The Age of Entitlement or Why Your Hot Chocolate Will Now Be Served Lukewarm

So I'm in McDonald's getting breakfast.  This guy comes up to the counter with 2 cups and 2 individual little bowls of milk.  He says  "This is too hot.  I burned my tongue" and looks at the server as if she is personally responsible for his burnt tongue and is awaiting resolution.

I notice that he is using a straw.  What kind of hot beverage do you drink with a straw?  I'm thinking they must have made a mistake and put a hot beverage when he asked for a cold one.

The server asks what he order and he explains hot chocolate - but its too hot.  The server says "Oh you wanted chocolate milk".  She turns to tell the original server that the order was done wrong.  He interjects that he did want hot chocolate just that this is too hot and it burned his tongue.  The original server explains that is why she gave him two saucers of milk to add to cool it down. 

He doesn't want milk.

The other server offers to put ice in it.

He doesn't want ice.

He wants a new one made warm.

The server explains that there is no way to control the temperature of the hot chocolate because the machine automatically heats the milk so that its hot.  But she can add some cold milk when she makes it if he agrees.

He doesn't agree but doesn't disagree either.  He seems to be leaving the door open incase when she remakes it it is still too hot.

Two servers trying to please one customer with different offers which are rejected is ridiculous.  I turn to him and say "You do know you are in McDonald's?".  He says "that's not the point".

Actually it was the wrong point and I realized after I sat down and hoped he came over to bitch me out.  The point is you are a young man.  You can take the lid off and let the hot chocolate cool to its perfect temperature.  You can add ice.  You can add cold milk.  You can stop being a crybaby 6 year old and man up.  It is time to take responsibility for yourself and your desires.  It is not the underpaid staff's responsibility to customize their menu to suit your straw sucking needs.  In short - put on your big boy underwear.

This my dear readers is why we can't have nice things.  Someone will always find it too hot or too cold.  It used to be we understood that we were customers and that the customers is always right BUT we also understood that we would not ask for things which were not realistic.  I expect my Big Mac to be put together properly and not slopping around in the container and I have no problem with someone holding up the line to have one properly prepared.   But we do not have the right to demand off menu items.  Lukewarm chocolate is not on the menu.

Now I will admit a prejudice.  If this had been an old cranky man I would have let it go.  My father was cranky before his time and as you can see I'm not far behind...

Acer Rant Chapter 1

I know that I have been remiss in writing on my blog!  But now I have something I need to write down so I have it recorded and I may as well share it here....

My IBM Thinkpad is pooching out.  No worries we bought a used replacement.  Didn't realize that the company that we had relied on for so long was actuallyclosing a week or so after we bought it.  They unloaded a Dell on us thta did not have enough memory.  I   I was ready to scrap it if memory would cost to much but C went ahead.  Well the computer worked like a dream with the new memory - though the overall design is pretty cheap compared to the Thinkpad.

Well - it just pooched out less than a week later.  The hard drive has crashed and I don't think there is any point in even doing more diagnostics then what I have done.  So we are going to try to at least recover the price of the memory from the tech - we have given him enough business in the past.  In the meantime I see an ACER netbook on sale at Best Buy online.

Now I usually walk away from these deals because I figure they are loss leaders - they won't have any and they will try to upsell me.  But it looked like a good deal and I checked around the Internet and the overall feedback was generally good.  We need easy access to email and Internet and something to take notes on.  Then we can reinvest in getting the old desktop up to snuff.

It comes today and C plugs it in.

It automatically goes into something called eRecovery.  This doesn't make sense to me but I'm not too up on these things.  An hour later it is stuck on a file and not doing anything.  I reboot - same thing again.

I go online on the rickety desktop and manage to register the netbook so I can call customer service and see what is up.  You know where this is going -

The customer service voice mail is infuriating.  "She" keeps asking me for a Serial Number that is located on the "label".  I keep giving it to her but she doesn't like it.  Its only supposed to be 11 numbers and mine is much longer.  I repeat "Operator" in varying tones of anger but "she" refuses.  She will not let me talk to an operator as there is a charge to speak to customer service if I do not have a SN.  I can call the other 1-800 line and speak to a service representative for a fee.  Yah, right.  I call her a bitch - pissed that I'm calling a computer anything and hang up.

After taking the battery out of the netbook I find a SNID number which I can also use.  I call "her" back.  She recognizes my phone number and does away with the small talk except to ask me for the SN/SNID.  Finally!  I am put through to a customer service agent.

I'M NOT DUTCH!

Sorry for yelling, but I'm not Dutch.

I have served in my church for six years and in that time there has been a lot of work to try to move the congregation away from describing the church as Dutch but to recognize that there are other cultural traditions present and that newcomers are unlikely to be Dutch.

So why is it on a day where we are preaching Ephesians which is a book which talks of the unity of Christians under Christ and the day when we take our monthly communion with all the saints that have gone before us that partway through the sermon the preacher refers to "our Dutch work ethic"?

Huh? I guess that is different then my Canadian work ethic, or my Christian work ethic? If I stook up in church and referred to my white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) work ethic we would quickly see how exclusionary that is.

That's not as bad as the evening service where I was told that we should be up in arms because our university appointed a Muslim in charge of Muslim Studies. Nope, not UofT or York or even Calvin but the University of Amsterdam!

What on earth is the "Dutch work ethic"? I'll have to Google it.

Eat at McDonald's Day

Okay, here is my solution to my rant. I want to get a group of people to come to the specified McDonald's and everyone special order. My special order is Big Mac, half sauce no lettuce. Richard likes Big Mac extra sauce no pickles - and he is a freak about the ice in the pop. If I can get 20 people to randomly trickle in with these special orders I can bring the McDonald's Corporation to its knees. Only when Nahid is working though.

At least I got served - but then again I have arms: check this out:
http://www.wrex.com/News/index.php?ID=19532

McDonald's Rant

Look at this order:

1 Bacon Angus Meal
1 6 Nuggets Meal
1 Big Mac Special Order Meal
1 Big Mac Meal
3 Qtr Cheese Burger Meal
2 McChicken Meal
1 4 Nugget Happy Meal
9 Medium Fry
3 Medium Ice Tea
1 Medium Sprite No Ice
1 Medium Sprite
1 Medium Coke No Ice
1 Medium Diet Coke
2 white milk
1 chocolate milke

Total 65.88

There are a total of 10 meals here. However, this order totally caused chaos at our McDonald's at 9:30 p.m. There was no one else in line and at least 7 staff on. After putting in the order the shift manager had to put in a code to authorise it. She made a comment about the length of time it would take while she did that. She then was at the other cash telling a customer - its going to be half-an-hour if you want to order anything - like my whole screen is full. She also made a comment that she needed "8: fries.

I finally had enough at that point and demanded to know what the issue was. The clerk serving us tried to say that the other girl didn't mean anything by it, its just a big order. She chimes in "yeah, its a big order". So I'm like, what's the deal with telling people that our order is causing others to wait half an hour? She indicates that the other customer is an employee. And again, its a large order. And I say yeah, and we just paid 65 bucks for it.

Crappy customer service is my biggest peeve - for one simple reason - its usually because the person does not have the decency to be polite. We were originally going to go through the drive through because we felt bad unleashing 3 teens, 2 pre teens and 2 children onto the restaurant. But we figured this would be far better than trying to coordinate the orders through the drive through.

Then another staff member, to make a point, says "I have never seen an order this big since I started here two years ago". Huh, its ten blasted meals! I'm not ordering Peking Duck for 30 - I'm ordering s**t on a bun. Microwave it and throw it between a bun. I'm ordering 9 orders of fries - stick the basket in the oil and pop them out!

I've been in McDonald's at lunchtime when offices have put there orders in and they have had to use a separate cash and workers because the order is large.

Anyhow, I'm pissed. I'm pissed that we are paying to eat crap on a bun and instead of being pleased that we are eating there we are throwing off their routine. In fact, we would have been pleased to do the orders in sets of three if it would have helped.

I just hate inconveniencing retailers with my business!

When To Speak Up

I went to this thing tonight at the church - it was supposed to be a place to learn about Judaism in light of the fact that we have many Jews living in our neighbourhood.

It was presented by someone who did not have first hand knowledge about Judaism but had been selected because of his role in the denomination to be a presenter.

The teaching process was that rather than tell us about Judaism we were to reflect in groups what we already knew about Judaism. The questions were:

practices and observations
similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity
what is important to Jewish people

Rather then be taught these things we reflected on them in a group setting. I thought I knew very little about Judaism so was interested in learning - instead I received a hodge podge of individual thoughts - some of them very negative and many of them totally out of context.

I heard so many disrespectful things at my table that I could not remain silent - yet that seems to be the preferred response. Stay silent, be gracious. This frustrates me I have been criticized before for being too vocal so I'm trying to be quiet.

I wasn't raised this way - I was raised to challenge ignorance, not to condemn the speaker but to challenge the thinking. I was raised that to let people speak poorly of another group without facts or in context is racism and that it can not go unchallenged.

That the church would choose to let people say whatever they think about Judaism rather than teach us about Judaism is a strange choice. Can there be anything less useful then a bunch of Christians sitting around talking about something we know nothing about? And this isn't the first time - I sat through a session where the parishioner chosen to speak on an issue told us we needed to be very cautious because the Muslims are "infiltrating" Canada - that they are coming here to take over our beliefs (Christian) and to make Canada Muslim. I was angry at this - I have worked with Muslims who have been so grateful to come to Canada and they never pushed their beliefs on me but always took the time to explain their practices if asked.

So now I am torn, I really think that the discussion was unfit for outsiders to hear - I would have been very embarassed if a non-Christian or Jew was sitting in our discussion because we really came off showing our ignorance without learning from it. But when I say things I get the "look". We are taking another stab at Islam next week - I don't know whether to avoid it or go.

Its Our Fault When Church Sucks

For all you non-church goers out there I apologize on behalf of those of us who should know better.

Christians like other real people fight. They disagree, they sometimes vent their anger inappropriately - some of them even are downright mean in how they express themselves. If you see that happening know that that is reality and that it happens in good families as well as in good churches.

What people outside the church need to know is that it is how individuals in a church deal with the issues that matter. Good leaders should be spiritual leaders and able to negotiate the choppy waters of discord. Mature Christians should be able to assist both sides in building bridges
Stop bitching about your church and work to heal the corner you sit in - then cross the room to the other side and do it again.

Church Rant

I haven't really gotten around to calling people, havent'really wanted to talk about it.

I'm bummed with my hunt for a church. Now I have to be careful with this because many of the people reading this are waiting for me to give them a good reason not to think about God and church and all that.

But church is a bunch of people. Just like at a bar. Ian hangs with people at the bar and they have discussions, fall outs and politics. Don't get him started about the darts group! Bars are more tolerable because even if you don't drink you can laugh at the ones who do. But church is crazy because we think it should be different. Of course it should, the people should be kinder and more loving to one another. And for the most part we are better than the average bar - because if we are authentic you see us at our worst - when we are ourselves - or like the nice guy who gets obnoxious after a few beers. Yet we keep coming back to see each other.

The problem is that the church building and its people do a lousy job of advertising what the whole point of showing up is. Without God, church would be hell. A bunch of people that you wouldn't want to sit next to on the bus singing together, meeting and making decisions together and discussing important topics like religion together. Its like one long day at work without the salaries and the risk of losing a job to keep everyone in line and there is no retirement to look forward to.

That's what you need to know about church. We are there, most of us anyways, because we love God and church is where we go to worship him and tell him how we feel about him and what he has done in our lives. It makes no sense to someone who doesn't love God how anyone could stand going to church. Just like those freaky beauty pageants for three year olds make absolutely no sense to those of us who see them for the very scary demented hobby that they are.

Yes, there are people in church who haven't experienced God personally. I admire them for showing up every week because they think they should. But the majority of us are there because we have to be there - its where we belong and we just have to learn how to love each other.

My frustration is that the very institution that is used to gather those who worship God is not geared for people who want to find out about religion. There are shops in Bayview Village that I would never have the courage to look in - I don't have the style, the figure or the cash. Why would I expect people who don't know God want to come into church and poke around? Well, I don't. So my frustration isn't with church and the politics - its with what I can't seem to get done with church.

I am ready to go out and be Christ's hands and feet and hopefully say some things that he would approve of in an effort to let people know how loving God is and how this crazy stuff I believe is so true to me. But I don't know how to do it by myself and I can't seem to find a church ready to do it with me.

So while I sort this out, I'm quiet about church and my calling. I'm trying to get my head together which means listening for God's leading. I'm sure I'm a paradox to many of you - you see how passionate I am and frustrated at the same time. It's not church or God - its trying to fit it all together.

I design clothes for the dead.

While lurking around the Internet looking for funeral related t-shirts and stuff for a relative in Holland, I came across a whole industry I was unaware of. Burial clothes. Most of the providers of this are offering shrouds and such, some are offering clothing for funeral directors (I always thought they just got that stuff at Sears) but Sindy's Designs offers a whole new perspective. They create clothing that funeral homes can have on hand so the bereaved don't need to go out and buy something if they don't have anything suitable at home.

The bizarre fascination with looking our best for our funeral is a North American thing (with an exception here and there). Its contrived, costly and fools no one though we like to stand around and pretend that Aunt Enid really looks good. I used to have romantic notions of death -Snow White's glass coffin with her perpetual youth encased in it seemed ideal. Looking good requires a bit of manipulation and approaches taxidermy a bit too much for my liking. But if you are worried about having "nothing to wear" check out this site: http://www.sindysdesigns.com/ You can't see the pictures of the merchandise unless you are brave enough to fill in a fabricated identity. But here is a quote:

"I appreciate the quality of the dresses I buy from Sindy's. The colors are so complementary of the colors in the caskets. And the men's suits are complete with tie, etc." Gail Krien, Krien Funeral Home, Davis, Oklahoma

'nough said.

The Summer Of Vicki

Well I graduate I Saturday. So that leaves me with 3 months before things start to get busy with school today. I consider this "the summer of Vicki" which means this is the summer where I hang loose. Last summer my internship and my job took up all of my time. This year my job and some babysitting is a great break from school. Hopefully a little preaching to keep me honest! Nothing creates discipline then being responsible to share God's word with others!

I've got big plans:

Read books that have nothing to do with pastoring or leadership of churches.

Go to the cottage - even on Sundays! This means we get to worship in this little United church that is so positively cute! Very friendly and laid back and lots of people in our cottage area go there.

Get a hobby - I'll probably try watercolouring for fun. Haven't done it in years and was actually a bit better with sketching. Maybe I'll start up sketching.

Cook. Yup, I love to cook when I don't have to. Haven't done this is years either. Hope to do this while I babysit the kids. Its great - I cook up a meal for Karen's family and take enough home for me and Cliff.

August starts up again with camping with Willowdale, the Leadership Summit and my first week in Seminary.

I think I have already written down too much stuff to cram in!

Consumer Rant

I have had the worst customer service - at least three stories worth! The latest is that I went to Zeller's on a break from studying. I like to grab something to eat at the foodcourt at Centrepoint and then look over my notes there - there's lots of background noise and activity which I prefer.

Anyhow, there is a huge display of those boxes of Neilson chocolate - the ones that are Rosebuds, Macaroons, Slowpokes and they are advertised for 1.00. I usually don't buy them unless they are down are 97 cents but I figured if I bought anything else I would pick up a box on my way out the door.

I go through the cash and check my bill and I was charged 1.09. I go back and sure enough the sign says 1.00. What really pisses me is the tax - I bought two boxes so I figure I'll get more than 18 cents back.

I stand in line and I explain to the clerk that the sign says 1.00. She asks me if they are the same product. Now picture this - in front of her cash is a skid of this crap. Its a impulse buy and I can't possibly be the first person to buy this. So I explain that it is the same product. Having determined that I do need a refund she then tells me I have to go to the clerk that sold me the product. This is one line over and there is a lady buying a ton o crap so I'm not to thrilled about this. I ask her what would happen if the clerk had gone home for the day. Oh, well, I really just need to go to that specific cash. I ask her to show me where on my bill it says which cash because this just sounds like bullshit and I wanted to make sure that someone could actually tell which cash I went through before I change lanes. She shows me - I ask her if she realises that this is a stupid policy and she agrees that it is and she doesn't know why its this way.

Anyhow, I'm in the next lane and I have the same conversation. The cashier goes over and takes down the sign (finally someone with some responsibility) and explains to me that the sign was for a sale that ended on the 8th but since the sign was up she will give me the cheaper price. Here is where I really wanted to scream - I was buying this on the 13th. For 5 days they have been overcharging 9 cents a box on an item that is an impulse buy. How can you have a sale item with two signs on it for 5 days and I be the first person to notice. I really want to send a letter to Zellers asking them to pull up all the sales of that product from those cashes and donate the money to charity!