Scowl, Nu?

Yesterday, I made one of the greatest mistakes of my life.

Ok, that's a tad dramatic… but I did make one of the most regrettable mistakes since I've graduated from college… and it was something that I could have easily avoided.

Yes, I admit it. I did this thing with full conscious knowledge of what the results would be and how much I would hate myself in the morning. I knew that Janet would never understand why I felt that I had to do it.

Even though it would be easy to pawn it off as an alcohol-induced mistake, in the depths of my heart, I knew what I would be committing… and I knew the suffering it would cause our marriage. The thing that really makes me feel like a monster is that even as I sat there in the car heading back into Hartford, I didn't feel even the slightest shred of remorse.

I saw the neon lights as I passed the adult world on Rt 66 and even though it was late and Janet would be wondering when I would be back, I decided to head in.

Yes, I did it. I went to Taco Bell.

See, Taco Bell and I have this sort of love-hate relationship. Back in college, it was one of the few fast foods that Janet and I could afford for lunch… and I ate it on a regular basis. I also experienced Moctezuma's Revenge on a regular basis as well. At least two times a week I would order up 5 soft tacos (hey, I was a growing boy) and a soda, wolf them down in about three seconds, and then suffer unimaginable pain for the rest of the evening. I ate it out of desperation, and when we graduated and moved to San Francisco, I swore that the great Taco Bell soft taco would never again cross my lips.

In San Francisco it was easy. If you wanted cheap, quick Mexican food, you had tons of taquerias all around town that served up tasty fresh meals. In the five years I lived in San Francisco, I don't think I had Taco Bell once, and my intestines cheered and treated me quite well.

But last night as Chris (read ScowlZine to learn about Chris) and I were heading back from the Willimantic Brewing Company, we came to a rapid agreement that food would be needed before we finished the 40 minute drive back to civilization (ok, to Hartford, the closest facsimile in Connecticut). Chris spotted the Taco Bell as we drove towards home and out of convenience we decided to hit the drive through for a couple of soft tacos and some Mountain Dew.

The Toxic Hell of Taco Bell hit me like a freight train before we even hit I-384 (a mere 15 minutes away from the Taco Bell). Trying to maintain a semblance of dignity, I strained to keep myself from erupting with the revenge of the great leader of the Aztecs. Barely successful, I spent the better part of the evening in miserable pain, exiling myself to another room so I wouldn't pass the overly offensive flatus while in the company of my completely unsympathetic wife (note: the cats were pretty damned aloof as well).

It was a night of my moaning as I writhed in gastrointestinal pain, interspersed with pleas of "God, can't you keep it in" and "Why the hell did you go there". Even when I woke up this morning, I felt nauseous from the previous night's delight. It was 12 hours of misery… misery I knew I would have as soon as it passed through my lips. But I did it anyway, and most likely I will eventually do it again. And again. And *burp* again.

Yo Quiero Alka-Seltzer.

I know, I know: the economy is prospering, unemployment is way down, and employers will hire just about anybody these days simply to get a warm body behind a desk. Consequently, the amount of skills that one must have to get hired has pretty much been condensed down to 1) can breathe without the aid of a respirator, 2) can answer a telephone, and 3) can perform simple office tasks like making copies and sending faxes with some light typing thrown in for good measure. (Note that in today's job market there is, I guess, no need to really know how to use software like Power Point or even Word and Excel for that matter.)

When I ventured out into the work force, the year was 1994, right around the time of widespread corporate downsizing. Everybody and their brother was getting laid off, so you needed to know an extra thing or two just to compete for what few positions were left. Back then you were supposed to research the companies you were interviewing with and dazzle the interviewer with facts about the company that she probably didn't even know. Your resume had to be perfectly one page, not too cluttered, not too much white space. (I agonized over all the "So You're Trying to Get Your First Real Job" books that I read which warned over and over that a great deal of the time, resumes were just thrown straight into the garbage can after the first glance because they were too this and not enough that or something or other, blah, blah, blah.) In my zeal to get a job, any job, I used my spare time to study manuals on Microsft Word and actually had someone teach me everything that I didn't know about Excel. And took notes. (Back then, good computer skills were of the utmost importance in a job interview, and the only computer class that was offered to me in college was on Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase 3… did anyone ever actually end up using those?) Before my most recent job interview, I practically memorized my old company's brochure in order to better explain the scope of the company and what role that I personally played within that scope, and in a fit of pure anality mixed with nervousness even brought it with me on the interview.

These days when you ask someone — someone who is a potential candidate for a job in the financial industry, mind you — when you ask someone how well they know a program like Excel (remember, the financial industry, where there are lots of numbers to be dealt with) they will probably say something like, "Well, I was going to take a class on that, but then some other things happened in my life, so…"

No experience in the financial industry, no experience with spreadsheet-based software, but hired nonetheless. Maybe it's the life experience — another thing which I don't agree with. Just because a person, say, home-schools their children (shudder) with perceived good results doesn't mean that s/he can function in a workplace. It means he or she is good at home-schooling (shudder). It should add nothing to the decision to hire him or her. I mean, I got married at 19 and put myself through college, sometimes working two jobs at once and bascially living the hard-knock life, but I didn't bring that up in my interview because it has nothing to do with how well I can — and do — do my job.

So, all these people get hired with little to no skill sets, which means they have to be trained and often end up fucking up the first hundred things they try to do, and they get in at 8:35 and leave at 5:00 on the dot, and they bitch and moan about how shitty the office equipment is and how they should get paid more, and basically walk around with a spoiled-brat attitude about the whole job experience.

I personally think that they should be forced to study those marching ants in Excel. Just for fun.

Yesterday morning, on our way to Boston, we decided to stop off at McDonalds for a quick Egg McMuffin. We spotted a sign for a McDonalds off of I-84 (exit 64) and decided that it was as good a place to stop as any.

We parked the car and went to the "server" to place our order. The "servers" however were too busy talking to a friend that stopped by that none of them were able (or willing) to "serve" us. Two minutes later, a management-type person (he was wearing a tie) came out from the back and told the "server" closest to us to take the order. Instead of apologizing to us for being more interested in talking to her friend than to actually do her job, she decided to turn around and repeat the manager's request in a mocking tone back to him. Then she finished her conversation and then did she take our order.

If that wasn't enough, when the McMuffins were ready, she got involved in another conversation with another friend that showed up… delaying her from actually putting the McMuffins into the McBag and serving them to the McFuckingCustomers!

It's people like this that make me want to vote down every raise-in-the-minimum-wage proposal that comes around.

This is what I'd like to know: what ever happened to the motto "the customer is always right?" The other day we dropped an obscene amount of money at Williams-Sonoma on an aluminum scoop, a canister and a six-pack of dish towels, and when it came time to print out the receipt, the aging cashier accidentally jammed the cash register and had to alert one of her stern-looking, tight-lipped co-workers. Instead of just voiding the items and re-entering them, which would have taken all of two minutes, on the advice of her co-worker she decided to try to fish the crinkled receipt out of the cash register, piece it together, have Avery sign it, then go make a copy for us. As the minutes ticked by, we decided she must have gotten in her car and driven clear down to Kinko's to make said copy.

Meanwhile, another "I'm so glad to be making minimum wage here at Williams-Sonoma, I could just spit" salesperson wandered over to ask if we'd been helped, to which Avery exasperatedly replied that yes, we've been helped and yes, we're still waiting for a copy of the receipt. At that point, the whole lot of green-aproned Williams-Sonomites turned and bared their teeth at us, tsking and making comments like "It takes time" and "You have to have some patience." At exactly what point did we turn into the bad guys?

I've told tales of my experiences with customer service people in the past, especially the ones manning any one of the multitudes of the planet's 1-800 lines, but it's gone way beyond that. I mean, I did my four-month stint as a headset-wearing drone, taking call after call at a plain grey desk furnished with a chair and a computer monitor and that's it, and it made me feel so homicidal that I couldn't stand it anymore (you may note that I only spent four months in the position), especially after answering the same stupid question in a faux-cheery voice 42 times in a row from 42 different people, so I kind of feel these people's pain. The only good thing about that job was that just about everyone I worked with hated their jobs as much as I did, so we would make frequent use of both the mute button and the seven words you can't say on TV and vent about whoever we were talking to, and then have a good laugh about it as we bonded over our shared feelings of how when we saw a little old lady on the BART train platform we all felt like pushing her in front of it. (I'm sorry, but old people are the meanest and most condescending, even when their threats contain outdated language like "I'm going to send a complaint letter to your boss through the post!" Old men in particular like to puff up their chests when they hear a woman's voice on the line and insist on making comments like "No, but I bet YOU do" (when asked if they have their account number handy) or "Are you so-and-so's secretary?" to which I reply "I'm his assistant, yes." to which they reply "So you are his secretary, then. Anyway, blah blah blah found a one cent discrepancy on my statement blah blah insignificant problem blah blah.")

Apparently, now everyone hates their job, not just customer service slaves. I frequently need to call the Home Office of the company I work for to get the answers to my questions, and I am met with the most remarkably deplorable phone manners I have ever witnessed. Last week I called one department where the person who answered the phone was evidently speaking in tongues. I literally could not understand a word she said and hung up in fear. This very afternoon I was explaining my question to a woman who, after answering the phone like I had just woken her up from an afternoon nap, proceeded to yawn loudly into my ear while I was in mid sentence! I was so shocked I just stopped talking. Where do they find these people?

The world may never know, thank god.

About a week and a half ago a little visitor invited itself to spend an evening in our apartment. No, it wasn't a baby or the Tooth Fairy or a mouse or a waterbug or even a cockroach. It was far, far worse than any of those.

It was a bat. Furry, with leathery wings. In our apartment. Flying.

We were eating dinner in the living room in front of the TV, as usual. We had gotten about halfway through our chicken stirfry when something cast a shadow over the couch. I instinctively winced while Avery shouted "Oh my god it's a bat! There's a bat in here!" Before you could even blink, we had run into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. Both of us were panicking at this point: what the hell were we supposed to do now? Since Avery's mom had had a bat accidentally fly into her apartment the week before, we decided to call her for advice. Seems that we were supposed to open a window, which would require one of us to leave the room, rip the window fan out of the window, throw open the window and remove the screen. There were no volunteers. Plan B?

Plan B was to call my mother, who told us to call the landlord. Ah ha! Reinforcements. Very wise. The landlord and his wife were here in 10 minutes, armed with a basket and a rake. Problem was, we had scared the damn thing away with all of our screaming and door slamming. The bat was nowhere to be found. Avery helped them search for 30 minutes, to no avail. I stayed in the bedroom, communicating through a crack in the door. The landlord's wife told me that I "had to get over my fear." Ha! Can't we start with talking about my fear? Do we really have to skip ahead to the direct confrontation part? Guess so.

Since no one could find it, we nervously assumed that it must have gone out the way it came in (however that was) and the landlord went home. We watched TV until 11:00 PM and, thinking all was safe ("It definitely would have been flying around if it was still in here…"), I went to do the dishes. 5 minutes later, I happened to glance to the right just in time to see the bat come flying around the corner and into the kitchen RIGHT AT MY FACE! Goddamn, I'll never forget that image. I immediately dropped to the floor and did a duck-and-cover, screaming at the top of my lungs. "It's in here, it's in hee-ee-re!" I screamed to Avery, who was surfing the internet at the other end of the apartment. Avery came into the kitchen and signaled it was safe to run back into the bedroom. I scurried across the floor on my hands and knees. (Many days later, Avery told me that while I was in the duck-and-cover position on the floor, the bat was behind me, hanging on the doorjamb of the bathroom door, "trying to blend in." When I started to make a dash towards the bedroom, it flew after me, presumably because it thought I would be trying to get out of this damned apartment as well. Avery nobly fought it off with the rake, though, kind of like a crazed jousting match from the depths of hell.)

Now we were really panicking: sweating, shaking and getting a little desperate. We tried to call our downstairs neighbors. No luck. Avery snuck out of the bedroom to run downstairs and knock on our downstairs neighbors' door. No luck. We even tried calling the dog warden, hoping that the city would have some kind of Pest Control and Removal Department. No answer. (It was midnight, after all.) My mother called back to report that they had just printed out some information from the internet about Bats and How to Catch Them.

Avery eventually managed to open the living room window. All right. Any minute now. An-n-ny minute. We were going to sit here in front of the bedroom with a rake all night if we had to. We both watched the window, waiting to witness the bat actually exiting the apartment. The thing was hiding again. As the minutes turned to hours, we both started getting more and more pissed. Don't these things have sonar? Aren't they supposed to sense that there's a window open. This goddamned bat. Fucking bat! We have work tomorrow! I'm still hungry! I just want to go to bed! Wah!

The silence was becoming more scary than helpful (we originally thought that having the TV on would distract the bat), so Avery turned on the TV. All of a sudden he leapt up, ran over to the window and slammed it shut. The bat had somehow gotten between the windowpane and the screen, and was hanging upside down between them. Oh, this bastard of a bat was going to leave, all right. Avery shined a flashlight on it (now it was more like science, but still gross) trying to get it to leave. That did nothing, so we held the lamp up to the window ("It's just turning away from the light.") Hairdryer? Nothing. Rubbing two Japanese knives together to make a distasteful sound? Nothing. The only thing that made it leave (at 2:00 AM, I might add) was us leaving the room.

Needless to say, I found it impossible to sleep that night. I was nervous for days afterward, thinking that any minute another one would fly into the room. My mind started thinking paranoid thoughts: was that the original bat between the window and the screen? Or was it a companion bat, coming to rescue the original bat? Did the bat actually fly outside when we left the room, or did it come back into the apartment? Was it just hiding again? Is it still in here? Will it come back? How did it get inside in the first place? I went to work the next day thinking that I'd tell my story and would get some "yeah, that happened to me once" sympathy. Instead I got, "Oh my god, that's my biggest fear!" and "Of course I've never had a bat in my house!" My mother suggested that they might be going into our apartment to roost. What a lovely thought.

My biggest fear used to be the chairlifts at ski slopes. Now my biggest fear is the chairlifts at ski slopes tied with having a disoriented, freaked-out bat flying around my apartment. I feel the urge to write into the Sassy-now-Jane magazine column: "It Happened to Me": "I never thought in a million years that I would have to worry about not just bugs, but bats — hairy, scary bats — sneaking in between the open spaces of the plastic window fan…"

This first appeared as the Front Page for 7/15/99

A letter from our Alma Mater came in the mail yesterday.

It was the first letter that we had received from the school in a couple of months, so when Janet saw the envelope, she figured that it was the alumni association asking for donations again. You would think that by now they would have gotten a hint that we aren't planning on donating to the college because, plainly, the school just sucked. Still, we read every letter they sent, hoping to get some information on the few teachers that we felt were something special… but usually the only thing that accompanied the donation request form was a notice about the Student Center that was almost completed (they've been saying that line for the last five years) or to announce that the school's soccer team won some kind of award. However, this time there wasn't any little trite bit of news enclosed in the envelope… just one piece of bad news.

Ronald Lettieri, our Political Science instructor and mentor had passed away last fall at the age of 48. No details or date, just a sheet of paper with his picture and a note that he had passed. Mr. Lettieri made an impact with every student in his class and when he wasn't instructing political science seminars, he was developing reading programs for the underprivileged children in Boston and writing grant proposals for the college. He saw something in Mount Ida College that nobody else seemed to see: potential.

Ronald Lettieri also recognized that the practice of politics was not limited to the people in local, state or federal legislatures. In his classes, he reminded us of the activists and the great people who sacrificed everything for what they believed in. Nothing sent that message home more clearly than when he convinced the the college to award Muhammad Ali a Doctor of Humanities degree. The Honorary Doctorate wasn't for his history in sports or to reward Ali for all of the school programs that he supported all throughout the country, but because he sacrificed everything when he decided to oppose a war that he found to be unjust.

Ron Lettieri saw what the college could be to the community, and it seems that he was the school's greatest advocate until the day he died.

Following the notice, there was a slip of paper that listed the scholarship programs that the college is putting together in his name, as well as a notice that they are commissioning a portrait for a new building that the grant proposals he had written over the past few years had funded.

For the first time, it's time to make a donation.