Do Not Disturb?

Ipod = the modern day "Do Not Disturb" sign.

I have one - don't get me wrong.

And when I wear it, I'm basically saying - "don't talk to me - i'm in my own world".

But I limit my ipod usage to when i'm on a workout machine at the gym, or flights where i'm trying to sleep... and especially when i'm sitting next to someone I have no interest in talking to.

I see so many people on the bus and the subway wearing them - but I could never do that. Even walking on the street...

I'd rather hear street sounds and keep tuned-in to the world rather than tuned-out.

I tried to listen to my Ipod one day last week while walking to the bus stop and taking the bus/subway - but I felt so vulnerable. I hated it. I felt like anyone could sneak up on me - that I was susceptible to attack. I also felt like I could miss important signals - like cars honking or sirens wailing or info from some loudspeakers. I don't understand how so many people just tune out to the world by popping those earbuds in their ears.

When I worked with the AIDS Marathon training program - so many of the runners kept insisting on listening to their ipods while running - yet as a site assistant - I had to act like a running cop by telling them to stop. I did a marathon 4 years ago (dreadful experience - had food poisoning that made my marathon last 7 hours). I didn't use an Ipod. I didn't want to - i couldn't imagine! I wouldn't have been able to hear the cheers of the crowds - the different music all around - the ipod would have taken me out of the experience.

I'd rather be awake and alert than in a zone while out and about in the city.

On a Downtown Train

I've been riding the trains lately. Metrolink to be specific.

I took this job - a part-time gig - that afforded me the opportunity to ride the Metrolink trains and hand out surveys.

It's more of a research project for my own personal interests than having a job for the sake of getting paid. It's provided me with a lot of insight and has been quite informative.

But the hours have been odd (to say the least). Some shifts started at 4am. Meaning I had to wake up at about 2:30am just to get ready and get to Union Station on time. So I've neglected my writing for a bit... but I'm loaded with a wealth of information which I will begin to share again starting this week.

Along with the evils of Palm Oil & Palm Kernel Oil... but that's another blog... for another day...

Can you please get to the point?

It's not that I'm impatient.

I'm not always terribly rushed.

But if I have to waste my time listening to a customer service representative repeat the same phrase over and over again - I will seriously go postal soon.

You must know what I'm talking about.

Case in point: T-Mobile customer service.

I called to see if I could get on a new plan - that allowed for International calls.

Fortunately, the voice recognition menu connected me to a human in under a minute (are you listening, AT&T internet?).

But the time I saved in getting to a human was quickly gobbled up by the useless repetition of such hollow phrases as "I understand your concern, and we do value your business, but at this time....."

Ok - tell it to me once. I might take it at face value and think that the rep is sincere.

However, if you need to preface EACH AND EVERY REPLY TO MY QUESTIONS WITH "I understand your concern, and we do value your business, but at this time..."

Since when did true customer service become this time wasting, script reading, empty auto matron-like practice?

I'm a calm person. I'm patient.

But once I sense that I'm entering this twilight zone - where I journey from people who know how to help to the land of script-reading auto-matrons - I feel myself go tense...

This seething monster within me rises to the surface at which point I become some rude beast cutting off the poor quasi-human at the other end who is forced to speak this way to every caller. I'm sure the person at the phone bank at the other end is probably working part-time, minimum wage, with no health insurance, and no chance of rising far above the poverty line... truly depressing. It's not the rep's fault... But I cut them off anyways - I tell them to talk to me like a real person and STOP REPEATING THOSE MEANINGLESS LINES!!!

I can only imagine how mind numbing it must be to speak this way all day long. I can't bear to hear it during the 2-3 calls per week that I have to do.

Can't they just get to the point and take care of business?

*** only after mentioning that I may look for service elsewhere did I get transferred to a "supervisor" who was able to knock $100 off the bill.

Is the general population really that brain-dead that they can't be trusted with positions in which they make decisions or can think for themselves?

Perhaps if they had some sort of job security with health benefits & retirement packages, they could actually come to work focused on their jobs on a daily basis. But if they are all hired on a part-time basis only, with no chance for benefits, and forced to work a second job - how can they truly know their job at the company inside and out. Vicious cycle, eh?

Did I just go off on a tangent? Darn you Dennis Miller!

Lost in a Supermarket

I usually spend my nights as a salesgirl at an art gallery in Hollywood - on Cahuenga Blvd... It's social - makes for great people watching - i get free drinks at the bar attached to the gallery...

But in between art shows, i revel in the mundane.

Last night was a Friday night... what did I do?

I walked down to the Ralph's at the corner of my block. It became my mission of the night - my little adventure - I was on the hunt and everyone and everything was in my crosshairs.

I spied:

• couples looking for dinner ingredients
• 20somethings procuring alcohol for the evening's delights
• overpriced underwhelming looking produce
• displays of food that just rang 'false' with me *

* The soup aisle has turned into something rather bizarre... I should have taken a picture to illustrate. The displays just make me want to walk on by and not even look at what they have. I don't know who the marketing kook was who came out with this new way of dispensing soup cans with pictures and huge labels on these large plastic display/dispensers.

I love going to markets - all types. One of the first things I like to visit in a foreign city is a market - any market: open air, super, small specialty, corner markets... anything.

It's my anthropology experiment - Since you are what you eat, I want to see who the local population is - what they eat, what they are being sold, what they are buying.

Ralph's depresses me.

Are they selling us food that we want, or do they sell their shelf space to vendors/companies who pay for the rent of the square footage on the shelves. The aisles are filled with processed foods full of ingredients we shouldn't be eating. Where's the honesty in that?

I only shop there for things I can't get at TJ's or the farmer's market. And my tab came to $31.99, for one bag worth of items that won't really feed me. They were ingredients for some recipes & some other misc. stuff.

I look forward to tomorrow's Hollywood Farmer's Market. That's where I'll be.

How many more weeks till boysenberry season?

Traffic in Los Angeles

Yeah - traffic here sucks.

Ok, I'm dating myself here - but I remember when getting from the Westside to the Eastside wasn't all that bad... But that is ancient history now. I rarely venture west of the 405 unless it's between the hours of 10am and 2pm. If I'm in Santa Monica at 4pm on a Friday - I'm staying there til after 7pm. No need to sit on the parking lots sometimes known as the 10, Pico, Olympic, Wilshire...

The idea was floating around - to make Olympic westbound and Pico eastbound - One way streets.

THAT'S JUST CRAZY!!!!

how's this for an idea:

MAKE THE BUSES FREE DURING RUSH HOUR!!!

no - seriously - hear me out:

more people would start riding the bus ---> fewer cars on the street
people would just get on and off --->no worries about fumbling for the $1.25 or trying to iron out that crinkled-up, dog-eared One-dollar bill ---> buses would just go rather than add to the traffic jam.
a bigger cross-section of the population would start riding - perhaps making the buses feel safer like in NYC ---> it sometimes gets rather sketchy on those buses - I feel like a fish out of water most of the time.

The MTA is a money loser anyways - and the money collected from fares is barely a drop in the bucket compared to their entire operating budget. So why not do something to help get the city moving?

Test it out for a few months!

It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper than converting Pico & Olympic to one way streets (which would be disastrous in my opinion).

How AT&T and Earthlink stole 30 minutes of my life

• Voice recognition
• Endless menus
• Scripted dialogues
• Last ditch efforts to save a customer

These companies are wasting our time!

Customer Service?

Call it what it is: Customer Dis-service!

Do they really value our business? They tell me just that every time I get a human at the other end - it's in the script. But do they mean it? HAHAHAHA

I called Earthlink to cancel my employer's service with them. It took me 16 minutes to go thru what really should have taken 5 to 8 minutes max.

How is it that they can still bill a credit card for the monthly service - yet when I call to cancel - they need me to give them the last 4 digits of the credit card used when service was started? This particular credit card had expired in 2002. That's 6 years ago! If I didn't get them that information - I wouldn't have been able to cancel service. Really?

Luckily I keep good files, and I found the 2002 box and grabbed the file, gave the correct numbers. Done, right?

Newp... how many ways can I say "cancel effective immediately"?
- we now have cable modem
- we don't use dial-up
- no thanks - we don't need emergency dial-up back up
- my computer guy set us up and told me to cancel
- my (her) husband pays for the cable modem - he told me to cancel
- we don't use earthlink
- can we just cancel already and end this call?
- no I don't want the free service for a month (which will start charging the following months)
- Thanks - I'll take my chances.

Jeez! I called to cancel - and I'm forced to listen to all the desperate attempts to keep me as a customer - at first politely - but by the end, I was so frustrated I wanted to chuck my phone out the window and into the pool.

Next was AT&T home telephone & internet services.

Perhaps it was a mistake to do this call immediately after. It took me 4 separate calls to finally get a human.

1st call
Patiently navigated the voice recognition service. It took 2 minutes to get routed to the proper phone bank. The phone was ringing (to take me to a human?) but it stopped ringing - they disconnected me!

2nd call
Voice recognition became a nightmare as my impatience and frustration led me to all the wrong departments... neither did I get a human, nor did I get to the right place. I hung up and started again

3rd call
Again, my frustration led to the voice recognition service telling me "I-I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that". Who did that narration? If I ever came face to face with that woman... pow - to the moon! Not only did I not get to the right department, when I entered the phone number in question, it didn't recognize the number! I couldn't get out of that menu. It was a dead end.

4th call
I took a deep breath. I was forced into submission. I had to listen to everything and waited to speak until after the stupid lady narrator finished giving me her list of options. It took me over 2 minutes to get routed to something - anything that would get me a human. Used to be you could dial zero or 9 to get to an operator. Finally got a human. It took less than 3 minutes to cancel that service (at least it wasn't like pulling teeth with the Earthlink person).

But seriously - after all that, It added up to over 30 minutes. And I must focus! If I zone out and don't hear the correct option, then I'm forced to listen to the list of options again. No multitasking.

Are these companies really trying to keep costs down? No - they want to hire fewer employees so that they can maximize profits to their senior executives and their shareholders.

End result: fewer people employed domestically with these companies - fewer people making honest wages. No health care benefits. Crappy customer service. And people who waste your time speaking from scripts.

These 2 calls should have lasted me less than 10 minutes combined!!

Customer service? HA.

I HATE YOU EARTHLINK AND AT&T!

idealist to rabble rouser to... nihilist?

The more that I'm reading Chomsky, the more upset I am becoming.

I am beginning to think that this country needs a real awakening.

But how?

We really need a true revolution. I was joking about not being a part of the workforce because I didn't want my tax dollars to go and fund this war. But it doesn't seem like such a joke anymore. I'm not in agreement with our current government policies... not in the least.

What to do? What's within my control? What can I do to help? I don't want to create any harm... But our government is in need of a significant overhaul.

Anarchy? Nihilism?

Can't we just all espouse the words of Thomas Jefferson and just pursue happiness? That's all I really want to do. Honest. But we're in dire need of a shake-up.

that's all i'm saying

TAP - More silly acronyms

Transit Access Pass - Another silly acronym by the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Basically it's a credit card type bus pass that can be re-charged.
I got mine for the month of May.
After 49 uses, it will have been made worthwhile.
So far, I've used it 13 times and we're only on the 3rd day.
I had to put in another $20 of gas in my car yesterday.
My last $20 lasted 10 days & 123 miles.

I've been walking a lot & taking every staircase going in & out of the Metro stations. I was hoping this would help me on my quest to lose weight.

But the other night, the doorman at the gallery I work at said something that depressed me.

Torrance: "Girl, your figure is looking good"
translation: "You've been putting on weight and getting curvier"

Torrance hates the skinny girls - he likes girls with "meat on their bones"
When I lose weight, he tells me that I look sick and not to lose any more weight.
So according to Torrance, when I'm looking sick, that means I'm doing well, and when I'm looking good - I've been getting fat and I must start dieting again.

sigh.

Ok - I'm cutting back on the alcohol... and maybe now that my chiropractor adjusted me, I'll be able to go back to working out... and I'll keep taking the stairs and keep on walking.

Rent Control at risk!!!!

It's voting time!

Propositions 98 & 99 are being presented to California voters - regarding Eminent Domain... but hidden inside prop 98 is what is essentially the phasing out of rent control.

61% of Los Angelenos are renters - and many of us are living paycheck to paycheck...

I am one of them... and this year, my rent went up 5%. Did my wages go up 5%?

No.

Next year, the ceiling for rent controlled rent increase will be back down to 3% (thank goodness)

UNLESS

unless prop 98 passes. if it does, that would be the phasing out of Government control over rent increases.

This is one instance where Government oversight is needed!

READ UP on these propositions...

as I understand it (and i may be wrong) this is how i would vote:

NO on 98
Yes on 99

Election day for these propositions: Tuesday June 3, 2008

WE MUST PROTECT RENT CONTROL - but also protect homeowners from Eminent Domain for private use.