Walking by a colleague’s office while he was on a support call, all I heard was:
Uh huh… and what happens when you put in your cat’s name?
I say that should be the new motto for our entire support team.
Anecdotes
They Have the Internet on Television Now
My coworkers and I all gathered this afternoon to watch President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address, as people did in many offices across the country. I took food orders and brought back lunch for those who didn’t have their own, and setup a laptop to stream the inauguration live onto the projection screen in one of our conference rooms. About 20 people gathered to watch reverently.
And then the feed cut out.
Evidently the tubes of the Internet were clogged this afternoon with people trying to watch the events of inauguration day. As the seconds to Obama’s oath ticked down, a room full of very intelligent people brainstormed ways we could get coverage.
“Try the local stations directly,” one of my colleagues suggested. I brought up Boston’s NBC affiliate, WHDH. They just offered MSNBC’s national feed, which was unavailable.
“Try YouTube!” another suggested. We couldn’t find any evidence of a live feed on YouTube.
“Try NPR! We’ll at least be able to hear it!” suggested a third. I opened WBUR only to get a “server unavailable due to high activity” error. We couldn’t even listen to it!
By this time President Obama had certainly taken the oath and had begun to address the nation. Discouraged, and running out of ideas, I turned sullenly when a colleague asked, “What’s that box over there?”
We have a video capture station in the room to record demonstrations, surrounded by a small pile of video equipment. (There’s also what I suspect is a genuine VT220 terminal, though I’d have to look more closely.)
“Part of the Echo360 setup probably, right?”
“It says ‘HDTV’ on it.”
If you haven’t been in a room with computer engineers when there’s equipment to setup, know that you should stand back in a hurry. Wires were unplugged and rerouted. Buttons were pressed. Menus were seen and contemplated. And then a live television picture appeared on the screen before our eyes, without all that fancy buffering nonsense.
So, in the end, it took a highly skilled information technology workforce of 20 competent adults fully five minutes to realize we could turn on the television.
We will never speak of this again.
Best Telemarketing Call Ever
My personal award for most awkward telemarketing tactics has lately been going exclusively to the Boston Ballet. I love them artistically, but administratively they struggle with the idea that they do not need to encourage me to buy a subscription when I already have one. At one point last year I fielded two calls in the same day from their marketers, both of whom were entirely taken aback at my assurances that I had already paid for my subscription to the upcoming season.
This week, the Boston Pops has surpassed the Ballet to receive my highly exclusive award.
They’ve been calling a lot in the last few weeks, but through the marvel of modern technology I’ve been quietly ignoring them. Tonight, I had a message waiting for me when I got home.
I here use the word “message” more loosely than perhaps one normally would. I had, rather, an audio recording of what it’s like inside the Pops’ call center when a marketer thinks he has hung up but, in fact, has not.
Enthralled, and wondering how long it could possibly go on, I let play a couple minutes of Mr. Telemarkter flirting with Ms. Telemarketer regarding her upcoming vacation (during which she will be visiting Canada), before giving up and deleting the message.
The Oscar for “most awkward telemarketing tactics” is yours, good sir. I congratulate you. (And I still won’t be answering your call tomorrow.)
Dress Rehearsal
While running various errands yesterday, I found myself near the corner of Chestnut Hill Avenue and Beacon Street in Brighton, where I saw a couple people jog around the corner from Chestnut Hill onto Beacon, heading east. They were not remarkable in any way.
Later, a couple more people rounded the same corner in the same direction, also running, and also looking wholly unremarkable.
Soon thereafter, several more people ran around the corner, followed some time later by others, and those people by others.
At some point I began to reflect that a statistically unlikely number of people were all running in the same direction (but not quite at the same time) on the same streets, and then that a statistically unlikely number of them were wearing jackets with the John Hancock logo on the back.
Like the answer to a riddle, the pieces fell into place: they were all running the Boston Marathon route! John Hancock Financial Services is the event’s main sponsor.
My question, then, is this: is it normal for 30 people to all be training for the Marathon on any arbitrarily selected Saturday near the beginning of January (for an event in April), or was this some specially scheduled training event?
Best Invention Since… Uhh… Never Mind
Most people who know me are aware I have groceries delivered through Peapod. Some envy me for it; some mock me for it. The latter group will enjoy this story more.
One disadvantage of ordering online is that compensating for what’s out of stock is harder. If I see the Diet Coke shelf is empty, I’ll happily substitute Diet Pepsi. If I ordered four different cereals, though, and Rice Krispies is out of stock, I’ll just abandon the Rice Krispies that day. Peapod offers options to indicate these preferences, but there appears to be a kink in the system.
Here’s a selection from my grocery list this evening. See if you can spot anything problematic:
- $5.32 Alpine Lace Deli Cheese Swiss
- $6.11 Boar’s Head Deli Ham Maple Glazed Honey Coat
- $4.07 Stop & Shop Deli Turkey Breast (Thin Sliced)
- $2.99 Hellmann’s Mayonnaise
- $1.99 Iceberg Lettuce
- $3.79 Ruffles Potato Chips Original
- $3.00 Country Kitchen Bread Wheat OUT OF STOCK (Delivered 0 of 1)
Blërg!
They omitted the only item on that list that completely derails my sandwich-making plans! I could make a sandwich without turkey, or even without lettuce, but without bread… that would be chaos.
Milk! But it Worked!
A friend of mine is studying in Italy, where (you’ll be shocked to learn) there are some cultural differences.
She just told me the story of the day she was running late to class, so she brought a modest breakfast along with her — a croissant and a small glass of milk. This earned her some strange stares during the lecture, and afterward a classmate approached her:
Classmate: What were you drinking during class?
Her: Uhh… milk…
Classmate: (horrified) Straight?!
On really rough days I take mine on the rocks with a twist.
This reminds me of my favorite scene in the musical Bye Bye Birdie, which we once performed in high school. Young Hugo Peabody tries repeatedly to get a drink at Maude’s Roadside Retreat (where I portrayed Maude) but gets kicked out every time. Later, he staggers out of the same bar completely drunk. His mother is shocked:
Mrs. Macafee: Hugo Peabody, what have you been drinking?
Hugo: Milk! But it worked!
(For the record, I heard this story the day after seeing Sophie, who drinks over a liter of milk every day. That just makes it funnier.)
Slippery When Wet
Sophie was very excited to go ice skating today. She first mentioned it weeks ago with high excitement and made me promise we’d go skating during our Christmas visit.
A few days later she realized she didn’t own any skates and called, greatly upset, to make me promise we’d get her some from the “store.”
This remained a major topic of conversation through this morning, when we got out to Cairns Arena in Burlington. We rented skates, got everybody laced up, and headed to the ice. Sophie walked with us, balancing somewhat precariously on her blades, and eagerly stepped out onto the rink, holding our hands. Immediately, she spun around in horror and announced:
It’s slippery!
We insisted she try it anyway (despite the unexpected slipperiness), holding the wall tightly, and holding our hands, but she burst into tears, and skated with us only grudgingly.
After a while she discovered (by chance) that falling wasn’t fatal, and so made her primary purpose on the ice to fall. Until she fell a bit too hard, and thereafter refused to set foot on the ice again, instead watching us from the sidelines.
Her summary of the event, recounted to anybody who asks anything about skating is simply:
It was slippery! I fell on my butt.
Winning Numbers
My stocking this Christmas included some scratch-off lottery tickets. Of course, I asked Sophie to help me scratch them off.
Each time she uncovered a number with the edge of her penny she gleefully announced what number she found. Being three years old and being thus unable to read, she declared most of them were “eight.” I took the chance to point out the numbers’ correct names.
“That’s a five!” I’d say, after scratching off one of the “winning numbers” spaces. When she later uncovered a second five under “your numbers,” I was able to say, “That’s another five, just like this one here. See? Five… five!”
Attentive readers will at this point suspect that uncovering such matching numbers would indicate a winning ticket. I, at the time, didn’t even notice. The only point of having two identical numbers was to show Sophie what they looked like. Immediately after saying, “it’s just like this other five up here,” I announced to the other adults, “aww, no matches; this one’s a loser.”
They had to correct me. And then review all the other tickets we’d done.
(It only won $2, but I could as easily have been discarding a $2,000 game in favor of a reading lesson.)
You Probably Think This Song is About You
I seem to have an over-developed sense of entitlement.
I ordered pizza tonight, and I noticed it was larger than expected the moment the delivery man pulled it from his delivery bag. The following thoughts went through my mind in precisely this order (in rapid succession):
- This pizza is larger than my usual order.
- I hope I didn’t somehow order the wrong size by mistake!
- I’m certain I paid the right amount, so I must have ordered the right size.
- Therefore: they must be having a special! Yay!
- Wait, that means I have way more pizza than I expected.
- I guess I’ll just have more leftovers.
- Uh oh. I won’t be able to eat leftover pizza over Christmas. Now what am I supposed to do with it?
- I wish they’d told me they were having a special in advance!
- I guess before I finish shutting the door I should check that this was really supposed to be mine.
- Nope. This is addressed to somebody on the next block.
In particular, let me draw your attention to the fact that “they must be having a special” came in at number four, while “I bet this isn’t mine” ranked as low as number nine.
(My pizza was still in his car, and for the record was the best pizza I’ve ever gotten from this restaurant.)
Found in a Hallway (Part 1)
As I would in any public space, I often notice strange items strewn about the common areas of my building. Our maintenance and custodial staff is diligent about picking up students’ messes, but they can’t clean the entire building instantaneously, so messes often last long enough to me to find them.
Restaurant delivery menus appear beside the elevators many mornings, lost socks are dropped in the hallway from time to time, and I’ve even seen a couple pieces of furniture left conspicuously in front of someone’s apartment for a couple days before anyone realized their owners had no intention of removing them on their own.
Commonly, I’ll find a beer can in the elevator on Saturday morning on my way to get coffee. This completely baffles me. I am not surprised that college students drink beer on Friday nights, nor that they dispose of beer cans improperly, but rather over how much beer a person can really consume in the time it takes a modern elevator to climb 20 stories.
It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld joke from his special I’m Telling You for the Last Time, where he describes airplane bathrooms:
[They have a] tiny slot for used razor blades. That’s always there. Who is shaving on the plane? And shaving so much, they’re using up razor blades? What have you got? The Wolfman flying here?
To date, however, I was most taken aback by discovering a pancake in the middle of the hallway on my way to work one morning — uncooked. Someone had clearly ladled pancake batter onto the hallway carpet and then continued the rest of their evening as planned.
I know you’re thinking I could be naïvely failing to consider other explanations for that particular mess. Believe me, “pancake batter” wasn’t my first thought either as I walked (necessarily) toward the mystery hallway mess, but pancake batter it was, without a doubt.
I should implement a new rule here. You can get as drunk as you want in my hallway, but with the understanding that I will automatically send pictures of everything you do to your boss, mother, girlfriend, dean, and . If you believe there’s any possibility they might end up getting pictures of you ladling a pancake onto the hallway carpet, you should impose some limits on your alcohol consumption.