| 9/15/2006 A Bad Day at Work I've had better days at work. I knew things weren't going well when a driver behind me honked because I had braked for a group of deer walking across the road. I guess it would have been better if I had simply run down the small one. I knew the guy was upset because he later offered a hand signal as he sped away – the usual action from a coward. • Lately, the operator has been sending all Web-related calls to me. This one began badly by demanding to speak with someone "higher up" because they were tired of being passed around. The call started off badly because the woman wouldn't explain what her problem was. I listened patiently to her complain for a few minutes, while she mangled the name of a reporter who had interviewed her for several hours over the course of a week. She was trying to get a copy of a multimedia slideshow that we had run on the site. It isn't as simple as copying files to a CD. You have to build an HTML page and then embed the show into that page. I doubt the woman will know what to do with the CD when she receives it. In any case, the person who was supposed to do this works a different shift, and I had no answer whether he had put this into the mail. Then she started in with the whine: "If I called Richard Scaife, he certainly would get to the bottom of this." Richard Scaife owns the competitor newspaper, and what he had to do with her problem is beyond me. So I told her that she could call our editor, but I doubt he would even know what the topic was, because I was pulling teeth here to get details. Lots of whining but lacking on information. Then she offers up, "Well, I think you're sarcastic too." And like most cowards – she ran away. That is, she hung up the phone not long after. • On the bus home, I noticed an unhappy motorcyclist in his 20s displaying his middle finger to the bus driver. Apparently, the bus wasn't traveling fast enough through a construction zone, and once out, it was time for him to display his juvenile displeasure. He wanted to make a left turn, but the turn signal wasn't changing quickly enough, so he sped to the next intersection where he made an illegal U-turn against the light. I'm sure that he saved himself at least 30 seconds by doing this. What a cowardly idiot. • I'm glad all days aren't like this. |