The ghost of Sacramento

Fresh off yesterday’s rant, I stopped at the gas station on Alhambra & P and met a ghost.

Not a real ghost, of course, but one of those crazed homeless guys that we’re seeing more of these days. It was hard to tell his age, but he didn’t look all that old. I guessed late 20s, early 30s, but some rough ones. Reddish hair, blue eyes, and skinny. He had an old blanket wrapped around him and that look that tells you something’s just not wired right. He was aggressively panhandling every driver at the station.

He headed toward me. Usually, I don’t give handouts on the street, but I sometimes waver. It’s not a hard and fast rule. If they get in my space, it pisses me off and I’ll usually tell them no. Other times, I give because I just want them to go away and stop bothering me. Sometimes, I’m just in a mood and I give because it just feels so shitty to be standing there in clean clothes with a shiny car and a cozy home. You know?

I pulled a dollar out of my wallet, and then stashed my purse out of sight under my car seat. I got out of the car to start pumping gas, the driver’s side door between me and him. He rapped on the window, holding out his other hand to show me a quarter. And then he just whimpered. I think he may have been trying to speak, but it just came out as wordless whimpering. It killed me. Just killed me.

Someone so lost that they can’t even make words any more?

I handed him a buck, which he took with filthy hands, and I noticed his very long, black-with-filth fingernails. He reeked. He immediately set off for the next car. I pumped gas and watched him do the rounds. Some people gave him change. One woman shouted, quite firmly, ”No. Now go away!”  He was a little threatening, invasive. Feral.

 What can you do for someone like that? It was hard to tell if it was mental illness, a serious drug problem, maybe even just an act. I don’t know. I grabbed a $10 bill out of my wallet. I’m not sure why. A song came out a few years ago, with a guy telling a story about meeting a beggar and not wanting to give him money because he’d just blow it on booze and smokes; then the singer says he realized he’d just blow it on booze and smokes himself, so he gave the guy the money after all. It was kind of like that.

He disappeared before I could give it to him. I circled the block, looking for the guy but didn’t find him. Honestly, I don’t think I’d have had the courage to step out of the car to hand it to him anyway.

What can you do for people like this? Are they beyond all hope? I have no idea. Sometimes I think so, but I don’t like that answer.

Why can’t we have a Stupidity Recession?

**Pottymouth Warning** Read at your own risk.

Seriously. There’s really quite an abundance of stupidity around, in good economic times and bad. So why is it that stupidity never seems to flag, lag, cease, or at least ease off a bit?

I received a “forwarded email” (read: chainletter spam freakout) from a “friend” (read: paranoid person). This chain email was filled with alarming and badly misused language about how “women in Sacramento” are being targeted for robberies by, get this, two “black women.” The perps are apparently packing knives and causing their own little crime wave throughout the city. The letter exclaims that it’s “TRUE!!!” and even KCRA reported it!!!

I hate shit like this. I really do. It seems like I get a forwarded email like this from a well-intentioned friend every six months or so. These emails are all the same: The message is that women need to be fearful. We need to fear going out in broad daylight as much as at night. We need to fear strangers. We need to fear other races. We need to fear each other.

These “claims” of truth are backed up by a link to a single robbery at the Downtown Plaza. None of the other claims in the letter are backed up by any news source. Not one.

Whoever wrote this letter had way too much zoloft that day and is in dire need of remedial English lessons. I’m also pissed at the people who keep circulating this crapola.

If I learned anything in Women’s Studies 101, it’s that we need to reject these faux warnings about what “women should fear” because they’re ultimately intended to “put us in our places”–which apparently for some is still hovering about in the kitchen, safely cooking up brisket for hubby.

I call bullshit.

Some fine examples:

If you don’t have money in your wallet, they still can disrupt your life by stealing your drivers licenses, social security cards, credit cards, and other important info that most women carry in there purses. And your Gucci or coach, or fendi, or other expensive purses that most women have.

Really? Gucci, Coach, Fendi? MOST women have these? Good lord, please don’t take my FENDI! Here, you can take my firstborn, but leave the designer handbag…

Here’s another screamer:

These women have been spotted at Target on Power Inn Road, Wal Mart on Florin, Elk Grove and Natomas, Dee Dee’s on Mack Road and the one on Stockton Blvd. Various food chains and grocery stores. Places that all women like to shop at.

Places that “all women” like to “shop at”? Yes, I consider shopping at Wal Mart a real treat. I usually take my Fendi handbag, stuffed full of my credit cards and spare cash. It’s hard to balance all that weight on my little bound feet, but somehow I manage.

And a personal favorite:

We are living in desperate times, and all kinds of desperate crimes are happening right under our noises.

Well, at least we’re not being quiet about it, apparently.

In the words of Jon Stewart, f**k you, whoever wrote this crap. The biggest crime here  is your felony abuse of spelling, grammar, and common sense.

Who are you and why are you friending me?

I recently joined FaceBook, after being urged by some professional associates and being told that I *must* do it. Fine, whatever, sign me up. I’m still learning my way around, but quickly realized there is nothing in my personal profile that I want my professional aquaintances to see.

What I’d been warned about, and hadn’t really taken seriously, was the danger of becoming visible to former high school classmates. Or, possibly, sinister and/or lonely people posing as my former high school classmates.

At least FaceBook has confirmed my decision to never attend a high school reunion. I was overwhelmed by the twit-speak (”Widdle Johnny just frew up!!!”) until I discovered the blessed “Less from this person” feature. Now that’s technology I can use.

But this week has brought my oddest FB experience yet…and I have an inkling I am not the first person to encounter this phenomenon.

I received a friend request from someone named Sally Jo Beyerdecker (not really her name, but it’s a good former classmate name, yes?)…I don’t recall ever meeting anyone by that name. Ever. I looked at her profile, and it turns out we went to high school together (or so she claims). Still no recall.

Thinking “What the heck, let’s see what this is all about…”, I confirmed. And then she wrote a long message on my wall that was all like “Haven’t seen you forever…you still look the same! Let’s get together and catch up!”

Well, okay, first off, I don’t recall ever having seen her, so I suppose the “forever” claim is accurate. She lives a 3-hour drive away and wants to get together to catch up on…what exactly? Like, say, oh…How we’ve never met? I baffled at this all evening, briefly wondering if perhaps we had met at some point in the hazy past and that now that I am getting old and alzheimery, I simply am forgetting these small, yet important, details of my past. I panic a little at that one.

The other thing is, I am fairly certain that even as an insecure and slightly dorky high school student, I would never have been pals with this particular Sally Jo Beyerdecker. She has the relentless, somewhat alarming, smile of the social-climbing high school cheerleader. Her FB profile pic? This is a woman who decided her wedding picture was the one to use. Her profile includes the info that she never left “our” hometown, is an unabashed Republican, holds an AA from the local community college, and has numerous children who she takes to church every week.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure we weren’t exactly pals.

And, what do I say back to her? “Oh, hi! Gosh, what great times we had, Sally Jo. I must’ve been really stoned all through high school, because I haven’t got a frigging clue who you are? Were you the one who gave me those mushrooms that made me see Sasquatch?”

It took some thought, but I finally came up with the answer to her post: “Hey, you look great, too. Haven’t changed a bit!”

Then, I selected “less from this person.” See ya, Sally Jo.

That’s as diplomatic as I get these days. I think it was a good effort.

Just basking in the zeitgeist…

So, I’m breaking New Year’s Resolution #52, which was “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t blog about anything at all.” It was a stupid resolution, anyway, and one that resulted in nothing short of a total injunction for someone like me.

I spent much of January in that weird state of liberal angst that involved holding my breath, waiting for January 20, because I just couldn’t believe it would actually occur: That we would be rid of Bush and his cronies and a new day would be upon us. Or that the new day would come, but that Obama would muck it up royally somehow, a la Bill Clinton, or that…well, anyway. There was about a week or so there, post January 20, where every morning was like a little Christmas. Each morning’s paper held some new policy change that repudiated some of the topsy-turvyness (and that’s putting it nicely) of the last decade. Hey, let’s allow funding of birth control in impoverished, overpopulated countries. Hey, let’s take another look at the shreds of the Endangered Species Act. Hey, let’s talk to other countries, rather than using large-scale bombing as an opening gesture. Not too shabby.

The depths of my disillusionment with people were revealed on the day the US Airways flight crashed into the Hudson. While Sullenberger was being hailed as a hero on the news, I was suspicious. I had this awful feeling that–as with many other “heartening” news stories, this one would turn out to be some sort of fakery, a scam. I thought “He did it on purpose. They’re probably going to find out there weren’t any birds.” When it turned out he is part of an airline safety consulting firm, I smelled a rat. Did you? Didn’t you get that tiny little qualm in your stomach that said, no way, too good to be true? (And, yes, I am quite pleased that I was completely wrong.)

But, there are so many opportunities for cynicism and so many good stories that turn out to be big fakes, it’s easy to preemptively brace yourself for disappointment these days. I mean, we’ve got Wall Street banksters whining about “excessive” restrictions on how much bailout money they can transfer to their offshore bank accounts, corporate exec dudes whose profit-blindness allows them to guiltlessly send out contaminated peanuts to make children’s food. We’ve got women of questionable mental stability foisting 14 children on the state of California’s taxpayers, not to mention a doctor who thinks creating eight little fetuses all at once is a good career move. Some of these things almost make me wish I were a Catholic, so that I could at least rest easy in the knowledge that there’s some awful place where these people will end up. Or, better yet, a Hindu: Then I could imagine their karmic reward of returning as something like a disabled cockroach.

All this, and I haven’t even mentioned the “stimulus” package. I read a quote from Lenin the other day, which said “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” I thought I smelled something funny.

Would you like some cognitive dissonance with that?

It’s a strange holiday season. Wouldn’t you agree?

Everywhere I go, I seem to see two worldviews (for lack of a better word) in competition. There’s the old “consume, consume, consume” mentality that is unsustainable and–apparently–on the way out. Not that you’d know it to walk into most stores. And then there’s this widespread, sort of gnawing neediness and thriftiness surging all around.

Today, I had a couple extra hours and wanted to finish up a few bits of Christmas shopping. I thought I’d hit midtown, with a quick trip to the Macy’s at Downtown Plaza to check out a new coffeemaker for Tater. Trying to earn my “shop local” street cred, I popped in at a few local merchants. I bought nothing. I simply couldn’t find anything I wanted to get for the people on my (very short) list. Thinking I’d take the easy way out, I headed to the mall.

Nothing like a mall to make you regret your entire existence.

After wandering around like an insane and rather lost person, I left emptyhanded and equally empty hearted. I just *couldn’t* buy anything. My thought process went something like this: Oh, Uncle Roscoe would love this. But it’s expensive. And I don’t know if Uncle Roscoe would ever use it. What if it just sat there in a closet, never used, a complete waste of money? Instead of wasting that money, maybe I should just send a check to Heifer International and tell Uncle Roscoe I bought him part of a water buffalo?

See what I mean?

On the flip side of all this dithering, I’ve been feeling as though I am among the fortunate this year. As I’ve watched the financial meltdown, seen colleagues and acquaintances lose their jobs, I keep remonstrating with myself: I should save more. I should spend less. I should definitely spend less on myself. I should give more. I should shut up and be thankful.

I stopped at Safeway on the way home and bought gift cards for several people who I figured would hate anything I picked out for them and would appreciate a little spending money. I also bought a box of chocolates for an awesome co-worker whose presence in our office is the only thing that maintains my questionable sanity on some days. What the hell.

To snap myself out of it, I’m watching Flight of the Conchords–specifically, the She’s so hot – Boom, Boom song episode.

My Inner Diva Will Not Be Attending Your Soiree

Do you ever just look at yourself in the mirror and wonder how you turned out to be such a misanthrope? I do.

I love the holidays as much as the next person. I’m even enjoying the crisp fall weather, instead of whimpering about it like I usually do every year. But this year, something else is different. As the party invitations start coming in, I find myself screaming “Bah-freaking-humbug” at nearly every one.

In particular, I have been having a violent reaction to any invitation that involves the word “diva.” You know the ones, the invites that offer a women-only party with shopping (!!!), spa treatments (!!!), and other girly crap (!!!).

Blech.

Who are these people? What is this blind devotion to consumerism and faux “pampering”? Is this a version of grown-up dress-up? I don’t want to rush out and buy something couture-y right now (if ever) and go prance around with a bunch of other chicks, trying to keep my tiara in place.

Not only do these events hold no attraction for me (obviously), they also gross me out from a simply practical standpoint. The product pushing. I mean, I realize everyone’s sales are down right now, but is “diva marketing” the way to go? Maybe it works. I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t attended a single one of these wanna-be-elitist-but-I’m-really-just-a-boring-suburban-middleclass-idiot-with-no-life-who-can’t-afford-this-crap-anyway events. (Need I specify they are being held in the ‘burbs? Probably not.)

Can someone call a moratorium on the overuse of the word “diva”? Because I’ve realized that my inner diva is a total bitch who doesn’t want to play with the other girls’ mommies’ dresses. Ya know?

The upside of being down with a cold…

This week I was ambushed by a very speedy, evil virus of some sort. For the last few days, I have only ventured out of the house for Nyquil and the gay rights rally (one must have one’s priorities straight* you know).

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, being sick doesn’t mean I haven’t been able to work, which is nice, or will be nice when the mortgage is due next month. But it has had some side benefits that I have been able to appreciate. So, I give you 6 Degrees’ top 10 list of the advantages of being sick…

1. Food Network/Iron Chef marathon: No guilt.

2. Bacon for breakfast every day.

3. Nyquil buzz. Woo hoo!

4. Unlimited nap time.

5. Excuse to take multiple bubble baths (you know, for the decongestant effects).

6. Much laying on the couch and reading crappy novels (oh, and by the way, I read “Twilight”–and all I can say is Jeeeezzzzussss, they made a movie out of that piece of crap?)

7. Caught up on my 30 Rock DVDs and started in on the Flight of the Conchords.

8. Yay, Tater left his puppy here to snuggle with me. Extra super benefit.

9. Scratchy voice = easy excuse for getting off the phone quickly (or not answering at all).

10. Uncontrollable coughing at door scares away the Jehovah’s Witnesses (bonus!).

* yes, pun intended

Snapshots from today’s rally

(Update: The official CHP count of event attendance is 5,000.)

I don’t know how many people showed up for the rally today, but it looked like about 3,000 to me. I hope it was more, actually. The tone of the event was very positive, peaceful, and upbeat. Here are a few shots to show the extent of the crowd and some of the humorous signs.

(Note: Joe Sac has a bunch of photos over at http://www.joesacramento.com/)

That was all I got before my battery died. I stayed for the speechifyin’ (Gloria Allred, Darrell Steinberg, Margaret Cho, and several clergy members whose names I did not catch), and then ducked out when the march started. Steinberg delivered the best speech of the day–very impassioned and sincere. Margaret Cho’s very naughty and funny (if you’re not Mormon) song is worth a listen–I’m going to assume that someone out there captured the moment and is uploading it to YouTube right now.

My only complaint? Every stinkin’ rally, march, protest, demonstration, whatever that I’ve ever been to has people shouting the same damn chants. (”What do we want?!?!?!” Fill in cause here. “When do we want it?!?!!! Now!!! ) People. C’mon. You’re killing me here.

Gay rights rally: This weekend…

More details over at the inimitable Hahn at Home: http://hahnathome.com/?p=1454

Thoughts on Customer Service in a Slow Economy

I have been a small business owner and a public servant at different times in my career. I have always taken pride in at least trying to provide excellent quality service in whatever I happened to be doing. In fact, right now, all of my business comes from word of mouth. I don’t have to advertise (yet, at least) because my clients recommend me. I realized early on that it’s the cheapest, most effective way of getting new business. And there’s also that little side benefit of having clients actually come back and give you more business ’cause they got their money’s worth the first time around.

What just baffles me, especially right now, is when I do business with someone and get utter crapola in terms of customer service. Are these people nuts? Or just plain stupid?

Two friends and I recently went to a local brewpub that shall remain nameless (although I’m tempted to say which one it was). At the door, the snippy hostess told us she’d “try to find us a table” (we could see several empty ones from the doorway) but that it would be 30 minutes or so. We asked if we could order food at the bar, and she looked off into the distance and huffed “If you want to…” Finally, not wanting to cause her to exert herself in any way, we opted to sit at the bar. Our little hostess friend couldn’t be bothered to bring us menus–perhaps she was busy texting or something. So, I walked up to the front and got them from her. An eon later, our server showed up. Although she was friendly and well intentioned, she also was disorganized and inattentive. All three of our meals came out with something missing or something wrong (remember, pub food…not complicated). Wrong side dish for one of us, wrong toppings on a burger, another burger ordered rare that showed up cooked to oblivion. Then the bill came, complete with overcharges. Seriously, other than perhaps throwing us out, this place could not have done more to convince us that they didn’t want us to come back.

Next, I called a plumber for a bid on a few-thousand dollar project. Small, but nothing to sneeze at as the building industry slows down and winter approaches. I waited a couple of weeks for the bid, but didn’t hear anything. Then I called the office and the receptionist, rather than be bothered to take a message, asked me to call back later because she was busy with another customer. Um, thanks but no.

And I could go on. It seems particularly bad in retail and restaurants. I dunno, but if I were running one of these businesses right now, I would make darned sure to train my employees so that they’re bringing customers back–not driving them away.

However, I’ve also seen the flip side: I was recently in the co-op making a complicated purchase, and the checker figured out a fabulous way to solve the issue, using better deductive reasoning than I’ve seen *anywhere* lately. I was so impressed, I ran home to tell Tater about it. And then I told anyone who’d listen. And everyone agreed that (1) that checker is probably going to have a great career in something not a grocery store, and (2) wouldn’t it be freakin’ nice if everyone would pay that much attention when someone’s trying to give you money?

The other cool thing was when I needed to arrange a casual dinner party for a group and ended up going to a cafe that normally doesn’t take reservations. I spoke with the manager and told her what I needed. She was quick to realize, again, that I was trying really hard to bring her a big group of customers, but we needed to be assured of having a big enough space when we showed up. She agreed to hold a large table for my group…a simple thing, really, but if you consider that many other cafes have said no to this type of request, it’s pretty outstanding. And that is how you get business coming through your door instead of your competition’s.