More customer service kudos

Okay, I don’t know what’s been going on lately, but Neal and I have been having some good customer service lately. We recently placed an order at Domestications.com for an Adirondack loveseat to go on our deck area here at the new apartment. It was a good price for one, but still wasn’t cheap, so we were disappointed when we started to put it together and very few of the pre-drilled nail holes lined up. This didn’t deter us too much, but the splintering support piece certainly did. We soldiered on a bit longer until we had a front decorative support piece that had someone’s handwritten measurements and other numbers on it. On the front of the piece, that is, that shows quite a bit to the front of the loveseat. Big numbers.

We finally gave up and emailed Domestications.com and let them know how disappointed we were. This thing was a huge pain in the rear to ship to us (and had added handling charges because it was so large, heavy, and unwieldy). I explained that I would really like to just return it (we’d wrestled with it for a couple hours to even get to the point where we were and then had to turn around, undo all of our work, repack the darned thing, and get it ready to be shipped back for pick up from our secure apartment building) and get a complete refund, even on shipping. I had a response within an hour or two (first shock!) and was told that they’d let me return it for a complete refund or re-ship another item. I chose to return for refund, and they had FedEx pick it up a few days later. They said it could take up to 5-8 weeks for the refund to happen, but we had the refund back on our card within a week.

The second one was definitely above and beyond. I was attempting to order some items from methodhome.com and receive a free t-shirt I had been given a code for in the main recently. I only really liked one of the shirts, but I couldn’t get it to add to the shopping cart. I contacted the “customer service” for methodhome.com, but they said that they couldn’t help me and asked me to contact some place else, giving me a broken link. I asked for a new one, and followed that one to another customer service portal (apparently method uses a separate company for the shopping cart). I emailed them as well.

The above is not the good service, obviously, because it took forever for the non-customer service place to get back to me both times and then it took a long time for method to get back to me. After a little over a week of no contact, I went ahead and placed the order, putting another shirt in the cart for the free shirt instead. In fact, not only did I place my order, but I received it as well before hearing back about the cart error I kept getting. When I did hear back, I wasn’t expecting much, especially since I had already placed an order from them. I, however, was very wrong. The response was short and succinct: They were sending me the shirt free of charge. (Remember, though, that the shirt was going to be free anyway, but this was a second shirt, since I’d already placed the order and received it for the other items and the first shirt.) That was much more than I expected, although I was a bit disappointed that the customer service issues took so long to get  a response. (Although, to be honest, it always takes over a week each time to get a response back from method, just FYI, in case you ever need to get through to them. In the end, I’ve always had a good outcome, but it has always taken time to hear back.)

I’ve never had two good customer service happenings so close together, and I’m pretty excited that they were both pretty painless to deal with. One was just a bonus, but the other could have been a pretty big pain (and would have been a pretty big loss of money for us, considering how frugal we both are).

My Qwest is finished!

I’ve written about our trials with Qwest many times over the past year-and-a-half. First, we had issues with our account when we changed the speed and the customer service representative lied to us about what they were putting on the account. I contacted the BBB, and an executive customer service representative and I emailed back and forth (and talked on the phone) until the issue was straightened out (in our favor).

I then moved to a new apartment, and all was well for a year with no issues. Then I moved across the hall and instead of moving my service, they continued my old account and started a new one. Every month, I contacted the executive customer service rep I had first talked to with the first debacle. For reasons I still don’t understand, they couldn’t just close the new one and move my old one nor could they actually close the old one. Until yesterday, we STILL had two accounts going, even though we moved at in June of 2008. And then we moved again to the current apartment in July 2009. Yes, we still had both accounts going.

Shortly before we moved this last time, however, I discovered @TalkToQwest on Twitter. No, I don’t personally have a Twitter account, but I did discover on that page that they have an email address as well. I emailed them there and inquired about their possibly helping me, even without a Twitter account to advertise my woes. (Although, seriously, you should read some of the tweets that they in turn reach out to in order to help. Some people are really rude, and they just tweet back “How can I help you?” all nice-like. Wow.) Steph at @TalkToQwest returned my email pretty quickly and told me that she’d be happy to look into the issue. A week ago, she emailed me and was ecstatic that she thought that she had finally fixed it. I was pretty happy to be able to email her back tonight that, yes, she had fixed it after a year of someone else’s being unable to do so!

In fact, not only did she help us with that issue, but she helped get us a better price when we moved. We weren’t able to get the same speed as we had here, so she offered for us to either be let out of our contract or she could give it to us at a decent rate. My exec CS rep said that it would be $15.00 more than the @TalkToQwest representative had quoted me and that she could do nothing to lower it. We, of course, immediately jumped on the rate from Steph and thanked her profusely for all her help.

I guess it all boils down to this: If you have Qwest and you have any issues with Qwest (and want them actually resolved), check out @TalkToQwest and ask them from help, after attempting to go through “normal” CS channels (or maybe before going through normal CS channels, if time is of the essence). They will probably be able to help you in a kind, courteous, and quick manner.

Thanks to Steph and @TalkToQwest! (This is all from the kindness of my heart, because I am so amazed that it didn’t take Steph very long to figure out the problem AND to help us get a good rate when we moved. Otherwise, we probably would have just closed all our accounts and gone with someone else when we moved this last time.)

Rape or rape rape?

Okay, seriously, people. There isn’t such a thing as “rape” and “rape rape”. There is only RAPE.

Are there really supposedly varying degrees of rape? Is stranger rape considered “rape rape” while date rape or statutory rape is just “not that kind of rape”? What about incestuous molestation? Is that not “rape rape”? Who are these people who think there’s two “kinds” of rape — or even varying degrees of rape?

My niece is 12 years old right now, pretty darn close in age to the girl who was raped by Roman Polanski, and I can tell you that if any man of adult age drugged her and then had sex of any kind with her, I’d probably have a few choice words to say to this man — and you’d better believe I’d push to have his ass in jail for a long time.

If a man drugs anyone, of any age and completes sexual acts with that person, it is rape. There’s a reason the “date rape drug” is called such. It’s rape. Any time a woman or girl is impaired (drugs or alcohol), there is no consent given. And, most especially, if a girl or woman has blacked out, you do NOT have sexual relations with her body. No answer is not consent.

Statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl is not “lesser rape” nor is it “okay rape.” It’s rape, plain and simple, and I don’t understand how dodging the law for over 30 years is ever okay, even if you make supposed good use of your outlaw time by filming people for millions to watch. I don’t care if you’re “brilliant,” there is no such thing as any kind of rape being “a little mistake.” I don’t care if you’re the first person to walk on the moon, if you make “brilliant” movies, or if you are Joe Nobody who lives the next street over: Rape is rape is rape. You deserve to pay for taking advantage of another human being, even if it takes 32 years to finally track you down and capture you legally.

Anyone else who says otherwise is an absolute idiot and, especially if they are women, they deserve to be completely excluded from human contact ever again: They’ve obviously lost their humanity anyway.

I’ve known many women and have had many friends who were raped in different ways. Some were drugged first, some were raped by “friends” or “family”, and some were raped at knife-point. Some were adults and some were only 14 or 15 when it happened. No matter how it happened, no matter when it happened, no matter the circumstances surrounding the event: It was rape. Sadly, out of the many women I’ve known who’ve dealt with this, not one has ever had her attacker arrested or brought to trial. Perhaps THIS is part of the reason these women don’t come forward — maybe someone won’t think what happened was “rape rape” and delegate it to the “just that other kind of rape” pile. You know what, though? Everyone — man or woman, adult or child — should feel safe and able to turn to their families, friends, and legal officials when they have been raped. Unfortunately, this incident just reminds me how much absolute twaddle is laid right upon the victims of rape instead of the rapist.

Something needs to change, people. Something needs to change.

Over-active conscience

“Do you have styrofoam cups or something for people?”

“For what?” I asked her.

“For the coffee back here. It smells good, and I want a cup,” she replied.

To clarify, between my office and the nurse’s office, there is a small room that we keep a fridge, a small coffee pot for water (that I purchased and brought for hot chocolate for the three of us in the area), and a larger coffee pot for coffee (for me and the nurse). The nurse brought in coffee from home this week, and I pitched in with creamer and sugar (and I’m bringing some of my favorite coffee tomorrow). We had some coffee brewing this afternoon when the person who covers my desk while I’m at lunch came in and smelled it.

“That coffee is just for us,” I responded.

“Oh, yeah,” she said back jokingly, thinking I was joking. “After all I’ve sorted and worked on for you today and yesterday, you’re going to deny me coffee?”

“No, really. I mean that this is our coffee, meaning that we bought it ourselves and brought it in. It’s not the school-purchased coffee.”

“Well, I’m going back down to the other end to get some down there then,” she said and stalked off, obviously ticked off at me.

I’m not sure why, if she wanted coffee, she didn’t bring it down with her. She usually brings water or juice down with her, and I’ve rarely seen her with coffee, so I’m not clear on why suddenly she needed/wanted that coffee (other than it smells and tastes MUCH better than the school-provided coffee, obviously.) I’m also not sure why she thought it was community coffee when it was in a room that very few people go into other than me, the nurse, and my boss.

But I still feel guilty for not letting her get some coffee, even though I know that if I do it once, she’ll keep coming down and trying to take some. If we let her do it, then we have to let other people do it, and it spirals from there. I explained this to the nurse, too, and told her that we really just can’t tell everyone to take what they want, when they want, or we’ll be buying several bags a week and will quickly be providing good coffee for everyone in the building. There are two lounge areas in the school where at least one pot of coffee is ready to go, one of which is situated right next to the lady who comes at lunch to cover my desk, so why did she come down empty-handed and then want our tasty coffee?

And why do I feel guilty for not letting her have what the nurse and I discussed, planned for, and brought in ourselves?

Awww, yeah!

Okay, if you’re not a 5Fe fan, you won’t get how happy this makes me. I’ve been hearing rumors of this and had heard from Roper on another site that this was coming sometime this winter, but I didn’t believe it until now. **

Also, for those interested, if you didn’t get the third BS2 album, do it. It’s not as good as the second, in my opinion, but it is worth owning and is definitely a great compilation of work. Their second album still remains one of my favorites, though, so I may be a bit biased on which of the three is the best.

Screencap from BS2's page (and no, I'm still not on Facebook myself). Brave Saint is neither dead nor dying. And Five Iron has arisen from the ashes...somewhat.

Oh, and Brave Saint Saturn loves you. *grins*

**(And…I can still hope that they get back together, right? I mean, 11 concerts isn’t enough to have attended, right? I would’ve made it a baker’s dozen of 13 shows, but we had car problems for the last two, although Misty and I had tix to them! I’m still hoping to see Brave Saint again sometime in the future. I know they played  a few places this past summer, but nothing close enough. Yeah, go ahead and laugh at me. I’m getting old and miss the “good ol’ days.” *winks*)

What are the odds?

So I was calling parents this morning and this afternoon to discuss an upcoming event with some of them. I dialed the third one on my list and it rings, rings, rings. Oh, it picked up! *click*

What? It hung up on me. I called the cell number again and the same thing happened. Okay, this is odd. I’m going to call the home phone number and just leave a message there.

Rinnng. Rinnng. Rinnng. *click*

“What?!” came a ticked off voice through the phone.

“Ummmm, good morning…this is Jessica with the — Office at —School.”

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry! I thought it was my friend who won’t quit calling me.”

We both laughed (the parent was mortified) and went on with the phone call business. At the end, she again apologized profusely, and I just assured her I completely understood.

Fast forward to later in the afternoon and I’m trying to finish up the list I have. (Between all the calls coming in and all the parents and students coming in, I had little time to make the calls in the morning.) One more student is on the list, so I find the home number and dial the phone.

Rinnng. *click*

“Oh, sorry about that. I dropped the phone when I picked up the baby.”

“Ummm, hello. This is Jessica with the — Office at —School.”

The woman laughs. “I’m sorry! I thought you were my husband calling back. I was just talking to him when I dropped the phone and it hung up on him.”

Really, though, what are the odds that I’d happen to call at the exact right moment to be mistaken for someone else not once, but twice today? Very odd. (And some people need to either invest in caller ID or just actually check it before they answer. I know I always do.)

Apropos

I finally went to get my hair cut last night. (This usually happens once a year, maybe twice if I’m feeling spunky that year. It hasn’t happened since November or December of last year, when I had between three and four inches chopped off.)

I generally wear my hair up (always at work), in a clip or a bun or pulled back completely somehow. I’ve been this way for a long time, actually, and usually feel better when my hair is up. My “letting my hair down” is actually putting my hair up. All of this to just say, I had my hair put up in a chignon as I walked toward the stylist who would be cutting my hair.

“Oh, I guess I should pull my hair down for you, eh?” I said, as I chuckled to realize my hair was still tightly bound.

“Oh my goodness! That’s a lot of hair! I wasn’t expecting that!” I had truly astounded my hair stylist with how long my hair was. For some reason, my hair grows really fast, so even though I’d had quite a bit cut off previously, it was all back and then some.

I have no idea why I felt compelled to write this here, to be honest, but I got a huge kick out of how surprised her face looked when I pulled out the clips and unwound my hair that I wanted to document it for some reason. *laughs* Possibly just self-indulgent, but what else is a blog for?

Keep Calm and Carry On

I actually used that phrase yesterday. You see, on Thursday, everyone where I worked had a huge bomb dropped on us. We didn’t know what to do with the news, but we knew something was off about it. Something was wrong. The news smelled. Stunk.

I was planning to use Thursday to get ready for the new school year, which begins on Monday, but instead I spent the entire day in meetings, even staying one-and-a-half hours past my normal endtime to attend yet another meeting with three members of the Board of Trustees. I got nothing done.

In the end, that meeting was worthless, and I knew it as soon as all three of them walked in the room. I knew it as soon as I saw their stony faces that they considered this a worthless meeting, and I started to consider it such as well. They weren’t going to change their minds and, as all three were businessmen, they all reverted to PR-speak of “no comment” and “I can’t answer that.”

One did say, however, my new phrase that gets me through the day, and I felt a strong desire to stand up and shout at him. “No, this isn’t what it is! You lie!” To me, this phrase reminds me of something that just is, that I can’t change, that cannot be made whole by my own power. This man has the power to correct this mistake and instead chose to ignore our pleas and to shrug off our cries for help to make this right. None of us in that room, except those three businessmen, could make this wrong decision right. To all the rest of us, it <i>is</i>what it is. It just is. We had no hand in the decision and we have no choice now that it’s made. To those three men and their 17 counterparts who refused to face us, that phrase doesn’t hold weight. They made this decision without input from us (or any other member of this community) and based their decision on falsehoods, outright lies.

When someone finds out their decision was based on untruths and misleading rumors, I expect that mistake to be remedied, but this was not to be. (By the way, they only told us on Thursday because someone, more than likely someone on the board since no one else knew about it, leaked the information to their family who in turn leaked it on Facebook. Our students knew before we did about this life-changing decision.)

Yesterday I decided I just needed to get back to work. No matter what, the kids are coming in on Monday, so I tried to get my mind on work. I got very little done, but at least it’s something. I’m not remotely ready for Monday, but it will come no matter what. For me, it is what it is, and now I must keep calm and carry on. It’s sad, in a way, that my work life is reduced to these catchphrases, but if I didn’t keep them in mind, I wouldn’t show up for work on Monday at all.

It just is.

Part of our trip to Madison to attend the Antiques Roadshow included a side trip (or, rather, the majority of the trip) to see Neal’s grandma, who just so happens to be a wonderful, insightful, and humorous woman that I have come to adore. We also met up with two of his uncles and one of their wives who were nearby, all of whom I have met ONCE in our entire relationship and that one time being before we were even married (at Neal’s younger brother’s wedding a little less than a year before we married). Since we had such a small wedding and his dad’s side lives mostly in Wisconsin, we haven’t seen them much. (Heck, we don’t see my family much. By the time we get back at Christmas, I won’t have seen the majority of my family, excluding my parents, my sister, and my nieces, for two full years. It will be a bit over a year-and-a-half since I’ve seen my sister and over a year since I’ve seen my own parents. We don’t have much money for travel, unfortunately, which means my family and Neal’s dad’s side get short shrift.) All that aside, however, it was very nice to see them again (especially Grandma. Man, I love that woman!)

We went out to eat and then hung out at Grandma’s new apartment (in assisted living, where she does NOT want to be, but she does realize she needs it) for a while. A lot of things had happened in the past few months, and his uncles were describing it. Every so many sentences, they would end with, “…but, you know, it is what it is.” I held in my laughter when one uncle said it several times in a row after each sentence.

When we arrived back at the hotel, I told Neal how funny it all seemed, especially since it was said so often that night by almost all present. Several days passed and I was reading through my Bible study lesson for the week. A couple weeks ago, I finished a really insightful study called “Me, Myself, and Lies,” which went through our negative self-talk and what we could do to work on that. I’ve really been needing it lately, and I was really happy when a good friend of mine agreed to do it with me, because I needed to hear some of the things we went over.

I was expecting it to be mainly about our self-talk as it pertains to our self esteem and how we see our physical selves, but it delved much deeper than that. A few weeks in, one of the lessons asked us to discuss what we were feeling convicted about, and I’d been feeling a strong conviction in regards to my persistent complaining. I mean, I’m a champion complainer, and I really felt I was starting to rub off on Neal, which was not a good thing. I’ve never met a more patient, more compassionate, and more forgiving man as my husband, and I was making him more impatient and less compassionate. What a terrible way to rub off on someone! (He says it wasn’t my influence, but I think that’s just to make me feel better about myself.) This lesson was shortly after we had visited Neal’s family, and the phrase “It is what it is” kept resounding through my head as I thought about the conviction and my own thought processes. I tend to meditate on worries and fears, instead of things that I should be thinking about (mentioned as meditating on “What if” instead of “What is” in the study). I really need to focus on that “what is” of life and leave off thinking about the “what if” aspects that I tend to keep in the forefront.

My last post was fairly upbeat, which if you knew the things going on in life right now and all the things I could be thinking about and worrying about, you’d wonder why I was dwelling on the few goodies in life that I’ve been tossed lately. Living in fear of “what if” and as a slave to the “what if”s that may come up is really no life whatsoever, and I need to let go of that lifestyle. I decided that my new mantra would be “It is what it is.” If something was and nothing I could do would change what was happening, it was what it was and I had to learn to life with “what is”. Life is nothing more than being more contented with “what is” and worry less about “what if”.

I know many people would say, “But we have to plan for the future” and other similar things like that. Yes, we do, we have to plan for future “is”s in life: retirement, potential job loss, etc. But planning for them (and saving for these things) is much different than dwelling on them and living in fear of them.

What does all this have to do with complaining? Simple, and I’ll get right to that in a second. Another thing that happend shortly after the visit was another week of study, at the end of which we discussed, guess what? Yep, complaining. I was convicted about this about two weeks prior to having two sections about it in the study, and it brought up a point that I had never thought about before. To me, the “it is what it is” goes right along with refraining from complaining because complaints tend to be about what we wish, hope, desire, want to happen (or not) in our lives. Someone has treated us unfairly. We didn’t get something we wanted. My complaining usually is when I feel someone is being stupid about something and it really irks me to have to see that stupidity. According to the study, complaining is a form of self-entitlement.

Oh. Let’s stop right there, because we ALL know how I feel about self-entitled people. “I deserve this because I was born” or whatever. Ugh, how I HATE that all-important sense of entitlement! And yet, here I am, complaining about things that I feel should happen in my life and all upset because something is contrary to that. Sometimes my complaints are valid, and most people would agree, but do I really want to be the person who always complains? No, I do not.

I’ve told several people about this new life philosophy of mine, and I’m learning a lot about how I’m viewed. First of all, none of my coworkers think I complain too much, which was shocking to me. One actually told me that she thought I was the happiest person she’d ever met, because I always seem so cheerful and full of life. (Maybe I just save up my complaining around Neal, then, which is NOT fair to him in the least.) No matter what, I know that I don’t feel good when I complain about most things. I need to feel the anger, which is fine, but let it go.

I need to remember that whatever happened IS, and I can’t change that just by complaining about what someone said about me or to me or for me. I can do what I can to change whatever happened, if possible, but if there are no possible remedies, it is what it is: Live with it.

This isn’t new, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s something I’m working to live by, working toward being a happier person, complaining less and living for my “is” more. If I can change it, complaining to myself or to Neal won’t change it: I need to DO something. If I can’t change it, it is what it is: I need to learn to deal with it some other way.

So that’s all there is to that. “What is” is what it is and “what if” has no place in life if I can’t change it anyway. Work toward changes I can make in whatever way and learn to live with the rest. Otherwise, how different am I from the self-entitled people that tick me off so much anyway?

Random stuff, just because.

I just signed up for Google Voice and jus spent a few minutes playing with it, and I’m pretty happy with what it does. Neal and I are discussing using it as our main number to sign up with businesses, mainly because then we don’t have to have all the annoying calls to our phone that we don’t want to answer. We’ll see what we decide, but for now, it’s a pretty cool toy to play around with.

School is just around the corner, and I’m gearing up to start my full hours again after about an hour less each day this summer. The money will be happily added to our savings account, as Neal is returning to work as well in September. Remember to keep your fingers crossed as far as second semester for his teaching schedule.

Things are brewing where I work, too, but I’m hoping they won’t trickle down to me too much. A couple of my coworkers, however, have already been hit by the changes, and I’m truly sorry for what they are going through. Neal and I are dealing with similar things due to his job being changed the way it did this year, and I wouldn’t wish these times of uncertainty on anyone.

On the bright side, we are now completely debt-free (except for student loans, but those are steadily decreasing — and at least we can take the adjustment on our taxes for the interest on those, right?) We’re so excited to be able to say that, even knowing that we’d like a new(er) car soon. We’re willing to wait for that to happen, though, until we’re definitely on solid footing as far as jobs go. We found Neal a new bike that will work well for him, and I am getting my (really old) bike tuned up and fitted for new tires this week, so we’ll both be able to bike. Heck, we even bought a bike rack for the car, so we’ll be able to bike around more in natural areas around here. (I’m still struggling with those darn foot issues, so the bikes will be especially helpful for us to get out and get some much-desired exercise.)

There’s just so much going on and, at the same time, not enough. That’s hard to explain, so I’ll leave it there, but that’s where I am right now. I really need to write a post on my new life philosophy, so maybe I’ll try to get back to that in the next couple days. It’s pretty interesting and a wild change from the way I’ve been for a long time. Twenty-nine is a good year for change, eh? (It’s my favorite number, too!)