A Scout is Brave

THIS JUST IN Boy Scouts of America has decided to officially open it's doors to members of differing sexual orientations

I can't seem to wrap my mind around how this is such a monumental, nay detrimental, decision.

Do you recall this?

Can you see where this is going?

What was so horrifying about an African American person taking classes with a Caucasian person?

Don't Boy Scouts actually have girls at their camps and in some of their troops?  YES THEY DO!

So if you can have girls in your troop, and typically they like boys, what is the major malfunction?

I just will never understand the reason for prejudices especially in this day and age.  How many people do we need to make second class citizens because it offends Religion A.  Don't boil this issue down to anything more than that.

Our government needs to shape up and recognize that enough is enough.  Something really caught me last night while I was watching the West Wing Season 2.  Ainsley Hayes basically said that everybody is protected under the 14th amendment on the basis that we are all citizens under the law.  All citizens under the law.  What a concept.  It really got me thinking because I'm all about Equal Rights and earning a proper wage but what a slap in my face.  Why do we need these types of laws to spell out what we can and can't do based solely on gender?

I return to my regularly scheduled blog.

Whoop, I meant this.

What is so wrong about this?

My boyfriend and his family are avid Boy Scouts.  Well, were avid Boy Scouts.  I found out yesterday that after his father heard about the decision made by the board members, he mailed back his scout uniform along with a letter stating how appalled he was and how if he could he'd have sent back his two sons Eagle Scout awards he would have done that as well; as far as he is concerned now they're worthless.  I think something about tolerance is missing in the Boy Scout curriculum if the general acceptance of all individuals has led some people to such action.

Incredible.  Separate but equal is no longer lawful in America.

I Can't Get No

You've heard of this concept instantaneous satisfaction yeah? Working in customer service has left me feeling a little angry when it comes to this topic. Today, in 2013, we no longer wait to update our encyclopedias with the door to door salesman; we simply google our answers. But what happens when we can't find what we are looking for in other realms of our lives besides looking up the ever important burning question of did Lindsay Lohan really steal that brooch off of her lawyer or was that just photoshop?

We get mad.

The swift travel of information has made things a little complicated. People don't like to wait over ninety seconds for their food.  They don't want to be told you don't have all the answers.  Like Violet Beauregard said,

I digress.  My problem with people getting irrationally upset with people trying to help them is that they forget you are dealing with living, breathing, flawed human beings.  To err is to be human. We can't be expected to pull rabbits from our hats at a moments notice.  PETA probably wouldn't appreciate that either. 

I Wear, So I Care

Don't even get me started on this topic.

Let me pimp out my charities before I get too involved and forget to praise something.  The causes that are near and dear to my heart are: Lupus, Autism, Juvenile Arthritis and Diabetes.

Lupus: My Aunt Karen Martin passed away due to complications with Lupus 10/11/11.
Subsequently, this article discusses her lawsuit against Ford because of their refusal to hire her
Autism: My Cousin Kamren is a child on the Autism Spectrum
Juvenile Arthritis: My sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi, has been championing this debilitation since 1967.
and Diabetes: Sadly, there isn't a female member on my extended family living today that doesn't deal with something diabetes related...this includes my mother.

That's the short list of the issues facing us today that I care about.  But let's talk about this notion of commercialized charity shall we?

If you didn't rock one of these bad boys,
 you weren't cool.  I think it took me about three months to realize I was on the fast train to lamesville when I finally understood Lance Armstrong's yellow banded message.  And really think about it right; that trend started when I was a freshman in high school.  Not to date myself, but that was May 2004 and we are nine years past that.  Other companies and charities have flocked to this seemingly insignificant moniker but what a cash cow/promotional tool is has spiraled into.  You can tell just by looking at someones wrist what tugs their heartstrings, what gets them teary eyed and what they really, truly care about.  Well, that was the thought anyway.

Recognize this?

This charitable initiative began in 2006.  You remember the GAP clothes right?  Of course you do.  Likely because it made you aware of the plight of the less fortunate right?  Well, if you don't remember that, you at least remember Bono and the excitement you felt when they finally released an iPod that wasn't either black or white though don't you?

What about Susan G. Komen and the race for the cure?  We've all been pinkwashed into believe that this is the only organization to support in order for people to believe that you really are supporting breast cancer research.  There are individual organizations that support the research in a more grassroots manner.

Have you seen the fact sheets on some of these major charitable organizations?  Pennies on the dollar actually make it to the intended cause. PENNIES!

That having been said, guess how many people that put their pink and (red) on actually care that money went to the charity?  Of that amount, how many just care that you noticed they had a pink ribbon on their apparel or their fresh red laces?

That's been the trend.  Take this company Sevenly.  They make it pretty clear in both the name and their company description that a flat seven dollars from every product goes to the weekly supported charity.  They don't flash their logo on everything you buy.  In fact, all I have from them with their name visibly on it is my phone and that's because they sent me this sticker, see?






 It's cute, subtle and I didn't have to choose between supporting the cause and pimping it out by placing it on my phone.

We're Here To Help

After helping a family friend with some computer issues, I am completely awed by the customer service standard we have allowed ourselves to accept.  I won't bore you with my desperate attempts to save a far gone hard drive but put your seat belts on before we dig into the call.

Jennifer explains to me that she's getting some blue screen and the computer is in this kind of reboot loop.  It had been doing this for months.  This result is due to a hard drive error and instead of trying and failing to combat the problem until I'm blue in the mouth, I informed her that as long as the laptop was still under warranty, Dell should be able to fix it no problem.

I gave it my best shot anyway and then turfed her to their tech support.

I bet you can tell where this story is going: overseas!
Everything boils down to our troubled economy (again, not just because I'm an economist) and how we sent away a few of our jobs for cost purposes.  I understand that you have to work every angle from a cost/benefit analysis and that sometimes other markets just have a better comparative advantage when it comes to certain tasks and products.  This notion however, does not give carte blanche for those companies that did take advantage of these policies by neglecting the conditions of their new work force.

The first person to answer the phone once we passed through the automated triage read from a script.  In my personal dealings with companies that start off this way, things don't typically get resolve on this first call.  He took some basic information, used terms like "Ma'am" and "Miss".  All in all, he could have had a personality and he could have actually acted like he cared about the problem (minimum wage doesn't cover the cost of giving a shit).

Jennifer isn't computer savvy.  How would she have been able to convey the true issue to somebody she can't understand?  I knew the issue wasn't a virus but the way she described it, you really wouldn't know unless you had that face-to-face conversation.  Her issue was a hard drive issue and those are always, pending you didn't dump a bowl of chicken noodle soup down your keyboard, covered by warranty.  His first instinct was to tell her that viruses are not covered by a warranty.  Me, I have a hot temper and this would have sent me off the handles and onto the twitterverse.  Once we cleared the gatekeeper, we were transferred to tech support, likely the guy in the cube across the hall.  He's oral skills weren't much better and because of the incessant recaps, a 10 minute call dragged on for 35!

What happened to 90 seconds or less?  What's that? Not McDonald's.

Really though, customer service jobs are shit.  People don't think there is a real person on the other end of the phone or the computer and that puts a chip on their shoulder that having a face-to-face conversation simply doesn't allow for, well, that is unless you are a complete ass.

I've had some pretty craptastic customer service jobs and I understand how that cloak of invisibility makes them feel all powerful while make you wonder when Alice handed you the Drink Me glass.  This is something we have to think about going forward though.  Will we understand that once the complaints start rolling in via social media that there truly is a rift that formed between companies and their customer base because of the overseas outsourcing of customer service phone support? Or will companies continue to think in terms of dollar signs and rely on the fact that as long as there are more dollar signs than not things are still chugging along.

First Job Blues

Woo I graduated.  Oh, that was two years ago, almost to the day.

So like any good college kid would, I sat around my house because, well, it was freaking summer.  Eventually, my Dad reared his head upstairs.  I peered out from behind my slowly dying desktop to hear, "get off of your ass and go look for a job".  Ugh.  Wasn't I supposed to get one last summer before reality smacked me in the face and knocked me on my ass?

Work sucks.  Plain and simple.

Of course, I worked most of my summers during college as your local McCrew member.  That was a treat.  Within 24 hours, I had already been asked to apply for manager.  To be fair, this may have been because the manager working (not my current boyfriend) was into me.  And let's be honest, who isn't seduced by my childlike wonder?

I digress.

The first "real" job I had came after I stupidly put my resume on careerbuilder.com.  My phone blew up!  You'd think I was going to give money to the first person to give me an opportunity to continue paying state taxes.  Essentially, every offer that came from the exposure I got on that site was a crap job; remember, I worked at McDonald's.  As a new college graduate with...decent grades, I was being offer opportunities to sell people office supplies and telemarket.  Not my thing.

One day, I was sitting on the couch in the office with my Dad and this magical person called from Quicken Loans.  She saw my resume and wanted to know if I was still looking for a job.  Considering that all of my prior calls had been busted, and not knowing anything about the company, I told her I had found other employment.  My Dad wasn't having that nonsense.  "Quicken Loans has been named one of the best places to work for.  Why did you tell her you had a job?  You can't sit on your duff all day here you know!"  Yes, I know.  So I called them back, set up and interview and before you know it I'm dealing in a whole paperwork mess because I wanted to keep my side job selling watches at Parisian for extra cash.  Orientation was all 100 new hires for the month smuggling as much red bull out of the auditorium you could fit in your monogrammed bag.  I hated that job.  The pay couldn't keep me there.  I aced every test.  When I hit the sales floor, I had all the knowledge in the world.  But that didn't stop me crying to and from work for the first weeks.  People can be so rude over the phone, who knew.

Finally, after sticking it out about six months and constantly threatening to quit, I did.  Everything boils down to the economy (did i mention I have a BA in economics?).  My state, like many others, is hemorrhaging talented people because we aren't experienced enough to assimilate into the jobs of our elders.  The way things are going now, you just have to take any job that sounds halfway decent.  And it did.  Until it turned out to be glorified telemarketing.  The job was about money. Period.

If I had wanted to be a money hungry yuppie, I'd have gone to an Ivy League school and I'd be running away to Paris to get the next Birkin bag.  We graduate thinking the world is our oyster and we burn out trying to be the shining stars others always wanted to be.My point in this rather lengthy tale is that life is simply too short to stay in a crap job.  You have to be happy(ish) in whatever you decide to do.  My misery wasn't worth the paychecks that stopped having double pay for overtime when I had served my initial purpose.

Any first job tales?