Slightly Off Kilter

Customer service is such a priority to me that I’ve abandoned a famous hamburger joint up the street from us because it takes forever to get served. I’ve also traveled miles out of my way to give my money to another branch of a large retail store because I’ve been treated rudely by some teenager whose main concern is texting his girlfriend.

Customer service weighs so heavily on my mind that my kids get sick of hearing me say, “That was great customer service,” or the opposite, which is more the case than the former these days. My kids also get embarrassed when I ask for the store’s manager so I can commend an associate who did his/her job the way it should be done.

As much as I hate poor customer service (maybe we’ve come to expect it), I feel much stronger about superior customer service. And thus, I feel Starbucks “is all that” when it comes to customer service.

What do you do if you get a phone call from someone who tells you they've found a virus on your computer?

Our non-technical family members and friends are lucky to have people like us they can call on. But what about those poor people who don't have someone to ask?

I got this note from my father yesterday. (FYI, my Dad uses Mac OS X.)

A girl called me yesterday to tell me my computer had a virus and she could fix it for $169.00 with protection for one year. Her company is ISECUREVAP and she diagnosed my problem while we were talking. I've tried to include her diag. with this email. What do you think?

I wrote back to say "You don't have a virus. Those phone calls are a scam."

We love our Scion xB. Customer support? Not so much.

We're trying to get a $225 reimbursement for a warranty repair. How difficult should this be?

On Sunday evening, September 5, 2010, we exited a local store, walked to the parking lot, and unlocked our Scion. All normal. But when my spouse, Rich, opened the rear (lift gate) door, the handle -- the plastic bar that holds the latch for the door and the lights over the license plate -- came off in his hand. It remained attached to the car only by the electrical cable that makes the latch and lights work.

We fastened the handle to the rear windshield wiper with a bungee cord so it wouldn't flop until we could get it repaired, then drove home.

Up until sometime today, my incoming email was in Rich Text (HTML) mode if that's the way the sender sent it. I send my mail out in plain text, but I was happy to read mail in whatever form the sender preferred. In many cases, Rich Text really is better.

Today, something changed. I started seeing all of my incoming mail in Plain Text mode. Ugh.

We came in largely by accident; the restaurant we initially planned to eat at turned out to close between 3:00 pm and 4:30 pm. We arrived just at 3pm. Pfooie!.

We had passed Coconut Bay Street Cafe on the way to our original destination. When, disappointed and lunchless, we headed back to the car, we noticed that CBSC was open.

So, we went in.

A Long Time Ago, in a World Now Far Far Away...

In 1993 I was introduced to two tools that had a profound effect on the direction my work and interests would take. The first of these was the World Wide Web (WWW). I wasn't certain, at first, how useful it would be. (:-) But within a few months, I was hooked. Still, I didn't realize how important the WWW would be to me in the years ahead.

The second tool was the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I was hooked on that from the first encounter. But again, I had no idea of the scope of knowledge and sheer enjoyment this would bring with time.

The former San Bruno Lyons restaurant is... gone. As of today, it's a vacant lot.

It was something of a landmark. Lyons restaurants dated from the late 50s to mid 60s. Lyons used to be a popular 24-hour coffee-shop restaurant in this part of California. We ate there often before the chain folded back in the '90s.