I Removed the Tag

Thanks to the machinations of the Wall Street “geniuses” who played fast and loose with other people’s money, America’s economy continues to stagnate. And, as a result, customer service has taken even more of a plunge from its already pretty poor state.

I have witnessed it in multiple contexts:

• At a Safeway grocery store, already with notoriously bad service, a cashier assigned to the end “express” lane has to stop serving the current customer and rush over to the adjacent self-serve lane to help customers deal with the problematic software in those lanes. Over the weekend, it took me an extra 5 minutes in the “express” lane, with a total of four items, to get checked out, because the cashier left my station four times to help the self-checkers.
• Multiple taxicab companies that share a single dispatch call center, leading to a recent experience in which I tried four cab companies on a non-holiday Saturday afternoon to arrange for a cab the next morning; I was put on hold with the same exact message and voice by 4 companies, and after giving each one 5 minutes of waiting, I gave up and found a cab company where a live human answered, promptly, and got my business.
• Radiology centers that no longer do “wet reads” of their imaging, including mammograms. A friend who was a nuke tech years ago said that in the old days, radiologists read images while the patient waited. These days, apparently the reads are farmed out to some radiologist off site, who reads them overnight. Thanks to this customer UN-friendly policy, every time I go in for a screening mammogram, I get called back for a diagnostic scan, entailing additional work time and expense—not to mention worry—for me.

The underlying thread is that businesses small, medium, and large have pared their staffing levels to the bone, at considerable inconvenience to customers/patients. Not only do we get treated as if our time has no value, but more and more jobs are lost, meaning fewer and fewer consumers to patronize the businesses. It’s a vicious cycle that will be increasingly hard to escape from. The zeal for maximizing profit at the expense of everything else is a sorry legacy of the worship of free markets.

Ah, the good old days, when Democrats ran the statehouse: Those of us with moderate incomes (in fact, all of us, I seem to remember) could file our state tax form by phone, and then by e-file, for FREE.

Now the free-market worshippers have made arrangements with e-file vendors to offer free state e-file but only if you fall into a few subsets. Oh, I could qualify based on AGI, but I’m older than 52. Yes, not only do you have to make under $55k, but you have to be younger than 52!

WTF? 

Ok, Bob McDonnell, you want to take away a benefit I used to have to pick up the phone and file, so here’s my response: MAIL me all the goddamn forms at the state’s expense. Screw you telling me it’s “better” for me to use my printer and printing ink to print out the forms to give you even more of my hard-earned, well-below median salary. Let’s not even get into not getting state employees ANY salary increase for 4 years, even after being promoted.

I cannot wait to vote your ass out of office.

There are a lot of things I like about Target: you can find nicely designed home goods, get 5% discounts using your Target card, and it’s close by.

But two things I HATE about Target, that I think are deceptive advertising practices, are:

1. No unit pricing on grocery items. How can I compare a 7-ounce package of cold cut A to a 16-ounce package of cold cut B, if you don’t tell me either the price per pound or ounce? Every grocery store in my state, and I think in most states, requires shelf price tags to show the unit cost; it’s a basic consumer protection. Why is Target’s grocery exempt? 
2. Mystery “sale” prices in circulars. Putting the words On Sale in front of an item tells me nothing. What was the non-sale price? If you mark down a $200 item to $195, I want to know.

Target, I expect more. But I’d also like to know if I really AM paying less.

Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House has risen two and a half times, according to financial analysis undertaken by the Washington Post. Over the same time period, the wealth of the American family has decreased slightly.

And yet many folks, like those in the Tea Party, somehow continue to labor under the illusion that Congress represents the interests of the people. That‘s true only in the sense that corporations are now people, thanks to the Supreme Court.

This is why politicians can fail to grasp that Social Security and unemployment benefits barely help folks get by. Just because they made out sucking at the public teat, it doesn’t mean that those collecting benefits are somehow lazy cheats.

It is impossible to have a representative democracy when elected officials simply don‘t represent the reality of the vast, vast majority of their constituents.

Given what Barney Frank had to say during last Sunday’s “Great American Debate” hosted by Christiane Amanpour, the country has lost one of the last remaining true political leaders, who actually seek to govern and not to act as lapdogs for corporate interests.

According to a report in the Falls Church News Press, this is what Frank had to say:

Yes, we have too much government. And yes, we have too little government. There is this mistaken view that says…we have a fight between the people’s money and the government’s money. It’s all the people’s money.

I understand the appeal of tax cuts, but in all my years of government, I have never seen a tax cut put out a fire. I have never seen a tax cut build a bridge or clean up toxic atmosphere.

The point is that there are some things where we are inevitably together. We are interlocked in the economy. We’re all subject to the same environment, we all have the same public safety needs. And there, I think, we sometimes have too little government.

Apparently, the entire population of Northern Virginia was calling for cabs at the same time tonight. Because I had to call not one, two, three, or even four, but FIVE cab companies to get a human being. The first four had me on hold for 4 minutes each and counting, with the admonition DO NOT HANG UP AND CALL BACK. I came to the conclusion the message reflects their dirty little secret: they share exactly one dispatcher. No, I’m not going to call back; I’m going to call a company that actually values its customers.

Because clearly, Blue Top Cab, Yellow Top Cab, Red Top Cab, et.al., your customer’s time is of no value. Let’s not have more than one poorly paid person answering calls, and let everyone just sit listening to your annoying automated voicemail about how important my business is to you.

Yeah, right. Next time, I will just drive to the airport myself and the cab companies can go to hell.

The Washington Post reports a study that just came out in Science, documenting that rats have sufficient empathy to free a trapped fellow rat AND save it some of their food.

Therefore, rats have moved ahead of the vast majority of our elected “leaders” in being able to put themselves in the place of another. (Think: Social Security, unemployment benefits, affordable housing … )

Joe Paterno still doesn’t get it. It is still all about him. His feelings, his regrets. He put himself up as some paragon of moral virtue, running a “clean” program and teaching his players how to be good men.

What a crock of self-deluding shit. 

Here’s what JoePa (pedophile abetter) should have done:

He should have resigned with a statement that he made an egregious error in judgment, that he let his friendship cloud his perspective, and that he failed the test of doing the right thing. That he set a poor example for his players and he would not bring further shame on them by continuing to coach.

That would have been going out on his own terms but in a positive, teachable-moment way for his players and for all the a-hole students out rioting in his support. (And again, Paterno just doesn’t get it: He should have IMMEDIATELY denounced the rioting, but then that just further fuels his massive ego.)

And to Mike McQueary and his morally bankrupt father, who advised him not to call the police or stop the rape, or even find out who the victim was, but to leave the building and come home. What a piece of work you both are.