You're Doing It Wrong

Today’s Dining In section features an article about Kool-Aid Pickles. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I didn’t even know they still made Kool-Aid. I’m sure my 9 year old self would love them but my old lady self is not so enthusiastic.

So, customer satisfaction surveys.

Really corporate world, you can extract valuable information from a series of questions with responses something like:

Totally Satisfied, Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied, Unsatisfied, No Answer

(When they’re doing it over the phone it’s always fun to ask, what were the choices again?)

Toyota has a paper survey that’s 4 pages of those questions. I started to fill it out once and after 10 questions wrote in, “How valuable is my time and energy?”

And they never ask you anything useful or anything where you could explain an actual problem.

>Were you satisfied with the way you were greeted?

Unless they throw rocks at me, why wouldn’t I be satisfied? If they’re super busy and I have to wait, maybe I’m annoyed but what are they supposed to do? Be less busy?

For my stupid body work on my car I received *two* form thank you notes from Kadels (body work shop) and two customer service surveys, one from Kadels and one from Farmers (insurance). Are you kidding me?

How about instead of wasting all these resources on follow up, make my repair cost less? The only thing I was unsatisfied with was the cost. I had three separate incidents that needed repair, two were covered by insurance, one not. Miraculously, the one I paid out of pocket they decided after a review I needed to pay an extra $40. Really, it was worth everyone’s time and energy to squeeze another $40 out of me? That’s what I get for not taking their stupid rental car. And for being honest. Next time all the scrapes on the car can be from a hit and run.

I’ve noticed that when I get a car work done at the dealership, if there is the slightest blip in the transaction, maybe I have to wait too long, or there’s some disagreement about the repair, there’s never a customer service follow up. But when all goes well, they’re dying to know what I think.

About a month ago I fired up the Ann Taylor website on my lunch hour to look at some pants and it wouldn’t let me look unless I upgraded some plugin. I think if you’re going to use the Internet as a tool to sell your wares, you should cater to a wide range of technological capabilities. If I can’t look at pants on your website because I need a plugin, I’m not going to download the plugin, I’m going to go look at pants somewhere else.

I sent their customer service a quick note with my error message and browser info and that basic sentiment and I got this moronic response that basically indicated I was too stupid to use my browser and suggested I get help from my Internet Service Provider or my Systems Administrator.

I decided it wasn’t my job to teach Ms. Taylor about usability and that was that. The next day I find a customer service satisfaction follow up in my inbox. I ignored it. That afternoon, I received a follow up to my customer service follow up reminding me I could participate in their lame-brained survey. I think Ann needs a new consultant on her Internet strategy.

1. Locally grown, sustainable and organic.
I appreciate the principle, I totally support our local farmer’s market but we’re at a point where I’ve heard enough about the plucky couple who decided to spend year only eating what they could gather from within 5 miles of their home, Safeway excluded, and are now telling their story of courage and sacrifice but how great it was to save the world even though they were miserable and sucking on sticks for most of February.

2. Artisanal Anything. (Microsoft Turd doesn’t recognize artisanal. Hm.)
See above. I love the idea that people are taking the time to carefully make yummy foods from choice ingredients but every week the paper has an article about some plucky couple who gave up their 10 trillion dollar a year income to simplify their lives and now live in a rural area and work 12 gloriously gratifying hours a day on their honeybee farm carefully crafting heirloom Valencia-strawberry honey infused with Avignon amber thyme and Malasian treefrog peppercorns. Snore.

3. Recipes with Crostini
What’s crostini? A giant crouton? A piece of toast? It’s like something you put in the recipe to make it sound fancy, like chutney or chipotle before it was a flavor they even have at McDonalds. Likewise serving suggestions that include “crusty bread.” Let people decide for themselves what kind of bread (or as Steve would say, filler) to serve. Maybe they want uncrusty Wonderbread.

4. Shuttered
Saying that a closed business has been shuttered. Why not just say closed? It’s right up there with coffer for writing cliches that sound like fancier writing but are really still cliches.

I have been meaning to get over to Holiday’s for a Sunday yoga workshop for sometime now. I’ve only been there once in the past year.

I’m meeting a yoga buddy over there today. The workshop is from 12-3 which kind of dictates the entire day.

I did 45 minute gardner this morning and got the pumpkins in and while I was out there found a million other things to do but didn’t get far.

By the time I get home this afternoon it will be time to think about dinner. Jeez, the weekend always zips by so fast.

I was hoping I’d get to this before the race.

For reasons that I couldn’t begin to explain, I’ve suddenly become interested in horse racing.

Since today was Kentucky Derby 133 I had to bet on my first Derby.

I picked my horses last week and the person whose office is a mountain of paper offered to show me how to place the bet (which I kept referring to as voting) and we went to an off track betting place downtown.

This was among the most depressing places I’ve ever set foot in. The room was like the rec-room in a halfway house (I suppose you could argue that’s what it is) and a dozen or so, lived-hard type guys sat slack faced in front of a wall of TVs with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One of the guys was on oxygen.

They just remodeled this place. Apparently it was more depressing before.

There’s a bar adjacent that I did not see so maybe it’s fun in there. We found out you couldn’t place bets until Friday and I wasn’t going to be downtown on Friday so I would have to place the bet on my own. There’s a racetrack not far from our house.

This morning I almost talked myself out of going over there because I’m not the kind of person who gets in the car on a Saturday morning to go and place a bet. But I did anyway because I picked my horses and what if they won and I didn’t bet? And while I was over there, I could stop at Lowe’s and buy dirt and manure and mulch for the pumpkins.

I’ve only been to Portland Meadows one other time. It was May 1995 and my future husband took me to see the Grateful Dead. I think Chuck Berry also played. I remember weird people and being unbelievably hot. I’m sure my husband will come running upstairs with a disk after reading this post so we can re-live every moment.

This morning the scene at Portland Meadows wasn’t a whole lot different from the downtown betting place but for some reason it wasn’t depressing. I made my bet and then wandered around and checked everything out. Then I waited and watched another race on the wall of TVs. The average patron, at that point, was a man of advanced age wearing a sweatshirt and a trucker cap. The ratio of men to women was about 20 to 1. I don’t know what it was like this afternoon when they started running live races. But I want to find out.

I didn’t win any money but I had a great time watching. I’ll be back.

I got home from pie making class at 10:30pm. Way past my bedtime. It wasn’t really a pie making class it was a pie pasty class. We actually used tart pans for everything we made. (3 desserts, 3 quiches).

(Geez, how hard can it be to find a photo of a tart pan online? It took me three tries. Kitchen Kaboodle is the lamest kitchen store ever. No time to elaborate at the moment. Also when I put “tart” into the Target search engine it came up with a paperback called “Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect.” I had no idea that the world needed such a book or that it would be sold at Target. One of the authors’ last name is Tart.)

The secret to pastry is obscene amounts of butter. I’m not sure I’m going to embrace this method. I don’t love butter soaked crust. I’m going to experiment with the butter, shortening combo and also I found a recipe where the author swore by lard. I’m going to try it once.

In class he showed us this one thing and it has a name and I didn’t write it down and don’t want to turn this into a half hour research project when I try to track it down online so I’m just going to explain it. Once you’ve got your gobs of butter cut in to the flour mix (we worked it in with our hands)(you don’t want it too fine) you turn it out on your work surface and do this sort of smearing thing with the heel of your hand. You’re flattening out the butter. You just do it a bit, you don’t want to work it too much, and then scrape it up and put it back in the bowl and add your few tablespoons of ice water and form your beautiful ball of pastry.

We all baked a tart and mine is at home now waiting to be filled. Photos to follow.

My colleague is going on vacation and I finally shamed him into cleaning off his desk (I have photos of this, too. Coming Soon.) It never fails that he’s out of the office for a week and some emergency comes up and I have to “find something” in the mountain of paper on his desk and it makes me cranky and curse his name and wastes half my day so I’m hoping to avoid this scenario. The downside is that in the course of cleaning off his desk he discovered mountains of work for me to do. The point being that I’d really love to write more about tart class and the fabulous thunder shower we had yesterday and then start my public fretting about all the things I have to do this weekend and how will I get them done, but I don’t have time.

About four hours after I washed my car it started raining. I should figure out how to market this power.

Tonight is my pie making class. It’s the same teacher who taught me sourdough back in February. I hope he doesn’t ask how my loaves have been turning out. And I hope I learn pie pastry better than I did sourdough. He makes it look so easy.

My scroll ball on my mouse is broken and I never realized how much I loved that thing until the past three days. I don’t think I even knew how it worked until a few months ago. How quickly technology sucks us in.

I left work a half-hour early today because the May Day march, protest, whatever it’s called, was scheduled to go right by our building and would block the garage exit. I’m sure I’m insensitive and offending some group (I’m so insensitive I don’t know who they are or what they are doing but I think it has to do with labor, immigration, or both) but you know it’s a long day and my protests don’t inconvenience them.

Since I was home early, I decided to wash the car which I almost never do. Sometimes my dear husband will wash it or drive it to the car wash for me. I have a high tolerance for dirty outside car. I like the inside of my car, including the trunk, to be clean and I’ve been teased about this more than once. But I spend a lot of time sitting in there I don’t want it to be like a garbage can.

The outside was filthy from the trip. The Mill Casino gets an A+ for hospitality. Not only was everyone insanely friendly and nice, they seemed to mean it. They are currently in the middle of a huge construction project so all cars disappeared with the valet. If I had one complaint it was that it appeared they drove my car though a fine mist and then parked it next to a dirt farm. It was filthy when it was returned to me and between that and all the road bugs, I couldn’t stand it and gave it a good scrub.

I read today that left-handed women may have a shorter life-span. I’m more lefty than not. I chose to celebrate the news with a reduction in my 401(k) contribution. Might as well have fun with that money now. (Just kidding, Dad!)

This morning Billy came in my office and started cracking his knuckles. Like each individual one.

Me: Knock it off. That’s sexual harassment.

Him: No it’s not. It’s OCD.

Me: Oh. I always get those two confused.

—

I know, it’s not that funny but for some reason we thought it was hilarious. I guess at 7:30am caffeine deprived people will go to any length for a laugh.

More Photos here.

Boy, my notes on the event are crapola. There is extensive coverage on my thoughts about driving and then a jumble of notes on what we did interspersed with any random idea or observation that might have floated through my mind while I was sitting in a folding chair during the programs.

This is the organization’s 18th gathering and I should volunteer to put together a website for them because I can’t find doodly to link to. The organization was created to encourage women into leadership in Indian Country and they meet all over the country. There were tons of Oklahoma folks there.

I heard about it in January and at first I wanted to go but then I waffled. Sometimes inertia gets the best of me. My dear husband gave me a nudge and so last week I left the office early Wednesday to drive out to the coast to The Mill Casino which is owned and operated by the Coquille Tribe.

The weather was drop dead spectacular the entire time. When we’re driving south it’s usually dead of winter (holiday visit) or the dead of summer (August visit). I can’t remember ever seeing so much green driving through the Willamette Valley. The sun blazed out at the coast, too.

The main program was all day Thursday and there were tons of speakers who spoke about the organization, networking, local traditions and tribal issues. Wilma Mankiller was the keynote speaker and she was awesome. The real value of the gathering was meeting so many people and normally I’m not very good at that kind of thing but I did my best to throw myself out there and I ended up meeting tons of interesting women including 4 Karuk ladies who live in the Coos Bay area.

Friday was an all day bus tour and I wasn’t up for that so I got my gear together and headed out to the beach to visit with the Pacific and then headed home with a quick stop to view elk.

Man, this is a boring post and I don’t have time to pep it up right now (or any idea how to do that) but I will leave you with this story.

At dinner on Thursday night we had fry bread and at the end of the table was a giant bowl of pink fluffy stuff that I couldn’t identify. A woman in front of me said it was mousse so I enthusiastically spooned a big plop onto my plate. Later, at my place, I stuffed a big forkful into my mouth. Turns out it was cranberry butter. The Coquille are big into the cranberries. It was delicious scraped onto my fry bread. Startling by the huge forkful.