I was reading the Sunday Journal Star and came across this article about customer service. I must admit that Larry the pretzel guy’s response made me chuckle because anyone who has worked any job where you provide customer service has had days when they felt like Larry the pretzel guy. Every job I have every had I have always tried to go above and beyond, all in the name of good customer service. I do have to confess that I have had a “Larry the pretzel guy moment”.

When I was in college I worked at a video store that was across the street from a bar. I dealt with drunks on a regular basis. All the regular customers liked me and I never had a complaint. I even had a customer contact the home office to tell them what a good employee I was. One night I was working when a woman, who had been in earlier, came back with a bag of microwave popcorn that was completely burnt to shit. She told me she purchased the popcorn and it tastes terrible so she wants her money back. We had a no cash refund policy but we would provide store credit. She said no she wanted cash. I explained the policy again and that I could not give her cash. Then she told me the popcorn was expired so I had to give her her money back. I explained again that I could not give her cash only a store credit. She proceeded to show me a product code (not an expiration date) that was on the INSIDE flap of the box. I told her that that was a product code and not an expiration date and told her that I would gladly give her store credit but not cash. She starts screaming about the popcorn being expired and me not giving her cash. Then I had my “moment”. I asked the woman if she had ever eaten cottage cheese. She looked confused so I continued to say that you don’t eat an entire carton of cottage cheese, get to the bottom and find out that it expired three months prior because expiration dates are on the outside of packages not the inside flap. The popcorn wasn’t expired, you burnt it and I am sorry for that but I can not give you cash back only store credit. She snapped. She wanted the manager, who wasn’t there, and she wanted her cash. She told me she would be back to talk to the manager about me and get her money. I kindly wrote down the manager’s phone number and his schedule so she wouldn’t miss him. She never called and never came in to talk to him. Sometimes you just can’t hold it in anymore and she was damn lucky that was all I said to her!

Yesterday, I went to Cub to take advantage of one of their sales. They had Kellogg cereal for $2 a box and if you bought 7 or more boxes you got a $10 off coupon for your next purchase. Since I have three boys who eat almost a box a cereal a day this was a wonderful deal. I pick out my 7 boxes of cereal, grab a couple of other items and head for the checkout. The first thing the cashier says to me is “Wow, your shirt is old.” I was too surprised to tell her that my evening gown and tierra were at the cleaners. Then she picks up my bottle of cumin and asks me what it tastes like. Well, it tastes like CUMIN! Then she wants to know if she can grow it. Hell if I know. Damn, if I knew it was going to be this much of an issue I would have gone without it. She finally finishes my order and hands me my stack of register generated coupons. I assumed, and that was ignorant of me, that my $10 off coupon was amongst the rest.
I get home and notice that I have a piece of paper that clearly says not a coupon and explains the offer I was supposed to get a coupon for. I didn’t feel like dealing with it last night so I called today. The woman at the service desk sounded very doubtful of my story but told me to come in anyway. I get to the store and show her my anti-coupon and my receipt proving that I bought my cereal. She called someone higher up the chain who didn’t want to deal with her, I could tell by the expression on the woman at the desk’s face. The higher up told her that they had a memo about it and the memo explained everything. She finally finds the memo and tries to do as it says. While she is doing this, the line of guys without teeth buying lotto tickets and 40 ouncers behind me is starting to get aggitated that they have to wait. The service desk woman can’t get the coupon to print. Wonderful! By now about half of the disgruntled alcoholics behind me have decided to actually go to a check out line. The service desk woman calls the pissy higher up woman again. The higher up just can’t understand that the memo is not working. Finally the service desk woman told the higher up that she was just going to give me $10 and be done with it. So I got a $10 bill for my trouble but I wonder how many other people had the same thing happen? How many other people were treated like they were full of shit and just got fed up and said screw it?

Yesterday I took the opportunity to clean my yard and two other front yards in my neighborhood. I cleaned my neighbor who broke her hip’s front yard and also the older couple who is in Florida’s front yard. I always find such interesting “treasures” when cleaning our yard. We have a privacy fence in our backyard that has alleys running along two sides of it. I am always amazed that the shit stains who are too lazy to use a trash can can always seem to find the energy to chuck their trash over my fence and into our yard. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the basketballs and the samari sword- complete with case we have acquired. Here are a sampling of the treasures I found yesterday:

Condom wrapper (Ew!!!)
1/2 eaten cobb of corn (not the dried stuff for squirrels-fresh!)
sling shot
Valentine’s I love you balloon (I would have rather not had to pick it up but it is the thought that counts!)
toothbrush (once again Ew!!)
doorbell (one that goes on your house not the getto kind)
receipt for 15 Oscar Mayer Lunchables all purchased with link card
beer can (only 1!!!)

Not all these are from the backyard. The cobb of corn was from my front yard and the condom wrapper and the receipt were from the alley. The city wide clean up is coming up in April and our neighborhood plans to participate. Just imagine the treasures we’ll find then!!

This weekend I was sick, again. Friday night I woke up with what I thought was evil indigestion. I took some tums and tried to go back to sleep. I was awakened by the dreaded bowel rumble (some of you know more what I am talking about than others! ) and made a mad dash for the bathroom. Once again, still being an optimist, I think that I just ate something that disagreed with me. After about the sixth trip to the bathroom I resign myself to the fact that I am sick again. Then the youngest gets up and throws up. Now it is confirmed. No more denial. The stomach flu is back.

I get my son situated on the couch with a puke bucket. Being that he is only seven he hasn’t quite mastered “knowing when to hold’em and knowing when to fold’em” so almost every trip to the bathroom ended with him needing new underwear. He used up all the underwear in his drawer but fortunately I had just done laundry and I had some in the laundry basket in the dining room. By now it is about 6 am Saturday and I have had about an hour of sleep total. My youngest is in our only bathroom and the rumbling is starting again. I hear the toilet flush and the call for fresh underwear. I am so thankful until I find out that my oldest got up and slipped in there. Curses!!! I go to retrieve the underwear from the laundry basket when suddenly I have to throw up. The bathroom is occupied so I make the quick mental calculations of which is closer - the puke bucket in the living room or the garbage can in the kitchen. Kitchen wins. So I throw the underwear in my son’s general direction and run. As I am running my socks start to slide across the floor. If I cannot stop I am either going to hit the wall and puke on myself or fall on my ass and puke on myself. Either option isn’t pretty. Fortunately, I stopped in front of the garbage can. I unleash the contents of my stomach and feel a little relief. My oldest son walks into the kitchen blissfully ignorant to what has gone on all night long and says “My brother doesn’t want me to talk about peanuts.” I turn to him, still hugging the garbage can, and tell him that I don’t want him to talk about peanuts either.

I ended up missing the blogger bash. Call me crazy but I didn’t feel pajamas, a bathroom bathrobe (wasn’t that Freudian!) and a puke bucket was proper attire for Panache. Brad and our friend Todd went in my place. I am pretty sure everyone managed well without me. Hopefully next time!

Wednesday, I was eating peanuts and I found one that looked like a penis. It was complete - cock and balls. I, of course, thought it was hilarious and put it on the kitchen window sill to show my husband. I started thinking that if people can put tortillas, grilled cheese sandwiches and pretzels on ebay that look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary and get big bucks then there has to be someone out there that would appreciate my penis peanut. It could be considered an “objet d’art”. The perfect piece for the penis enthusiast’s collection.

My husband comes home. I show him my treasure. He is not as amused as I am but concurs that it looks like a cock and balls. I put my penis peanut back on the window sill and wait for the kids to get home. The kids come home (I didn’t show them!) and I go get on the internet for about a half an hour. I go back downstairs and my peanut is missing! I hollar for my oldest son and he admits he ate my peanut. I am completely devastated. There go the millions I’m absolutely sure it would have fetched on ebay! I guess we’ll have to go back to funding the old 401K!

BTW - I am really disturbed by the fact that my 11 year old son would eat something he found sitting on a window sill without knowing from where it came.

Just when I thought things were getting back to as normal as they get around here, my middle son is now sick again. I have been exhausted the last few days and unable to sleep. Last night I could tell I was going to be able to sleep. Then I hear someone in the bathroom. My son yells to me “Mom, I gambled and lost. Can you bring me a new set of pajamas?” At least he already grabbed underwear on his way to the bathroom. So I get my son set up with clean pajamas and a puke bucket. As soon as he gets back to bed I hear the dreaded vomit sounds coming from his bedroom. At least he made it in the bucket! So I get him set up on the couch since he is on a bunk bed it is just easier. Then I have to go try to retrieve the puke bucket. I have a weak stomach so I am in the bedroom with my nightgown across my nose trying to get the bucket down from the top bunk. I couldn’t do it. It just smelled way too bad. I had to send my son back in to get it. I had to wait a bit for the smell to mellow before I could empty it out. YUCK!!!!!
Now I have my son home. He is upset that he is missing ISAT testing. I am hoping that he just ate something that upset his stomach (He has a salad eating contest with his younger brother at dinner last night.) and that it isn’t the stomach flu again. Hopefully I will still be able to make it to the in between blogger bashes bash Saturday!

Everyone has been wondering what the hell happened to me. I have been sicker than a dog for about 3 weeks. I had that evil flu/plague that has been going around. At first I thought I had a cold. Boy, was I wrong! I lived on liquids for a week and a half and not the fun ones. I rarely run a fever but I was running 102 F for more than five days that tylenol wouldn’t break. In my fever delerium I was getting ready to order some Kinoki foot pads at 4 am in hopes that strapping kotex to my feet would magically cure me. Thank goodness I was too weak to get the phone or there would be a case of them being dropped off any day now. Then I got worse. At one point in time I had something spewing out of damn near every orafice. The only way it could have been worse was if I started giving birth in between projectile vomitting sessions!
Of course, there was nothing on TV the whole time I was sick but I did discover some gems that I wouldn’t have had I not been sick.
MXC is on every weekday morning at 9 am. I just love sinkers and floaters!! Nothing is funnier than watching people bust their ass all for a game. CMT has a delight of a show called My Big Redneck Wedding. After watching damn near every episode, my husband wants to buy a dog so we can get remarried and the dog can be the best man! Brad was born in Georgia so I guess it can be excused!
Hopefully I am fully recovered now and can get back to getting my bitch on!

winter.jpg

I think this says it all!!

Yesterday one of my sons got off the bus and told me that a certain kid gave him the finger. This is nothing new. There is a core group of bullies on the bus and my son is one of their targets. Then my son tell me how one of the bullies had a glass bottle that he so graciously gave to another bully to try to break over my son’s head. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My son has already been assaulted and threatened but this really crossed the line.

I put in a call to the assistant principal but she was in a meeting so I was forced to leave a message. This morning I decided I was going to call the transportation office to find out why there is no bus monitor on this bus. The man that I talked to provided me with various excuses. The first was that there are no special ed kids on the bus. Well, he didn’t know that he was talking to a mother with a special ed kid on that very bus and knows of at least 3 other special ed kids. Then he told me they weren’t special ed enough, according to the state of Illinois, to require a monitor. He said he didn’t have a monitor to spare anyway. So I laid everything out for him with out all the bullshit. I told him that he was tell me that there was no money for a monitor and that was tough. He told me that he didn’t say that. He told me how it was all the state’s fault because they won’t provide the funding and how a bus driver is perfectly capable of driving a bus and disciplining more than sixty kids without help. I then told him what exactly had been happening to my child on the bus and he already knew which mom I was (there was a particular incident that is too disgusting to forget). Then he explained to me how there are far worse busses in the district and they don’t get a monitor. Now he is justifying bad behavior by pointiing out worse behavior and he expects that to pacify me? He told me all I can do is contact my state legislature and beg for money so my kid can have safe ride to and from school.

In a nut shell, district 150 can come up will money to buy a house that border the park and demolish them when they don’t get their way but money for a bus monitor for elementary school students is out of the question. Thank you district 150. I thought my opinion of you could not get any less but you lowered the bar and lived up to your shitty reputation.

I read a story yesterday on WEEK.com about dogs disappearing in Peoria. People are shocked to think that dog fighting may be going on in Peoria. Really? This is a surprise?

I have lived in the East Bluff for 9 years. You can’t swing a dead rat in the East Bluff without hitting a pitbull. Yes, there are loving responsible owners who take care of their dogs and don’t train them to be fighters. Then there are these people who walk their pitbull with weights attached to its collar. Anyone who thinks this is “doggy bling” needs to have their head examined. I have seen people who ride bikes in front of a pitbull to piss it off and have it drag a cement block behind it as it chases the bike. Not exactly training out of the book of Cesar Millan.

Dog fighting is a reality in Peoria. Most people want to bury their heads in the sand because it isn’t done openly or in the “good” end of town. This doesn’t make it exist any less. Once again the city needs to pull its head out of its ass and face reality before this is as out of control as the rest of the crime in Peoria.