Free Taco For All! (10/25)

October 30th, between 2 and 5 o’clock, get your free taco from Taco Bell, compliments of Jocoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox stealing a base in Game 2 of the World Series in the bottom of the 4th!

White House Edits Report on Health Risks From Climate Change

Earlier this week, the written testimony by Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was edited by the White House prior to being given to a Senate Committee. The testimony was to brief the committee on potential health risks from global warming. While the editing was part of a normal review/trimming process, it’s interesting to note that a line stating that “the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed,” but left in content that focused on how agencies were already prepared for any problem.

While Dr. Gerberding doesn’t believe the edited content was of much importance, one has to wonder why the White House would want to edit out parts of a report that casts the only doubt on our readiness to tackle potential future problems. Are they doing their usual bit of pretending there isn’t a problem, or trying to water down any concern? Or was it just part of a simple, innocent process that’s done with any number of reports that end up being read by/to a Congressional Committee?

If you are to believe the good doctor, then no, the media is simply just “making a mountain out of molehill.” Whatever the case, at the moment, it appears that it isn’t that big of a deal, at least to me. Others may not agree, but that’s life, and politics, I suppose.

Blog Action Day: The Environmental Conundrum: Save the Future or Live for the Present?

*This was supposed to be up early morning, but my internet was down for some inexplicable reason (raining in SoCal=nothing good)*

Why should we care about future generations? One of the biggest arguments I hear about reducing our resource consumption, which subsequently leads to a reduction in pollution, other than global warming. Well, why?

That question, no matter how many times I hear it, trips me up. Especially when I hear it from people with children who don’t want to stretch their personal resources any further since it may (or may not) “hurt their children.” Well, what do you think global warming and a polluted world is going to do for your children?

I suppose it’s my liberal upbringing and bleeding liberal heart that doesn’t understand how anyone could be so selfish when it comes to attempting to make sure the blow from global warming is as soft as possible. Let’s face it, there’s nothing we can do at this point to stop global warming. While I’m no scientist, it appears as if we’ve reached (and surpassed) the point-of-no-return, and I’m not the only who thinks this. There’s even some who think that it’s just time to give into reality and learn to live with climate change.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel that it’s a completely hopeless cause. Even if it’s true and we’re too late to stop global warming from gaining a foothold, we could still keep things from spiraling out of control, i.e. lessen the impact for future generations. That wouldn’t be so bad, now would it?

If anything, the “fight” to prevent global warming has given us some advances in technology that will make our lives all that much easier and better, if they haven’t already. And, by continuing to worry about climate change, technological innovations will keep on coming and the way we look at the world will continue to change for the better. We’re inching closer-and-closer to cutting our dependence on oil for transportation by developing hydrogen cars. Solar power efficiency continues to grow at a relatively fast pace and the manufacturing cost and price to consumers just keeps on dropping.

Climate change may be inevitable. But, by fighting the good fight, we’re making our lives and the lives of future generations better. Who can argue against that?

Six Stupid Customer Comments, Complaints, and Thought Processes

There really is no particular order to this list, I just wrote ‘em down as I thought of them. There are plenty of stupidity out there, so this list is in no way complete. All you need to know is that I come across this sort of thing all the time working at the drug store and most, if not all, of these things can be applied to any store in the retail industry. Enjoy!

And there’s a reason why it’s only a list of six. It’s all I came up with on the fly. If you don’t like it, deal with it!

• “Well, that’s a stupid system!”

Guess what? Odds are, the employee you’re making your little comment to feels the same way but there isn’t a thing s/he can do about it. I hear this all the time, sometimes it really is stupid, sometimes it’s just the customer being difficult. Regardless, some suit sitting in some air conditioned office came up with the idea. That idea was developed by a person, or groups of people, who’ve never worked a day in retail. To sum it all up, you’re preaching to the choir: stop bitching about it. We hear it all the time.

• “Oh, that’s supposed to be on sale”

Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it? Something tells me you didn’t actually read the sale sign/tag hanging in front of the product. Or you saw a sale sign/tag hanging in front of another product and figured that it applied to whatever you wanted it to. Or you saw a sale in an ad for another store (that’s really the worst). Instead of making yourself look like an idiot at the checkout stand, really (and I mean REALLY) read the sign/tag.

It might be on sale and the computer is just wrong (rare, but it can happen). It could be that there’s a coupon for it (this is the most common mistake: most people don’t know how to read and completely miss the whole bit about “coupon required”). It could be there’s a rebate for that, so you need to go ahead and fill out the rebate form at home. It also might be that you’re not too bright and the sale sign/tag wasn’t even hanging in front of that item and you’re just making assumptions. Last, and pretty much least, the tag/sign could have been hung in the wrong spot.

Regardless, again, read read read read read. It’s important. So is reading comprehension. I suggest you take some SAT classes to work on that.

• “Well, why can’t you….” /condescending tone
  

Probably because I can’t. And maybe in part because I don’t want to. I deal with whiny, pushy, self-absorbed jack asses all day and you’re tone isn’t making my day any better. Yeah, I know, this is a customer service role, but you know what? There’s only so much a human being can take, and not even Santa Claus has unlimited patience and understanding (he DOES have a naughty list). I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably keep repeating myself, but we (the grunts) have no control over anything. We don’t make the rules, laws, policies, and weather. I, my fellow workers, and my managers aren’t gods. If you’re nice, we’ll do what we can and then some. If you’re not, we’re going to give you the bare minimum and make sure you know it.

Remember, tone and demeanor mean everything.

• “How come you don’t carry….?”

Possibly because…WE DON’T! Not even Costco carries everything (they don’t sell cars…wait, do they?). It’s not that people come into a drug store looking for, say, car tires (not a true story, but close…we used to carry bike tires, not anymore), it’s when they actually expect that we carry that item. And not only that they expect it, it’s when they get upset about it like I’ve wasted their time and that we’re the worst store in the world for not carrying such an item! People boggle the mind.

• “That’s *insert retail chain name here* for you.”

I actually heard this one the other day because one of my co-workers didn’t know if we carried some whatever-the-hell-they-were-looking for. Sorry to break the news to your, princess, but there’s hardly an employee working at any store that knows EVERYTHING. Maybe a store manager might know close to everything, but, nobody can know everything. Yeah, what I just said.

Basically, that comment could be used in every retail chain store you can think of (in that context anyway). I’m so sorry that so-and-so isn’t omnipotent. We’re hoping to get those brain chips with knowledge of everything in the world installed next Tuesday.

• “They charged me too much.”

No, THEY didn’t. THEY don’t manually input the price. That’s why we have these new-fangled registers that scan those innovative barcodes that are conveniently placed on your item: the scanner reads the barcode, searches the computer database for that item and subsequently its price, then the computer database tells the register what the price is. Voila. The register was wrong, not the cashier. Of course, the problem might just be you misread the shelf label/ad sign.

And that brings us back full circle.

Computer down….MEDIC!

Well, my Frankstein-of-a-desktop bit the dust….or at least one of the components….and now will no longer turn on. It’s wonderful…and now eerily quiet. I really have absolutely NO idea what could have gone wrong with it. All I know is that it happened withing 12 hours of installing the replacement graphics card I had received in the mail a day or so earlier. Installed the card over night, went out, came back to sleep, woke up the next morning, and the computer was off. Of course, it would kinda turn on…except nothing more than the CPU and case fan running (I use the term “running quite loosely). Now..nothing.

I don’t know what he hell to do. I’m either going to start swapping parts to try and figure out or I’m going to try and hit up some of those wonderful tech forum sites to see if someone can give some helpful pointers before I waste precious time…time I really don’t have. I’m just glad that I backed everything up the other day with my new external harddrive.

Until then, I’m gonna be laptopping it. Hooray.