Dear Google

THANK YOU for putting a 'google instant' on/off toggle on the home search page! I've been gagging for weeks, because the instant thing is NOT instant. It was maybe a "cool" idea, but made my searches slow, cumbersome, and beyond WRONG. Really, really wrong. Instant just couldn't keep up, and I'm not that fast a typist.

Your big reward for accommodating usability over geekminded 'coolness' is that I will continue to use Google as my home base for every browser I use -- and I use Google's search engines in front of many people throughout my workday as a college educator! (Talk about your free advertising)

Of course, I also use Firefox and OpenOffice as much as I can, too.

Google gets a cookie. Have a nice weekend!

Dear Office Depot

You really need to pay attention to how your people treat customers. Today I was shopping in our local Office Depot store when some kind of alarm went off. It was a loud, ear-slashing, painful squeal that just went on and on. One of the employees, possibly an assistant manager of some kind, sauntered slowly out of a back room, saw me holding my ears in pain, and smiled a "sorry about that," but he did nothing about it.

The noise dug into my head and just as I was about to drop the box of 100 manila folders I'd come to buy and run for the exit, the noise stopped, leaving me with a crashing headache and the urge to see if my ears were bleeding.

At the checkout counter, I commented that I was still trying to recover from the obnoxious noise, and the trainee cashier  laughed, then had the nerve to ask me stupid questions about 'membership' and my zip code. I just said "I have no idea. Just ring this up. I just want to leave."

As I headed for my car, I silently chided myself (my ears were too raw for anything other than silence and the mellow, now quiet-seeming drone of rush hour traffic). I should have had a spine. I should have been brave.

I should have gone back inside, asked for a manager, and said, "You know, I totally understand that sometimes alarms get tripped. But to let that ear-torturing noise harm your customers, make them uncomfortable to the point that I was holding my ears and my eyes were watering right in front of your workers is just crappy behavior.

I'm a good person and I try not to let bad things happen on my watch at work. If they do, I don't shrug it off with a 'sorry' or laugh at people who are visibly in distress.

A truly classy establishment would have given me two things:
1. my $7 box of manila folders on the house
2. an apologetic reassurance that the screaming skull-cracking alarm would be fixed, or at least turned off promptly when customers are cowering in the store aisles, looking for the nearest exit.

That's all. Grow up and treat people right. This town isn't that big: word gets out.

September 11, 2010

Dear Planet Earth:

Today is September 11. The only appropriate thing for anyone to say to America today is "I'm so sorry for your loss." Anything else would just be tacky, wrong, and unforgotten.

That publicity-grubbing christian minister can burn your sacred book or not. He doesn't matter. History is full of burnt stuff. Vikings burned bibles, Arabs burned Torahs, Christians burned everything in sight. Atheists mostly burn marshmallows and wish the others would CALM DOWN.

On NPR the other day, an interviewer said 48% of Americans view Islam negatively. That's roughly 150 million citizens of the richest, most powerful nation in the world thinking that individuals who subscribe to that system of belief are Not Good People. I know they are wrong, you know they are wrong, we all know that Islam is not responsible for any more pain and suffering in the world than any other religion. Yet a group of nasty, opium-addled, immature, stupid, ignorant, black-hearted men -- YES, they were MEN, not women -- slew more innocent American civilians than we could have ever imagined dying from any man-made weapon other than a nuclear attack.

My sentences are strained. My heart is strained. Nine years ago, I mostly held my tongue. I did my job. I told my students to just keep an eye on their government if we went to war--truth is the first casualty in war. I said all the right things, and I did all the right things, and I only took ONE lousy day off work to cry miserably into my pillow for dead and suffering people whom I did not know.

I never told the world how angry and bitter I was -- and still am.

Americans are kind. We are fair. We truly believe in equality and justice, even if we screw it up a lot. The difference -- the primary difference between terror-mongers and Americans is this: We believe in good for all.

Even if we don't always get it right, even if we do bad things, even if we screw up and stumble, and get tired and a little too arrogant or smug for our own good, we still believe. We try. We work very hard so that all of us can be safe and have decent lives and behave with dignity in the world.

So here's my advice. Quit bitching and do some good, and spread that idea as strongly as you can.

We can all do better, but at least America knows this and keeps on trying, keeps on believing.

If you give up on that, we'll be watching you. So if you're thinking that death and blood are answers to anything you hate, grow up and get wise. For even if our dignitaries and top officials say smooth and peaceful things to you, even if they give you money and ask you nicely not to turn weapons on innocent people, the rest of us do not forget. There are a lot of us, we are literate, smart, ambitious, and protective of our own. We take names.

America remembers.

Dog Lovers vs. Michael Vick

Dear NFL Players:

I very much enjoyed the preseason Chiefs v. Eagles game at Arrowhead Stadium last night. Fun place, nice crowd. The only really jarring moment was when the announcer reminded me that Michael Vick, Mister "I'll strangle a dog for a buck--or just for the heck of it," was on the field.

If some of the players and fans have forgotten (oh, how fast Americans forget things they don't like to face), you can review the aftermath of his participation in one of the bloodiest, most abusive pastimes in the world:
"Dogtown: Saving the Michal Vick Dogs" (National Geographic Channel, avail. on Hulu)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/158422/dogtown-saving-the-michael-vick-dogs

Now, I would never ever condone random violence against any of the universe's creatures.

But if one (or more) of you NFL players who are also true animal lovers were to accidentally do on the field to Vick what he did to some of those poor dogs, well . . .

I'd probably let my dog send you a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers.

That's all! Have a good season (all of you except the nasty animal abusers -- you know who you are).

Dear Sears

You need to get serious with your stores and actually stock what you're trying to sell.

No, seriously. You blew it, you lost the sale, and here's why:

1. Your store in my town puts very expensive items on its sales floor, but tells customers "Sorry, we don't have that in stock." The mower I chose was not in stock, and for some bizarre reason you would not sell me the floor model. 
2. I asked for a rain check, to get the same price when the sales person told me they would be in stock "in a week or two." The sales clerk took my name and contact information. On a scrap of paper. 
3. Which did not surprise me, since she was barely, minimally competent, showed no enthusiasm whatsoever when I expressed more interest in the new models than the used 'returned' machines parked on the sidewalk outside the store.
4. Not only that, her mouth kept saying, "Uh, yeah, that's a good mower. They're all good," while her face was saying, "Please just go away, I have no interest in selling this crap."
5. When I finally chose a fairly high-end self-propelled mower, saying "Wrap it up, I'll take it," she said, "Oh, okay, ummmm... I'll go back and see if we have that one..." (WTF???! Don't your employees know what they are doing at ALL?)
6. I had even brought friends to help me shop and load/unload the machine into my truck. They were NOT impressed with your store or the personnel, so you've lost two rather wealthy local residents as customers in the future.
7. Needless to say, I was never contacted, and made the decision not to ever shop at your store for a high-end item (for me, 'high-end' means over $300...so possibly you don't care).
8. Another local resident told me he and his wife had the same exact experience at your store--they bought the really expensive washer and dryer set you didn't have in stock from LOWE'S.
9. Come to think of it, Lowe's has every appliance and motorized lawn care product you have, only they really do know how to serve customers, deliver, install... well, you get what I mean.

Here's my advice (and it's worth every penny you've paid for it). Either get your store into shape, or you're out of our town.

And come to think of it . . . we probably won't notice if your store leaves--except for the big UGLY SPACE it hogs up in our little mall (it looks OK from the outside, but inside it looks like a sad, understocked outlet store).

In this economy, I think you need to make a better effort. Sell products your people can believe in, and make sure you stock what you show.

American Idol

PART I

Dear Randy, Cara, Simon, and Ellen,

One reason the show is getting so squirmy, uncomfortable, and stale is you've got these kids singing old top-40 tunes recorded before they were born. These songs were mildewed and worn out long before Fox got permission to use them.

Here's an idea: Theme your nights on something fun and interesting. Baliwood. Celtic pop. Reggae. acapella harmonies. Rap. Grunge.

Anything but the yawners they've been singing.

PART II

Dear Idol Contestants:

Simon calls it the "moment" or the "it factor" -- it's really not a mystery to get that star quality mojo happening when you are performing. The secret is to GET OVER YOURSELF. You are performing because people want to be entertained, they want to be taken away from mundane life. They want to feel something, to experience the song. It's not about YOU. It's about the music, and unless you can be like Crystal or Casey (they both seem to understand it's about the music and the art, not their own egos/attention), you'll never have it.

Good luck!

Health Care

Dear Republican office holders,
Before digging your heels in, screeching about how single payer health care would take your freedom away, let me remind you: No One is talking about making your private health care illegal or anything. You really need to talk with people who have lived for extended periods of time with no health insurance (FYI -- I have been there myself).

• You need to hear what it's like to wake up in the night with a fever and pray that it's nothing serious.
• You need to hear what it's like to fall and sprain your ankle, wrap it up and hope that nothing's broken.
• You need to hear what it's like to have an asthma attack and hope that pharmacist on the corner will (once again) sell you a rescue inhaler, even though you have no prescription.

Other countries have managed to care for their most important resource -- the people. Why is America lagging and failing in the health care arena? Do you really want to go down in history as the legislators who couldn't drop the backward bottom-line mentality and care about working class Americans? You really need to wake up, smell some serious coffee, and drag yourselves into the 21st Century.