The new job keeps me moving along. Today I came home, made supper, and it was already 9:00 PM. News from across the lane, Carlos and Dan-O are moving away end of the month. They lasted longer in there than most, the average stay being a few months. How long before Arnel and I are the only two people left working in this town? Alfredo likes me to answer the phone at the shop, kind of screen the calls. One thing we get is telemarket calls, and I love to put the screws to them. They’ve got to go through me now and I’m impressed by how evolved their scripts have become. They will not answer a direct question about whether they are selling anything. Let me tell you about one such call today. I used to write the scripts, you know.
The lady asks for the owner by last name. I ask her if she is a telemarketer, she replies that she would like to speak to the business owner. Am I the business owner? No, then I must be an employee and she “needs to be certain she is talking to the right person”. I ask her for the business owner’s first name, she again dodges the question by asking if I am “the FBI”. She got nowhere, but it was a clever script indeed. If I was not the owner, she acted like I did not have the authority to screen her call. If I was an employee, she didn’t have to do what I said. If I was not an employee, she acts like I should not be answering the phone. We get around three such calls per day.
When I stepped out the door at quitting time, Marcus came by (a coincidence). For the first time in years, I went for a drink right after work. My old 9:30 rule still applies. This is a holdover from my college days when drinking after class was considered normal. In my entire college, university and years at the phone company, I never once left from those to go drinking. I always did something productive until 9:30 PM, hence the rule. After that point, anything goes. Hey, I was in college. Or actually, it was university. Big difference.
This made me a pariah at the phone place, where the three beer lunch break was common. But it also ensured an enormous gap in productivity and quality of life between me and the pack. Take little gems like this blog. I understand how for some people, a blog like this would take so much time they would assume I, and not they, had no life. If I had no life, would I have anything to write about? Hold on, that sounds like a telemarketing script. Sorry.
Don’t expect any important posts on the Karaoke or database during the week. There isn’t time and you know it. That only means I’m not writing, it does not mean there is no progress. Besides, I’m still in pain over that insect encounter last weekend. Wallace says “lance it” but I twisted around until I could see it in the mirror. It is tiny. I will go to a doctor if it does not disappear in another day, promise. For the record, I was wearing a loose flowing but sturdy cotton shirt at the time. Maybe it was a horsefly, but can they bite through a shirt that thick and not make a hole? There’s never an entomologist around when you need one.
Worst joke of the day: Who lost the election in Iraq? Answer: The USA. Like some of the most lauded military experts of all time, Clauswitz and Lao Ting, all military philosophy is wholly obvious to anyone who has played with toy soldiers in the sand box. Just as I predicted about hurricanes when I was eleven, as time goes by and knowledge increases, humankind with eventually figure out the way stupid people behave is far from random. For proof you need look no further than my oft-quoted example of “family emergencies”. Our politicians have created another unwinnable war.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
