Ponderings and Musings

I have been listening to political radio during my commutes for a while. I figured that as a responsible American, I should be well informed as to what is going on inside the Beltway and find out who is vying for the big chair in the Oval Office during the 2012 presidential elections.

I have decided that this contributed to what I now call “My Winter of Darkness”. Now granted, Earl and I had some stuff going on this past winter with the death of our fathers and I needed time to grieve properly and find my way through all of that. And heaping the chaos of Washington into the mix certainly didn’t help matters. At all.

So this morning I decided to go back to what I used to do, and that’s find a great song on the radio and to crank it up as I drove along the back roads to the office. My father never listened to talk radio. He read the newspaper, he watched news broadcasts, but he wasn’t a talk radio kind of guy. Before we had our first FM radio in the family vehicle, we listened to 62 WHEN, a Top 40 station out of Syracuse. Mom occasionally listened the local pickin’ and grinnin’ country station, but Dad always had WHEN turned on whenever he drove somewhere. It was a good radio station and listening to songs that I remember from that station remind me of sitting in the back seat of the ’71 Heavy Chevy we had. I think listening to radio back and forth to work, and everywhere else we went, contributed to my dad’s seemingly constant happiness.

I need to remember that.

So I listened to 70s on 7 on my way into work this morning and so far it has been a stellar day. I’m smiling, I’m trying to make the smile infectious and quite frankly, it feels much better than worrying about what political idiot is doing something politically asinine today.

A couple of days ago, my internet friend Séan tweeted about an article that talked about 15 things you should do to make your life happier (or something like that). Here’s a link to the article.

The basic gist of the article is that we should stop worrying about what others think about us. Much of what we do that results in stressing ourselves out involves doing something that doesn’t resonate quite right because we are doing whatever we’re doing in order to make someone else happy because we are worried about what they think about us. (As a quick aside, I apologize to all of my English teachers in high school for the hideous syntax I just used to construct that sentence. I don’t think I left anything dangling but sometimes I write the way my brain processes something and we all know about the organized chaos I have up there).

Anyways, since reading that article, thinking about it and having a good discussion about it with Earl, I have come to the realization that it’s absolutely on target. I have made a conscious effort to not worry about what others may think about me in a variety of situations and it has markedly lowered my stress level. So I got a little more ‘ranty’ than usual on a conference call yesterday. I got my point across (using sentence construction much like that paragraph that precedes this one) and things are happening that need to be happening now on one of my work projects.

In all honesty, I wouldn’t be walking around with a mustache the size of a small country if I truly cared what people think about me, but there are some things here and there that I am self-conscious about and this has slowed me down and deterred my original path in the past. Dropping the charade of trying to impress and just doing my thing because it’s true to me has lowered my blood pressure and put a bigger smile on my face.

And if people notice a bigger smile, then they can share the happiness I’m feeling. And that’s always a good thing.

So in an email exchange with Earl today I mentioned that the world feels like a better place when you smile and deliberately seek out a positive attitude. This has been my approach to the chaos littering my day today and so far it has been working brilliantly. Let’s hope this trend continues.

At work we have basically replaced all the tools that the technicians need to do their job. New phones, new monitoring systems, new ticketing system, all of it is new. It’s as if you picked up a 30 year veteran that ran the same cash register system at Ames for all those years and plopped behind a completely different cash register at Sears and told them to do their job. People are feeling disoriented and this makes them a little cranky.

Smile and the world smiles with you. Take it with a grain of salt. Frustration leads to folks saying things in the heat of the moment. Once you remember that, you can continue with your day and find a way to solve the problem at hand. This approach has been working for me.

I just keep smiling.

So last night when I was at the Apple store at the future Destiny USA, a younger woman walked up to Bryan, the Apple person that was helping me get my new iPad set up (we were basically waiting for my backup to download from iCloud, it was moving along at a wonderful pace). She was dressed in a way that suggested ‘hipster’ but not really quite there. Perhaps it was more her glasses than anything that looked hipster. She had an air of money about her. I didn’t find her unpleasant.

“Excuse me,” she said to Bryan, “may I speak with the manager, please?”

Bryan was very courteous with his reply, “Is there something I can help you with?” I don’t know if Bryan was the store manager or if the folks at the Apple store try to field these things before calling a manager, but he was quite nice about it.

“My friends and I have been standing over there for 20 minutes and no one has helped us and I’d like to let the manager know how rude the staff is here.”

Now this kind of bothered me, because I have been to many Apple stores over the years and while I have had some employees be less enthusiastic about Apple products than I am (because, I am a nut after all), I would never categorize any Apple employee that I have ever encountered as ‘rude’. Bothered or distracted? Maybe, and that’s usually because they’re handling a line of people out the door, but not once have they been ‘rude’. Not even ‘miffed’.

“I’m sorry about your experience,” Bryan replied, “did you press a specialist button on one of the iPad kiosks to indicate that you needed help?”

“What are you talking about? The folks on the floor have helped the people all around us but never talked to us.”

I would have been one of those people. I noticed this barely hipster girl (I like the male hipsters better, but that could be due to the mustache and gay thing I have going on) sitting in front of a cinema display playing on Facebook with a couple of her friends when I was looking at the iPads. Now granted, I didn’t press a specialist button until I was shown to do so but I did make a conscious effort to make eye contact with an Apple Specialist to show that I needed some assistance. I don’t know if the woman with the complaint had done the same thing because I didn’t notice.

Again Bryan apologized for her experience at the store and said, “if you’d like, I can get a specialist for you right now.” Seemed reasonable enough to me.

“Never mind, I called Best Buy and they have what I’m looking for on hold for me now, so I’m going to go there, but I just wanted to let the manager know how rude the sales staff is here.”

This kind of bothered me for the aforementioned reasons based on my experience but the thing that really bothered me is that she was really just trying to convey an air of bitchiness. She never mentioned the product that she had on hold nor did she ever say what she was trying to get an Apple Specialist to help her with. She just needed help.

“I’m sorry that you didn’t find what you were looking for and I will relay your experience to the manager. Again, I apologize that you weren’t helped in a timely fashion.” I admired Bryan’s calm approach.

“Well never mind,” and with that she bolted out of the store. A casual observation from me noted that she headed down the mall hallway in the direction opposite of Best Buy.

Bryan and I resumed the setup of my iPad. We then had a casual conversation beginning with me asking, “So, how is it to work in the mall?” He told me that he loved working for Apple but the mall … he could take it or leave it.

I get that. Bryan and I finished up my business (and I walked out with a beautiful new iPad) and I thanked him for his help and went on my way.

I mention this little scenario because it reinforces a couple of things I’ve observed over the years: 1. Folks are in way too much of a rush these days and don’t give customer service folks the respect they deserve. 2. While many customer experiences are absolutely hideous these days, there are establishments out there that focus on a premium retail experience for the customer, and while it may cost a little more than the bargain basement crap experience you can get from a big box, it is available to those who still prefer quality over quantity. 3. Most people are just rude and some folks just look for a reason to be rude.

I learned a little bit of a lesson with that scenario last night that has put me in a better mood this weekend, a little patience goes a long way and I need to remember that.

So a few months ago I met up with our friends Shirley and Christine (whom I used to work with) at a local eatery, Baggs Square Café. They were offering a weekend brunch buffet that I found a little unique for this region. Instead of going up to the a buffet area to fill your plate up with food, you paid one price and you could eat as many items as you wanted off the menu, in whatever quantity you were in the mood for. So, for $19.95 you could order eight servings of prime rib if you wanted, which of course would be preceded by 14 servings of shrimp cocktail, a dozen bagels and to bring your meal to a satisfying finalé, a cupcake.

Of course I’m being extreme here, but they had it setup so that servers were constantly coming to your table to check on your happiness and to see if you wanted more food. It was kind of a nifty way to eat and it made for a great way to enjoy the company of your friends; you didn’t feel rushed and if you were in the mood for more, you could always order it.

Today I met up with our friend Mike (more on that in a future blog post this weekend) and I took him to the café for this fantastic brunch experience.

Except the experience was no more. Baggs Square Café was back to their standard, workday breakfast and lunch menu. You ordered at the counter and then they brought it to the table you selected. It’s not a very busy place so they didn’t bother with the likes of numbers on a tall stand or anything like that.

The food was delicious as always but when I asked why they had discontinued the brunch buffet they didn’t really fully answer the question. The counter attendant simply told me that this was the first week that it they were back to the original way of doing things but if I wanted to come back next week they were having a one-day offering of the brunch for Easter.

It’s a shame that this didn’t really catch on because I enjoyed the different eating experience on a Saturday morning. Perhaps we should have visited them more often.

I’m not a fan of being labeled. I don’t like being perceived to act in an expected manner. I believe that labels restrict us and establish a possibly unwarranted expectation for our behavior. One of the reasons that I dropped out of the semi-finals for becoming a Big Brother contestant was because they were clearly trying to herd me into being the “gay one”. Since this was relatively early in the Big Brother history, a man by the name of Bunky had established the gay baseline for behavior on Big Brother (he cried a lot) and that didn’t really appeal to me. I don’t want people to think I’m going to be an emotional wreck just because I’m gay. I’d rather people find out why I’m an emotional wreck without figuring any labels into the equation; that’s when they’ll find that I’m more eccentric than an emotional wreck.

Over the past month or so I have stopped eating meat for the most part. I have had a meatball or a piece of pepperoni here and there but other than that, I have enjoyed a pretty much meat-free diet. I have also stopped drinking milk, instead opting for rice milk with my morning cereal. I have done this before but back then I always called myself a vegetarian. Now I didn’t go running into a steakhouse screaming “murder!” with a look of indignation on my face back when I was labeling myself a vegetarian. I wasn’t militant but when offered a piece of meat I would say, “No thank you, I’m a vegetarian.” I labeled myself. And that made me kind of militant about it not eating meat, even though I didn’t think I was being overly militant. So now, when offered a meat dish of some sort, I simply say, “No thank you.” And that’s that. If pressed for a reason, I would simply say, “it looks delicious, but I’m just not in the mood for (insert offered dish here) today. Thank you, though.” I don’t want to be known as a vegetarian. I don’t feel the need to proclaim being a vegetarian and I don’t want the label applied to my permanent file. It’s bad enough that my penicillin allergy is on that permanent file because that shows the world that I have a weakness and I don’t like that sort of thing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with calling yourself a vegetarian and if that blows your skirt up in a pleasant way then I am all for blowing your skirt up, but it’s just not my thing. It’s kind of like “gay marriage”. I like it better when it’s called “marriage”. I have been accused of being homophobic about myself because I don’t go running through the mall screaming “I’m gay!” (the neon light of my personality does that for me anyways) but I believe we should respect one another enough to the point of respecting the labels (or lack thereof) that we choose to identify with. Do I identify as a “gay”? Of course I do, but I don’t want to be singled down to being “the gay one”. If you want to get on a really bad side of me, mention my sexual orientation when introducing me to someone. At least one person in attendance is going to be mightily embarrassed and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that it’s not going to be me. It’s not that I’m not proud, it’s just that I have bigger things to be proud about.

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