Wherein our neighbors have really long legs

I’m pretty sure we have the same upstairs neighbors as this blogger. I’m not sure WHAT they do up there, but they must have the anvil-feet and the same bookcase trying to track them down and kill them. They also do the trust-myself fall backwards over and over at all times of the day and night. I’ve often thought that they have issues with tripping, stutter-stepping, and then falling over and over and over and over and over and…you get the idea, several times an hour. The hammering neighbor is the guy next door, whom I’ve already written about. “Oh, I’m just nailing a RUG TO THE FLOOR very early in the morning? Oh, what? You were sleeping early in the morning? Oh, well. I’m up and have things to do, which means I can do them at any time I’m awake. See how that works?” (I’ve often wondered how he’d like me to do things at 2:00 in the morning just because I’m up and have things to do, like hammer on the wall adjoining his bedroom, which technically is really a closet, but I could nail things into the closet, right?)

Anyway, how did our upstairs neighbors’ feet end up in New York anyway?

“People keep giving us stuff today!”

Today we decided to veg about a bit (since we haven’t had a free weekend day in a while) and then go to a movie that we’d been hoping to see for a while. We then decided to find a few new summery shirts for me (and a white button-down to go with my skirt for my employee/trustee dinner at a particular-dress-code dining establishment coming up this week) and afterwards go to Starbucks for Neal to do some work and for me to play with my DS.

After the movie we decided to stop off at Pizza Hut and grab something to eat. We decided to get the garlic cheesebread and a medium pepperoni pizza. As soon as we’d ordered, the waitress said, “Oh, do you want to do this? It’ll save you money,” and she pointed at a meal deal on the back of the menu that included the salad bar and a medium Lover’s Line pizza with two drinks. Neal and I decided we’d rather have the garlic cheese bread (I’ve had their salad bar a few times and it’s never gotten any better — and it wasn’t that good in the first place) and she offered to substitute the salad bar with a double batch of garlic bread. We debated it, since we didn’t want that much food, but we finally decided we could take half the meal home, especially since we were saving quite a bit with the deal (and even getting the double batch of garlic bread instead of the single and a Lover’s Line pizza instead of a single topping was still cheaper with this meal deal). We went with the Pepperoni Lovers, too.

When the garlic bread came, we realized that there wasn’t any marinara sauce with it. It has been a couple years since we’d orderd it, but I was positive it had come with it before. When the waitress came back with our drinks, I asked her for some sauce. She said, “Oh, it technically doesn’t come with the meal anymore and it costs a dollar, but I can get some for you for free.” I said that it’d be fine for us to pay for it, but we did not see it on the bill anyway when it came.

Throughout the meal, Neal and I kept returning to the fact that the waitress looked very familiar, but neither of us could place her, and we never did figure it out. I’m still not sure if we knew her, or if she looked like someone else or what. We were very surprised that she seemed to go out of her way to make sure we got a good deal and even gave us something for free, and we tipped generously (and in addition to the generous tip added the $1.00 she had saved us as well). I realize that what we would’ve tipped on that $1.00 wasn’t a significant amount really, but she still saved us money on the total bill (including the meal deal and the marinara), which really would have lowered her tip due to being a lower amount to base our percentage on. Yeah, it wasn’t a huge amount, but it was enough to make me appreciate her honesty and want to give her the total tip she would have had with the original amount and a bit more.

After looking for shirts (for the record, I still abhor shopping, especially clothes shopping), we ended up at Starbucks, mainly because they aren’t usually super busy on the weekends (but during the week? Hoo-boy…) and they also have these two super comfy chairs that I like to lounge in (well, just one of them. Neal sits in the other.) We both ordered our usual drinks and one of the works asked if we minded if she mopped near us — not if she mopped where we were (I even offered to lift my feet, and she said she didn’t want to disturb us), but if she could mop somewhere NEAR us. It was over an hour until closing, and she didn’t want us to think she was rushing us out the door. Okay, that’s fine. I go back to playing and Neal goes back to reading. A little bit later, she came up to us with two full-sized pastries (a lemon tart and a huge rice cereal treat) and said, “Would you two like some samples?” We, of course, agreed, and she said, “The owner is gone, so I get to decide on the size of the samples!” We all laughed, and Neal and I enjoyed the “samples.”

I told Neal we should run out and buy a lottery ticket and maybe visit a few other places tonight to see if other people will give us free stuff. I mean, we didn’t ask for anything free (or, really, anything other than some marinara that we would have paid for this once and then never got again once we knew), and I’m really not sure what was going on tonight.

I’m obviously not going to complain. I’m going to give kudos to those two places for making us feel special on a very unspecial day. It’s nice to get that feeling every once in a while these days, and it definitely doesn’t happen all that often. (And I won a free print from one of my favorite Etsy sellers who does freehand glass engraving, although she has recently switched over to sandblasting the designs on the glass pieces. She did tell me that she’d freehand any design I wanted in the future, if I let her know I wanted it hand-drawn and not sandblasted. More wonderful customer service, and she’s just a super nice person in general, which is why I also read her blog regularly.)

I don’t need people to give me free stuff for me to like the customer service, and just the little extra in telling us about deals and specials would be good enough for me. Tonight, several employees of different places went above and beyond their general call of duty for no apparent reason. It’s nice to see that this kind of thing can still happen even in these tough times. It reminds Neal and me that we need to be just as giving even when it hurts a little bit.

Happy First Day of Spring!

How’s yours going? Ours? Oh, great! We currently have white-out snow conditions, but otherwise, it’s a gorgeous spring day! *winks*

More customer service (some good, some bad)

Okay, remember when we moved and then had problems with Qwest? No? Okay, here’s a refresher…and here…and here. As a quick reminder: They were supposed to move our service from one apartment to another one in the same building. Another apartment literally right next door to the one we were in. Instead, they charged us to set up a new account and kept billing us for the old account. And kept billing us. And kept billing us. As a matter of fact, they STILL have not closed the old account. The switch was supposed to happen the last week of June 2008. It is NOW almost the last week of MARCH 2009. Almost nine months later and we are still fighting this. Still. Qwest, when will you finally just CLOSE that old account? (The rep I’m in contact with said she can’t figure out why it hasn’t been closed. Heck, they don’t even listen to their corporate customer care reps. Egads.)

But on to the good: In December we rented a car from Enterprise to visit family. When Neal got the car home and we opened the trunk to put our bags and presents in, we noticed some moulding was loose on the rear panel of the car, but we didn’t have time to go back to Enterprise. (Yes, I know.) We dropped the car back off on Sunday and received a call on Monday that there was damage to the rear, as though the car had been backed into. It hadn’t, and we knew it. We disputed the issue and were told that we’d receive a call from someone in the Cities office regarding the dispute process. Instead, a week later on January 5th, we received a bill for about $800 and and pictures of the “damage” including a “dent,” although the pictures showed nothing that could be seen: no dent, no damage other than the loose moulding that we had explained. Neal called the person on the notice and explained that we were disputing the issue. We both felt that we were getting the rap for someone else’s damage on the car, possibly because the other person didn’t or couldn’t pay up. The Enterprise rep told us that he’d look into past damage reports and get back to us within a “few days” if they denied our dispute.

So far, so good, right? So why am I writing about it now? In March? Because on Friday, March 13th, we received a call from our insurance company that said Enterprise had filed a claim against us with them. Yes, almost three-and-a-half months later, they finally send it through, possibly hoping we’d just give up and let the insurance pay out on it. I mean, no skin off our nose, right? (Except possibly higher premiums, depending on the final cost of the “repairs.”)

I was livid. No contact for this long and then you expect me to let my insurance pay with no argument? I don’t think so. I immediately went to The Consumerist to find what info they had on Enterprise’s executives and then did some more researching on other corporate email addresses to launch an EECB (Executive Email CarpetBomb) before we left for the Cities (this time no rental car due to this exact issue) for the rest of my Christmas present (how timely!) I explained what had happened and that we’d been loyal to Enterprise since both of us had been able to rent cars, especially during before we had married and were driving back and forth to see each other and even now that we have to drive states away to see friends and family. I told them that unless the matter was actually looked into and we received some kind of contact, even if it were to tell us we were still going to have to pay for it, then we would never rent from Enterprise again (even though they have the best rates and, until now, the best customer service we’d seen).

On Monday, Neal received a call that apologized for the error and told him that we were not at fault. The person promised the information in writing as well. True to his word, we received a letter today that again apologized and explained that the damage on the car was actually from an accident four weeks before we rented the car. The damage simply hadn’t been completely repaired, for some reason, and we were the unlucky ones in the interval to take the fall. He apologized for the misunderstanding and the error and let us know that they were reviewing procedures with staff to make sure this doesn’t happen again. (Seriously, though, what a break-down in communication for this to go on so long and obviously not be our error. Why couldn’t the first guy just actually do his job and look back into it like he said he would?)

I’m pleased that this had a good outcome, and we will definitely rent from Enterprise again in the future. I’m still a bit upset with the particular local office we rented from (there are two) and the corporate office in the Cities, though, that they didn’t consider us valuable enough customers to actually do a real check on the car’s history.

Qwest: C’mon and fix these silly issues!

Enterprise: Thank you for being so prompt and for doing the right thing. It took several months to do it, but it turned out all right in the end.

I just thought you should know…

Okay, I’ll admit it. I read a lot of blogs. I mainly read them through my feed, though, the creation of which just allowed me to add more blogs to my reading list. Strangely, though, I’m not much of a commenter. I don’t often go around spouting my opinion or leaving notes on other people’s blogs. Every so often I will and, sometimes, that leads into a discourse and I’ll make it a point to leave comments (which you kind of have to do when you read on the feed, as it takes “extra” effort, albeit not that much, but still some) on that person’s blog because I feel that the blogger actually didn’t mind my comment or, heck, maybe even actually liked the comment in some way.

What I do not do, however, is leave snarky comments around just because I can. I don’t make up usernames to be more anonymous, and I don’t use the remove of the internet to be a pissed-off jerk all the time. I don’t write to bloggers to tell them that they should let me in on the secrets of their life just because I’ve read for years. Sometimes bloggers say to email them if you want the rest of the story, but don’t be surprised if they deny you the info because they don’t know you. I’m fine with that. If I don’t comment, so they can’t get to “know” me in any way, no matter how small, why would they let me be privy to the personal details of their life that they don’t really want to make archivally public? Some “lurkers” get mad that they can’t find out all the details on a move that was made or on a personal issue with someone’s job just because they haven’t commented much, if  at all, but how many of us would want a totally random person knowing something we just outright said we didn’t want completely public? (And how do they know that you aren’t just someone they actually know pretending to be an anonymous lurker just to get the goods? And…am I the only one who thinks like that? That it could be someone they know, I mean?)

I also don’t email webcomic artists when their comments fail to make me laugh or think. I don’t tell them how their work should look or that they need to fulfill a plotline just for me. I don’t understand these people who think that because they read something, watch something, or otherwise passively participate in another person’s endeavors they have a right to dictate any part of the work being produced. This isn’t anything new, I know, but it’s really starting to make me wonder how many idiots like this there are out there. Are there a lot, or just a few who happen to be everywhere? Does the internet give us the feeling of anonymity? And even if it does, why does the feeling of being unknown make it okay to be a jerk?

Am I the only person who thinks that if you don’t like something on the internet, you can always LOOK AWAY? I mean, I know the concept is very odd in this day and age, especially with rubberneckers and train-wreck watchers, but if a writer really offends me — and does so quite often — I just quit reading without feeling the self-important need to tell them I’m quitting and just exactly why. (I also don’t quit reading just because I disagree with a person on a few points. I have to honestly be outright offended several times in a short period of time — or bored by their writing, which has also happened.) If their writing starts to go downhill, I wait a while and see what happens. I still don’t feel the need to tell them that their writing has changed and that I’m no longer going to be reading; I just quit doing so.

Is that really so hard for a lot of people?

Remembering the crazy

I had a flashback the other day to my 7th-grade year, aka the year I was in the “popular group.” Up until that point, I never really had a group I hung out with from year to year. I had a new best friend every year pretty much and I was trying to find the group I “belonged” to. Seventh grade came and somehow I was thrown into one of the two competing popular groups that year. They had split up into two groups over — what else? — a boy, who just happened to be an 8th grader that year. For reasons unknown to me, I somehow gravitated toward one of the two groups and became one of “them.”

It was an interesting year and one that contained many learning experiences. As a girl, I had been in groups where there was nitpicking and side-choosing (or attempts to force one to choose sides) and gossip and bad-mouthing and, well, the list goes on. This year was probably the worst year for all of that. There were mainly five of us and, generally because I really could not have cared less about the arguments, I was always in the middle of arguments. Sometimes my refusal to choose sides put me on the outside of the group. All in all, I had a great time hanging out with those girls (one in particular was a wonderful person, whom I was particularly close to and fond of at the time), but the drama quickly got old.

Forward me to 8th grade where I found a new group of chicas to hang out with. I met my best friend that year and we are still in contact. (I need to call more, though, so I apologize for that!) That group changed over the years, but a few core people remained the same. We had ins and outs, of course, since no relationship is spot-on perfect.

All of this flashed through my mind when my boss’s daughter came in, upset. She needed to talk to her mom and waited in her office for her. After they had talked, my boss said her friends were throwing her “under the bus.” The girl later came in and asked if she could switch one class around so she wouldn’t have to “be with people who all hate me.” This is her first year in the “popular” group. This on top of it being a transitional year for her (8th grade) had just created a lot of problems in school and out.

Is it just this age? The teen years? Since 7th grade, I’ve never really had girly-girls for friends. Most of my friends are not stereotypical females in the least, for which I have been forever grateful. We don’t always agree on things (political, religious, etc.) but we have gotten along and had fun together. We were able to talk about things and agree to disagree, when necessary. Even now, when we are living different lives than we might have imagined in college, we are still able to be honest and open with each other.

I wouldn’t return to junior high or high school for anything. When I was there, I was okay with being there. I had friends and I think I was generally respected by people and peers who mattered (implying that some people were insane, criminally or otherwise). I just think back on how ridiculous it all seems now (and most of it seemed pretty ridiculous then), and I wouldn’t go back for anything.