Jetsam!!!

We've done Flotsam. Here's Jetsam.

Customer Relations--A Study in Contrasts

The Good Example: Over the weekend while K. was gone, I was taking the near-occasion to walk the dog when we got into my car and discovered that it wouldn't start (I was driving). Well, I tried to compression-start it to no avail, so we (the dog and I) decided to walk down to the beach (he was driving). Anyway, no juice in the car. It could be one of a couple of things: dead battery (not uncommon when the weather turns chilly), or a bad something-or-other, either the ignition, or the distributor. In any case, I was not going to move forward with at least a jump. But I really didn't have anyplace to go, so I let it set. K. was coming home Monday morning. Not a big deal.

K. came back, we hooked up the jumper cables--and "Lookit, Igor!" it came alive, ALIVE!! But the next morning, not so much. So after another boost, I took it in to Les Schwab--known around these parts as the very model of a modern Better Business. I left the house at 10, and I was going to be doing chores in town all day, but let me just start by saying I was on the 11 am ferry. So I left my house at 10. It takes 20 minutes to get to Les Schwab. I was ON the 11 o'clock ferry.

What transpired? I went inside, explained the problem, they gave me dollar options and then went to work. They were done within a half-hour. As I was paying I mentioned to the mechanic, "Now I just hope it's not the generator or distributor acting up.." "Oh, we checked those," he said. "You're good to go."

He CHECKED all that. I was GOOD to GO.

And, indeed, I was. But, I had to tell him my admiration for the Schwab shops by telling him of this story, to which he laughed and just said, "It's what we do..."

And exceptionally well. Next stop:

The Bad Example: My first stop was to get the pads of my eyeglasses fixed. The one pressing against the right side of my nose had cracked and split off, causing my some irritation, so I thought that that was the day to get it fixed. I went to the Group Health "See Center" on the Eastside. They were up on the third floor of the building, so I went into the Office, and was promptly beckoned to a cashier. What was I there for? "I just need to replace the pads on my eye-glasses. You can do it here, or I'll just buy the pads and do it at home." Fine. My name? I told her. I have a common name, so I had to do the standard wait while they find which of the "me's" is actually "me." What's my address? Not there. What's my phone? Not there? Any previous address? Not there. How about my birth-day? Not there, either. This went on for 10 minutes. "Well, I can't find you in our data base, so we'll just have to start a new account. Name?" You've got my name. You've got my phone number, my birthdate, and my last two addresses. I could've applied for a job by now. Do we really have to start a new account? "Well, we need it for payment purposes." I'm going to be paying CASH. "It doesn't matter. We still need a record for..." No, you don't. I don't want to start a new account. I'll go someplace else. "Well, if that's what you want to do..." Thanks, I lied. And I left.

Bad Group Health. Very bad.
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I don't give two hoots about sports (though I did cast an eye towards the World Series results), especially College Football, but this caught my eye. Like I said, I don't like c-football, but I do like chaos, and I understand that when a play is made, it takes equal parts planning and luck, and something like a miracle for a complicated play to be completed.

But, this? This is insane. This is a play being made on the edge of a razor blade for a staggering minute and a half, when at ANY TIME, something could and probably SHOULD have gone wrong. But it's been that kind of crazy year for football.

Here's the last play--Trinity College and Milsap. :02 on the clock. Amazing. In fact, legendary.

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So, what's up with you, anyway?

Well, this year I decided that I wasn't going to buy Hallowe'en candy. We (I) always buy too much, and it just sits around the house calling our name, because for the past five years or so, we've always lived in "the spooky house." The house with very few lights. The house that's difficult to get to. Whatever the reason (Hmmm. Maybe it's the ferocious barking of a certain Hound from Hell*), we don't get a lot of kids for Hallowe'en. None, precisely. So no candy shopping this year.

K. went off to her "Smoking Cessation" class (She's doing EXCELLENT, by the way). Before she went, we discussed the Hallowe'en situation. "Do we have anything to give 'em?" No. I've got some Toll-House cookies baked, but parents will be concerned about razor blades and stuff like that. "Well, I don't know..." I could give 'em some of that nicotine gum you don't like.... I thought that was an inspired plan, but K. said you weren't supposed to give nicotine gum to kids, so that put the ki-bosh on that. I guess we would have to contend with T-P in our trees, if any pint-sized pirates and princesses showed up at our door.

But they didn't. Saved by the lack of a bell. K. came home, I put together dinner and sat down to watch our Hallowe'en movie, "The Innocents," starring the recently late Deborah Kerr. It's a great little hysterical romp of a movie with a sound-design track I've always liked, and some images that have always stuck in my head. But it was made even more spooky, when all of a sudden...the lights went out, and the DVD went dead, and the stereo quit.

Not so much scary as disappointing. The outlets on one wall of our house went dead for some reason. So, we plugged everything into a surge-protector and plugged it into a wall-socket in the bedroom. We resumed the movie, but we kept furtively glancing at the wall-sockets to see if their might be melting or erupting in flame. Anyway, it made for an interesting Hallowe'en!
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Tying it up in a Nice Thematic Bow

Remember the storm we had October 18th? 50+ MPH winds, and all? I was in Portland. But if you were taking a ferry from The Rock to The Mainland, it might have looked like this:











This is the ferry Cathlamet making its way to the Mainland. I've taken this ferry on rides similar to this, but I've never seen this happen:

Now, that is a big, hurkin' wave splashing up and over (and through) the car-deck, completely drenching, and no doubt re-arranging the cars positioned there. The usual procedure is to put motorcycles on the front lip of the car-deck, so that they can egress first--that is, egress once they've docked. I think this time egression was a bit premature.

Which brings us back to "Jetsam." According to dictionary.com, "Jetsam applies to cargo or equipment thrown overboard from a ship in distress."**

Though I doubt the Cathlamet (or is it the Klickitat--I'm not really sure) is not in REAL distress, it would sure seem like it to someone on board. I'm hoping nothing was thrown overboard, but that is one scary looking "hit." One more reason to someday get off "The Rock."


* Ya know what I'd like to see? A "dripping blood" font. That would be ever-so-handy for Hallowe'en, Horror movie invites, James Bond film festivals, Stigmata conventions....

** And "flotsam" is the floating debris from a wrecked ship. You can have jetsam without flotsam, but you can't have flotsam without jetsam.
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Bumper-sticker of the day: "Boys Lie"
Song in me head: "Yes It Is" by The Beatles
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Ev'!