Sunday, July 26, 2009
Don't Be a Sucker (Like Me)
Man, do I feel like an idiot. I was actually enticed by those Wendy's commercials for their supposedly new "Boneless Chicken Wings," in 3 enticing flavors - Bold Buffalo, Honey BBQ, and Sweet & Spicy Asian! So I hurried on over to Wendy's and ordered up some of those delicious sounding Asian boneless wings. Well, I knew I was in trouble when the employee charged with filling my order had to ask her supervisor, "which bottle do I use?" Because the scrumptious sounding "Boneless Chicken Wings" are actually their crappy chicken nuggets with some sauce from a color-coded bottle squirted on them, thus yielding chicken nuggets with a disgusting gelatinous flavored coating. I suspect that "Chicken Nuggets with a Disgusting Gelatinous Flavored Coating" did not perform favorably among their new product sampling focus groups so they came up with the more pleasant sounding "Boneless Chicken Wing" terminology, which is totally misleading. First of all, this thing is not and never was part of a chicken wing (I'm not even sure it comes from a chicken). I suppose it is boneless, but by the same token it is flavorless and probably chickenless, and warrants a full scale investigation by the FDA, FCC, and FBI! So there!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Leave My Coffee Alone!
I had breakfast in Cracker Barrel this morning, a fine establishment off the PA Turnpike in New Stanton. These places like Denny's, Eat & Park, Bob Evans, etc. all have one thing in common: the waitresses are absolute fanatics about keeping your coffee cup filled to the brim. Now I vociferously object to this practice for 2 reasons. First, I just like one cup of coffee and that's all. If I drink any more, my aging bladder will retaliate by making me spend the rest of the day in the men's room. The other problem is that I am very particular about the ratio of coffee to cream to artificial sweetener. Once I get that perfect ratio and take a few sips, if the waitress fills up the cup again with fresh coffee, I'm back to square one in terms of my ingredient ratio.
So predictably, the waitress at Cracker Barrel hones in on me like a Cruise missile with her pot of coffee literally milliseconds after my first sip of coffee. I politely declined, thinking that she would get the message that I was just fine with my initial quantity. I then proceeded to open up a newspaper so as to completely cover my coffee cup in the hopes of precluding further assaults on my mug. Then a few minutes later she returns and actually tries to burrow under the newspaper with the coffee pot like she was some kind of ground hog in this intense effort to fill up my cup. I then kind of lost it and wailed, "I don't want any more coffee" and I think I hurt her feelings, because she slunk away with her shoulders stooped like I had crushed her spirit and eliminated her whole reason for being.
Simple solution to this earth-shattering problem: give out stickers to put on the coffee cups that say "fill" or "no-fill". Wow, that idea could get me a Nobel Peace Prize!
So predictably, the waitress at Cracker Barrel hones in on me like a Cruise missile with her pot of coffee literally milliseconds after my first sip of coffee. I politely declined, thinking that she would get the message that I was just fine with my initial quantity. I then proceeded to open up a newspaper so as to completely cover my coffee cup in the hopes of precluding further assaults on my mug. Then a few minutes later she returns and actually tries to burrow under the newspaper with the coffee pot like she was some kind of ground hog in this intense effort to fill up my cup. I then kind of lost it and wailed, "I don't want any more coffee" and I think I hurt her feelings, because she slunk away with her shoulders stooped like I had crushed her spirit and eliminated her whole reason for being.
Simple solution to this earth-shattering problem: give out stickers to put on the coffee cups that say "fill" or "no-fill". Wow, that idea could get me a Nobel Peace Prize!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Strange Encounter at Giant Eagle
After yesterday's rant about customer service morons who confidently give you the wrong answer to your question, I had an interesting encounter with a guy at the Giant Eagle today of the opposite nature. Or to be more exact, it was a curious combination of competence and incompetence. This guy was kind of like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of supermarket help.
I was getting exhausted and irritable searching for items at a crowded Giant Eagle (that's the weird avian name of a supermarket chain in Western Pennsylvania) when a helpful employee asked me if I was finding every thing on my list. I said I needed help finding soy sauce, couscous, and corned beef hash (how's that for a strange trio?). It always impresses me that these employees can tell exactly where every single item is in the store, and he did not disappoint when it came to the soy sauce and the couscous. But he drew a blank with the hash. He honestly did not know, and to make matters even stranger, he said that was the second time today that someone asked him where the hash was. And THAT is what pissed me off about this guy. If he has just said that he didn't know where the hash was I would have let it go. But if someone had actually asked you earlier in the day about the hash, why didn't you ask someone where the hell it was in the interim? Well, he definitely is not getting my vote for employee of the month.
Anyway, I vowed to find that stupid hash or drop dead trying. I finally located it in the section of the store where thay have Spaghettio's and other miscellaneous canned stuff. I would call it the "disgusting canned shit that really doesn't belong in a can" section. I'm not even sure what the hell hash is, to tell you the truth. But at least I now know where to find it in the supermarket.
I was getting exhausted and irritable searching for items at a crowded Giant Eagle (that's the weird avian name of a supermarket chain in Western Pennsylvania) when a helpful employee asked me if I was finding every thing on my list. I said I needed help finding soy sauce, couscous, and corned beef hash (how's that for a strange trio?). It always impresses me that these employees can tell exactly where every single item is in the store, and he did not disappoint when it came to the soy sauce and the couscous. But he drew a blank with the hash. He honestly did not know, and to make matters even stranger, he said that was the second time today that someone asked him where the hash was. And THAT is what pissed me off about this guy. If he has just said that he didn't know where the hash was I would have let it go. But if someone had actually asked you earlier in the day about the hash, why didn't you ask someone where the hell it was in the interim? Well, he definitely is not getting my vote for employee of the month.
Anyway, I vowed to find that stupid hash or drop dead trying. I finally located it in the section of the store where thay have Spaghettio's and other miscellaneous canned stuff. I would call it the "disgusting canned shit that really doesn't belong in a can" section. I'm not even sure what the hell hash is, to tell you the truth. But at least I now know where to find it in the supermarket.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Pent-Up & Pissed Off
I'll tell you, even though I enjoy my Seinfeld blog, Bobsblogaboutnothing (http://bobsblogaboutnothing.blogspot.com/), there's something very therapeutic about spilling your guts out about life's daily travails. I happen to have had a trio of incidents recently with a common theme that got me so pissed off that I had to temporarily resurrect my Pissed Off In Pittsburgh blog.
The common theme is "customer service idiots who don't know what they're talking about but are extremely confident that they do." One of my basic philosophies is that there are 4 combinations of competence and confidence. You have people who are competent and confident (insufferable, but nice to have around in an emergency), competent and lacking confidence (unlikely to lead in a crisis, but unlikely to make mistakes), incompetent and lacking confidence (these people know their limitations, thank goodness), and the most dangerous category, incompetent and confident (the last President, for example).
Anyway, here are the 3 examples of the last category I have encountered:
1. My wife needed a couple of links removed from her Twist-O-Flex watch band, recently purchased at WalMart. I have had this done at WalMart many times before. So I went to the store in Fox Chapel, where the idiot behind the jewelry counter confidently stated that one cannot remove links from a Twist-O-Flex watch band! I was so pissed off that I ratted her out to the store manager (I'm sure that did a lot of good). I then looked up the instructions on the Internet and did it myself.
2. I was looking for this frozen polenta stuff that they have at Trader Joe's but I couldn't find it. So I asked one of the store cretins dressed up in his tropical costume where it was located and he looked at me like I was an absolute dope and said that Trader Joe's has never, ever had frozen polenta in its entire history, like he was some kind of Professor of Advanced Trader Joe's studies. So when I was checking out, the cashier asked if I had found everything that I was looking for, and I lept at the chance to complain about Mr. Polenta Know-It-All. She was actually nice enough to find another store employee who took me directly to the frozen polenta in question.
3. I wanted to get some cash from a pre-paid debit card I had received in return for completeing a survey online. You can't use it at an ATM but the website of the sponsoring bank said you could go to any bank and ask for a cash advance. I went to the PNC at the corner of Fifth and Craig with this intent, whereupon I was told by a very confident teller that there is absolutely no way that my request could be honored, again with the implication that I was an idiot for asking. Unfortunately, I did not have the website documentation with me at the time, so I went back to my office and printed it out. I then went to another PNC branch armed with my printout, but I didn't even need it, because the teller at this branch said it would be no problem. However, there was a $25 minimum on any cash advance, and I only had $2.36 left on the card.
The common theme is "customer service idiots who don't know what they're talking about but are extremely confident that they do." One of my basic philosophies is that there are 4 combinations of competence and confidence. You have people who are competent and confident (insufferable, but nice to have around in an emergency), competent and lacking confidence (unlikely to lead in a crisis, but unlikely to make mistakes), incompetent and lacking confidence (these people know their limitations, thank goodness), and the most dangerous category, incompetent and confident (the last President, for example).
Anyway, here are the 3 examples of the last category I have encountered:
1. My wife needed a couple of links removed from her Twist-O-Flex watch band, recently purchased at WalMart. I have had this done at WalMart many times before. So I went to the store in Fox Chapel, where the idiot behind the jewelry counter confidently stated that one cannot remove links from a Twist-O-Flex watch band! I was so pissed off that I ratted her out to the store manager (I'm sure that did a lot of good). I then looked up the instructions on the Internet and did it myself.
2. I was looking for this frozen polenta stuff that they have at Trader Joe's but I couldn't find it. So I asked one of the store cretins dressed up in his tropical costume where it was located and he looked at me like I was an absolute dope and said that Trader Joe's has never, ever had frozen polenta in its entire history, like he was some kind of Professor of Advanced Trader Joe's studies. So when I was checking out, the cashier asked if I had found everything that I was looking for, and I lept at the chance to complain about Mr. Polenta Know-It-All. She was actually nice enough to find another store employee who took me directly to the frozen polenta in question.
3. I wanted to get some cash from a pre-paid debit card I had received in return for completeing a survey online. You can't use it at an ATM but the website of the sponsoring bank said you could go to any bank and ask for a cash advance. I went to the PNC at the corner of Fifth and Craig with this intent, whereupon I was told by a very confident teller that there is absolutely no way that my request could be honored, again with the implication that I was an idiot for asking. Unfortunately, I did not have the website documentation with me at the time, so I went back to my office and printed it out. I then went to another PNC branch armed with my printout, but I didn't even need it, because the teller at this branch said it would be no problem. However, there was a $25 minimum on any cash advance, and I only had $2.36 left on the card.
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