people for eight hours is bad enough. But customer service jobs pay shit, have shit benefits and shit opportunities. I mean moving up the ladder from dishwasher, to bus boy, to waiter to maitre d’ is kind of a dubious career progression. The ridiculous, and essentially criminal, “waiters wage” in the U.S. is just insulting. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the hardest jobs out there are the ones based on servitude - waiter, barrista, store clerk, bank teller, call center worker. I know this to be true because I worked customer service jobs from when I turned 15 in 1986 until I graduated from Georgia in 1999. I sold shoes at a J.C. Penney, I waited tables at a steakhouse, I flogged books at a Books(sic)-A-Million, I took in camera repairs, I made coffee, I poured drinks, I sold fetish gear and temporary tattoos. I did it all and I dealt with endless crap from obnoxious customers for minimum wage at best.

I was a shockingly bad customer servant, primarily because I just don’t like people. My misanthropy manifests itself as a distinct lack of patience for human interaction - a bit of a problem when your job description calls for eight hours of that very thing. I could be OK. Early in my shift or on a good day or on a bad day if the customer happened to be a pretty young thing, I could be charming and pleasant. But as the day wore on and ennui and irritation set in I would become the kind of surly servant that you would expect to find in an über hip Paris bistro rather than a South Carolina steakhouse. I would ignore customers and if they made the mistake of demanding my attention treat them as if I was a member of the British Royal Family rather than some dickhead wearing a “My name is Chris, how can I help you?” name tag. I would intentionally make mistakes on orders and get angry when the customer demanded correction. A lovely lad all around.

Not surprisingly, I got sacked a lot. But I wasn’t qualified to do anything other than customer service. So, when I found myself in Athens, Georgia in the mid-90’s freshly fired from the coffee shop I had worked at for eighteen months, I decided it was time for a change. I had always preferred the arts, but had worked with enough English graduates at the various shops, restaurants and bars that made the mistake of employing me. So, I made a decision to get into a major that offered a chance to get out of the seventh circle of hell that is the customer service industry. Hence, the geneticist that you see before you today.

And, god willing, the words “My name is Chris. How can I help you today?” will never slip through my lips again.

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And now, your daily contest reminder. I need a new tagline and if you can come up with the best, you’ll be the proud owner of a sackful of hot new CDs. Post your tagline as comment here. And please vote on your favorite Anti-Christmas limerick here. I’ll make you a cappucino with a smile.

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Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is available from .

Image credits:

Customer service - our priority!

35 y/o Barista

Waiter

 

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Damn it. As I got off the bus on the way into work earlier this week, Rundle Mall (the main shopping street in Adelaide) was bedecked with plastic snowmen, Christmas bulbs and chubby Santas - in the first week of November. Nooooooooooooo! Are you seriously expecting me to be festive for two months, for one-sixth of the year?

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Christmas. Well, that’s not entirely true, it’s more just the latter. In recent years, I’ve learned to tolerate the holiday and with the arrival of Boy Z last year almost relished the season. But not this year. This year, I’m going Grinch.

It’s largely because of the seasonal reversal here in the Southern Hemisphere. Christmas Down Under is in midsummer, but the Australians have maintained most of the traditions of their felonious progenitors (turkey, stuffing and sedition). I just can not get my head around eating a full Christmas dinner when it’s 40C (104F) outside. The Christmas trappings here are the same as they are in cooler climes: Fur draped Santas who must bog down the local ERs with heat stroke complaints during the holidays, spheroid snowmen in a part of the world that hasn’t seen snow since the Mesozoic. Come on Aussies, after 220 years of baking Christmases, couldn’t you have come up with some climate appropriate Christmas icons? A Santa in board shorts driving a surfboard pulled by a team of kangaroos? Eucalyptus trees trimmed with jingle-bell adorned koalas? Willy the White-nosed Wombat? Something?

I think I may have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But I fear that this is going to be a Joni Mitchell kind of Christmas.

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green

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Nothing better to cheer one up, though, than a nice word or two about one’s self. The Noble Savage, a fellow expat blogger, gave me the much coveted I Heart Your Blog award. I blush.

The best thing about the award, well beyond the stroke to my ego, is I get to pass it on to seven writers worthier than myself. I’m always up for working on my blogging karma. I’ve discovered a few new blogs (and have been relishing some old ones) in the past few weeks that I would strongly recommend. I would go so far as to say I heart them:

1. My first two awardees are a couple of ladies with whom I have a lot more in common than just the blogging. Mongolian Girl is a Misery based commie who brags about disrobing in front of presidential candidates among other things. I would describe her site, The Cusp, as gonzo blogging. A must.
2. I found the Indisputable Topcat whilst searching for bloggers to hold down the Auburn end of next week’s Smack Talk. I still don’t know how she came up in a search for “Auburn Tigers” but I’m glad she did. Australian, husky owner and a smashing writer.
3. One of my oldest blogging buddies has said she’s quitting the blogosphere. I hope she changes her mind, but if not, I’d like to give Just Jessie this award posthumously. Maybe if we all go over and beg her to stay she’ll reconsider.
4. Everyone and their Great-Aunt Siobhan blogged about the election, self included. But Matt and April really nailed it with their post-election posts. Fantastic, well thought-out politics at The Bauer Confidential.
5. As we’re into another weekend of college football, I’ve got to direct some hearts in the direction of A Bulldog in Exile. The Dean is a Georgia Bulldog in King Corn’s Court and is doing some fantastic ‘Dawg blogging up among the unwashed Midwesterners.
6. I find it difficult to explain why I like Carrie’s blog Reconstructing Fossils, but I’m well hooked. I think it’s the kind of “Truman Show” quality of it, she doesn’t use a lot of words but I warn you there’s something addictive about her photographic diary.
7. One of my consistently favorite reads is Malfeasance. But Courtney lives up to her blogging pseudonym: she is evil incarnate and, I believe, single handedly caused my beloved alma mater’s humiliation in Jacksonville last weekend. So, rather than rewarding evil doers, I will offer this award to her better half who blogs at The Prettiest Denny’s Waitress. All the writing chops of Malfeasance with 50% less evil.

Have a Christmas free weekend, gentle readers.
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I was too depressed to take my own photo, so had to nick this photo of the Rundle Mall Xmas decorations from here.

If you don’t own Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” then you really should. It is available from and Amazon or your local independent record store.

 

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Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I’d like to smash every tooth
In your head.

Oh … sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be
Bludgeoned in your bed.

I don’t know how we got there, but Dr. O’C and I were talking about bullying the other day. I think I expressed my concern that Boy Z could be the victim of bullying one day, to which Dr. O’C responded, “I’d rather that he be a bully than be bullied”. This kicked off one of our trademark “debates”, with me speaking eloquently for the position that bullies, ultimately, are worse off than their victims. The bullying eventually stops, leaving the bully-ee to get on with life, but the bully has to live with themselves for the rest of their life. Now, I know that this is presuming some sort of emotional maturity to people who are little more than burly thugs, but I stand by my position.

Mike, who blogs beautifully at The Newborn Identity, got me thinking about my own experience in school with a post about similar fears around bullying and his little girl. I’ve got a whole shed full of anxiety about Boy Z’s future and can certainly relate. It’s part of being a parent, we’ve got a biological imperative to protect our progeny at any cost.

I don’t think fondly of my time in middle and high school, but I didn’t really have it that bad. As you can probably guess from the photo above, I wasn’t really in the upper social strata of high school. Nonetheless, I didn’t have it that bad on the bullying front. I mean, I took a fair share of verbal antagonism, but I was never stuffed in a locker or anything.

One of my survival instincts is that I can blend in to my environment. I’ve always been able to avoid the line of fire. I sorted high school out pretty quickly - you were either predator (football player, cheerleader, prom queen), prey (stuffed in a locker) or one of the herd that just got generally ignored. I aspired to the herd. The worst moments of high school for me were when I stood out, when I became the slow wildebeest - the one you see being dragged down by lions in nature documentaries.

I’ve already written about one of these incidents in which I found myself at the edge of the herd (involving glasses, P.E. and appendages), but I’ve got another for your carnivorous pleasure. The closest I ever got to being physically bullied is when I made the mistake of aspiring to a predator’s place in the high school food chain. I was crap at ball sports but was a pretty decent swimmer. I earned a high school letter in swimming in my junior or senior year. That was fine, but I made the mistake of deciding that I would like to dress in wolves clothing - I ordered a letterman’s jacket.  On a day that, unsurprisingly in hindsight, resembled that day in P.E. class a few years earlier I proudly walked through the doors of my high school wearing my shiny new purple and gold letterman’s jacket. With my head held high I wandered the halls of my high school for aI don’t remember how long it took for a couple of football players to corral me against a wall. They explained to me, very clearly and none too politely, that only proper athletes - football, basketball or baseball players - were permitted to wear letterman’s jackets. They convincingly expressed their opinion that if I wished to keep my limbs fully intact that I wouldn’t wear the letterman’s jacket in their presence. The jacket stayed in my locker for some time*, fortunately without me in it.

Now, these were not pleasant experiences by any stretch of the imagination, but I still stand by my assertion that I’m better off than these guys (and girls) are. I can laughingly tell these stories 20 years later. I’ve gotten past high school, grown, developed, become a happy and content person that lives largely without fear of being stuffed in a locker. They have to live with the fact that they were, and in most cases likely still are, dickheads. Even if they’re not dealing with the remorse of treating people like crap, even if they’re not self aware enough to know that they were/are nothing more than a self-loathing goon, they will still have karma to deal with somewhere along the way.

In a vaguely ironic 21st century twist, a number of these people that at best ignored me in high school have discovered Facebook. Some of the people who went out of their way to make my high school years unpleasant have asked to be my friends. I’d like to suggest that in addition to “Add As A Friend” and “Ignore”, Facebook add a “You were an asshole to me in High School and now you want to be my friend? Sod off.” button.

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This cover of The Smiths’ classic is one of my favorites ever. Treepeople were an Idaho band that used to tear up the Seattle clubs back during my time there. They were led by Doug Martsch, who subsequently went on to form the outstanding Built To Spill. If you like what you hear you can buy Treepeople’s records from C/Z Records.

Images:

Lion and wildebeest

Lettermen

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*A few years ago and I don’t remember why exactly, probably as a result of a rant like this one, my friend Alex got in touch with my parents and had them send him my letterman’s jacket. He then “gave” it to me as a birthday present. There exists a picture of the two of us in our high school lettermen’s jackets. One of us with a big grin and the other slightly chagrined. If we talk real nice to Nichole she may be able to come up with it.

 

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