You know, in all the years I was on the west coast, I cannot specifically recall a day when my planned activities were forestalled because of rain. You can work around rain but you cannot work outside in the Florida summer heat. Well anyway, that is my excuse for getting so little done today. Today I didn’t even think of doing anything outside.Instead, I stayed in the shade and made a lot of serious plans for my music course. Now that I have great references, I have to follow it up. I only require three lessons per week to stay afloat, and three per day is not unreasonable. It depends on advertising now. That’s why I was testing the answering machine, I need one that covers a lot of the repetitious answers before people call me. Prices begin at $45 per hour, type of thing.
Jimbo’s was dead so I did not set up and play. In the alternative, I dropped in to the VFW to see for myself how the Saturday Bingo really goes. It is exactly what you’d expect except for the caller. She is a 60-year-old lady with dyed brown hair and just before she calls each number, she issues a slight off-center grin, almost a smirk. As if she’s thinking the next number could dash somebody’s dream. At first you don’t catch it because it just looks like she was chewing gum, but then you see the pattern.
When I was around 15, I did a calculation of the odds in Bingo. I don’t recall the details but it was such an incredibly huge number that nobody would believe me. My conclusion is that Bingo is a deceptive game if one does not know statistics. There are 75 numbers and 24 are on each card, so your chances are nearly one in three to get each call. However, I watched the two blackout games and noticed nobody won until there were just 9 numbers left in the scrambler. That means 66 numbers have to be called where theoretically a blackout could occur on the 24th number.
One of my student’s lost her job and thoughtfully called in to tell me she had to cancel her lessons. This is polite, but it was what happened next that got me. She mentioned she worked for Deltacom, the company that stole my name back in the early 80s. I am the original Deltacom, short for “Delta Community of Interests”. At that time I was living near Tsawwassen (Tee-Ess-Aye-Double-Double-You-Aye-Double-Ess-Ee-En). Rhymes with “Tsawwassen”. The closest bank was the Delta Credit Union.
What intrigued me was she said Deltacom was a “telecommunication company”. That perked me up and I asked her for the details. Folks, anyone, anywhere, who thinks I have been unduly harsh in my criticisms of the way the phone company treats smart people should have heard her. It was like listening to an exact list of the grievances I had twenty years ago.
What is revealing is that the industry has not evolved much because it must still hire the same sorry specimens as “management”. They regularly get awards as a top employer. (From people who don’t work there.) Once inside, you will find not one of the real benefits are yours, particularly if you are a white male. Take this one fact from many: Single women get maternity leave, but not single men.
That makes sense until you are told “You can’t have a raise this year because we used up all the money paying benefits to unwed females who became pregnant after they were hired.” (It must be your fault. And we need to speak with you about all that weight they’ve been gaining. That’s gonna cost you, too.)
Unreasonable? Not once you learn that in the phone company, married men can get maternity benefits. Only single men cannot. Equality. On top of that, the Union will whack even more off your paycheck unless you attend every meeting to vote against further deductions. (But first you have to stand around in a roomful of garlic-stained comrades in ball caps and sing all 37 verses of “Solidarity”.) Funny it is, when you twist the rule book to create social affirmative action at my expense, I don’t like it.
To the thinking man, the phone company is a zoo. Mind you, I had a plan of escape, for I waltzed out the door with a buyout package and two college degrees. But I was not one penny further ahead than the day I had started there. My student joined an insurance company.
I had another service call out on Hillcrest, so this week was truly great for the money. I’ll use the surplus to step up advertising a bit. On the way over there, I stopped at the office. I tried to download an instrumental version of “Happy Birthday”. So far I’ve got versions by Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, none of it suitable. But what’s this? A version from Sesame Street that actually sounds like it was recorded for a barroom. I can work with that. In fact was hilarious when I added in a bass line and it is now 12:22 a.m.
Trivia. Did you know that ID theft culled $46,000,000,000 the last year I looked (2005)? That’s over $15,000 for every person in the country. Good business. Don’t you love the way the banks and credit card companies blame their customers? You are just so careless with your identity.
