Out of the Frying Pan...

Remember how I said I needed a vacation? I now won't be able to afford one anytime in the near future. Two weeks ago, it was new tires for the van, this week it's a new hard drive for my computer. Next week is going to be much, much worse.

This afternoon I was standing in the control room at work when my cell phone rang. I'm normally alone in the control room, but today it was full of people. It's been full of people for the past two weeks. The station is in process of installing a new system and they're having troubles working out all the kinks. OK, that's a lie. They can't get the frickin' thing to work at all. And this week they brought in a trainer to train us on this new system that doesn't work. So as my cell phone rang, I was standing in a group of about ten people all of whom were staring at a computer screen and scratching their heads. The phone call was a merciful reprieve from this torture, so I excused myself. It was Diane.

"Hey hon," she sounded harried.

"Hey. What's up?"

"We have no water. I tried several faucets and none of them work," she explained. Why does this crap ALWAYS happen when I'm at work and can't do a THING about it.

"Well, the only thing I can think of to do is to call the water company and see if they know anything."

"OK."

We hung up and I returned to my head scratching (as if I would have anything to contribute to the flex capacitor problem). A minute later my cell phone rang again.

"There was a note on the door. It says 'Overuse Investigation'."

What the heck?! Did the H2O Gestapo come and shut down our water because I like to linger in the shower? "Well, Hon, what do you want me to do? Did you call the water company?" I know I wasn't helping the situation, but I was frustrated not to be there to handle it.

"No. I just thought you'd want to know what was going on!" She was annoyed at me, and rightly so. Sorry hon. So we hung up again, and I awaited her next report. It was so not good.

As it stands right now, we have a $1,000.00 water bill. Yes, you read that right. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. I can think of roughly one thousand things I'd rather do with one thousand dollars than pay a freakin' water bill. The water company came and read our meter on Tuesday, and when they calculated our bill and realized the magnitude of our water usage, obviously a broken pipe of sorts, they sent someone out to stop the hemorrhaging. Diane's dad came out to the house (thank goodness) to help her isolate the problem, and it looks like we have a broken pipe between the main shut off valve on the street and the shut off valve to the house. Can someone explain to me the deal with broken pipes and my house?!? It's only thirteen years old!! And there's no physical evidence of a broken pipe: no puddles, no mud, no mushy ground, no water running into the street; absolutely nothing to warn us of a potential problem. It's so frustrating!!

So my in-laws gave Diane the name of a plumbing company they've used and trust. She gave them a call, but they can't get to our place until Monday. I'd much rather wait a couple of days on someone who can be trusted than to rush in and hire someone who will stick it to us. Have you ever been screwed by a plumber? Wait. Don't answer that. I really don't want to know.

For now, we're bunking at my in-laws (thanks guys), and I'm working on a fund-raiser, probably something along the lines of setting up my open guitar case on a corner and performing some choice Art Garfunkel tunes. I may even debut the "Rodeo Days" song. I'm going to need to raise some major cash because my next stroke of fortune will probably be my house collapsing into the sinkhole that was created by a month of gushing water. That would be just my luck.

Rodeo Daze

It's that time of year again when the rodeo comes to town. For people not born and reared in the Southwest, it's no big deal, but here in Tucson, the city practically shuts down. Schools close, people take time off work, and the snow bunnies take to the streets en masse. All for the rodeo. Yeeeee-ha. This week has left me in a bit of a funk and I am looking forward to the weekend and a few days off. I blame most of it, no, make that all of it, on the rodeo.

First of all I'm bitter. The girls get a four-day weekend out of the deal, but I get jack. Check that, I got a big headache. I came in to work on Thursday only to be greeted by mass chaos. Our station decided to celebrate the occasion with a cookout and potluck luncheon in the back parking lot. Fine, whatever. They also invited our radio division whose facilities are on the other side of town. This is where the headache begins. I'm trying to do my job, and I have tours of people coming through, interrupting me and distracting me from getting ready for my shift. This was accompanied by co-workers coming in every two minutes to inform me:

"Hey, did you know there's food out there?"

"There's food out in the back parking lot!"

"Did you get food? They're grilling hot dogs out in the back lot!"

"They've got Hebrew Nationals out back! Why don't you go out there and fix yourself a plate?"

While I do appreciate their concern for my hunger relief (ignoring their lack of concern for my intestinal well-being), it became pretty annoying. As you can tell, it seems everyone at the station gets a little giddy whenever free food is at stake. An announcement of free lunch will incite a riotous stampede to the source, as employees adhere to the unwritten rule concerning free station food: you snooze, you lose. I realize that television salaries aren't great, but please! You'd think the company was handing out bonuses or free stock options. Apparently, everyone has come to the realization that free food is as good as it's gonna get, so they celebrate it. I'm not there yet.

Then I heard the tragic news of the day: a five year-old girl had been killed at the Rodeo Days parade earlier in the day. For the second straight year, something spooked a team of horses pulling a wagon, sending them in a literal stampede through the parade route. Last year, the mayor of Tucson and his wife were injured in the incident. This year, the team of horses collided with a horse ridden by the little girl. She was thrown from her horse and trampled. I hate hearing news of children dying, even more so now that I myself am a Dad. I can't help but put myself in the shoes of the grieving parents, and my heart goes out to them.

So now I'm annoyed and depressed. And people kept coming in and saying, "Oh, did you hear about the little girl? That's so sad! Hey, there's still hot dogs outside! You should go get one!" Leave me alone...can't you see I'm grieving here?

Diane was in Los Angeles for meetings and the girls were with the in-laws, so I had the house to myself. Normally, I'd be ecstatic to have all of that alone time, but not this week. The house felt a little too empty. Add to that the frustration of my computer dying for real this time (the hard drive is fried on a computer that's not even two years old), and my life's beginning to resemble a Country/Western song:

My dog died and my wife ran to L.A.
My buddies hate me 'cause I won't eat the hot dog tray
And I'm cryin' 'cause the computer won't play
All during Rodeo Days

Sadly, those are probably the best lyrics I've written in the past six months, probably more. My funk has lasted for about three days now and I'm going to place the blame squarely on the rodeo, even for the fried hard drive. Why? Because I'm in a bad mood and I can. I think I need a vacation.

It's Not My Fault...I'm Global!

A few months ago while attending my Grandpa's visitation, I was talking to my Mom and some other family members in the foyer of the church. I was telling them about how crazy it was for me to get ready for the trip: I'd start one task, then remember something else I needed to do, so I'd drop the first task and move on to the second, and so on, and so on, and so on. I eventually completed everything, but was exhausted by all the extra running around.

"You're global," my Mom declared.

I paused and looked at her. "Excuse me?"

"You're global. You get it from me."

I still wasn't quite tracking. I mean, I try to keep up on world events as best as I can, but I had absolutely no idea of how this had anything to do with running around like a chump chasing a greased pig in order to get ready for a trip.

"It's your personality type," she explained after reading my confused expression. "I was at a workshop a while back where I learned about personality types. You're either global or sequential. Sequential people see a list of tasks and complete one at a time. Global people see a list of tasks and complete them all at the same time. I'm global. You get it from me."

"So it's your fault!!" I cried. All these years I thought something was wrong with me, and I was right...I'm global. Can't be helped. It's in my jeans, er, genes.

This morning was a good example of my globalositiness. My Mom, appropriately enough, is visiting this weekend to look at houses for a possible move to Tucson. I just returned from taking Kailey to school, and everyone was in the family room watching the Today Show. I asked if they were ready for coffee, and began getting it ready. As I washed the coffee pot I noticed a light out in the family room ceiling fan. My Mom was reviewing housing information that we picked up from our house hunting yesterday, and she was sitting in a dark spot. I need to change that light bulb!

I abandoned the washed coffee pot, put on my flip-flops, and headed into the garage to fetch the ladder. My brain immediately began screaming at me: What are you doing! Finish the task! Finish the task! I snapped out of my global induced trance and finished making the coffee. THEN I fetched the ladder. I set it up, climbed up and unscrewed the globe from the ceiling fan, and took down the whole assembly. Then I went to the laundry room to retrieve a light bulb.

The light bulbs are at the back of a shelf where we keep detergent and cleaning supplies. Only I couldn't get to them because there were 30 boxes of Swiffer dusters blocking them, several of which were open and half used. What the heck? So I took them all down and began consolidating the boxes of dusters. Why did I come in here again? Light bulbs...yeah, right! I filtered through the boxes of light bulbs and decided on a 75 watt bulb, then returned to the ladder.

I climbed back up the ladder with the 75 watt bulb and noticed the other bulb was 100 watts. Plus, man was it dusty up there! So I climbed down, went back to the laundry room, grabbed the Swiffer duster and another 75 watt bulb, ran back to the family room, and climbed the ladder where I proceded to dust off the blades. When I was satisfied with the results, I replaced both light bulbs along with the globe assembly. I put the ladder away, then returned yet again to the laundry room to clean up my mess.

All in all, a job well done if I must say so myself. I took a few tangents along the way, and it took me a half-hour to get a five-minute job done, but I did it. Actually, I did a three-in-one job. So don't hassel me...I'm global!

One of Those Days

I'm tired. Today has been one of those days that I can't wait to get behind me. It all started at around 5:00 am this morning when we were awakened by the sound of Kyra crying and coughing up a lung. Kailey has been sick since last Friday and has missed three days of school, and yesterday afternoon Kyra started coming down with whatever has been ailing Kailey. Diane got up (God bless 'er), tended to Kyra and discovered she had a temperature of 103. Great. Thankfully and unfortunately, Diane had already scheduled a doctor's appointment for this morning: thankful because we'd at least get to the bottom of what's been sidelining the girls for the better part of a week; unfortunate because Kyra knew she was going to see the doctor and she was scared. She proceeded to whine and cry for the next two hours until I got up at 7:00.

I dragged my carcass out of bed and proceeded to get the girls ready for their doctor's appointment while Diane showered and got herself ready. Kyra, being the drama-mama that she is, continued to carry on about her doctor visit. I offered to pick out an "extra special secret video" for her to watch to keep her mind off the doctor. I told her to close her eyes while I dug through the video cabinet. Basically the girls only watch the DVD's that are on top or close to the front, so I thought if I dug one out from the back, one that they hadn't watched in eons, it would be like she was watching a new video. It worked. I popped "Ice Age" into the DVD player...end of crying. I'm a frickin' genious.

The girls left for the doctor's appointment, but I had marching orders of my own: bills to pay and a house to clean. My mom is flying down from Las Vegas for the weekend and the house is a disaster zone. I had it pretty well picked up a couple days ago, but anyone with young children knows that it only takes a couple of minutes for them to completely destroy what it took you hours to clean. Do over. Start again.

I made a pot of coffee, jumped on the computer, checked my e-mail, and went to pay the rest of our bills for the month. This usually takes me about five minutes, but today it took close to an hour. The site that I use to pay bills kept logging me off and then I had to track down two bills because for some reason they didn't post to the site. Turns out they weren't due until the end of the month and I could have waited another couple of days to pay them, but I didn't know that at the time. It's going to be one of those days.

The rest of the morning was spent folding laundry; piles and piles of laundry. I didn't know we owned that many clothes and I certainly don't remember washing all of it. In the meantime, the girls came home. The prognosis: a viral infection. Kyra won't be able to go back to school until Monday, and, barring any setbacks, Kailey can return tomorrow. She should have gone back today because she was bored and bouncing off the walls. She wanted attention, but we had a house to clean. Sorry kiddo. Pick up a mop and earn your keep.

I finished folding the mountain of laundry just in time to get ready for work. Diane decided to make a quick trip to the store while I was still home. So she left and I took a very quick shower so that Kailey couldn't torment Kyra for that long. I didn't hear any screams of bloody murder, so I guess things went OK. I went through my grooming routine, and Diane returned as I was getting dressed. She walked into the bedroom and paused for a moment to behold my glorious physique before announcing, "The back tire on the van is really low." Fantastic.

I offered Diane a deal, "If you'll pack my lunch, I'll fill the tire before I leave." Done. I went into the garage and grabbed the air compressor, set it for 32 lbs, attached it to the tire, and cut her loose. The tire slowly began to fill and after several minutes the compressor reached its target and shut down. But I still heard noise coming from the tire: PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! Crap! I sauntered back into the house. "Umm, you don't have to go anywhere this afternoon, do you, Hon?"

"No. Why?"

I opened the garage door so she could hear the rapid deflation of the tire. "Holy crap!" My sentiments exactly. I didn't have time to change the tire before work, so guess what I'll be doing bright and early tomorrow morning? Yippee.

I arrived at work where everyone was all atwitter because a new seafood restaurant was providing free lunch as a promotion. I love seafood, but this stuff did me wrong...REALLY wrong. I'll spare the gory details, but suffice it to say that intestinal distress at work is never good. I think the Bluetooth guy even walked in during one of my "episodes" and made a hasty retreat. Add to that the stress of dealing with a of testy, overbearing client and I was ready for the day to end.

And to think I get to start off tomorrow by changing a tire. I just hope it doesn't mean tomorrow's going to be one of those days too.

American Airlines...The Final Chapter

It's over. And while I'm not completely satisfied with the results, I'm quitting while I'm ahead. Barely. Last Thursday I received the "additional" mystery voucher from American Airlines...the offer that was to make everything better. The offer that was to make amends for having to write four letters of complaint to rectify the situation. The offer that was to restore my faith in American Airlines and the whole airline industry. Now I know why John Madden rides a bus. I mean, besides that fact that he's terrified of flying.

I opened the envelope to find a three-page carbon copy form bound by a perforated edge on the left side and the American Airlines logo emblazoned in big bold type across the top. The bottom part of the page held a note: "I'm so sorry for your disappointing experience. Please accept this transportation voucher as tangible evidence of our regret and concern. (Hmmm...I've heard this somewhere before.) I hope you will use it to travel with us again soon." I opened the form to the second page and scanned it for numbers. I found the box entitled "Numerical Value" and my eyes locked in: $200.

I was disappointed...again. If $200 had been their initial offer after my original complaint, I would have gladly taken it. But $200 after all the crap I had to go through seems low. I was hoping for $300, but I'm going to settle for 2. Oh, and they let me keep those 5000 frequent flier miles. Can't forget about that!

The last step was a letter to AA President/CEO, Gerard Arpey, documenting my experience and encouraging him to look at their Customer Relations department. It may be excessive, but, hey, they gave me his name and address. Some excerpts:

I am writing to you today to direct your attention to what I believe is becoming a growing epidemic within the airline industry: poor customer service. American Airlines has always been my first choice in air transportation, and, while I may not be a business customer, I have been a faithful recreational customer, using your airline on average of two times a year. This is soon to change...

...I think that it is utterly ridiculous for me to have to write a letter to the President and CEO of a major corporation over a customer service issue. But quite frankly, these days the whole airline industry seems to be full of customer service issues, and I, for one, believe it is unacceptable. It needs to change. Ms. Scott writes, “Also, you may write to Mr. Arpey at the address below. However, he has delegated the responsibility of responding to customer concerns to our Customer Relations personnel. In turn, we keep him well-informed about customer issues. This designation allows Mr. Arpey and other senior management to devote their energies and attention the daily operation of our airline.”

While I wholeheartedly agree with the principal of delegation, I also believe that when delegated responsibility breaks down, it’s time to draw in the reigns. The airline industry is a customer service industry, and as such, your customers need to be your top priority in the daily operation of your airline. Mr. Arpey, I am not an opportunist and was not looking to “stick it” to American Airlines. I am a hard-working man who spent a lot of money on an airline ticket, only to end up sharing that expensive seat. I simply wanted reasonable compensation, and the process of receiving that compensation was too drawn out and difficult as I dealt with Customer Relations agents who were more eager to dismiss me than to take an honest look at my situation.

I am including in this letter all of my correspondence followed by each reply from your Customer Relations agents to show you exactly what I had to go through in order to seek compensation. It saddens me that I had to become a “jerk” before your Customer Relations agents would take me seriously. I hope that you would investigate and address this issue so that no other AA customer would have to go through the same grueling process that I experienced.

Game over. I'm done. I don't expect anything else from American Airlines. Some people might think all of this is overkill, but I don't agree. I'm proud of the fact that I took a stand against something that was wrong, and hopefully will have an impact on how customers are dealt with in the future.

Oh, who am I kidding?