A Not-so-twisty Concept

I have to wonder about the latest trend in fast food. It seems more burger joints are joining in and it doesn't sound all that appealing to me. I'm talking about pretzel buns.

Now, I like a nice warm soft pretzel, coated with massive salt crystals, maybe dunked in cheese or spicy mustard. But never have I been eating a pretzel and thought, "Ya know...this would be great on a hamburger or hot dog!" I just don't like the idea of a hard crust surrounding my burger. Yet Wendy's has their burgers and Sonic has their hot dogs clothed in pretzel buns. A quick search on Google shows pretzel buns are readily available in many bakeries.

To be fair, I have not yet tried either fast food place to see if their fare is any good. I am tempted to get some pretzel buns by themselves, warm them up, coat them in salt and butter, and put in a good movie. Some day when I have nothing better to do and enough money to do it with, I might swing by and pick up one of these offers. Don't hold your breath, though.

The Customer is Always....

Customer service…. What does that term mean to you? The customer is always right, no matter what? Unfortunately, it seems customer service is starting to go the way of the dodo. More stores are putting in self-service lanes so you never even deal with a cashier. You gather your purchase, scan the stuff, bag them, put them back in your cart and haul them out yourself. If you’re lucky they may have one or two lanes open with an actual person, but the lines for those lanes are extremely long. Or, they’re the “Express Lane” kind and you have more than 10 items in your cart. Gas stations did this a long time ago, grocery stores are catching up. Soon it will be restaurants where you enter your order on a screen at the table or counter, swipe your card, and your food arrives on a conveyor. There actually is a small chain of restaurants where your order is delivered by model train on an overhead rail, then lowered to your table. I haven’t tried it yet. I wonder what you do when you want a refill of tea, though.

What’s more troubling, beyond the lack of personal service, is the quality of personal service. Restaurant servers in particular seem to be in the news lately, demanding either higher wages or better tips. In some areas, your server is most likely making about $2/hour, with tips making up the difference. I don’t agree with this, because not everyone can or will leave the (now suggested) 20% gratuity. I certainly don’t unless the service was stellar. The problem I see is that so many servers aren’t doing their job. I was at one restaurant recently where our waitress took our orders and brought drinks, then someone else brought our food. Our waitress stopped to make sure we did get our food, then disappeared until it was time to bring the check. I had to flag someone down to get drink refills. It’s not that she was on break. I could clearly see her standing at other tables, chatting. At one point she sat down to chat. Yes, she was trying to garner a bigger tip from that table, but that shouldn’t excuse her from showing some attention to her other customers as well.

I’ve had this same problem with counter workers and telephone service as well. The apparent lack of interest in the job, the customer, or anything else but his or her phone or time clock. Many are not rude, per se, but just don’t seem to care to do their job. Others I have seen have been plain rude.

I can’t say it’s all customer service people, definitely. I’ve seen plenty that do an excellent job of paying attention to customers without hovering, being friendly and seeming to care about what they’re doing. Despite making pittance, they do their job well, and those people I applaud. I know customer service is difficult. I’ve done it. There are days you don’t want to get out of bed, let alone deal with idiots all day long. Yet you force yourself to get out, face these people with a smile, and do your job. Kudos to you!

Which brings me to my next point…. Customers can be idiots. If you’re standing in line to order something, get off your phone and talk to the person behind the counter. They’re there to serve you, not try to interpret what you mumble while telling your BFF about some moron that almost ran into your car while you were busy not paying attention to where you were going. Your BFF can wait a few minutes while you place your order and interact face to face with someone. Honest. Or if you’re in line in the grocery store or Walmart or wherever, get off the phone long enough to talk to the cashier. He or she is a person too, and when you’re rude to them you may discover you are missing something you’re sure you’ve paid for. In a restaurant, interact with the server. Put your phone down. Stop your conversation long enough to give your order and see if the server has any suggestions or questions. Otherwise, it’s not their fault your steak isn’t done right or that coffee isn’t decaf after all, or you can’t quite put your finger on that unusual seasoning…. Be polite and interact with people who are there to serve you. Consider how you would feel in their position. The old adage is fitting: Treat others as you would have them treat you. If you wouldn’t want someone treating you this way, don’t do it to someone else. It’s really kinda simple.

Bottom line, good customer service is a two-way street. It requires the service person to be friendly and polite, but it also requires the customer to be friendly and polite. At the very least it requires that both parties interact enough to make sure things go smoothly. I realize it’s a lost art, but using manners is a good start to better customer service, on both sides.

Knowledge vs Opinion

I was driving my son to school this morning, and had the radio on the local NPR station. Yes, I listen to NPR. Get over it. Anyhow, the leading news story was that fashion designer Lily Pulitzer Rousseau died recently. Sad, yes, especially for her family, but not overly interesting to me. For those who do not recognize the name, she is famous for designing bright, colorful clothing with floral prints, paisley, stripes, and such. Not my taste, but apparently she was able to turn a side hobby into a booming career. Good on her. We were half listening to the interviews when the story ended with, “Also, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away on Monday.”

I was surprised. Not about Ms. Thatcher dying, although that is sad. What irritated me is the leading story was not about a prominent, albeit former, world political figure dying but instead about a fashion designer. Now, to be fair, NPR did follow through with a story about Thatcher’s life in politics. Still, placing such an iconic, influential person after a fashion designer only emphasized something my son had said the night before: Our society values opinions more than knowledge.

I will veer from my normal rants and not talk politics as such. Instead, I have to comment on how our society has fallen from the bright future of knowledge we once foresaw to the obsession we now have with image. Going through the line in the grocery store, we are bombarded with information about celebrities and their antics, as well as stories on how to improve our image and make people think better about us. We can find articles on make-up, hair, clothing, diets, and a plethora of ways to make ourselves appear better to others. We have become a vain society.

When did we go from revering Einstein and other scholars to revering Kardashians and other rich, spoiled, talentless people? Why have we become so obsessed with image rather than knowledge? Part of it, I believe, is because of the decline in education. Over the past few decades there has been a push to let children through school regardless of grades. Anyone familiar with “No Child Left Behind”? Unfortunately, this allowed some children to graduate high school with little ability to read comprehensively. I realize it also enabled some with learning disabilities to progress more than they would have otherwise, and that is good. However, many schools are not equipped to work with learning disabilities and so just ignore them. The curriculum has been downgraded to make things easier for children, while more emphasis has been placed on participation in athletics. Latin used to be taught in high schools. Now many high school students can barely speak English as a first language. Rather than push children to expand their minds, we have allowed them to grow stagnant in order to not make them feel bad for not knowing their multiplication tables.

As these children grow physically, their mental abilities are not focused or encouraged enough. More emphasis is placed on physical appearance and ability. The star athlete, the head cheerleader, these are the school heroes rather than the head of the honor roll. Once out of school, this emphasis continues in the working world. Dress right and you get promoted. Wear your hair a certain way to attract a man. Everything is about appearance and making others like you more. No more does the intelligent child become the prominent employee. Now the favored ones are the well dressed, well-manicured, pretty people who use more body than brain to get ahead. Is it any wonder, then, that we have become a society so enamored with opinion rather than knowledge? Is it any wonder, then, that a news report about a fashion designer would take precedence over a news report about a political figure?

Marriage.... what's the big deal?

The Supreme Court of the United States is hearing testimony today on two cases that ban same-sex marriage. One is Proposition 8 from California that makes same-sex marriage illegal. The second is the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which claims that marriage is supposed to be nothing but one man and one woman.

The problem with these two items is that they are highly discriminatory. In this era of supposed equal rights for all, we are still a long way from actually having equal rights. There are far too many people still judging, still discriminating, still hating others based on the most trivial of reasons. By trivial, I mean they have no good reason for their bias.

I have asked many times for any non-Biblical reason why same-sex marriage should not be allowed. I have to date heard one. That argument is that the dictionary states marriage is one man and one woman. Unfortunately, the dictionary was written initially in a time when marriage was just that: one man and one woman. Of course, arranged marriages were common, as were forced marriages, but that’s irrelevant. Definitions for many things have changed over years of usage. The definition of marriage should be updated to be more inclusive rather than staying in the Middle Ages.

Many people are against same-sex marriage because they believe it is wrong, according to the Bible. Let me say, before I counter this argument, that what you believe is up to you, no matter how hateful it is. You’re entitled to believe it to be true, just as I am entitled to believe it to be false. That being said, the argument using the Bible is extremely biased.

Yes, there are passages in the Bible which can be used to make the argument that homosexuality is wrong. There are also passages in the Bible that say women are supposed to be subservient to men, that Saturday is the correct day for worship, and that eating pigs is wrong. I don’t see these passages being touted. Sadly, many who use the Bible as their sole basis for being discriminatory are unfamiliar with the entire Bible. They pick and choose what they want to follow, discarding the rest. They then wear their beliefs as a badge of honor, thrusting it in the face of any who dare disagree with them.

I know many churches will not permit a wedding to be held in that location if one or both of the people getting married is not of that religion or even a member of that particular church. This is fine. Discriminatory, yes, but it is up to those in charge of that particular church to make such decisions. This does not make marriage the sole institution of that church, however, or any church. Marriage is not a religious institution, no matter how badly some want it to be.

As I said, you have the right to believe what you want. I support that fully, no matter how wrong your beliefs may be. That does not give you the right, however, to force others to follow your beliefs. There is no justifiable reason for any law in the United States to be made forbidding same-sex marriage. Religion has been used as a battering ram for racial segregation, for sexual orientation segregation, for any type of discrimination that those wielding it wanted. That doesn’t make it right.

Imagine, for a moment, if someone decided that pork should be banned, because the Bible says we should not eat pork. There goes the Easter ham, there goes the bacon, there goes pork chops. Would you follow that law? What if a law were created based on a religion other than yours, forcing women to wear their hair a certain way, or certain clothing? Would you follow that law? Probably not, because it would be against your beliefs. Yet you expect others to follow your laws because you believe them to be right? How arrogant are you?

You have the right to not agree with same-sex marriage, or same-sex couples. Absolutely. You do not have the right to tell them they are wrong, or cannot marry. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to agree with it. But you do not have the right or the authority to ban others from liking, participating, or agreeing with it. To believe you do have that right, that power, is arrogant, ignorant, and certainly not based on anything a loving God would do, no matter what religion has been attached to Him.

Why buy the cow...?

So, I feel like I need to voice my opinion on something that is troubling me. No, it’s not a major controversy. At least, it’s not for most of the participants. Still, it bothers me and it seems to be getting worse.

There is a trend, and has been going on for several years now, of man-bashing. And yes, it’s getting worse. Every day I see posts on Facebook about how “Real Men” need to treat women, and how lousy men in general actually are.  Television is full of childish, immature, stupid men being dominated and controlled by highly intelligent, strong willed women and children.

Gone are the days of ‘Father Knows Best’ and ‘My Three Sons’ and other show that had positive male role models. Now we have the bumbling, inept dolts who couldn’t make the right decision if it were the only decision. What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened. Women happened. A few decades ago, men were allowed to be strong and intelligent. Then we were told that things needed to change. Men needed to “get in touch with our feminine side.” Okay, fine, I’m good with that. After all, that leads to equality, right? No.

It got worse. Once women knew they could force men to do whatever they wanted, they took advantage of it. “A woman is allowed to change her mind. It’s a woman’s right.” It became about keeping men guessing and off balance so women could be in control. Women started treating men like children, and men regressed because it’s what the women wanted.  The more men regressed, the worse they were treated. The worse they were treated, the more they regressed.

The problem is, now we have all these women saying such twaddle as “A ‘Real Man’ would treat a woman the same way he wants a boy to treat his daughter” and “A ‘Real Man’ would make sure his woman is taken care of physically, emotionally, and financially” and that whole thing about Boaz and his supposed relatives.

Unfortunately, nothing is being said about how a ‘Real Woman’ should treat a man. I brought this question up, and was asked to prove what a ‘Real Woman’ was. I asked them to show me what a ‘Real Man’ was and was referred back to the nonsense post that originated the question. Many of the same women who post about what a ‘Real Man’ should do then post about what bitches they are and how they don’t care about others and so on.

My thought is, if a woman can act in any manner she chooses, what motivates the man to want to act properly for her? If he must make all these improvements in his life just to please her, and she is not required to improve herself, what’s the point? Sex? Guess again.  He’ll just move on to someone who doesn’t require so much sacrifice unequally.

Ah, equality. There it is. Yes, I know that for years, decades, centuries, women were treated as second-class citizens at best and as property at worst. I’m not denying women have had it rough. What I am saying is that if you want to be treated as equals, you need to work for equality rather than domination. I’m all for equality. If you’re interested in domination, though, move along. I don’t support female domination any more than I support male domination. So if you want men to treat you as special, you need to start treating men better too. It’s a two-way street. You don’t deserve respect until you can show it. If you can’t give me respect, I won’t give you any. Capice?

Weapon of choice....

There is something raging in Washington currently, and I’m not referring to Chris Matthews’ feelings for President Obama. I’m referring to the battle on gun control. Following the recent wave of gun-related violence, particularly the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, most Liberals and even some Moderates are calling for stricter gun control laws, up to and including the banning of all private gun ownership. There are a couple problems with this, though.

First, we have the Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment. According to Archives.gov, this amendment reads thus:  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. This means the government cannot by law take away private gun ownership. It can be restricted, certainly, and monitored, but not taken away.

Just for clarification, since this seems to be something many people are fuzzy on, Dictionary.com defines a militia as “a body of citizen soldiers as distinguished from professional soldiers” as well as “a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies.” This means the National Guard is a militia, as are the Reserves. Are these men and women required to provide their own weapons? No. Still, many do own weapons privately. And yes, those people we read about in the news who call themselves militia are in fact militia by definition.

“But,” I hear you cry, “that was back before we had a national military. We don’t need private militia now, so we don’t need private gun ownership!” True, we don’t NEED private gun ownership, and true, it was ratified in 1791 before the US had an official military service. The fact remains that many people still hunt for food to supplement what they buy, or in place of buying meat. It’s not much different from those who go fishing and eat what they catch, just on a bigger scale.

“Okay,” I hear you now saying, “but you don’t need automatic weapons to go hunting!” Again, true. And I’m opposed to using automatic guns for hunting. I find it unsporting. Also, you run the risk of doing more damage to the animal and having less usable meat. Still, who am I to force others to live by my choices? For that matter, who are you to force others to live by your choices?

“But,”  you now declare, “what about all those people, especially children, who are killed by guns? We must do something about it!” Must we? Timothy McVeigh killed 19 children under the age of 6, and didn’t use a gun. He used fertilizer and a rented truck. Those are still legal, just restricted. Anything can be used as a weapon. How many children are killed by drunk drivers each year? Yet driving isn’t illegal, only doing so while drunk or otherwise influenced.

The guns are not the problem. How they are used is the problem. Once upon a time you could walk into any gun store or pawn shop and walk out with a gun and ammunition. Then restrictions were put in place requiring a 3 day wait before one could purchase a gun. I have no problem with this. Odds are if you think you need a gun immediately, you’re probably better off without it. Yes, I know, there are cases where immediate self-defense is needed. I’m not arguing that. If you’re being abused, you should be able to defend yourself. I’m merely saying that in most cases a gun is not needed immediately.

I also have more respect for the US military than to think they would blindly follow orders to turn on the very citizens they are sworn to defend. I know it has happened in other countries, and it is not outside the realm of possibility. However, I believe it is highly unlikely that the GI’s and other regular military personnel will follow those orders. I don’t believe we will need to defend ourselves from the grunts as much as we need to defend ourselves from the politicians and those in power who never see the front lines. Most of us are familiar with the concept of management making decisions based on what looks good on paper regardless of how practical it is in application. The same principle would apply here.

When all is said and done, however, I still believe we as United States citizens have the right given to us by our founding fathers to own guns privately. I do agree there are some who should not have them, but who gets to decide? Do we say you can’t have one if you’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness? What about those who are never diagnosed, or misdiagnosed? Taking away the right to bear arms opens the door for the removal of other rights, such as the right to not suffer unreasonable search and seizure, or the right to freedom of speech. Rather than blithely take away this right, perhaps a bit more restraint should be used by those in charge, and a bit more logic and common sense. We have laws in place. Making new ones won’t force those who break laws to suddenly follow the new ones. It only affects those of us who try to follow the existing laws. So before overreacting, stop and think. If you don’t agree with gun ownership, fine. Don’t own one. But who are you to take away my right to own one?