Where Has Common Courtesy Gone?

I've been lamenting the lack of service that you find seemingly every day and everywhere, and unfortunately, I'm finding it more and more in the company I work for. I have been at this company for over 25 years, and we were trained by the now deceased owner to always go overboard in providing service. If someone asked a question and you didn't have the answer, you were to find the answer immediately and get back to that person. And if you didn't have an answer immediately, you were to call the person back and tell them what you had done and that you would continue to search for an answer.

I was reminded of this when I emailed a co-worker today to ask if we had received any claims on a new client since there were no claims in the computer system. I needed an answer soon but the phones in the claims department are always busy, so I find it less intrusive to email. Four hours later, I got a response telling me to check with someone else in the claims department (who sits 3 feet away from the person I sent the original email to). This is the kind of thing that raises my blood pressure. If she couldn't be bothered to stand up and walk the 3 feet, or even yell over to the co-worker, she could have at least emailed the co-worker (with a copy to me) and asked her to respond. It's common sense, common courtesy, and basic service. And it's gone.

A pet peeve is when I call a company to ask a question and I am told the system is down and I need to call back "later." Well I don't know when the system will be up; wouldn't it be better to take a message (seemingly a thing of the past) and have someone call me back when the system is up?

I know with the current economy especially, more people are doing more work than they used to. It's still not an excuse to blow people off.

Another pet peeve, and I work with people to do this, is to set your voice mail msg with the following: "I'm away from my desk right now, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you at my earliest convenience." Do people not realize how rude that sounds? I'm busy, but when I feel like it, I'll get back to you....

I work for a company that handles medical claims, and we used to get calls from hospitals and doctors' offices calling to request the status of claims. I was recently very surprised to learn that many hospitals and doctors' offices have sent even this basic function to India. So we now get frequent calls from India, checking status of claims. They usually have no identifying information so we can't find who they are checking on, and the calls with India last twice as long. One of the claims examiners told me last week that one of the hospitals we work with pulled the function back from India and admitted it was a mistake to send it there.

And the lack of human beings when you need an answer is sooooooo frustrating. You are given a choice of dialing numbers 1 through 4, and you listen to each offering and still can't decide which one is appropriate. Where you would normally dial 0 to speak to a human being, that option has become all but extinct. So you waste 10 minutes and hang up in disgust.

There are so many times I need basic information from co-workers and I leave them an email or voice mail msg and they never get back to me. So now I have to follow up, and I'm busy too! And I get back to people when I say I will! And I take calls from clients who want to complain about co-workers who don't return their calls, and I am no longer a boss, so there's not much I can do other than help the person.

I think I'm rambling. It's Monday and I just hate the way half the world has lost common courtesy. I guess we need to remove the "common" now when we talk about courtesy.

My Lack of a Cleaning Gene

Here's dad, flanked by my sister and brother-in-law, as he prepares to blow out his candles in a house that is temporarily clean.

On Monday night we celebrated my dad's birthday. He turned 86, on Groundhog Day. We had a nice celebration, where everyone contributed to the meal. As I get older and more tired, I have decided this is the only way to entertain. The worst part of having people over - the very worst - is the clean-up before hand. Every time I finally get the house in shape, I vow that I will never let it go again, only to find myself, at the next birthday or holiday, going through exactly the same thing.

I got an email this week from a market search firm, asking if I wanted to be part of a focus group. The topic was prescription drugs, and it was being held 5 minutes from my home. The pay was $100, for 1.5 hours of my time. I jumped at the chance and called immediately. But when the lady at the market search firm did my pre-screening, she found out that I work in the field of medical benefits, and that disqualified me. But, she did have another focus group open. This one was about cleaning products; was I interested? Sure, I said, thinking I am not the best person to evaluate cleaning products. She asked a bunch of questions, where I had to respond by choosing from very true, kind of true, not really true, and definitely not true.

One of her statements was "I am the envy of my friends for my cleaning abilities." I quickly replied "the bottom one."

Every time my mother comes over, she feels the need to offer to help me clean. I always decline. My sister got the cleaning gene. I got the slob gene. My daughter inherited my slob gene. I wonder if the next generation will also inherit the slob gene. Sometimes my husband will complain that there is so much clutter it's making him crazy. I tell him I know, but he married the wrong person if he was hoping for a neat house.

I have noticed lately that any magazine I read - Women's Day, Family Circle, and Ladies Home Journal - always seems to have an article on how to get rid of clutter. I actually read these articles. I know what I should be doing. It's just so damn boring to me. I'd rather sit on the computer or read a book. By the fact that everyone feels a need to educate us on this subject, I am glad to know I am not alone.

Well I'm gonna go find something to do now. Other than clean.

Hodge-Podge of Stuff

OK, today I put a new background on my blog (I am slowly - and I won't add "but surely" - learning how to figure out this blog), so I think it's time for a new post.

This post is a hodge-podge of stuff.

First, I have to relate that something amusing came out of facebook, which I am very inept at navigating my way around. Sharon had posted some elementary school pictures and people have been "tagging" them. I used to think that meant someone had posted the pictures, but now, Sharon, a recent facebook subscriber, tells me means the that "tagging" a picture means labeling who is in it. So Sharon managed to find Jonathan, someone from our kindergarten class. They befriended each other on facebook. Then I also befriended Jonathan. I have not seen Jonathan since 2nd grade, when I left that school district, but when I viewed his facebook picture, I thought he looks EXACTLY the same as he did in kindergarten. Well yesterday I went to Trader Joe's, and as I was leaving, I saw a guy walking in. I thought to myself "OMG, I think that's Jonathan!" He looked at me with just a flicker of recognition (oh, I need to add that I have no current pix of myself on facebook). He walked past me, I stopped, and said "Jonathan?" and he turned around, and I introduced myself, and he gave me a big hug. I know facebook is a place to "play" online, but I never thought I'd actually see someone in person who I had discovered on facebook! So I got in the car and immediately called Sharon. I said "you will never guess who I just saw outside of Trader Joe's" and she amused me greatly by saying "Jonathan!" She didn't ask; she just said it. I said "how the hell did you know that?" And she laughed and said "who else would you be calling to tell me you saw?"

Last night I watched the movie Real Women Have Curves. I loved this movie. Maybe cause I could relate SO much cause the mother in the movie keeps telling her daughter she needs to lose weight. My absolutely favorite scene in the movie is when the women, working in a factory, strip down to their undies to cool off AND to compare stretch marks. The movie was only 86 minutes long, and my only complaint is that it ends kind of abruptly.

Pepper the dog has lots of sores by her belly. She had these months ago and I took her to the vet, who diagnosed "seasonal allergies." I know anyone (and anything) can develop new allergies at any time, but a 14.5 year old dog suddenly developing allergies seemed kind of weird. He put her on steroids and the sores cleared up. Pepper loves to roll around on her back (that's supposed to be the sign of a happy dog, I'm glad to hear), and when she was rolling yesterday, I went to rub her tummy and noticed all the sores. I don't believe these are seasonal allergies. I will either take her to the other vet in the practice or maybe to a new practice.

Our house is a nightmare right now in this weather. Water is dripping from half the windows and the windowsills are lined with plastic cups. And tomorrow our family is coming for dinner to celebrate my father's 86th birthday. The house doesn't really look presentable, but it's family. And so much ice attached to our garage that the automatic garage opener stopped working cause a piece of wood snapped off. David yesterday decided he would go to the hardware store to get stuff to fix the garage. He announced this when I got home yesterday and I asked him if he was crazy. I said "call the garage door guy." Years ago, a garage door guy left a leaflet in our mailbox, announcing that he used to work for a garage door company and was now on his own. We have used him twice and he's great. I put him in our address book under "G" for "garage door guy." The last time he came, David went to write him a check and said "I"m sorry, I don't remember your name; my wife put you in our address book under 'G' for 'garage door guy.'" The guys told David "tell her to put me under 'J' for 'jack of all trades.'" So David said "we can't call him; he does garage door motors." I said "no, he told you he's a jack-of-all-trades!" David finally relented and called the guy. I heard him on the phone saying "I was going to try to tackle this project myself but my wife says I'm crazy and I think she's right." THAT'S RIGHT - he said "'I THINK SHE'S RIGHT"!!!!! There is a first for everything. So Mr. garage door guy/jack-of-all-trades came out this morning and fixed the door. For $40. The best $40 we've ever spent.

We are going to a super-bowl party at Howard and Mary's tonight. I still never learned all the rules of football but I made my Mexican dip (I can't tell you how many recipes I cut out each year of food to bring to superbowl parties and I never make them) and I'm gonna go be a pig tonight and enjoy those commercials. Son Joe is delivering pizza. I hope it is a very profitable day cause he owes us $190 from his last car accident.

Snow Day

I'm having my very own personal snow day!

Last night the prediction was for a ton of snow today, and I have vacation days I haven't used, and I am not a big fan of driving in the snow....and I thought maybe I'll take my own snow day. Our office NEVER closes, so any snow day has to be used as a vacation day.

So the alarm went off at 5:30, I came down and let old Pepper out, got on the school closings site, saw that almost every school was closed, and thought I'm taking this day off!. Last night I told Sharon I might take a vacation day today and we agreed that if I did, we'd meet at Jack's deli for breakfast. We both love to go out to breakfast. So while I was up at 5:30, I emailed her that I was indeed taking the day off.

And I went back to bed, setting my alarm for 7:30 so that I could call in to the office. After that, I fell back asleep. How glorious.

Sharon called at 9:30. I said so...are we doing breakfast? She said no, it's too bad out there. And I reluctantly agreed. A few years ago when I took a vacation day on a day like this, the two of us did meet for breakfast. The roads were bad, we were the only ones on the road, and when we got there we laughed at what idiots we were, and then had a nice breakfast.

A few weeks ago when schools were closed because of snow, the pizza place where son Joe works called him at lunchtime and said they were slammed with delivery requests and could he deliver for a while. I thought about it later on and realized all these kids are home all day with nothing to do, and I can see them (or their parents) saying oh, we're not going out, but you can order a pizza if you want. So I'm guessing pizza sales increase greatly on snow days. Especially delivery pizzas.

So I'm here in my sweats, with my coffee, and it's almost 11:00, and I should be reveling in my freedom, but strangely, I'm thinking ok, what now? Could I have cabin fever after only a few hours of being home? I don't remember many snow days when I was a kid - they seem to have a lot more these days, but I remember the fun of going outside in the snow, sledding, coming in for hot chocolate, going out again...

I have a million things I could be doing here but I am not motivated. Maybe I'll go back to bed.

Sweet Sunday

I got up early today - the 2nd day in a row. Since my damn alarm goes off at 5:30 AM Monday thru Friday, I so look forward to sleeping in on the weekends. But my body has been aching a lot lately and I've decided it's better for my body to be up doing stuff rather than getting more stiff by lying in bed.

And for some reason, the song "Sunday Sweet Sunday" just popped in to my head. My father, who will be 85 next week, used to sing it all the time. I know it was a love song ("Sunday, sweet Sunday, with nothing to do...Lazy and lovely, my one day with you...") - but I just prefer the lazy and lovely part (not that I don't want to spend my Sundays with David, but lazy and lovely is just very appealing to me).

As a kid, I don't think I fully appreciated what a Sunday could offer. I thought of Sundays as kind of a boring day. Of course in those days, nothing was open on a Sunday, so it probably was boring for a kid.

Now that I am middle aged, but often feel quite old, I take great joy in the laziness of a Sunday. We have kind of a tradition where David goes out and gets hot bagels. There is NOTHING like a hot bagel and coffee on a Sunday morning, settling down to read a Sunday paper.

It's a little off topic, but I will always remember one weekend morning many years ago when my son Joe was a toddler. I was in a bad mood, it was a gray and rainy day, and I made both of us some rye bread toast. I went up to my room to eat mine in solitude. He came upstairs, stood at my bedside with his toast, and announced quite happily "it's nice to eat rye toast on a rainy day." And my heart melted for this little kid who could find joy in such a simple thing.

Maybe it wasn't off-topic. Sunday is a day to find joy in the simple things. I just put up a pot with ham hocks to boil, and I will add split green peas, onion, barley and carrots. Sunday is the day I try to cook something that will cook all day, so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute to put dinner on the table. It is a slow, peaceful day.

I like to read the paper slowly, maybe catch up on magazines, cut out coupons, read my favorite blogs, and read the emails I don't have time for during the week (like the NY Times that comes daily via email). It's not a day to zoom through my tasks so that I can drive off to work. Everything is just in slow motion. I guess these days slow motion is very appealing.

So I'm off to enjoy this Sunday, sweet Sunday. I know I will find things to do, but it's nice that I don't have to do any of them.

And that soup is starting to smell delicious.

On Facebook

That's me, in the red top in this picture that an old high school friend just posted on facebook.

I decided to join facebook last year. I'm not quite sure why, but it seemed like there might be some interesting stuff on there.

So I joined, and a stranger asked me to be his friend. A good-looking stranger, I might add. Well, I went to college in Toronto and he lived in Toronto, so maybe we weren't completely strangers (although we probably were), but I said ok. My first friend! Then I asked Donna from work to be my friend, and I had 2 friends. Gradually my friends list started to increase, although the numbers didn't approach what my kids have. But honestly, I have started to suspect that the kids just look for quantity, rather than quality, in their friends.

I honestly have no idea how to navigate around facebook, and I don't really have the time or desire to explore it; I just wait for people to befriend me.

Suddenly a few weeks ago an old high school friend asked if I would be his friend. I accepted, and I got on his account and found other high school friends. So the last week has kind of been a frenzy of getting back in touch with people from junior high and high school. I was very good friends with one girl in junior high and she found me (first asking if that is really me, cause my picture is a monkey; something that I'd rather display than the real thing). We then started emailing each other, catching up on 30+ years of what's happened to us.

Incidentally, it's kind of interesting to sum up 30 years of your life. When you are in touch with someone daily, the topics are basically how was the drive to work, what are you making for dinner, listen to what so-and-so did to me, etc. Being in touch after 30+ years is much more complex, and it's almost like you have nothing of note to say!

One of the high school people I found (and befriended) is now an exec at the food channel. My cousin-in-law loves him, so I got them in touch with each other. My cousin-in-law had shared with me that she has a list of guests she would invite to her "dream dinner party" and my high school friend (along with Bob Newhart and some others) is one of them. So she got to tell him in an email herself that he was so honored. He sent a nice email back.

Another high school friend must be very into scanning pictures, cause suddenly old high school pictures are popping up on facebook. I can't believe I was ever that young and carefree. I know I will never be young again, but I'd settle for carefree.

I purposely did not ask my son or daughter if they would be my friend. I recognize they have a life with their friends and they don't want me in it. But funny enough, several of their friends asked if I would be their friend. So I am cool with the friends but not with the flesh and blood.

A few days ago, my nephew decided to un-befriend me. He sent an email to all of the "older" relatives, telling us very nicely that he loved us, but no longer wanted us on his facebook; he was reserving this for friends. Wow, to face such rejection at age 51! My first facebook rejection! But alas, those of us who were rejected have formed our own group of fellow-relatives-rejected-by-the-nephew (not its official name, but it's official purpose).

The Co-Ed Bathrooms at York University

I had decided to go to Canada for college, and I chose York University in Toronto.

So one fine August day, my parents drove me up there, and we loaded all my stuff in my large dorm room. Then my father said he was gonna look for a restroom and I said me too. It was a square hallway. So my father walked around and found a sign that said "Men" and I walked around and found a sign that said "Women." He walked in his door, I walked in my door, and we met in the middle. We immediately went back out our doors to make sure we had read our signs right. We had. It was a co-ed bathroom (although I never did understand why they didn't just label it that way."

Well my dad was surprised, but not outraged. I was amused. I was just so happy to be starting in on this new phase of my life that really nothing could bother me. And I had purposely chosen a co-ed floor. We walked back to the dorm room and my father said to my mother "Lenore, the bathrooms are co-ed!" "No!" she exclaimed. I smiled.

When I tell people about it today, they ask how I could stand having a co-ed bathroom - wouldn't it be weird? Well in my youth, it wasn't.

A few days after I arrived, I walked into the bathroom and there was a guy washing his hair in the sink. "Hello!" he yelled when he saw me through the mirror. "Hello!" I replied back to this shampoo filled head. "My name's Leigh," he said. I told him my name was Bonnie. That night there was a dance in our dorm. I was sitting there with my new friends and a gorgeous guy walked in. We were all murmuring about his good looks when he surprised all of us by saying "Hi Bonnie." I said "hi" in an uncertain tone, having no idea who this Greek God was. He realized I didn't recognize him and said "it's Leigh!" I said "oh!" I hadn't seen him upright yet! What a treat!

The bathroom had two showers with a wall between them that was about 5.5 feet tall. Well there was a guy on our floor named Garth, a very tall professional student. A few times I would find myself taking a shower next to tall Garth. He could see my bright yellow robe hanging and he would yell over 'Hi Bonnie!" and I would think "oh no, I'm taking a shower next to tall Garth, and with his height, he only has to look over and here I am in my naked glory." So I would converse with him as we showered, thinking it would stop him from looking over. I think it worked; I'll never know.

I was on the 13th floor of the dorm, and people on our floor befriended the people on the 14th floor. We were always going up and down those stairs. There was a guy on the 14th floor named Louis. Louis, like many students at York, was from Hong Kong. When the students from Hong Kong came to Canada, they took on American names. But, we American and Canadian citizens decided, someone over in Hong Kong must have had a very old book of names, because the names they took were from another generation - Louis, Arthur... And they never used the condensed version of the names - it was always the full name. Anyway, Louis was renowned for brushing his teeth for 10 minutes at a stretch. So you might go in to take a shower, and Louis would be there brushing his teeth. You'd get out of the shower, and yeah, there was Louis, still brushing his teeth. I still think about Louis and what amazing teeth he must have today.

Those who lived on the same sex floors were used to looking good all the time - they'd look like hell as they shuffled into the bathrooms in the morning and would emerge looking great. Those of us on the co-ed floors were used to seeing what we all really looked like, and it didn't matter. It somehow seemed symbolic in our friendships - we had nothing to hide.