Don't Have A S****y Day

"Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays!"

Has anyone actually ever said that to you? I hope not. If they have, I am in full agreement with the dude from Office Space. I think you reserve the right to whoop someone's ass for saying something like that, it's just the epitome of 'why are you talking then' phrases. Sometimes, nothing needs to be said. Sometimes, just don't even say anything, because anything you say is just going to make a negative contribution to the conversation.

Do you get tired of hearing the same phrases over and over, and you start to look at them really closely to try to understand what they even mean? I can't stop myself from doing this lately. A guy at the grocery store in front of me the other day told his wife and kids that they could 'kill two birds with one stone'. And for whatever reason, I pictured what it actually looks like when you kill even one bird with a stone. And it's actually a bit screwed up.

It's like, dude, why did you kill that bird? That bird did nothing to deserve that, what are you doing? You want to kill another one after that? And do it with the same stone? So you're possibly psychotic and lazy at the same time? Or does that mean you kill the first bird, walk over, pick up the same stone, and then kill another one? Somehow that's less impressive. Maybe you're killing more than one bird because of the size of the stone. If I lob a meteor the size of a football stadium at a wooded forest, I'll probably hit a few things, birds, squirrels, might even get a deer or two. But no one is going to turn to me and say "Good shot" over it.

So I guess details like that matter a bit.

Here's something that I think we overuse all the time:

"Have a great day!"

Again, I know I'm really turning up the microscope on this one, but what does that actually, like ACTUALLY mean? Because a lot of us have really great lives in the first place. We have jobs, we have loving families, or families that aren't plagued with violence and incest that we can deal with most of the time. We live in a part of the world that currently has all the basic resources needed to sustain life. We have things that entertain us that we don't even need, and yet we can allow them to bring us stress and interrupt otherwise boring great sufficient happiness. If you've recently felt angry or disappointed because of the result of a sports competition, or you were let down by a musical performance or musical album, or you are currently feeling unfulfilled because you finished a binge of a tv show and don't have a new one yet, then yeah, maybe life sucks, but on a much more basic level maybe life is going great and you are able to focus and dwell on details like that. If you didn't have to kill your own food to feed yourself and seven others using a spear and a rope, clothed only with the hide of the last thing you killed with that same spear and rope, you just might have more going in the right direction than you realize.

So when you say 'Have a great day", how are you saying it? Are you saying, continue having a mostly great life without interruption? Have an average day of excellence? Or are you trying to say, even for the great life you're living with no real problems and a ton to be envied by people in your own life, you need to go out there and just kill that standard by having whatever a great day is to YOU. Go out and finish first in a marathon, and learn Cantonese Chinese, and write an award winning screenplay, and foil a terrorist attack, and cook a perfect souffle, and then travel to Paris and have people excited to take pictures of you while you're the visitor in Paris, and then come back and have lunch and then keep going after that. Just get out there and kill it, have a great day to what is already a great life! Go, go now! Why aren't you having a great day life in this moment?! You're disobeying my enthusiasm and I won't have it!

What if your normal days are amazing and this great day that you're supposed to have is for normal people? You know, like you're used to mansions and cruises and champagne lifestyle and you have a great day for a blue collar dude with a trailer, a pickup and a case of Bud light? If you have one standard and the other comes at you, well, can you definitively say that ISN'T a shitty day? And I'm not talking shit about the case of beer. Bud light days can be awesome. Bud light days can bring great perspective. The mornings after Bud light days can also bring a requiem for why you move on from Bud light days at some point. Just like the day or so after the champagne lifestyle might not be great when you get the bill for all that shit and realize, 'Now I'm broke and have to go back to Bud light days for the rest of my stupid but still basically good life'.

I got the idea after listening to Ice Cube's "It was a Good Day". For those of you unfamiliar, it's a 90's gangsta rap song about a guy in South Central LA who takes you through what is considered in his world a good day. And he mentions things like how he played basketball and did well, had some good food with his family, won money in a card game, went on a date and got laid, his favorite sports teams won, more good food, got some drinks, ect., things that are relatable to many people out there, regardless of background. But then he mentions other things in his world that didn't happen, that also contributed to a good day. Like the fact that he didn't have to shoot anyone, and he didn't get shot or shot at. At one point he notes that he had to stop at a red light, and no one was waiting at that red light to try and rob him. Cool. To many of us, it's not just that "yeah it's good that no attempted robbery occurred", but more, "Holy shit, do you have to worry about that kind of thing regularly?" But to Ice Cube in the song, it's like, "Hey, nobody I know got killed today. Thumbs up."

Maybe the amount of focus we put on mundane things is way too much. Maybe we're using words like great too much. We call our days great. We call our jobs great. We have great cars, great families, great weekends, great grandmothers, great escapes, great walls, great balls of fire. Please, spare me your balls of fire, they are usually quite shoddy and ordinary. You gotta really dig deep to impress me with your balls of fire. If you don't have massive balls that are completely engulfed in flames that are burning everything that they touch, then I challenge your definition of what it means to have great balls of fire. I have now gone on this point for too long and will move on.

We definitely use great for things like food constantly. I had a coworker at a previous job go on and on about this 'amazing' burrito he had for lunch that day. He described everything about it, from the meat, to the cheese, and the toppings of guacamole and peppers and chilies and pico de gallo, and the way it was wrapped up and toasted, and the way it smelled, and how satisfying it was for him and how he doesn't think he'll ever have another burrito that good ever again. And just messing around, one of the female coworkers there at the same time said, "So then I guess it's all downhill from here, huh?" And I got a glimpse of the moment his face sank just a little bit. It was quick and subtle, but I think he honestly had a moment of consideration, where he thought maybe that six dollar burrito was the best he was ever gonna do, and everything in life had built him to that moment and now nothing else was going to measure up to it ever again.

But that wasn't quite the end of it. It would turn out later that this same burrito may have made a second appearance. I can't say for certain what else this dude ate, but the bathroom was uninhabitable shortly thereafter for most of the rest of the day after he paid it a visit. And it was definitely him, because I had the misfortune of being in the vicinity when it happened and I saw the look on his face when he left that bathroom. It was one of those faces where you don't yet know how terrible of a thing you just done. It looked kind of like this:



Suffice it to say, the next 10 people to use that bathroom had horrible days, or had their days severely downgraded, thanks to this god damn burrito that caused 10 seconds of euphoria to this admittedly aloof useless hippie type. And yes, I get that this could be taking several things out of context just to support my point here in an unnecessary way. Thousands of other things could have made other people's days shitty, and this guy may have just had his own personal Victor Green moment that he hopes no one ever finds out about, yada yada. And to all that I say-

...meh. I choose to believe it was the burrito that made all of this mayhem happen. And it's likely that this was not a great day for anyone involved. So let's go with that.

Maybe it's not about having great days. Maybe it's just about eliminating the awful ones. So let's try that. Go out there and don't have a shitty day. Let's raise the average rating of your days to where you don't even have to worry about having good or great days, because they already are that. Don't have a shitty day, everybody.

Until next time.

Super Hero: An Ode

My wife is not a super hero.

I try to explain that to her every so often, that she is not an invincible force. She doesn't have unlimited and unparalleled strength, she is not able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. She cannot take on the world all at once, all by herself. I simply mean to say that she shouldn't feel that she has to. It's possible she thinks that I'm setting it as a challenge.

Tara has known for a long time that she wanted to help people. She has studied it, she has practiced it, and she has lived it, both in her family and professional life. She has always been someone that can be relied upon, someone who can be trusted, and someone who can give and accept love in many forms. Someone who will deal with reality in whatever format it comes forward. Someone who will find solace and meaning in things that may shine on a cloudy day, or further brighten a sunny one.

She's probably the most determined person I know. Working in mental health counseling must require the kind of inner will that most of us will never be able to appreciate. It's certainly not easy to push past some of the ugliest parts of the world and of life to make it to the good parts. Doing this is already a lot to ask in our own lives, but to do it for someone besides one's self is beyond admirable. That actually is heroic. For the record, I include myself in with those who will not truly understand selflessness at this level.

But again, my wife is not a super hero.

My wife is fiercely proud of who she is and where she comes from. Her family holds a place in her heart that cannot be rivaled. But please understand, this is not just the family she was born from. Tara has found others, from childhood through her adolescent and young adult life, that have become intertwined with her just as if they had sprouted from the same seed. She knows so well the definition of friendship as 'the family that you choose'. Tara has a knack for putting others before herself. This includes people close to her, but also those that she does not know well and owes nothing to. The trauma, the agony, the pressure, and the relentlessness of a calling like this still baffles me to consider as a daily endeavor.

This woman that I share my life with, whom I love more each day that I know her, does her best to share the best possible side of things, but it is inevitable that some of the darkness comes up at times too. It's only natural to acknowledge that this world of ours is unfair, and fickle, and at times even cruel. Yet I find myself sometimes glad when these dark forms show up, not because I am happy that such terrible things exist but that there also exist the people like her that can fight them tirelessly, and save the world from them, over and over again.

When we are together, I know she usually has a lot on her mind. She does her best to shut off work life at work and live independently of those difficulties and that trauma that is such a common part of the days. She must make sure that she finds time for self care, wherever possible. It is still difficult for me to not try to take on some of the weight of what she does. She would never ask for help in that. Perhaps, it is not Tara that needs to be reminded, but instead myself:

My wife may not be invincible, but I've yet to see a force that can defeat her.
My wife may not have unlimited and unparalleled strength, but it's strength that she still has yet to find the maximum to.
My wife may not leap tall buildings with a single bound, but she will climb every mountain put in front of her for what she believes in.
My wife cannot take the world on all at once, and I hope she never has to because she will try all the same, and the results may be closer than expected.

My wife is not a super hero.

Oh, wait... yes she is.

Help Me Not Help You

I know, it's been a while.

I've had things I thought about writing, and then didn't. Had things I started writing and still am working on, but never posted. Just a lot of stuff going on and not much time to stop and think about them in this way, blah blah, excuses and what not. It's actually one of the things that I like about doing a blog like this. I don't even owe you an explanation, even though I will give portions of one as we go here, for where I've been. But that's not what I came here to talk about.

Sometimes, people convince you to hate them. Or distrust them, or question them, or to just be done with them and forget they ever existed.

There was this cigar bar that was open a few blocks from my apartment when I lived downtown. We walked by it all the time, and it seemed to have a cool vibe going on, but we'd always have somewhere else we were going anyway. But one night, we stopped in, on a relatively cold night in winter, and decided to get some drinks and maybe a cigar(which was a bit over budget considering the financial place we were all in).

The lights were dim, the crowd seemed mellow, the prices weren't so bad, so we decided to check out the drinks at the bar. While we were up there, I noticed there was a DJ in the corner, adjusting his records as he already had something playing. Whatever it was, it was kinda weird, but not bad necessarily. So me, being my curious self after 2-3 cheap beers, I stroll over and ask him what he's playing, what kind of other stuff he's got lined up, just to kinda of chat him up, and the guy seems to take offense for some reason. Like it's weird to want to know what to expect from a new place or something. And I tried to not be taken aback, I just start to say that our group has a lot of new music constantly being thrown around and I like to know what new stuff is out there, and he says something to the effect of:

If you were really a music person, you'd know to just shut the hell up and listen to whatever I put on.

And I don't remember exactly how he worded it, but that was the gist. I walked away at that, and thought about what he said as my friends continued to look at the menu. Because I considered what he said, the idea that I could just be in that space and take whatever came next as a new experience, and maybe learn something new just by listening and not thinking too much.

And then I expressed this to my group by saying, "Fuck this guy and this place, let's find another bar on this street." They agreed, not finding too much they were excited for on the menu and realizing none of us could afford cigars at the time.

On our way out, I looked back at the DJ, and I'll never forget the smug grin on his face as he stood there, arms folded, basking in his accomplishment of having chased out 5 potential bar patrons. Like he'd won something, done what he set out to do. And I just shrugged and shook my head, because all he convinced me to do was NOT hear him out. Even if he felt that way, he seemed to intentionally have shrunk his own audience. And for what? To put a stranger in their place, about something that is no by no means a universal understanding in music? To make himself feel better about some other shit he was dealing with? Did he think he was teaching me an important lesson that would improve my life, too?

Well, in a way he did. I was reminded of the benefits of not being an asshole to the point that people stop being on your side, and start lining up against you. You may not always be able to make someone your friend, but I'm willing to bet you can just about always piss someone off more than they currently are. There's a phrase, "You can't always do right, but you can always do what's left." I think it's lyrics from a song by Queens of the Stone Age as I really think about it, but that doesn't kill my point. When something isn't great, do yourself a favor and remember that it can always get worse. Some situations, I feel, are just dying, just begging to get worse than they already are.

For example:

My last few months have led to me taking a new job in the Madison area. It's a good move for me and my career, but I'm still in touch with a lot of my former coworkers and I'm glad to hear that things are basically still moving along. I said that in that way, because it was a bit dicey over the past year. I'm not going to go into too much detail and I'm certainly not going to bash the company here. The company, for all of its faults, still did a lot of good for me over the past six years, and I could never disparage them for it.

I can, however, feel a bit more liberty in bashing some of my least favorite customers now.

You must understand, we worked in the medical device field with a lot of dentists and doctors students that would soon become dentists and doctors, and you have to believe me when i say i fear for the clients of more than a few of these bastards out there. Bruhhh, there are some stupid sun' bitches cleaning and fixing teeth in America. People that are incompetent, people that are entitled, people that are just assholes and assume because I work in this type of role, I must be a slack-jawed neanderthal that couldn't possibly understand how important these people were. And this is by no means a new concept in customer service type jobs, this is very much within the territory. Still, I had people go above and beyond the standard of acting shitty to those that, again, ARE THERE TO HELP YOU.

Something else I will mention about the past year in my now former job: my boss at the time, the manager, took another job within the company. I, the supervisor at the time, inherited a number of his responsibilities but was not interviewed as replacement for his job. Was I happy about this? No, of course not. Did I understand the reasons they gave me for not considering me? Meh...somewhat. But that's not the point here.

The point is that both my (former) boss and I were both overloaded and neither was in a particularly happy mood when this story took place. He was doing his new job while still managing our department where he absolutely needed to, and I was still straddling the line of working on the phones with the rest of my group, as I used to do regularly, while handling new responsibilities as a supervisor while also getting passed things that a manager technically does. I'm not bragging, I'm simply telling you what happened.

So we get a call that's an escalation. Some old dentist in New Jersey (or not) who's unhappy with something and wants to speak to a supervisor. So someone transfers it to me, and I tell them that I won't be able to take the call at that moment, and that they can either have the guy leave a message or they can take it to my boss, if it's that urgent. I didn't like passing things off to him like that often, but I remember I did at first in this case, so I had to have been just that far behind.

Whoever took the call walks into his office (the boss's), and he tells them to send it to me, and they mention that I just said I couldn't do it at the moment. And this guy, who we'll call Allen for this story, leans out of his office, and asks me if I can give whoever a hand with this. And I start to explain why I sent it over and that I need to finish what I have going, and halfway in I pause and I look him right in his eye, and he's got this semi-wide eyed glance that says, "I wasn't actually asking." And this annoying little smile comes across his face as he says, "Can you please take care of this?"

I know that look. It's the look of someone passed his limit who hopes you understand that this will only get less pleasant from here forward. And plus, he was still technically my direct report, and I was holding out hope that if I did a good enough job with these 2 (really 3) roles, maybe I could prove my worth and be given a shot at the manager role a bit later on. So I mustered a similar smile to him, nearly gritting my teeth, and tried to say, "kiss my black ass in as professional a way as possible." But it came out as, "Send him over to me."

I take a couple of deep breaths, reminding myself that the customer did nothing to warrant any retribution. I have to be professional, I have to be patient. This is my job, to take this on and make it better for everyone involved. Woosah.

Yeah, woosah my ass. This guy was a tool from the minute I clicked over. I told him my name and he told me our entire department should be let go, probably with me first. That's how he thought our conversation should start. The problem was that we had sent this guy's product to him in the wrong color, a color he originally requested but then claims to have changed a few days later. Which could have happened, but it didn't. So he wanted to send it back and get a new one with his new color choice. And so far, I had no issues with his request.

The problem, however, was that he was already using his product and didn't want to give it up. He had another of this product and had been using it for a while, but he wouldn't give this one back within his trial period until he had the new one. Which was directly against policy, and when they said they couldn't change it, he flipped out and asked for me. If this had been some little widget for like $20, maybe even $100 or $200, I wouldn't have cared and probably would have just sent it at no cost, don't even bother sending the old one back. But these things were like $3000, and it would take a while to make it between his prescription and all these other factors, and again, he's already lambasted me a ton for no good reason. The guy who was going to fix his problem. So I decided that I couldn't break with the policy.

The one thing I offered, I said we would remake a second one and give him a discount. The standard special discount for repeat customers, but a discount nonetheless. And he asks how much off it is, and I say how much (like $200) and there's a pause on the phone. And then I hear him just start to scoff and almost hyperventilate. And before I can ask him if he's okay, he starts to say, over and over again, "How dare you?! How DARE you?!" I'm not particularly sure what to say in response. I kind of can guess why he's upset, but this is a level I legitimately didn't anticipate.

Next, he says he's going to do his best to ruin our business in the U.S. And I came so close to telling him, "Give it your best shot." I wish I could see where that conversation went, even though the lines are recorded and it ultimately would not have been too professional. And I swear, through all this, I am as polite and courteous as I can be, while still refusing to give into this retail terrorist. This is not the kind of guy that gets what he wants and goes away. I fully expected, if we yielded to him now, he'd be back and would expect we give into his demands next time, too. So, with respect, fuck that. And with less respect, fuck him.

So he starts asking for my manager's name and info, and I tell him who Allen is and that Allen essentially doesn't work in our department anymore, so that for now, I'm the one he wants to talk to. So he asks for Allen's boss, who is a new General Manager that has been with the company for about 3 months at that time and doesn't really know what anything is or how to do anything. Not to mention, when our GM, who we'll call Aaron I guess, will almost certainly come to me to put anything necessary in motion. Again, I tell him, this still has to go through me at the moment.

But screw it, I give him Aaron's name, and this douche canoe of a dentist tells me to tell him to call the next day. And before he hangs up, he says something that made me laugh later. It went like this:

Douchbag: And Trevor, tell me something before I go.
Me: I'm sorry?
Douchebag: Tell me this, Trevor.
Me: (ignoring the wrong name) Yes, sir?
Douchebag: What's your next job going to me?
Me: Umm, I don't know yet.
Douchebag: You should figure it out. You're not going to have this one much longer.
<click>

Yep. This motherfucker was that sure he was going to get me fired. He proceeded to call the Better Business Bureau and complain about our return practices, which are stated pretty clearly on the website. He then stalked me on LinkedIn for the next few weeks, periodically leaving weird direct messages every few days, which, how the hell did he even do that when he was looking for a Trevor? I told Allen what happened, and he didn't believe me until he started getting notices from our marketing department because this guy also blew up the company Facebook page.

So I took it to Aaron, and he said he wanted to help smooth over the situation however he could, but he agreed with the policy and that we had been reasonable with the doctor to that point. He then basically gave the doc exactly what he wanted. Whatever. I was all to happy to was my hands of this assmuncher and the horse he rode in on, and in many ways, New Jersey (or wherever) as a whole.

But I looked up the doctor a bit later, because I was now more curious than ever. It turns out, this is one of the highest rated dentists on the east coast. This imbecile, Dr. Byers we'll call him, is actually highly respected and has won a ton of awards and has a 30 year practice established and blah blah blah, don't use your position and reputation to try to justify being a maniac. There are ways to talk to people to get what you want. This guy talked to several people in our company like he owned them, like he was better than them. Like he was the only one in the equation who mattered.

I know for a fact he called early this year and demanded some more free shit, and Aaron gave it to him. Because it got escalated to him again, because no one else would stoop that low to please him and no one else felt like getting bile spit at them through a phone call like that. So this was the whole concern the whole time for me, that he knows he can go to this length to get acquiesced to, so that's what he did. Asshole.

He had no idea that I had no issue with bending the rules a bit if I thought the customer deserved it. Or if I felt that we screwed up on our end. I am someone who worked in 3 different roles at the same time for that company, averaging 50-60 hours a week for years. I worked projects, trained new employees, helped troubleshoot issues within the building and across departments, went to trade shows on weekends, did after hours drops to UPS to ensure delivery dates, hell, I once cleaned up shit off the god damn carpet in that office. And Dr. Byers found a way to help me not want to help him more than I was obligated to.

Go ahead, tell me that I should have just done what he wanted and been done with it. Remind me the adage that the customer is always right (they really aren't. Customers are wrong about tons of shit on a constant basis, and not being aware of this is just a further detriment).

I maintain: you can't always get someone to smile at you. But if you are bad enough, you can always, always, always get them to flick you off, though.

And no, I can't tell you about the time I cleaned up shit. And NO, it was not my own. It wasn't Victor Green.

Bye now.