This article from The Billfold pretty well sums up something I’ve been thinking about for awhile: why is social media the only way to get decent customer service these days? I’ve had similar experiences, most recently with Sprint, and previously with Cox Communications in Wichita.
It’s as if we’re creating two classes of customers: tech-savvy and otherwise. I don’t see why someone who knows how to use Twitter deserves to get her problem with the cable company fixed any faster than the person doing it the traditional way, over the phone. Social media is a Band-Aid, and not a very good one, at that; with these huge companies, only a tiny fraction of users are getting their concerns addressed this way. And sure, maybe the payoff for the company is that those users don’t start a PR fiasco, but how much does a little social media fracas now and then really hurt a huge company’s bottom line long-term, anyway?
Let’s fix customer service from the bottom up – empower the call center representative to actually solve users’ problems, and go from there. Then, maybe a big company like Sprint or Fifth Third Bank or Cox doesn’t need to have a Twitter page that’s almost exclusively replies to pleas for help, and it can go back to actually promoting and enhancing its brand.
The piece of clothing I’ve owned the longest is a pair of gym shorts.
I feel like there ought to be a sentimental story behind that. Nobody keeps their old gym shorts, right? But… there isn’t. I just really like them. And I’m going to be sad when they finally give up on me.
Let me clarify: these are not the school-issued shorts we were required to wear in gym class in junior high. No, those went in the garbage the day I graduated from ninth grade, because they were made of thigh-clinging sweatshirt material and had my initials in a designated spot in Sharpie. A few years later, when it became cool to wear your old apparel from grade-school activities, I still didn’t miss ‘em. Rest in peace.
No, these are just a pair of athletic shorts my mom picked up for me to wear at dance-team practice in eighth grade. Later, we found out that the dance team had these ridiculous “practice uniforms,” because it apparently was important for us to look identical during practices as well as games, and I would be facing demerits if my shorts were the wrong color. So, between not being able to wear them in gym class and not being able to wear them at dance team, they didn’t get used much.
I always loved dance, and I have vague memories of competitiveness during grade-school track and field competitions, but I wasn’t the most athletic kid. A scoliosis diagnosis caused back pain and kept me out of the weight room; a trip through puberty several years before most of my classmates made me extra awkward and afraid of sweating in front of people. A runner I was not. I quit the track team after three weeks because there was too much running; I just wanted to do the long jump, wearing the shorts I liked.
Eventually, in college, I took up yoga and realized my natural flexibility was of some long-term use even if I wasn’t performing at dance recitals anymore. And then my boyfriend convinced me to give running another try. Stuck in a small town with nothing to do (except my summer internship there), we ran together – just a few minutes at a time to start with – through safe, strange neighborhoods. I was poor and couldn’t afford to throw away old clothes, so I was still wearing the shorts.
Fast forward almost six years; I’m training for a half marathon, do yoga and Pilates weekly, and am working my way back to the number I saw on the scale after miraculously losing, not gaining, 15 pounds when starting college. And I still have those stupid shorts. Mainly because pocketed, nylon (but not basketball-style with the mesh) shorts are hard to find. The elastic is starting to wear out, and I’m seriously considering having it replaced when it finally stops stretching. I’ve had to sew up the inside of the pockets because my keys wear holes in them.
Who knew that of all my wardrobe staples, a pair of gym shorts from 1999 would persevere?
ProSpirit, call me. I’ll gladly trade more glowing blog reviews for another pair of these babies.
Don’t get the post title? It’s a play on a Spoon song:
A little over a year ago, this music video “dropped” on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, or at least heard the song, well, I don’t really know what you were doing with your life in March 2011. Press play, but be aware that you can never unhear what you’re about to hear.
I know what I was doing a year ago, though: slogging through a rougher-than-usual Kansas winter, mourning my great-grandfather, worrying about my just-diagnosed-with-cancer grandfather and my living-in-Japan-during-the-earthquake best friend, and waiting for Luke to hear good news – any news, really – from the Ph. D. programs he’d applied to. It wasn’t my best month. The transition from winter to spring has always been a weird time of year for me (turns out there might be some science behind it), and having all of these things going on was not at all helpful.
At the time, I was freelancing at a coworking space in Wichita that was pretty much living up to the stereotype of coworking spaces, startups, and other laid-back workplaces. In no time, every Friday morning after “Friday” appeared, one of the space’s owners was blasting this song around lunchtime. After sitting through a morning of writing SEO-bait articles and refreshing websites I wasn’t supposed to be visiting that track the status of grad-school applications, I was ready for a little ridiculousness. For pretending that I was 13 and didn’t have any worries except the question of whether I should sit in the front or back of my friend’s convertible.
Eventually, things sorted themselves out. Luke got into UC. My grandpa started treatment (he’s still doing well), and Kim was safe and sound in Japan. Eventually, getting “Friday” stuck in my head all weekend long started to get annoying. But now that it’s less ubiquitous, hearing it every once in awhile still makes me smile.
If you haven’t gotten enough of mind-numbing, auto-tuned teenage music, may I recommend “My Jeans”? (Yes, I realize I already linked to this in a previous post. It’s that… good?)
Does anybody really like February? It’s the shortest month, and it drags on and on. A varmint reminds us that winter’s still not over, no matter what. There’s Valentine’s Day, which most people either hate outright or feel the need to make tired observations about. (Oh, you wrote a blog post about how expressing your love shouldn’t only happen one day a year? How original!) Every four years, people born on Feb. 29 get a real birthday, which probably feels kinda weird for them.
For me, February has generally been about dreams unfulfilled. Promises broken, in emo terms. A boyfriend who gave me fake flowers for the holiday and came out of the closet two weeks later. A high school classmate whose life ended pointlessly and far too soon. Other family members who passed away when we’d hoped they would hang on a little longer. Two rounds of Luke’s grad school anxiety. Last year, massive protests in my home state against a terrible bill that ended up passing anyway. Glimpses of spring followed by blizzards. (To be fair, growing up in Wisconsin, that also happened in March. And April. Sometimes the first weekend of May.)
This year, aided by mild weather and a workload that makes the days fly by, I’m trying to turn it around by working toward some future dreams. Half marathon training. Some continuing education efforts.* Getting more financially stable. Putting myself out there and trying to make friends.
Maybe it’s just best to focus on the future during February, rather than expecting awesome things to happen during the month itself.
*This means I read free how-to guides about Web stuff occasionally. Don’t get too excited.
I wrote a thing for A-Line Magazine (based here in Cincinnati) last month about being new in a town that isn’t always especially welcoming to newbies.
And Chomu Press is publishing Luke’s fiction collectionI Am a Magical Teenage Princess later this year. I have been appointed publicity director. If you’re reading this and know anything about setting up author events, sending books to bloggers, etc., please let me know. I need all the help I can get. And I only read YA book blogs, which, despite the book’s title, are not exactly its target audience.
The piece of clothing I’ve owned the longest is a pair of gym shorts.