Cranking up the Rant Machine

It's been a bit, but because of the amount of crap in this world lately that makes me want to just smack the shit out of someone, it's become Rant Time.

 

In the category of "bubble wrapping and foam padding our children to death" comes the newest scare tactic being thrown at unsuspecting parents by the makers of Flu Shots and Purell: siblings shouldn't share things......Yep...the latest radio commercial I heard was a Mother talking to her son telling him he couldn't share things with his brother....Ummmmm aren't we supposed to teach kids to NOT BE SELFISH????????  When the kid asks if he can share a video game (in otherwords play a game with his brother) the Mother says, yes but don't share controllers.......... WTF!!!!!!  What is wrong with this world when these Pharmaceutical companies can get away with this kind of Orwellian advertising??????  OH NOES........your kid will get germs and die!!!!!  Teach your kid to wash his freaking hands and wipe his mouth and you won't have issues.  Not only have we gotten lazy in so many things (hey I'm guilty of some of those things) now we want our immune systems to get as lazy as our fat asses.  Let's force feed our immune system a certain variety of Flu virus so it gets used to that one....What's the long term effect of this folks???  Remember Penicillin???  In some third world countries they used Penicillin for every little thing...so much so that the viruses it used to kill started becoming immune to it.  Viruses are smart, adaptive things.  The more we make it easy on our immune systems, the less strength they have in fighting off the crap that makes us sick.  I personally don't believe in Flu Shots.  I believe in an active immune system.  It has fought all my colds and flu in the past, why shouldn't I rely on it now?  First sign of a cold, I take remedies that are designed to bolster your immune system; to make it fight harder, but not to tell it what to do.  Vitamin C, ZiCam(shit works great), Echinacea, Golden Seal.....these things are designed to make your immune system fight harder.  Kind of like a never ending supply line of ammo and food for your battle weary Immune system Soldiers.  I feel sorry for these poor parents.  Parenting is hard enough without these Pharmaceutical firms trying to scare them into making their children "germophobes"....Jesus what do we want to do to our Children, turn them into TV's Monk?????  My Step-Daughter Liv heard one of these commercials on TV and said "Sounds like a bunch of clean freaks to me..."

 

By now we know my feelings about the show "The View".  I used to have lots of respect for Barbara Walters but now I have zero.  First she let's Rosie "Big Mouth" O'Donnell use the show to further her personal battle with The Donald....don't get me wrong, he's as big an Ass as Rosie.....now she is encouraging the other hosts to badmouth Heather "I'm a Loon" Mills because the woman Sir Paul is currently dating is a friend of Baba WaWa....... Who greenlights this crap anyway? 

 

As you know from previous posts and probably from your own personal experiences, there is no such thing as Customer Service anymore.  You used to be able to blame Teenage workers who haven't been trained properly, but now it's everyone at any age.  When you come across some that does their job exceptionally well it is more of a pleasant surprise, when it used to be a given.  I don't understand when this happened, but it has been going on for some time now.  Cat and I used to like to go to a chain out here called "O'Charley's".  We refuse to go to the one in Lebanon anymore after the most heinous service meltdown I ever experienced.  We stopped in on a Tuesday for lunch and we both ordered Salads.  Our waitress took forever to come to our table, and it wasn't that busy.  When she came to the table, she took our drink order and because it had been so long we also had made our food choices and ordered at the same time.  We never saw her one time after that when she brought our drinks to the table where we then informed her there was no silverware.  She vanished.  This restaurant is known for their rolls which they bring endlessly to your table, and the other diners behind us were not given butter with theirs.  Their waiter was no where to be seen like ours.  You know your service is bad when other diners are passing each other butter.  Finally our meals came and of course I had nothing to eat it with.  I told the person bringing our food.....remember not our waitress....that not only did I not have anything to eat it with, but it being a salad it should have some dressing on it!!!  Silverware and dressing were brought as well as some lukewarm rolls (of course without any butter for them) and we ate our meal.  Didn't enjoy it as we were pissed at the lack of service.  We finished and waited.....and waited....then my more patient than I Wife got up and said "If they aren't going to bring us the damn check then I guess it's free!" and proceeded to walk over to the Manager and complain.....Loudly!!!!  The manager was appalled and said our meal was free.  Cathy said "Damn straight it's free because I'm not waiting any more for your useless help to bring us the check."  We made the mistake of going to the O'Charley's by our house.  We figured it's a new one and it shouldn't be bad.  We've gone a few times and it was okay.  This last time took the cake though.  We both ordered a 7 oz sirloin.  Now it's a small cut of steak understandably, but usually a good sized portion of meat that it satisfies your hunger.  What was brought out to us couldn't legally be called steak.  It was the size of small lumps of charcoal and tough as Hell.  We have written off O'Charley's.  I've told you about the horrible service at New York Pizza Deli, apparently we aren't the only one who has experienced it. Liv's friend Tara's folks have mentioned to us how bad it sucks and where every restaurant in that mall is packed, they are still not.  Not a good sign.  Chilis has become a no go for us as well, which is a shame as I love their Fajitas.   Every single time we've gone to the one in Cookeville, it's been the slowest experience in our lives.  We went to the one out in Lebanon near Home Depot.....slow as sin too.  While shopping in Hermitage a few months ago at Lowe's we walked next door to Chilis to see if that one was better.  It sucked.  There was a baseball team in there with their parents.....let me pause for a second here.  Who takes their little league team to freaking CHILI's after a ball game???????  What happened to Pizza?????? Or Chuck E Cheese?????........and these kids were all over the place!!!!  Standing in the aisles, blocking access to the bathrooms (one can only say EXCUSE ME so loud and still get ignored without getting pissed) which I proceeded to shoulder out of my way because I had to use said facilities.  When I got back, Cat is sitting in the booth looking pissed.  Here's some stupid kid blocking my way into my booth.  I proceeded to tell him to sit his ass down that aisles were for walking not standing.  The parents were just as bad.  I equally shouldered parents as well as kids out of the way to the bathroom.  It was loud (more so than usual) and folks were standing in the aisles shooting the shit with each other with no mind to the fact that there are other diners IN THE FREAKING RESTAURANT and you are ruining their dining experience.  I looked at Cathy and said "Let's go to Applebee's" as loud as I could.  She beat me out the door.  Our waitress looked at us saying "anything the matter?"  I said "control your diners" which she then proceeded to defend with the statement "oh their not that bad and they are leaving soon..."  I looked at her and said "since your restaurant chain has the slowest service in the world no matter where I go and since you'd rather defend rude, obnoxious diners and condone their behavior my Wife and I will no longer frequent your restaurants."   At the Applebee's (the other side of the parking lot) we have gotten nothing but excellent service.  It's the diners that have been annoying, but not bad you can't ignore them.   Here's my take on a Restaurant.  I go in with the tip set at 15%.  I understand that it is essentially a sucky job and they can get away with paying you slave wages because you get "tips".  I personally think this is crap.  A waiter should be paid around 7 to 8 dollars an hour plus the tips.  Out here that would be good money.  My Sister works at Nordies in SF and makes 14 an hour plus a 4% commission.  She sells Bobbi Brown Cosmetics (I guess he needed to invent a line of cosmetics so Whitney can cover up the bruises........I know that was bad).  Not bad money really.  Most restaurants have free drink refills now.  So, this is what I expect out of a waiter.  Give us a minute or so to get settled at the table/booth then come over and take drink/appetizer orders.  Don't be pushy.  Ask if we need some more time to look at the menu or do we know what we want.  If we are ready, take our food order Ladies first (hey we still live in a somewhat polite society).  If they don't start with Ladies First I will usually say "Honey go ahead" or "Take the ladies orders first then get me".  Said waiter still is at 15% tip at this point since not everyone has a chivalrous streak and the ladies first thing is my personal feeling.  If you notice my drink is empty....get me another....I drink alot when I'm at a restaurant....love my never ending Diet Coke.  If I have to remind you to do so, you border on a few percentage points dropping off the tip.  If you never do or forget to do so, you are down to 10%.  Hey we pay almost 3 bucks for drinks at most restaurants, I want my refills and they better keep coming because I'm drinking 3 bucks worth of soda fountain syrup soda.  At Logan's once we had this guy waiter who was on the ball.  I would literally drink my last strawful of soda when he'd come by and snatch the glass off the table and return with a full one.  Dude got 20% tip that day.  If you bring rolls, etc with the meal, ask if we'd like more.  If you don't bring out our food (because alot of these places work on whoever is near the food when it's ready gets it out so it's not cold) at least notice our order has come up and come by to see if everything is right.  Red Robin's does this all the time.....they Rock.  Heck they messed up and didn't give me Garlic Fries but gave me Onion rings instead.  When I mentioned this they said "heck will bring you out some garlic fries no problem".  I had onion rings and a small plate of garlic fries.  They rock.  When you bring me my food it better be the temperature it's supposed to be.  Salad with grilled chicken on it should be: lettuce cold, chicken hot.  Simple.  See I don't ask for much.  I just ask that you do your job with a smile and don't bitch to me about it or take our the fact that your job sucks on me.  It's not my fault.  Free refills are that, refills.  Refill means keep it coming no matter how quickly I drink it.  The tip you receive from me is a courtesy; a reward for good service.  It's not a guarantee, nor should it be expected if you didn't do shit for me the whole time I was there.  I've left no tip on several occasions where our waiter was downright lazy and had everyone else do crap for them.  Another thing that has happened a time or two is I've bought something at a store but it didn't come home with me.  The reason, I thought the bags I had to grab myself off of the checkout stand were all there was.  Have you had this happen to you?  Clerks don't hand you your bags anymore.  They bag your crap and sometimes leave it hanging on the rack of bags.  You literally have to reach over the counter sometimes to get your damn bag of merchandise???????  Last night we bought a few large things at Target and a couple of small items.  I of course had to retrieve my own bags and put them in the basket.  Seeing the huge bag the large items were put in I naturally assumed (yeah I know don't assume) that the small items were in there.  Nope.  One didn't get scanned and the other was put in a bag but never handed to me.  Must be one of those people raised in the "don't touch someone else or you will get germs" households.  I went back to the store and the clerk said that the item I went and got that I was charged for but didn't get was the wrong barcode.  She talked to a manager guy and I was sent to Customer Service (yeah right).  She told the CS guy that I had "left" my item behind and that I got another one that didn't have a matching barcode.  I let her tell her little fib and when I got over to CS I said "First off, I didn't leave it, she never put it in a bag or if she did she never handed it to me.  Second this is the same item I purchased and I have no idea why the codes don't match."  He actually lived up to the definition of Customer Service and understood and rang me up no problem and got me on my way.  At Kroger once I forgot to grab a bag of stuff and the clerk actually realized I missed it and ran out after me.  Now that's service!!!!