Category: Daily Grind

I have waded through another Monday at My Crummy Job.

I can’t believe my life has deteriorated to this. I don’t even thank God it’s Friday anymore, because on my way home I am already dreading Monday. I need like a year off to unwind, then a year to travel and have a little fun, then a year to get ready to go back. Then I’d like to work half days, from home, for twice as much $$.

I’ve been struggling with the Protest Song for the past few weeks, thinking this shouldn’t be taking so long. I don’t remember spending this much time on songwriting before, and I actually wrote a lot of songs. The quality may have been questionable, but there was no arguing with the quantity. Then I remembered: I used to sleep until ten, have breakfast and drink coffee until noon, and do music all afternoon – listening, playing, writing. Then, when it was time to go to work in the evening, guess what? I played and sang until one in the morning. My whole day was music. No wonder I wrote songs faster. And I was having a splendid time, too. These days I have to make an appointment with myself. Songwriting? Well, the whole day is out, until after 6 PM. Maybe I can squeeze you in from 7:20, after the yard work, until 7:55. I’m sorry. That’s all the free time we have for you and your protest song.

Whose idea was it for me to spend my last years doing meaningless work that I actively dislike, and doing such a fine job of it, too? I am already performing the work of two-and-a-half people. And the longer I stay at My Crummy Job the more work I do, even though I could not possibly care less about any of it. Why do the jobs that pay well have to be so freakin’ crummy?

And what’s up with those guys who say “I love my job! I am so happy to be here, I’d do this for free!” In my experience, those guys are either the owners and CEO’s, or they have high-powered rifles out in their cars. They are either getting rich off my labor, or they are nutcases planning to blow me and half my co-workers away, including themselves. I only hope their aim is true.

I made a smart remark on Emma Goldman’s War On Error blog the other day, and she came back at me with a quote from a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I am not making this up). Go read the post, because Goldie is quite literate and persuasive and if you play your cards right she might one day make you a French pastry, and I don’t mean turn you into an eclair. But here’s the quote, anyway:

So much of what we ordinarily do has no value in itself, and we do it only because we have to do it, or because we expect some future benefit from it. Many people feel that the time they spend at work is essentially wasted–they are alienated from it, and the psychic energy invested in the job does nothing to strengthen their self. For quite a few people free time is also wasted. Leisure provides a relaxing respite from work, but it generally consists of passively absorbing information, without using any skills or exploring new opportunities for action. As a result life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.

Right on, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi! But what can you do to fix it, once I have become addicted to the money? I have heard that you should “…do what you love. The money will follow.” I did that, and the money followed someone else.

OK, sorry. I’ll feel better by morning. And I’ll feel great on payday. And I’ll be walking on air when I finish the Protest Song and record it and post it here. Don’t think you can escape this. In fact, you should all start thinking of nice things to say right now. You might want to jot down some thoughts in advance, because if you take too long when the big day arrives, it won’t seem spontaneous. It’s best to get your awestruck adlibs ready in advance.

That post below this one has been there long enough.

“Next Blog” visitors here will think that I am using the internet to shop for sex. Heh, heh. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am using the internet to shop for porn. But you have to admit, the person who wrote that ad (see the previous post if you must read it) was pretty clever. I thought about contacting her to tell her that I had used her ad as a blog post, and to let her know that I appreciated her writing. But then she probably would have sued me. Is plagiarism a crime? Even if I acknowledge it right in the plagiarism itself? But I guess you can be sued for things that aren’t criminal. Look at O.J.Simpson: Not a criminal according to the court, but so sue-able. So if any of you were thinking about giving the ad writer a jingle, please don’t mention me, OK?

I’m writing this to blot out the memory of my previous tawdry post, so I have to think of things to discuss, so as to push that other thing as far down the screen as possible. I usually don’t do current events, because I have lived forever already and nothing much surprises me or outrages me, at least not enough to expose my thoughts to the world. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, there are professional writers with press credentials and lots of access, not to mention their own personal fact-checkers, who are able to do a better job of punditry than I could, so mostly I stick to trolling for comments from naked women. Some of you have been obliging in that regard, and I can’t thank you enough.

Nonetheless, because I am at a creative impasse, let me try a list of stuff:

• THE LONDON BOMBINGS. A lot of people hate us. I’m including the Brits and Americans in the group known as “us.” There are other countries that are hated, too, sort of a coalition of the arrogant. Blowing things up and killing people you don’t even know really pisses me off. Of course, it must really piss off the people who are blown up and killed. We’ve been doing it to whomever we want for centuries, so you’ve got to think they must be angry. So now they’re blowing us up and killing us. Everybody in the West wants to know “Why do they hate us?” The real question is “Why did it take them so long?” Get used to it, people. This is not the kind of war you can win. In fact, the very act of engaging this type of adversary sort of guarantees that it won’t end. The terrorists, who, let’s face it, are fundamentalist Islamic radicals, don’t have a political agenda, so we can’t even surrender. We can’t say, “OK, you win, we give up, you can have what you want.” Because they only want to kill infidels. If we give up, they’ll kill us all. So we have to take away their incentives to hate us. We have to treat the Arab and Islamic worlds with respect, instead of stealing all their stuff that isn’t nailed down, installing murderous dictators in their countries and sneering at their culture and religion. It will take a couple of generations to pull something like this off, and the healing won’t start until we in the U.S. dump our current crop of “leaders,” who are, not coincidentally, fundamentalist Christian radicals.
• TOM CRUISE. What a terrible spot this poor guy is in! He is as queer as Rock Hudson. A gay Scientologist. You know The Church wouldn’t approve. You know his twenty-million-dollar-a-picture career would take a nose dive if he came out. At least you’ve got to hand it to him for managing to get Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz and Katie Holmes to go along with the ruse. All he needs is to be married or paired off, and for that he could use anybody, but he went out and hooked himself three world-class babes. I’m trying to imagine being repulsed by doing the nasty with any one of these women. Not working for me, but I think I can simulate the feeling (of revulsion) by imagining myself with Tom Cruise! So not my type. One night with him and I’d be going on talk shows admitting my heterosexuality. And yet he has posed as lover or husband for these hot women for years! Has he won an Academy award yet? He deserves one for this ongoing performance. Maybe after a couple of years with little Katie he will cop. According to my calculations, sometime in the next 18 months he will have accumulated more money than God, and so who cares about the career anymore? He can “get back to his roots” and do some off-Broadway theater. But whoops! Here comes The Church of Scientology. They will have to lock him in a room and cure him, or else come out themselves. I can hardly wait.
• KARL ROVE. This is a non-story. But first, what kind of name is Plame? I’ve never known anyone with that name. It sounds made up. Is that the best the CIA can do? Making up names for their secret agents that sound made up? No wonder thay can’t catch Bin Laden. Anyway, Bush said he’d fire anyone who leaked information about Valerie Plame two years ago, and now it looks like it was Karl, the guy who sort of created Bush and still pulls most of the strings. So there will be some awkward moments between George and Karl, the President and his mentor. Despite the fact that half the people in Washington already knew about Valerie Plame’s job, if it can be proved that Karl did the leaking Bush will have to fire him. And the loyal opposition will grind on this interminably, so if there’s any evidence it will be found, and even if there’s no evidence the whole thing could bring the government to a standstill. Some of you will say “Good,” and you are probably right, but Bush has to think of his legacy, such as it is, and so Karl must be canned. But wait – is this a bad thing? Certainly not for Karl. The Heritage Foundation or some other right-wing “think tank” will gladly pay Rove a million bucks to join them, and once he is free of the fetters of being a “public servant” he should be ble to make twenty grand a night in speaking fees. That’s more than I make in a week. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who cares if people like him, so even if he faces the public humiliation of an indictment and a trial, he’ll still be able to laugh, especially when he is sentenced to six months in some low-security Martha Stewart clink (suspended, of course). Not to mention that he cannot do anything bad enough for the millions of ditto-heads in this country to lose their love for all things Rove. So this is a win-win: Joe Wilson is made an example of and Karl Rove becomes a millionaire. Because I don’t have a fact-checker, I have to state here that I don’t know if maybe he already is a millionaire. But either way I’m sure he won’t mind getting the hell out of D.C., and getting started on his “civilian” life.
• THE PROTEST SONG. You thought maybe this was going away, didn’t you? Well it’s not. I won’t bother to link back to the relevant posts about this debacle. If you were here, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you missed a great party. I am actually working on the protest song, using as much of what you sent me as I can, without violating the Hayes Act. When it’s finished I will record it and post it here, as I have previously threatened. I only wish I could somehow invade all your computers, you lazy do-nothings who have not helped me with this project, and force you to listen. It will not be pretty, but it will be done.
• THE DA VINCI CODE. Yes, I am reading it. I was forced to. Someone at work bought the book and loaned it to me, against my wishes. But I have to read it now, because I refused to read Atlas Shrugged when this same woman forcibly loaned that one to me a few years ago, and so I owe her one. This book has swept America, and it has been recommended to me vigorously by so many people that I expected it to be, well, really good. I will say this: It is a classic page-turner. Every chapter ends in a cliff-hanger, and since there are three (or four) storylines, you often have to read a couple of chapters to find out the resolution of one of the cliffhangers. But while you are doing that, you discover a couple more cliffhangers, and so on. I am only half way through it, so I don’t think I know enough to spoil it for anyone, so for God’s sake, don’t click away from here. For me the problem with the book is that the descriptions are dull and the characters are simply props. They don’t feel like real people, and therefore one does not get involved much with them. I think the world likes this book a lot because it says many bad things about the Roman Catholic Church (hooray), and because it piles on a lot of little “facts” about history and language and philosophy and religion, and makes it seem as if you are learning something by reading it. This is an illusion. Still, I have to say I like all the stuff about Goddess worship, yin and yang, and the sacrament of fucking. In my big-budget blockbuster movie, which will be out late next spring, I will cast Keannu Reeves as Robert Langdon and Isabelle Huppert as Sophie Neveu. The film will flop, but I will get to meet Isabelle Huppert, and share a sacrament.
• I APOLOGIZE to any of my blogging buddies whom I may have offended in private email. I didn’t mean to, I was thoughtless and crude, and I beg forgiveness.

As always, my heart is filled with love for you all, but tinged with vague unease.

I love this blogging thing! It’s almost exactly like writing.

If I were a real writer, I mean like a professional writer, a guy who actually got paid for, you know, writing, I think it would be a lot like this. You sit down at the computer – I’d use a computer because that whole typewriter thing, while it looks cool in the movies, you have to keep ripping out the paper with the crappy false starts on it and crumpling it up and throwing it away in disgust, missing the waste basket at least half the time, plus you have to use whiteout. Have you ever used whiteout? As The Oldest Blogger, it’s possible that I have more experience with whiteout than all of you combined. Oh, sure, it’s got a kick. I’ve seen the antelope-sized jackrabbits galloping alongside my car on the freeway. But it will give you a righteous headache, too, and it takes like five years to develop enough skill to use it and not make a big, soft lump of whiteout on your page, a wet mass of paste that will not dry anytime soon. You might as well rip that page out and toss it at the waste basket, because you will never be able to type over that goo-covered mistake. Plus, the high is not worth the headache.

So I’d use a computer.

Where was I? I’d sit down at the computer and start my professional writing. I’d have a beginning, a middle and an end, every time I sat down. Or at least I’d want to. And here’s another way that blogging is like writing: Writer’s block. Only you don’t get writer’s block. That’s for the writers. What you get is Blogger’s Block. You think you’re going to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but maybe you don’t have an end, or a middle. Maybe right now you’re like me, and you don’t have shit.

Don’t worry! This is Blogger’s Block. It’s not a bad thing. It is the proof that you’re a blogger! If the blogosphere gives you lemons – say it with me now – you make lemon-fucking-ade!

Welcome to Blogger’s Block. That extremely brief moment when you have nothing to say. Work through it. Chances are, your “readers” won’t even notice if you fill the screen with meaningless nonsense. I know that when I’m a reader, all my bloggin’ buddies get the full benefit of all my doubts. Was that a stupid, thoughtless remark? Of course not. Facts a little, ah, wrong? Nah – just a matter of interpretation. Was that a conclusion she just jumped to? Couldn’t be – she’s too smart. See how that works? Blog through your block, and you can’t go wrong.

Hey, and how about readers? Writers have readers. Well, so do bloggers. Bloggers have technical ways to check up on their readers, too, find out if they are being loyal. So I guess that’s a little different than it would be for a writer. A writer would go to bookstores and read his book out loud to a bunch of readers, and then he’d take his pick of the nubile coeds who had attended his reading. Bloggers don’t get out as much, but they do have stats. And they make up for being just a little withdrawn at times by being in the forefront of a new medium. Bloggers are in the vanguard, so they’re cool, and you can take that to the bank.

I wish I had a gray wool houndstooth sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. That would be something a writer would have. But that’s another post.

One day I will hit upon a traffic-generating scam that will make this blog the Most Popular Destination on the Web.

The revision99 Protest Song UnContest was not it, however. I am reviewing the entries this evening, and I have a few thoughts:

• Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who wrote lyrics and proposed song ideas. My creative days are long in the past, so I really need this stuff if I am going to maintain any sort of illusion of vitality.
• I will not name names at this time, because then everyone will know what a flop the UnContest was. Besides, you know who you are. If any of you “win,” – and this is a big if – I will request permission to identify you in this blog.
• Apparently, not many of you are very angry, and those who are, aren’t really angry, just a little annoyed. You have to stoke up a pretty heavy head of steam to actually want to write a protest song (or, apparently, even to say a protest sentence), and I guess I just didn’t piss off enough of you, enough.
• I thought my list of things to be angry about would get your creative juices flowing, and just in case, my reprint of the lyrics to “Eve of Destruction” should have made it obvious that there would be no reason for embarrassment, no matter what you wrote. But most of you who said anything, said you “didn’t know how” to write song lyrics, or that you “suck at” writing song lyrics. You should listen to “Achy Breaky Heart” a few times.

But, whatever. I warned you what the punishment would be if you didn’t cooperate on this: I will write a protest song myself. God knows I am angry enough. I will steal what I can from the songs and ideas you have sent me, mix in a little tambourine and acoustic guitar, and try to put them together into a rousing anthem for the New Revolution. When it’s finished I will record it and post it for you all to hear. Then you’ll be sorry. Get your picket signs ready.

If you’re here for the first time, details about the UnContest (which is over unless you want to enter now) can be found here and here.

Au revoir, my friends.

Last week I went away to attend a graduation, and I was completely disconnected from the internet for almost four days. I got so far behind in the daily serial that is my bloggin’ buddies’ lives that I felt guilty. Every blog I visited had three or four (or five) posts that I had not read. I was not just disconnected from the internet. I felt like I had been disconnected from life itself.

I tried to catch up, but I am hopelessly behind. Whatever was discussed is gone forever, and I am destined always to be out of the loop when references are made to the occurences of that long weekend. Oh, wait. I’ve been out of the loop since Reagan was shot, anyway, so what’s new?

Now, the very next weekend, I have another graduation. This one is right here in my town, and the wrap party is right here in my house. Due to the close family connection of this graduate (my niece), many relatives are descending on my town, and I will be entertaining them, probably every second from Friday early in the morning (who flies at 6:30 AM? My sisters.) until late Sunday evening. My only plans for entertaining all these people is a backyard party and barbecue on Saturday. Other than that all I’ve got is getting ready for the party, and cleaning up after the party.

The party might not be so bad, because my niece may have hot teenage girlfriends, and I have made it clear that there will be no underage drinking at my home. So I’m assuming they will be loaded to the gills when they get here, and you never know what those crazy kids will do.

So again I will be out of the blogging loop, in the dark, incommunicado. Naturally, I’ll be right here close to my computer much of the time, so I might be able to sneak in and check some blogs. But I have a large, demanding family, and I’m not in any way ready to throw a party for hot teenage girls (OK, and boys), so with all the last-minute running around I will be doing I anticipate that I will be offline again for the next few frantic days.

I’m guessing this is going to be mildly disappointing to about eight people. I don’t seem to have as many readers as Pops, or MPH, or Theresa, and they (you) don’t seem to be as fiercely loyal. But they make up for that with their intense, uh, their, ah, occasional mild curiosity, or something. Maybe. I’m not jealous or anything. All those people who don’t visit me here, well, it’s their loss. This really is one of the only places on the internet where “to, two, too, there, their and they’re” are never misused, and all apostrophes are placed correctly. Oh. Maybe that’s why no one visits me here.

Well, I just thought I should let you know. About my upcoming busy weekend and all. Busy, busy, busy.

A Few Items:

1. I was out of town since Thursday, attending the college graduation of someone I have known since the day of her birth. I was cut off from all computers, so I haven’t written anything or read anything you may have written.
2. I discovered that I really miss being on a college campus. I have almost no daily intellectual stimulation at my crummy job, whereas on campus, there’s tons of that.
3. College kids today have little to no fashion sense, at least in Santa Cruz, California.
4. If you think I am going to stop promoting the Protest Song UnContest, you’re wrong. I’m just too tired to do it tonight. But let me assure you the entries I have so far are stunning. The rest of you have a little more than a week to deadline. Don’t put it off, people. The punishment will be a protest song by me.
5. As always, my weary heart overflows with love and bittersweet joy.

I just washed my car this morning.

OK, I didn’t exactly wash it. I went to the car wash. The point is, my car was freshly scrubbed, and looking good. Then I parked it and went in to work.

When I came out of my office eight hours later, I discovered that the automatic sprinklers near where I had parked had come on and sprinkled my car. My beautiful red car was covered with muddy waterspots. As you may be able to see from the picture (or not, now that I look at it), the spray from the sprinkler went all the way across the car to the street side. The spots show up nicely on the windshield, but let me assure you that the entire car was covered, front and back, left to right. Then the hot sun dried them out, and now I will have to go back to the carwash, or else wash it myself, the very next day.

This really pisses me off. Why do the sprinklers point out in the street? They must, because there was no wind today. The sprinklers were simply aimed at my car. I wonder if any water got on the grass.

I will admit that this is not as bad as being attacked by snakes, or having lunch with Dick Cheney. Maybe I should count my blessings. But, damnit, I spent time and money at the carwash, and then my paint got all fucked up, like, immediately.

OK. Sorry. In other news, my story called Promised Land has been moved to this location. I couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to write right here in front of everybody. So it has it’s own space now, where you can read it if you feel like it, and I get to work at the leisurely pace befitting a man of my age. I don’t expect any readers to go there and make comments on it, but I have enabled comments just in case, so feel free. Getting it off this blog makes it easier for me to just write, and even go back and make changes, the way you’d do if you were writing a story, and not a blog. I will also add Promised Land to my blogroll in the sidebar. Don’t get me wrong: I’m hoping someone will read it. I just won’t come after you if you don’t.

Well, OK. It’s never too late to learn.

Boy, that last post sank like a stone, didn’t it? Let’s bury it a little further right now. It was just stream of consciousness, in a way. I bit my tongue, I wrote about biting my tongue, I bit my tongue because I was eating too fast, food was in my mouth because of the eating, and yeah, it made kind of a nasty picture, but believe me, the reality was much worse for me than the description was for you.

Somehow it just turned into that kinky kissing thing which, coming right after the ghastly image of half-masticated food – and come on, some of you were also thinking about blood, too, weren’t you? – well, I can see now that it was just too much. Since I am a sophisticated man of the world, you’re probably thinking “How could he have committed such a faux pas?” I could say that I love you all, and I was overwhelmed by the desire to plant a smooch on you. In fact, that’s really my only defense, weak as it is. So that’s what I’ll say.

Sue me.

No one can make me happy about working at my crummy job.

For the past few months, due to mismanagement and bad planning, my job has been a brutal nightmare. If I were not already highly skilled and efficient at what I do, I would surely have fallen apart. But the fact that I can make up for failures elsewhere in The Corporation doesn’t mean I want to, or that I enjoy it, or that I should have to. I have complained about this all I dare in previous posts, so some who are reading this now are aware of my attitude. I’m a little grumpy.

Now, things are more or less back to normal and I don’t have to use my super powers to get the work done, and this annoys me, too. Mind you, I don’t take credit for this turn of events – it was just a happy accident. The various managers, supervisors, vice presidents and directors forgot to screw things up this month.

I refuse to act busy, so I find myself going around looking for things to do. At the Post Office or on a Teamster job, this might get me killed, but at my job they already think I’m a crazy misfit, so they barely notice.

I ran out of things to do by mid-afternoon, so I checked my email a thousand times, redesigned a form I want to start using, read a bunch of blogs and commented on a few, and then I just sat in my office for a while, sort of becoming one with the furniture. I tried to make my mind a blank, and it seemed to be working. But I looked in there and the thought that I found was this: I wonder if I can touch the top of my head with my big toe.

Think about it: The lowly foot getting to meet the head, home of the brain. They probably haven’t seen each other since I was a very little baby, made of some kind of highly flexible rubber. The only communication they’ve had for all these years would be the brain sending down orders to walk, or run, or stop. One-way orders, no discussion, no compromise, no warning. The only way the foot would have had any input is if it sent pain signals, or if it simply broke. If I could touch my head with my foot it would be like a chauffeur getting a sit-down with the CEO. Who knows what good might come of it?

Remembering my psychocybernetics, though, I thought it would be the better part of valor to simply imagine vividly that I was touching the top of my head with my foot. Because as you know, the mind cannot distinguish between a real event and one vividly imagined, and besides, I didn’t want to be carried out by my colleagues and driven to a hospital.

So I looked at my foot, gauged the distance and the bending that would be involved, and it only took a few seconds for me to say “Damn! I could actually do this.”

Of course, that was just a theory, and it had to be tested. So I closed my office door, took off my shoes and got down on the floor, and yes, it turns out that I can touch the top of my head with my big toe. Not only that, but I can do it with either foot. OK, I admit I had to grab my ankle and drag my foot up there, and I can’t put both feet up there at the same time, but what do you want? I’m putting it on my resume.

Sadly, the foot-brain conference did not take place. The foot got one look at the hideous haircut I got the other day, and went back to the garage, laughing.

Paper towels, huh? What would we do without them?

If I had been a pioneer I would have stolen a bunch of land from whoever was there ahead of me, and I would have tamed that land, and planted it, or mined it, or raised cattle. Whatever the hell I was doing outside, the little woman would have to be in the kitchen, cooking for me and the men. And when she spilled something she’d have to clean it up with a rag, which would then have to be washed. Until it was washed, it would sit around and stink, or perhaps get moldy. Jeez, what a mess!

But not if you have paper towels. If you have a lot of big, sturdy paper towels, you can wipe up any mess you make, and then just throw them away! Spill some beans on the wood-fired cookstove? No problem. OK, I think we’re all on the same page now. Let’s move on.

I went to Supercuts this morning, a chain of haircutting shops where English is a second language. You never know when you tell them how to cut your hair if they get it or not. “Take a half-inch off” might mean “leave a half-inch on.” They always act like they know what you’re saying, but I don’t understand anything they say, so why should I expect them to understand me? And let me just tell you right now that I have nothing but the highest regard for those who have immigrated to the U.S. from other places and are making their way in this strange land, getting jobs, buying houses, learning a new culture. Greatest respect. But now I am sporting perhaps the worst haircut of my life. It could be the worst one in Los Angeles, although – and I can’t verify this – I might be very hip in Cambodia. I don’t know how such a small amount of hair can be made to stick out so forcefully in all directions.

But I am not proud. I took my weird haircut like a man and went on to the rest of my errands. The main one was I had to exchange a telephone that I bought at Radio Shack. Since I bought it at Radio Shack, I saved all the packaging and the receipt, because I figured I might have to take it back.

This was not a cell phone, but a regular wireless home phone. It has big buttons, though, and a volume control, stuff that’s hard to find. I took the phone in to the store, where two pleasant-looking young people were standing behind the counter. This is what I told them:

“I bought this phone four days ago, and it seems to have a problem. I charged it for 12 hours, and it went completely dead in less than an hour. I charged it for another 12 hours, and it lasted a bit longer, but I have never gottten even four hours of use out of a charge. So I think it’s defective, and I’d like to exchange it for another one just like it.”

To my surprise, both clerks agreed, and one of them went into the stockroom to get me a new phone, while the other one started to ring up the transaction. Alas, the price of the phone had gone up in the few days since I had made my purchase. This was a serious issue for the Radio Shack Kids. They huddled over the register for a few minutes discussing this impossible customer service conundrum: How can we charge this guy an extra 20 bucks now that we’ve agreed that his phone is defective?

They had to call tech support. I’m not kidding. They had to make three phone calls and wait on hold for five minutes each time. One of the calls was because they had forgotten to ask something on the previous call. But I was patient. I was in the right and God was on my side, it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t going to ruin it by pulling out a weapon and demanding justice.

It turns out the issue was that the phone had gone up twenty dollars, but there was a twenty-dollar mail-in rebate on it. If they changed the price for me, the computer would still have printed out my rebate form, thus I might get away with something. Rule Number One in modern corporate sales: Never let the customer get away with anything. The solution, no doubt provided by the president of the company was this: Change the price for the man, and keep the rebate slip. The clerk who finally did this for me and handed me my new phone actually tried to convince me that he had wanted to do it that way from the start.

Why then, did he have to talk on the phone for twenty minutes while I stood there cooling my heels? Then it hit me: The hidden cameras in the store were taking pictures of my grotesque haircut, and it was being emailed to all the stores so the schmoes who had to work on Sunday could have a laugh.