Duck And Cover, Part Deux

Man kills children and himself in Amish school

This just in...

Duck and Cover

Gunman takes hostages at Bailey, CO school

Principal shot in Cazenovia, WI

Looks like "Take A Weapon To School Week" didn't turn out too well.

What's In A Name?

I'm in the waiting room of the doctor's office just hanging out while my son has some testing done, and a woman comes in with her son. She tells him, "Kahn, sit down and wait for Mommy," then goes to the window to check in (by the way, the only reason I know how his name is spelled is because she had to spell it for the receptionist). Now, if this kid were of Asian or Indian descent, it wouldn't be noteworthy in the least. However, this kid and his mother's last name is unmistakably Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are both very clearly of Anglo-Saxon descent in appearance.

As parents, we have the unique privilege of naming our offspring whatever the hell strikes our fancy. Make no mistake, however, that with that privilege comes an awesome responsibility, because most people will keep that name for their entire lives. What kills me is that some people don't seem to take that into account when they name their children. Let's take Kahn, for example. I don't know about you, but I have been a real smart-ass my entire life, and have run into more than my share of annoying jerks. For that matter, I've been an annoying jerk on more occasions than I choose to recall.

Knowing that, what's do you think is the first thing that jerks and smart-asses like me think of when we hear the name "Kahn?" Yes, Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Hearing a name like that is a clarion call for smart-asses and jerks of all walks of life to crank our heads back, shake our fists at the sky and cry out in mock anger, "KHAAAAAAAN!" Guaranteed, this is what this kid has to look forward to for the rest of his life. Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad. I'll remember this in therapy.

Even better (or worse, depending upon your perspective) is this boy that was in my son's class one year named Repton. Apparently, he was named after some town in England. I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a hell of a lot of boys in America named Repton. In fact, counting him, I would have to say I have only met one person with that name. Now, any kid or anyone with kids has certainly seen, or at the very least, heard of a cartoon on Nickelodeon called Rugrats. On that show, there is a movie character that all children love called Reptar.

You do the math.

I guess the big problem with names is that some become notorious through no fault of our own. Take the name Damien, for example. The name has been around for hundreds of years, unmolested and minding its own business. Then, the movie The Omen came out, and the name of the main character was Damien. Afterwards, people were frightened of the name because it sounded to close to "demon" and they didn't want their kid associated with the spawn of Satan. Nevermind that it was a just a fucking movie.

Corporate America Will Eat Itself

Last night, I was surfing channels and came across a report on Scarborough Country on MSNBC about this guy named Vincent Ferrari who was calling AOL to cancel his service. He had heard horror stories from a number of people who had done the same thing, only to be put through the ringer by the rep on the other end. Learning this, he decided to record his conversation to see if the horror stories had any merit. The way he figured it, he explained, was that it would give him something to write about regardless of which way the conversation went. Well, as predicted, the rep did everything he could to try and keep him from canceling his account, including ridiculously padding the conversation. Read more about it here.

The final result of the call was that the service was cancelled and Vincent Ferrari posted the conversation on his website. This, in turn, prompted others to share their tales of woe and misfortune in forcibly weaning themselves from Internet For Beginners. Eventually, this guy got his story told all over the NBC networks - including the Today show - and has a movie deal in the works about a guy innocently trying to cancel his Internet service who then becomes digitally abducted into a virtual environment and must try to escape by disabling the Master Control Program.

Okay, just kidding about the movie deal. Apparently, not getting Angelina Jolie as his love interest was a deal-breaker. Or some shit like that.

Anyway, what pisses me off about the whole thing was AOL's response to Ferrari:

"At AOL, we have zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this - which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable. The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care - chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests. This matter was dealt with immediately and appropriately, and the employee cited here is no longer with the Company.

"I've spoken directly to Mr. Ferrari and personally apologized to him for what took place. Many here have taken a strong interest in this episode - even going so far as to email all customer service representatives about it as an example of how we should never treat a member. We're going to learn from this - and continue to make the necessary, positive changes to our practices. This was an aberration and a mistake, and we have to manage these incidents down to zero as best we can. That means improving our already strong safeguards in place today, and maintaining rigorous internal and external compliance methods. We can do better - and we will."

Now, will everyone who honestly believes that this isn't total bullshit, please raise your hands? Yeah, I didn't think so. Wait a minute, there are a couple of you in the back with your hands up. Oh, you poor, naive fools. You've never actually worked for a major corporation in any significant role, have you? Let me attempt to summarize what this message means as plainly as possible:

Holy shit! Did we get caught with our pants down, or what? Man, are we ever sorry we got exposed on national TV for what we've been doing for years. We are so, super-duper sorry. Just to prove how sorry we are that we got caught, we even fired the poor bastard that was just doing what he was told to do by his management team. After all, somebody's gotta pay for this, and it sure as hell isn't going to be the people who are being told by executive management to do whatever it takes to stop the massive hemorrhaging of customers who are tired of being overcharged for Internet access, e-mail and bloated software that screws up anything it touches.

We told Mr. Ferrari how very sorry we were that he recorded us screwing him over as badly as we screw over anyone else who tries to disconnect from our service. We've even e-mailed a transcript of this conversation to everyone in our customer service to cover our asses should anyone get any ideas about a class-action lawsuit and decide to subpoena our records. This way, we can credibly claim in a court of law that we as a company tried to do the right thing, but it was a few hundred rogue employees that screwed up because they chose to do what they could to keep their shitty jobs. We'll relax our quotas for a couple of months until all this blows over, then once the numbers start rising again, we'll go right back to beating up middle management about the piss-poor retention rates and exhort them to do something about it, rather than do anything to address the underlying conditions about why people are fleeing our dying service model in droves.

The bottom line is that Vincent Ferrari was simply a messenger, and the AOL rep is the corporate scapegoat. Furthermore, this isn't the first time that AOL has been nailed for stuff like this. The State of Ohio filed a class-action suit against them back in 2003 for these same types of shenanigans, as have a number of other states. Yet, the beat goes on. My prediction is that, unless these assclowns radically retool their business strategy to adapt to the current environment, AOL will soon become another footnote in American Business History; alongside such fallen giants as PanAm, Woolworth's and Commodore International.

Financial responsibility?

Right now, I am working on a customer service project with a local bank. Part of my job involves monitoring calls to improve training and streamline processes. This is the first time I have ever worked with a regular savings bank, but I have been involved in financial services before, so I know how funny people are about their money (present company included). That being said, I can't believe the abundance of absolute ignorance about basic savings and checking accounts that I have been hearing on these calls. Not from the customer service agents, thank God, but from the customers. You know, the ones with a vested interest in the well-being of their money?

Here's an example: Today I heard a call from this woman who was complaining that her account was accruing overdraft charges because when she withdrew $200 from the ATM, the receipt showed that she still had $8 remaining. What the woman hadn't taken into account was the fact that she had 2 checks outstanding, which overdrew her account when they posted. When the rep asked her what the balance was on her check register, she replied - quite defiantly, I might add - that she didn't have time to write down all the purchases she makes, nor did she feel she had to. Hell, that's what the bank is supposed to do, right? After all, they have all the accountants and the computers. Well, apparently, clairvoyance is something else the bank is supposed to possess, because there was absolutely no convincing this woman that the bank doesn't know about any outstanding checks that haven't been presented for payment.

I wish I could say that this call was the exception, but there are an alarming number of calls from irate customers that fall along the same lines. Now, I will admit that I have overdrawn my bank account once or twice because of my own bookkeeping errors, to which I have owned up and paid them. However, there are also an alarming number of customers who overdraw their account regularly, some of which carry perpetual overdrafts. What galls me is that these are the customers who bitch and moan the most about fees.

Call me old fashioned, but my understanding is that you shouldn't take more money out of the bank than you put in, and that if you do, there are penalties associated with that action. I simply do not understand how people can be that baffled about so simple a concept.

Ball And Chain

Today, a buddy of mine at work was talking about her Social Distortion sticker on the back of her car and it made me think of my bachelor party back in 1992.

My buddies took me to this bar in Scottsdale called Babe's. They had made reservations for a booth in the back for all of us, which is a good thing, because the place was packed. Anyway, we were all having a good time watching the show and all my buddies were taking turns paying the ladies to do lap dances for me. Needless to say, we were getting the lion's share of the business that night. Suddenly, the stage emptied and someone put a lone chair up there. Then, the DJ called my name and a couple of ladies came to where I was sitting to escort me to the stage. The DJ announced that this was my bachelor party and that, since this was my "last night of freedom", they were giving me a special dance. With that, everyone in the place started whooping and hollering and shouting things like "Don't do it, man!" as I made my way up to the stage. All the dancers in the building came up on stage to dance for me, and the song they were dancing to was "Ball and Chain" by Social Distortion. While I thoroughly enjoyed the attention from the fine ladies surrounding me, the thing that I remember the most about that evening was that every single guy in the bar was singing along, with special emphasis on the chorus: "TAKE AWAAAAY, TAKE AWAY, TAKE AWAY THIS BALL AND CHAIN!"

I was laughing so hard, I could barely concentrate on the ladies surrounding me.Now, anytime I hear "Ball and Chain", I always think about that night and get a big ol' shit-eating grin on my face.

I love XM

Let me explain why I love XM Satellite Radio. I'm driving home from work yesterday and listening to channel 44 (otherwise known as Fred) and enjoying the Fred Essentials countdown, where they play a list of the most popular classic alternative music from the 70's and 80's all weekend long. Yesterday, I was rocking out to Jocko Homo by Devo, House of Fun by Madness and Orgasm Addict by The Buzzcocks; tunes that you would never hear on regular radio any more. There's nothing offensive about the tunes, they just don't fit neatly into any of the very narrow categories on regular radio. Furthermore, because regular radio plays 20-30 minutes of commercials every fucking hour, they don't have the time to play 2,044 different tunes (not an exaggeration, by the way) over an entire holiday weekend. For a music lover who can't be bothered with the effort (and expense) of legally downloading a bunch of music that I will probably only listen to once in a great while, XM is a godsend.

Another example occurred last September with an event simply called "IT." The premise was that they played every single top-charting pop song ever made from the 1930's through the 1990's in chronological order. This event spanned all of their "Decades" channels and took a little more than 3 weeks. The great thing about it was that, while listening to a certain time period - let's say, June of 1977, for example - memories would flood back of what I was doing during that timeframe and listening to those tunes on the radio. It was exhilarating and magical, as well as enlightening. For example, listening to the segments during the mid-1980's, I remembered why I listened to a lot of alternative radio around that time; music was massively overproduced and boring as hell!

The diversity of music that you find on satellite radio is what really makes it worth the subscription price for me. If I get tired of listening to classic alternative rock, I can switch to gut-crunching metal, punk, hip-hop, funk, bluegrass, folk, country, blues, electronic, reggae, or even reggaeton. The channel that was the most pleasant surprise for me was channel 27 - Cinemagic. The premise seemed pretty stale to me at first - they only play sound clips and the soundtracks from movies. However, I have discovered wonderful films like Kinsey and Whale Rider that I wouldn't have even considered before just by listening to a clip of dialogue that normally wouldn't make it to a trailer. I have also found myself picturing scenes of movies that I love by listening to the soundtrack. For example, just this past Monday, my son and I were listening to a track from The Incredibles where we could picture the whole scene unfolding. We were laughing about how much we could peg each part of the scene to each movement of the soundtrack.

Everybody I work with asks me about why I would pay money to listen to the radio. I always explain to them that people used to say the same thing about cable or satellite television, and now people can't see why you wouldn't. I also warn them that the same thing holds true for satellite radio; that once you go satellite, there's no going back to regular radio, especially if you drive a lot.