Category Archives: Grumbles

To the car outside my window

Posted on by

I understand that you are stuck behind an ass trying to make an illegal left turn, and you would really like to get past him now if not sooner; but obviously, he doesn’t care about your convenience. It seems that he also doesn’t care about the horn you’ve been laying on for the last minute and a half.

I, on the other hand, care deeply about your convenience and would firebomb the scofflaw, if such were possible (as I lack explosives) and legal (as I have no wish to go to prison). However, I think intentions should count for something, so taking our mutual hatred for the illegal-left-hand-turn-making-idiot into account, could you do me this one eensy favor?

Lay. Off. The. Horn.

Obviously, your horn is not producing the desired result. The scofflaw has not moved, and it seems he will not do so until such time as he gets to make his mother-loving, donkey-fellating, left hand turn. Your auto horn, on the other hand, is impacting MY day rather directly, and both I and the customer on the other end of my phone would be eternally in your debt if you would take a few breaths, find your zen, and remember that, auto karma being what it is, the scofflaw will most assuredly get his, probably in short order.

No, really.

I still beat a Turing script. Barely.

Posted on by

Customer: I’m looking for ::Insert description of item we don’t have anything even close to.:: would ::item:: be a good match?
Me: No. ::item:: is really nothing like what you are looking for, but we could run up a custom quote for you.
Customer: No, my customer is OUT of ::non-existent-box:: and needs more NOW.
What I do not say: Well, obviously it already exists somewhere. You can’t just ask them where they bought it last?
What I do say: I’m sorry, but we don’t have anything that matches what you’re looking for. Here’s the info to begin a custom quote request, if you want to go that direction.
Customer: Allright. I’ll order samples of ::item:: anyway, just to check them out.
Me: You have a good day.

We’re not like a shoe store. There’s no special back room where we’re keeping the one item you really really want. If it’s not listed, we don’t have it. We may be able to magic it up out of nothing, but that does take time and money.

A wish list for (some) of my southern customers

Posted on by

Yes, I speak quickly. When annoyed or stressed, I speak even faster. I understand that this may make me hard to understand if you’re not used to it. I will try to chill out of you mention it.

Being passive aggressive is not the same thing as being polite or nice, and I can sniff that out faster than you would believe. It will not endear you to me, and it will not make me want to go that extra mile for you.

You are free to ask how my day is going. That is, however, a personal question and one I am not obligated to answer (truthfully or otherwise). If I decline to answer and instead ask how I can help you today, you will take the damn hint and drop it. It’s not rude for me to politely sidestep a personal question (even if you don’t think it’s terribly personal). It IS rude of you to force the issue, and it’s INCREDIBLY rude for you to cop an attitude afterward.

Asking where my company is located and then sniffing “well, that explains it” when I tell you that we’re in Newark is also rude. No, really.

Please keep in mind that you are a stranger who wouldn’t know me from Adam, and as such, there’s are certain modes of address that, I swear to god, are just not appropriate. This would include calling me honey, darling, dear, sugar or anything else that you might find yourself calling your spouse in bed. I’m not fond of “miss” but I’ll live with it. (Same for ma’am, though that feaks me out a bit as it makes me look around for my mother.) I’ll let it slide if I’m in a good mood, or unstressed, but if you hear my voice chill and my mode of address to you get ever more formal, you might want to pick up on the clue that you’re hopping over a line and it might be best if you hopped back over it right now.

Genuine respect and a decent attitude will get you a hell of a lot further than playing bait the yankee, I kid you not.

About Techcrunch

Posted on by

It’s kinda hard (if you’re paying attention tech-news in general) to avoid reading, or reading about, TechCrunch. (Loved by some, hated by many.) Over the weekend, I caught an interview with Mike Arrington, and it got me thinking about why, exactly, he’s such a focus of ire among traditional journalists. (Internecine grumpiness in the blogging community is another thing, I think.)

The main points:

  • Reporting on? rumors
  • Process journalism
  • Conflicts of interest

These are legitimate issues, but they are also known issues. I don’t know if it actually makes what they (or any other tech reporting blog) do more or less legitimate than the tech (or other) sections of most newspapers.

Arrington’s attitude is that what they do isn’t unheard of in the wider world of journalism, so why is everyone picking on him? I think that’s exactly why (journalists, at least) go after him. He’s not covering the latest starlet to forget her undies, so they can’t dismiss him like some Mike Drudge/Perez Hilton bottom feeder. He’s covering “real” news, and it’s one thing for the gossip rags to engage in less than sterling ethical practices, but the sinking ship that is mainstream respectable journalism (with the NY Times leading the way) insists that THEY are different. They have standards darn it! (Except when they don’t.)? Arrington, by his actions, is s saying that the emperor’s naked.

I don’t have a problem with Techcrunch. I give it about as much credence as I do most other tech reporting (it varies on the day and story). I do have a problem with the horrified pearl clutching by “respectable” media, because it’s just ridiculous, and leads to nothing so much as another round of “I know you are but what am I?” that traditional and blogistan media have been playing out for the last few years.

The problem isn’t that Techcrunch commits sins against journalism, it’s the idea that there are some sort of journalistic “virtues” that were ever adhered to in the first place that I find questionable. Really, I’d like any of the “we must save Journalism or Democracy will fall” screeds to acknowledge the large debt modern journalism owes to the yellow presses of the robber barons. William Randolph Hearst anyone? Name ring a bell? Certainly not – modern heroic journalism begins and ends with Woodward and Bernstein and god help you if you look at some of the stuff they’ve published since the 70′s.

One of my first journalism professors laid it out thusly – a journalists’ job is to get eyeballs for ads. That’s what pays your salary, not the subscribers. (This was the ethics in journalism class, mind you.)? Anyone who was looking to change or save the world should not be there. This was the same term I was taking media theory and had to read a ton of? Chomsky. Suffice it to say, I got my ass out of dodge with some shreds of idealism intact. Yes, I have some a lot of bones to pick with Journalism as it is normally practiced… I never claimed to be impartial here.? Besides, didn’t you know that shredded idealism makes the best kind of bitterness?

Impartiality is a myth. The idea that you can take a person who is a conflicting collection of biases, impulses, nuroses, and desires and, by application of some editors, fact checkers and a loose agglomeration of ethical guidelines produce Truth and Justice delivered daily is just… fiction.

The truth is so much less prosaic, but that un-prosaic truth won’t help the drowning print media regain their footing, so they must find devils to point at, and cast themselves as Perseus, ready to save the princess (the reading public) from the gorgon-like perils of un-ethical journalism. Currently, Techcrunch is the gorgon.

And whew, I hadn’t intended to get quite so ranty there.

That's not an answer

Posted on by

Prepress folks -
When my customer has requested your art requirements so that they can alter their art file to run correctly, (as they did not like the changes you made to the file) the correct response is not to drag your heels for the better part of a week and then just hand me back their original artwork and say “here, go for it”.

I have an unhappy customer and an unhappy boss. Guess what I’m gonna sound like when I get you on the phone?

And, for the record, I don’t like being That Person. I take enough crap from end-users and I have no desire to toss that crap on down the line to my vendors, but if you deliberately make my life difficult, I will serve it back with english.