pberry

On Customer Service

August 26th, 2010 1 Comment

When Amy and I were first dating, I would drive to Greeley from Colorado Springs. Have you ever been to Greeley? I’ll spare you the details, but the place smells. I mean, a high school locker room thinks the town stinks. If dead cows played football, their locker room would smell like Greeley. And it’s a two hour drive. But, I wasn’t going to see Greeley. I went to see Amy. I didn’t know it yet, but I loved her. So I drove up there to see her.

Before one of my first trips up there, I got a haircut. I went into one of those discount places that put some synonym for cheap in their name. I don’t go to those places any more, but I went this day. It was just an hour before I was going to leave and they were making this big deal about customer service points. The stylists got stars on a board for doing customer service. I didn’t know a lot about customer service at the time, so I figured the idea was that she’d be sure my hair cut looked really good and I’d be out in no time. So I told the girl how I wanted my hair longish on the top and shortish on the sides. I expected her to have some new idea for me that would make me look really good for Amy. I imagined her starting to talk to me about it, and like some Rembrant of hair cuts she would give me the best hair cut that had ever been conceived.

Tim Tebow's hair cut thought mine looked dumb.

What I didn’t imagine was this girl trying to talk about Tuesday night football games that didn’t exist, stumbling through trying to relate to me (whatever that means), and talking about how good a job she was doing at customer service with me. And I really didn’t expect her to cut my hair short on top and long on the sides. It looked so dumb. Tim Tebow thought my hair cut looked lame.

I wasn’t really expecting some great hair cut. I would have been happy to just sit there, not say a word, and get what I asked for. I wasn’t looking for a relationship with the stylist, and it’s fine to chat and all, but you’ve got to get my hair cut right, don’t you? I mean, isn’t that customer service?

That kind of stuff happens to me a lot. I walk into Starbucks and they ask me if I’m going to try a double Java-chip Frappuchino with whipped cream and a chocolate donut. All I want is a cup of coffee. They ask me if I want a “treat receipt” and drop a stamp right over the actual receipt. How am I suppose to keep an account of what I’m spending if I’ve ink all of the receipt (and my hands)? Then they ask me to make sure the 155 degree drink they just handed me tastes good. I can’t drink that stuff for at least 20 minutes. I really can’t.

Anyway, I don’t feel very served by all that customer service. A lot of places ask their employees to go the extra mile with customer service. But you have to walk the first mile before you try to go the extra one. Maybe they should start calling it company service. That would make more sense.

Katrina’s Dad

August 20th, 2010 No Comments

Remember Katrina?

I do. I worked with her at the swimming pool. Her dad was my math teacher and basketball coach in 8th grade. He was a really happy guy. I mean he didn’t really seem to get down and always had something to smile about. Sometimes he would get on your case and when he did you knew he meant business because he was so happy all the time. He didn’t really get too mad, just frustrated. He wasn’t frustrated because you messed up, he just knew your potential was better than what you were giving. He just knew you had it in you, you know? And man, you never saw somebody so happy as him when you got it right. He just found a lot of joy in life, I guess.

Anyway, poor Katrina. She had a real nice name until that hurricane. Now when she meets someone they’re probably thinking, Man, that was a horrible hurricane. Instant downer and all you did was say your name. I can’t imagine introducing myself and everyone getting all sad because my name is Paul. Right after the hurricane, I had a waitress named Katrina and it just about ruined the meal. I left her a big tip because I figured people got mad at her just because of her name.

I remember when Katrina happened. The hurricane that is. It seemed like everybody was really pissed at Bush. It wasn’t everybody, though. It just seemed like everybody because the only people talking were people who hated Bush. And they were talking loud. People who liked Bush weren’t saying much at all because they knew he screwed up. And so did the people who hated him. Man, did they let him have it. I really felt sorry for him even though I was mad at him too. Now the same thing’s happening to Obama with the oil spill. The people who were quiet before are loud and the people who were loud are real quiet.

It’s funny how everybody says they expect politicians to do a bad job and then still get all cranky when they do. People rail on politicians for acting like gods, call them hypocrites when they say they aren’t gods and then put them on blast when they don’t turn water into wine. I’m not saying politicians don’t need to be accountable because they do. But most of the time we’re just trying to use a bad situation to get someone else into office. This guy screwed up disaster response, let’s vote in someone who wants lower taxes.

Katrina’s dad didn’t treat people like that though. He wanted you to be better because he knew you could be. He wanted you to succeed. I liked how Katrina’s dad treated me. I try to treat other people that way, but I’m terrible at it. I really am. But I bet it’s like free throws. I need practice.

I haven’t heard from Katrina’s dad in forever. He moved to Africa to help kids. I don’t blame him. I don’t think Africa’s had any natural disasters named after his family.

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Kindess is not for wimps

June 19th, 2010 No Comments

About this time last year, Donald Miller posted this on his blog:

http://www.collidemagazine.com/images/articles/donald-miller-small-feature.jpg

The one thing my very conservative friends and my liberal friends have in common is that they are extremely kind. I think kind people are kind and mean people are mean and it hardly matters whether they are conservative or not. It has more to do with irritable bowels, I think, or a persons controlling personality vs. their ability to trust Gods grace and speak His truth without associating a persons response to that truth with their own threatened identity. Regardless, I keep the kind friends and slyly slip away from the mean ones. Life’s too short.

Sometimes we associate kindness with weakness or fear of confrontation. We justify loud, angry, or rude behavior by believing that they are necessary to confront evil. We assume that because we are confronting evil, we are doing good. But if we confront evil without kindness, we are the blind leading the blind. Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Kindness is not for wimps.

It’s a sign of God at work in your life.

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Instant Reply, Secret Holds, and Is Twitter Making Us Stupider?

June 15th, 2010 No Comments

A couple nights back, Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game in which he got 28 batters out. It’s a well publicized story that I won’t get into except to say that umpire Jim Joyce blew a call and robbed a guy of one of the greatest feats in all of baseball. Nobody’s really that upset with Jim Joyce about it because he owned it. He apologized to everyone who had a pulse, even walking into the Tigers locker room to talk to Galarraga. Galarraga responded by forgiving Joyce, which is pretty cool if you ask me. If an ump robbed Ubaldo Jimenez or Zack Greinke of a perfect game, I don’t know if I would be as gracious and classy as the Detroit fans have been.

Mostly, people were all over Bud Selig for not instituting instant replay last year. Bud Selig is an easy guy to get mad at because he’s never apologized for anything he or baseball has ever done wrong. When MLB reviewed and denied the use of replay, Bud said he wanted the Human Element as part of baseball. I think you could get this pretty well from the baseball players because I’m pretty sure they’re all human no matter
how many steroids they are taking. But Bud thought the umpires ought to be human too. The UmpBot stock I bought went right in the toilet when he said that.

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NPR ran a story a few days ago about Senate Secret Holds. I listened to the story because I thought it was about professional wrestling. I imagined John McCain climbing to the top of Joe Biden’s giant desk and leaping across the chamber to drop a double axe-handle on Charles Schumer. I think McCain is the toughest member of the Senate. He’s scrappy and I wouldn’t bet against him, even if it was all fixed.

As it turns out, a secret hold is a lot like a filibuster, except it keeps the motion from ever getting to the Senate floor. And it’s anonymous. A senator can go to his or her party leadership and say ask for a hold without ever being identified on the floor. Listening to the story, it felt a little bit like a man walking into a 7-11 and asking for all the cash in the register because there’s a man outside with his hand in his pocket claiming he has a gun.

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Maybe Senators are smarter than we give them credit for. We Americans are pretty easy to wait out. In the short time since I started writing this post, no one is talking about Armando Galarraga. We’ve moved on to Stephen Strausberg, NBA playoffs, who’s holding out of NFL OTAs and college conference realignment. The first 28 out perfect game seems like last season.

It will be two weeks on Wednesday.

National news isn’t that different. We are always interested in right now. It’s true. Watch any of the cable news channels for a day. There is no “news.” There’s only “breaking news.” And that doesn’t mean it’s the most important. Around 16000 kids die every day from hunger. Fox News wants to tell you about “Stars With Sex Tapes”. MSNBC says “Pickup sales perk up along with economy”.

Twitter is breaking news on steroids.

Nick Carr and others have asked if our technology is making us stupid. It isn’t, but only in the sense that guns don’t kill people. We are choosing to buy in—to believe that the stories on the news or in our twitter feeds are the stories. We are choosing to live contextualess lives that move from one outrage to the next.

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In his last two starts, Galarraga has only given up three runs. Detroit has won both games. He’s pitching lights out.

No word yet on if John McCain will add the Flying Elbow to his arsenal.

Breaking news as it happens.

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My suggestion for instant replay in baseball

June 4th, 2010 1 Comment

In light of the un-perfect game, here are my suggestions for a Major League Baseball instant replay system.

Put a fifth ump in a room with a monitor and a phone or a walkie-talkie or something. He is the review ump. His ruling is final. He stays in that room while play is occurring so that on the field umpires don’t have to leave the field for review. His monitor gets the same type of feed that is currently used in home run reviews.

The on the field crew chief can call for a review at any time at his discretion. He has the other walkie-talkie.

Each manager has one challenge per game. They do not get any more, even if they are correct in their challenge. Challenges are made to the crew chief directly, not to the umpire who made the call or to the review umpire.

Balls and strikes cannot be reviewed. The strike zone is set exclusively by the home plate umpire based on the MLB rulebook.

Homeruns, catches and plays at the bases may be reviewed and overturned. Play will resume based on the result of the corrected call.

Foul balls which have landed in the infield are not reviewable. (This is actually the one I’ve had the hardest time with. I’m sure baseball people smarter than me could come up with a good solution.)

Foul balls which have landed in the outfield and upon review are found to be fair will result in a ground rule double.

Fair balls which upon review are found to be foul will be played as if they were foul.

A salary cap will be implemented^*.

*Ok, I’ll give on this one to get replay going. But I’ll never let this one go.

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You don’t have to

March 2nd, 2010 1 Comment

For about five years, I played Uno over lunch. Nearly everyday, we’d grab our trays and cram as many people as we could around a table in our chapel-teria. The first person done would deal cards from the double deck, well worn from being clutched, slammed, smacked and thrown into minestrone soup.

We invented a myriad of extra rules to enhance the game. If you had the exact same card as the one that was just played, you could play it and play resumes from your spot. Play three skips in a row, everyone draws a card. Three reverses in a row, everyone passes their hand to the left. If you throw a card to the pile and miss, you get your card back and lose your turn. Drop a green three and you got to try slapping the cards out of someone’s hand. During Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas, play a red following a green, proclaim Merry Christmas in any number of languages, and get rid of any card in your hand.

The most notable rule was that penalties accumulated. If someone plays a draw two on you, no problem—just play another draw two and the next sucker has to draw four. If she plays one, the next guy is drawing six. And so on. If it comes all the way back to you, your penalty doubles. After one guy played a draw four, he watched in horror as seven more were played as it came back to him, he found himself picking up 64 cards.

Green three!

Whenever we got stuck drawing a fist full of cards, my friend John was quick to remind the unlucky soul, “You don’t have to draw 32, you get to draw 32.”

He was right, you know. You didn’t have to draw. You could walk away, go back to work and get on with your day sans half the deck.

But we didn’t quit. Drawing cards was part of playing. Playing was what we wanted to do, even if that meant picking up 16 honey mustard stained cards off the floor.

We don’t do things because we have to. It might seem like we have to, but we don’t. My friend Jim pays taxes because he doesn’t want to go to jail. Teresa does the laundry because she enjoys clean clothes. Paul test his blood sugar and injects himself with insulin because his body and brain to function correctly. Matt has to brush his teeth if he doesn’t want them to fall out. Makeesha mentioned urinating. She’s right. But you don’t have to use the bathroom. Former NFL lineman Mark Schlereth used to pee his pants during games because he didn’t want to walk back to the locker room.

I tend to look at life as series of have-tos with a few get-tos dropped in here and there.

But it’s really not that way.

It’s mostly get-tos.

Maybe we think of them as have-tos because we forget why we’re doing them.

The two questions I can’t get away from and thus I ask you:

1. Are the things I see as have-tos getting me toward the things I want?

2. How can I make my have-tos and my get-tos line up more often?

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Working on something…this video may be related

February 25th, 2010 No Comments

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Giving up politics for Lent

February 18th, 2010 2 Comments

“Where they make a desert, they call it peace.” — Tacitus

For the past few years, I’ve given up something for Lent. I wouldn’t say I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve appreciated what I’ve learned about myself.

In different years, I’ve given up coffee and meat and alcohol.

This year, it’s politics.

No reading political stories or emails.

No listening to, reading or watching the news if it might include political items.

No visiting facebook groups to see if a piece of used wrapping paper has more fans than a Senator.

And most of all, no talking (or writing) about politics.

Because we’re here on Ash Wednesday (or we were when I wrote this…technical difficulties), I won’t detail specific examples of why I’m giving this up for Lent.* But I will say, in general, why I’m fasting from politics.

Part of it is that politics makes me angry. I get really worked up over people who don’t know what they are talking about telling other people what to think. This is my broad brush assessment of the political climate in which I find myself. From the top office in the land to the average Joe on Facebook—nearly everyone talks past each other instead of with each other. Those who agree with us are smart and those who don’t lack common sense. We slander our opponents and misrepresent their positions as if truth were a luxury unaffordable in the most prosperous nation on the planet.

Politics is a game that we must win at any cost.

Most of us see politics as a game like any other. Maybe a bit more like professional wrestling than some other games. Really, it’s better than any other show on TV. The characters, the stories, the fights, the lies—it’s all an amazing melodrama.

And that’s just the news.

Even though I see this is happening, I still think I buy into it. I think I believe that winning—getting the right people in or keeping the wrong people out or whatever—will be some magical event that makes everything instantly better. And that because of this, anything I do or think or say about someone is fair game.

But that’s not true.

I’d say why, but then I’d be writing about politics.

All that said, I’d love to hear about your Lenten vow.

What are you giving up for Lent and why?

*This really should have been posted on Fat Tuesday and I tried to keep as much political opinion out as possible. But if this day is supposed to be solemn, this post has definitely brought me to that place.

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pberry

I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

On Customer Service

Katrina’s Dad

Kindess is not for wimps

My suggestion for instant replay in baseball

You don’t have to

Working on something…this video may be related

Giving up politics for Lent

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