Take a look at the painted pumpkins they are flogging for $9 each. I guess it had to happen sometime, I mean, they paint Easter eggs. Enjoy, that is the only light comedy you’ll get today. I remember once cleaning out a pumpkin. What a chore. I do like pumpkin pie but you know, there is actually very little pumpkin in it.
Justin is off my Christmas list. I spent all last evening, night, this morning and most of the afternoon scrambling because he can’t give people a straight answer. Fred and I talked it over, and although nobody wants to take sides against him, he can forget about any business relationship from this point. This is the first time in years that I found myself held to a deadline that I did not create and I assure you I did not like it. Since that is nearly all that happened today, I have nothing else to write about. Are you ready?
Take a laugh break whenever you’d like. Ruth calls me up y’day to say there is a re-run of the Letterman show with the dog wigs. Although I have explained it to her many times, she does not understand that mentioning a web page on national TV does not mean thousands of customers will instantly log on late at night.
Ruth is convinced she is losing money because, despite her web page, nobody is contacting her. She also does not understand that having a web page does not mean people will suddenly begin to send you email or money. Now, by coincidence, something was wrong with the web last time, or so I am told. However, when I first arrived on the scene, there were only 13 emails and they were all spam. I pointed that out to Ruth, who feels she should have been swamped with email orders.
She does not understand and does not want to understand that a web page cannot be created instantly. Various steps and stages are involved, but one of those steps is allowing three times as long as you think it will take. Ruth did not do that, and this is where Justin enters the picture. His manner of doing business is to be vague about what he wants at first, but the further you get into any venture, the more picky he becomes about what he expects. (To the point where you wish you had done it yourself.)
It seems he told her three weeks ago that it would be three weeks before he could modify her web page. She took that to mean that he would be working on it for the next three weeks and get back to her. He meant they had a tentative appointment in three weeks, at which time she was to call him so they could get started. Both people are waiting for the other to move. Having dealt with them both, I support Ruth on that one. Justine has intentionally worded things funny before, where Ruth has merely been unreasonable.
Now, Ruth’s existing page, which Justin designed, does not have specific types of dog wigs that the customer can browse. Ruth is convinced that this catalog is a requirement to sell the wigs. Don’t ask me. Despite telling Ruth maybe six times, she cannot or will not understand why she can’t just send Justin the pictures of the dog wigs and that is it. It requires programming, and that part I agreed to do. Justin, on the other hand, would never explain to Ruth that the pictures have to be scanned, formatted and optimized. He is more likely to wait until the pictures arrive and then just say he can’t use them the next time you call to find out why nothing has happened yet.
However, I agreed to do this on the strength of statements by Justin this very morning that if I got the tested pages to him before day’s end, he would make the necessary links from the web page. I had two ways to proceed. One to dump a half-baked page on him early in the day, or make it a little more friendly so all he had to do was the two links. That is misleading because he understood the problem was lack of communication between two adults who should know better, and that a certain amount of tweaking would be needed right at the last moment. I was just trying to help. He didn’t have the time, she didn’t either.
That is where he messed me up. When he said he would do it, to me that represents a commitment. I can and rightfully did call up Ruth and try to calm things down with this news. However, when I phoned Justin to confirm he had the files by email, he twice said something about “tomorrow”. I instantly countered that everything he had committed to was today. He also said that he could not use my material, but I called the bullsh on that one. It is ordinary html code with no style sheets, and if his system cannot use the universal standard, he had a duty to tell me that before I started. Then, he proceeds to announce that he is not going to do it right away, but will give it “the attention that it deserves”.
Meanwhile, Ruth is in a panic about the whole affair, still convincing herself the web thing has some magical properties that will make money for her. Justin was plainly not going to be helpful and in fact was becoming increasingly difficult.. He simply put up the links and did not test if they worked, saying he only worked with what I gave him. Nothing else. He even got antsy when I asked what hotlink he had used, saying I should look at the page and find it.
This needs clarification. First of all, whereas he may not know that I don’t have Internet at home, he does know that Fred closes at 5:00 PM. When he failed to call back by 5:47, I rang him up. The reason I asked for the hotlink is so that I do not have to call back and have Ruth trial and error every link on that entire page while I’m riding a bicycle down 17th Avenue. Not because, as he insinuated, I was trying to get him to lift a finger for free.
Which brings around the end of the conversation. I asked why he was not being more cooperative and he said that Ruth had not “paid anything yet”. I was not about to get into it, but Ruth has paid me every day on time and has mentioned occasionally that she has not yet received any invoice from Justin. This is where I advised Justin that, if the money was a factor, that is another thing he should have mentioned this morning. Furthermore, I was holding him to what he said in the morning, not what he said in the afternoon when he changed his tune.
So, as far as I know, the site is running with the doggie wig catalog, but I have no way to test it until later tomorrow. It does not matter what anyone has to say about that, I’ve told everyone I have no Internet at home, whether they listen or not. It is out of my hands, though I should mention if there is any major difficulty, Ruth has a lawyer on retainer while I doubt Justin has ever been in court. To create an analogy, since neither of them is an irresistible force, that makes them both immovable objects. Are you done laughing yet?
Well, okay, a couple other things did creep into the spaces around this boondoggle. I had it out with Nippon Express Ltd. over the $45 invoice. They had a secretary call up and demand I fill out a tax form and register as a vendor. The entire problem is that she demanded, going so far as to say that Federal law requires I do what she says. I balk when people demand things, and asked her why she wanted it. Sure enough, she tried every tired Florida corporate scam in the book, which included
stating that I was obligated to give her the number (the lie)
insinuating I must be a crook (this must mean something to Floridians)
threatening to “turn me in” to the IRS (I can return the favor in spades)
implying I didn’t know how to fill out the form (really?)
maintaining that I was the first one to ever complain (like it’s a race?)
saying she had never heard anyone refuse before (I did not refuse)
trying to hide behind “policy” (join the Army, lady)
The sad part for her is that I have policies also. Now which do you think is more important over here? One of them is that I supply minimal information to strange women who call up and both pretend to be important and call me a crook in the first thirty seconds. Sorry Kathleen, you might be one of Florida’s best, but real life does not work like that. I was impolite, but she started it. Get off your horse lady, you are nothing but a flunky and you owe me a thank you for bringing you down a notch.
It got there when I informed her that I had filled out all the paperwork necessary for her to pay me, that I was not interested in becoming a “vendor”, that they could pay my invoice out of petty cash, that she had already wasted more time that all this was worth, that I did not like her attitude one bit and she could quit with the theatrics anytime.
If, by now, you are getting the impression all useful information is flowing one direction, you are right. I pointed out that I had not agreed to filling out any forms prior to being engaged to do the work, and would not do so under duress from her. I further assured her they were obligated to pay whoever did the work, even if they were “some kind of crook”. She was too stupid to grasp this. Nonetheless, it is time for her to start losing weight rather than throwing it around.
More, I found her words slanderous and when this was done, she could expect a clearly worded letter of complaint about her attitude and lack of remorse when exposed. (She actually defended her right to call me a crook! When I asked her if this was deliberate corporate policy, she announced she was just doing her job. I see, and to a jury, that is a “yes”. Hey, you lawyers out there back off, this one is mine.)
Oh, and in case you are wondering, the tax numbers are public information. If she really needed the information, she could have looked it up herself. But no, she reaches for the phone. This stupid woman is so typical of the types of morons you meet in South Florida, it is truly disgusting and totally entrenched in the structure here. I have no doubt that I am the first one who stood up to her nonsense, no doubt whatsoever. What bothered her most is that I did not care what she thought and she quickly spotted that everything I said was just her own medicine thrown back in her face. However, she was too stupid to break the cycle because she could not stop running off at the mouth. Talk about juvenile secretary-brain, this one embarrassed herself beyond belief. I’ll keep you posted. Right now, I do nothing, see what stirs up.
The only thing Nippon Express could do right at this point is fire that twit and fork over the $45.
The O’Toole real estate network was next. I biked over there at 19 miles per hour, hey, there was a stiff headwind. I got no help since the 17 year old daughter was home alone. I found the problem. A loose RJ-45 on the Westell (a type of Digital Subscriber Link interface used by the Florida phone company.) I was there maybe five minutes, and I thought about my standard $50 charge for a service call. Then, I thought about what makes me and Nippon Express so different in this Universe. I told her forget about the money and rode away.
I’m going to plug in my guitar and finally learn that old Merle Haggard hit, Momma Tried. Years ago, I remember these “older” guys nearly 20 who kept singing the part about turning twenty-one in prison doing life without parole, but never knew the name of the song until a month ago.
