Customer Service? No thanks.

I'd like to address the genius that came up with the new standard in over-the-phone customer service.  I'd like to congratulate him or her and buy him or her a drink.  Then, I would like to pour that drink over his or her head and punch him or her in the penis or vagina.

I am, of course, referring to the talk-only selections that are so popular nowadays in customer service telephone lines.  If you've ever had to call your Bank or energy company or cable company or mother, then likely you've had to experience this burning pile of vomit.

It works like this:

1.  Dial the number.
2.  Enjoy the 30 second greeting from the dialed company, even though you know exactly what you need to do, which is speak to a human being.
3.  Speak your selections into the phone.
4.  Repeat your selection because the phone said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't catch that," like we might believe it's an ACTUAL person we're talking to that is almost completely deaf.
5.  Repeat your selection again.
6.  Repeat it again, through gritted teeth.
7.  Scream your selection over the phone, startling passersby into thinking that you are a crazy person.
8.  Remove the phone from your face, hold it directly in front of your mouth, and scream your selection, over-enunciating every word because the robot on the other end is clearly stupid and can't understand freaking English.
9.  Throw phone into a quarry.
10.  Retrieve phone, repeat steps 1-8.

Then, after 10 minutes or so of desperately trying to speak to someone, the robot on the other end will give up and...direct you to an associate.  At this point you are so frustrated and exhausted that you don't even care if your problem gets solved.

Which was the point all along.

DUMB DOG WALKERS

This is Fred.  He's our dog.  He was a stray for the first year of his life, and my wife and I rescued him from the Pasadena Humane Society.

Fred is a great dog.  He's really funny and smart, gets into all sorts of trouble, and loves to boss around his best friend, a giant Labrador named Levi.  Fred doesn't care that they're the same age and Levi weighs about 100 lbs. more than him.  Fred is in charge, and Levi is too, well...purebred, to argue.

The one thing we've had to work on with Fred is his reactive behavior to other dogs.  For those of you that have reactive dogs, you know this can be a bit of a struggle.  Fred is different from some of the reactive dogs you see on The Dog Whisperer or other shows in that he isn't aggressive.  He doesn't freak out when he sees a dog because he wants to attack.  Fred freaks out because he wants to make more friends.

Still, this behavior shouldn't be encouraged in that it stresses out both Fred and the person walking Fred.  When we see another dog coming our way on walks, we either have to turn around or cross the street so Fred doesn't get to barking. 

Street corners are particularly tricky when another dog approaches as you can't determine where that other dog is going to cross, so you have to find a place to hold Fred back so he remains relaxed.  You then have to distract Fred for as long as it takes until the dog and owner have moved on.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that the other dog owners in our neighborhood are morons.

Particularly in the last few weeks, my wife and I have encountered dog owners that aren't intelligent enough to care for a tapeworm, much less a canine.  They can clearly see that Fred is reactive and barking uncontrollably, but instead of just moving on so the stress of the situation is removed, these things tend to happen:

1. The dog owner stops at the corner and stares at Fred and I, or allows their dog to have free reign and sniff every freaking thing in the area before moving on.  Meanwhile, I have a dog losing its mind on the end of my leash, but that's okay, let your worthless chihuahua sniff that patch of grass for 10 minutes.
2. The owner walks DIRECTLY TOWARDS MY DOG.  Now remember, Fred isn't aggressive.  He wouldn't hurt another dog, but if you see a dog freaking out on the leash, why in the high holy crap would you make a beeline towards that hyperactive dog?  What if Fred wasn't so friendly?  What if he was really vicious and actually wanted to hurt your dog?  Why take that chance?  This happened over the weekend to me, where the owner of a dog saw Fred and I walking about half  a block behind her, stopped, turned, and walked right towards us.  When I took Fred into a small alley so he wouldn't freak out, she stopped right outside the alley and told me, "It's okay.  Your dog just wants to meet us."  First of all, how does she know this?  Is she an animal psychic?  And if so, why the hell isn't she marking this?  I had to calmly explain that it actually ISN'T okay, that my dog is reactive and we are trying to discourage him from freaking out whenever he sees a canine, so one day we CAN approach other dogs calmly.
3. The dog owner is on his/her phone, sending text messages.  This happened to me last week, where Fred and I approached the corner, and instead of being aware of her surroundings and her dog's behavior, the owner just typed on her phone for a good 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, her dog is running into the street sniffing around, tugging on the leash, which the owner is ignoring.

This kind of behavior is inexplicable to me, but I guess it's reminiscent of a culture that thought that Fast Five was a pretty good movie.  

Emily and I just consider ourselves lucky that we have such a great dog, and that we, unlike the other owners in our neighborhood, aren't complete idiots.

HEY CVS

What the shit is your problem?  Why can't you do your job?

Why is it every time I go into your store, there are 14 available registers, but only one person scheduled to man them?

And what the hell is the point of having a self-checkout station or two (the greatest inventions of all time), yet they are never, ever in service.  Seriously, I've been to your store maybe 30 times in the last few years and they've never been open.  What the fuck?

Good thing you got this installed, assholes

There's nothing I love more than walking into a CVS with the intent of purchasing one item, carrying this belief that this time, maybe, I'll be in and out in less than one hour.  After all, I just need some TUMS!  That's pretty quick, right?

Not at CVS.  Nothing is quick in that time suck.  You might as well purchase one of their $15 lawn chairs and park it in line cause you ain't going nowhere.

CVS Customers in 1932

A rational person might visit another store, right?  Well, guess what?  Rite Aid and Walgreens sure as hell doesn't have it any better, do they?  You think customer checkout efficiency and service might be a major competitive point in stealing some customers away from your opponents, but apparently all pharmacies have given this up so they can continue the battle for most ridiculous queue.

Feels a little like this, doesn't it?

Give me three weeks, CVS.  That's all I ask.  Put me in charge of your entire store layout and customer service department and I will solve your goddamn problem in three weeks.  You know how?  By using my brain!  How about that!

Until then, rot in hell CVS.

HEY, ELEVATOR GUY...

How're you doing, guy standing in the doorway of the elevator, of which I am riding?  Looks like you're having an interesting conversation there.

What's that the guy down the hall you're still talking to saying?  The Lakers hired Mike Brown?  Wow, I thought it would be Rick Adelman.  No, please, don't mind me standing here in the elevator waiting for the doors to close so I can go back to work.  I have all day!

Hey, tell ya what, do you want to borrow my shirt?  I'm just saying, it looks a little cold standing in that doorway, what with the breeze that I'm sure is pouring in from the open doors.  I don't want you to catch pneumonia or a cold or get struck in the face by a claymore mine or anything.  I mean, I'm totally warm standing underneath these fluorescent lights in the elevator.  Please, take it, I insist.

And you know what else, cause I'm feeling generous?  Here's an unopened can of Dr. Pepper for you, in case you get thirsty.  I was going to keep it for myself to drink in my office, but with all the talking you're doing with that guy down the hallway, I bet you're more thirsty that I am.

Uh oh, the alarm in the elevator's going off because the doors have been open for too long.  Don't worry about it, buddy, just keep talking.  Pretend I don't exist...it's cool.

Oh, you're done?  Are you sure?  Cause you didn't get a chance to ask the guy down the hallway how his family is or if your asshole bleaching was worth the money.  Tell ya what, let's push the emergency stop button, pry open these doors, and you can finish up.

It's my pleasure, buddy.  It's your world...I'm just living in it.

Matthew Perry Stole My Childhood

Remember those formative years of our youth?  They were times of great discovery, confusion, elation and crushing defeats, and also acne in places where acne should not occur.  My teenage years, however, were primarily dominated not by numerous failed attempts to talk to girls or excel in some athletic competition or whatever.  No, my teenage years were overshadowed by one haunting and constant reminder.

I am Chandler Bing.

You remember Chandler Bing, right?  He was that character played by Matthew Perry on Friends, the last of the juggernauts of prime time sitcoms of the 90s and early 2000s.  He was the sarcastic one that always had some lame wisecrack and everyone thought was gay.  Now before you object, I have no problem being compared to people who may or may not be gay.  A lot of people think I look like Rupert Everett.  And I didn’t object to the fact that people thought I was funny.  That’s a good thing, right?  Being funny is a good thing? 

No, it is a horrible, evil, dirty thing, because no one ever told me that I was “funny.”  No one ever heard one of my jokes or witticisms or puns and thought, “What a humorous and interesting person Bob is.  I would like to get to know him on a more personal level and establish a meaningful and long lasting friendship with him.”  No one ever said that, which I guess is ok because if someone did say that to me I would wonder why they had no inner monologue. 

Instead, whenever I made a wisecrack, this is what I heard: “Oh my GOD that is SOOOOOOOOO Chandler!”

Now multiply that by every sentence I ever said for about ten years, and just to drive the insanity of this point home, you want to know who was the first person to ever say that to me?  DO YOU?!?!  My freaking physics teacher.  That’s right, it wasn’t some hot popular girl that I wanted to make out with or the captain of our football team (1996-1999 Kingwood High School football record: 1-59), it was the teacher of the most boring class I ever took.  I was walking down the hall of KHS, passing the biology and chemistry rooms.  My teacher, who shall remain nameless because she is the devil, was standing in the hallways talking to some other dork science teacher, when I walked toward them both.  I tried to avoid eye contact as to be spotted by this teacher would doom you to a conversation of inertia or yaws or whatever the hell you talk about in physics, but she stepped out into the middle of the hallway to block my path. 

She grabbed me by the arm, looked me in the eye and said, “You know who you remind me of?  Chandler Bing.” 

She stared at me for a moment, released me, and rode off on her broomstick to kill Christians.  I am not making that last part up. 

At that point, the freaking floodgates opened and I could not get away from this constant comparison for the life of me.  It was like some rampant virus, and I hadn’t even seen the show!  I had no idea who this incredible doppelganger was who happened to be making a million bucks an episode by capitalizing on my life. 

Everything I said, everything I did, even the way I looked was directly compared to Matthew Perry at all times.  Here check this out:

          

See any resemblance?  No, of course you don’t and you wanna know why?  Cause I grew a freaking beard.  I grew a beard so no one would ever say I look like that bastard again.  Do you know how hard it is to even GROW a beard?!  Not hard. 

Eventually, I started watching the show and in the end, yeah, it turns out everyone was right.  I’m just like him, but you know what?  I never did this:  

Rot in hell, Chanandler Bong.

There were no elves at Helm's Deep!

That's what my father yelled out when he, my sister and I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers many years ago.  My dad was such a Tolkien purist that the entire battle at Helm's Deep was completely ruined for him due to the presence of the elves.  Sure, it was a nice little dramatic flair that Peter Jackson added to the movie, uniting elves and men once again, but come on, this doesn't happen in the book at all.

I never told my dad that footage was actually taken where Arwen was at Helm's Deep as well to aid in the battle, but I figured that news might kill him.  I don't need that on my hands.

Anyway, I perused the official website of the two Hobbit films that start shooting in a few days, and suffice to say, my dad is going to blow his lid.  Those of us who have read the book before know that Frodo, Galadriel, Saruman, or Legolas never appear or are even MENTIONED in the book.  Yet, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee and Orlando Bloom are all on board to shoot the film.

Now please excuse me, as I have to give artificial respiration to my father.

Weddings Are Hard

I just checked my blog and realized that I haven't made a post since December 7th.  That's Pearl Harbor Day, in case you were wondering.  Maybe put that in your diary tonight.

I was really busy the last two months getting married.  While everything at the wedding and everything since then has been amazing, I have to say that weddings are hard.  It's seriously a lot of work and stuff.  I knew this lady who had been married 6 times.  6 freaking times!  How do you do that?! 

I mean, just after 1 wedding I'm totally convinced that I am set for life.  I am not going to do this again.  How in the high holy hell do you get in the mindset that you think, "Wow, that first wedding was so fun!  Let me dump this dude and crank out 5 more!"

That type of commitment I just cannot fathom.