Tis the Season to be Leery

ALERT - You may have been compromised. Anyone starting to get an influx of txt messages and e-mails from major vendors & credit card companies where they send you a message that's a borderline fraud alert stating, “there’s a possibility that you've been compromised.”  So you spring into action and after fighting through 50 minutes of online chat angst, they finally come clean and say, "this may have been part of a promotion." Is it not bad enough that multiple vendors each inundate us four or five times a day with the same sensational “one-time offer” emails?  I haven’t personally crunched the numbers yet, but I have to think after the 3rd offer with the same details being ignored, they have to know it’s time to stop and move on.  

I believe that in desperation, their marketing technique has devolved into nothing short of a series of scare tactics to grab and hold your attention.  They know the one last thing that everyone is leery of, and will pay attention to is: “The Hack” alert.  When you see that message a knot immediately forms in your stomach, and an all-consuming anxiety builds.  Of course if you don't respond in a timely manner and formally deny that you're supporting the Prince of Nigeria's efforts to regain the throne, then you are responsible for those charges.

The best is that at the end of this massive waste of time, your customer service representative asks you over your chat session, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”  I’m incredulous.  They didn’t help me in the first place, if anything; they were the antithesis of help.

My belief is that they can’t be typing that message every time; it has to be a simple pre-programed button they hit that sends that final message.  I also believe that if they don’t hit that button, they lose their jobs.  One for the suggestion box - would it really be too much trouble for them to program a second button?  A button that once pressed says, “I know we’ve wasted half your morning and I apologize for that.  Unfortunately we live in an imperfect world. I’ll raise your issue with my management team and find the responsible party - there will be retribution, I promise you that! But putting all of that aside, is there anything else I can help you with today?”  I don’t think that’s asking too much.  It would also go a long way from stopping me from throwing my phone through a wall when they have the guts to send me a customer satisfaction survey. 

One lesson learned from this is: Shop Locally.  Generally speaking, my experience has been that local customer service reps have more of a…human touch.

The Devil's Vegetable

So as we’ve all read one of the major tenets of quarantine is to take the opportunity to get healthy.  I had heard about the wonders of Celery juice, did some quick research and decided it would be an easy way to “cleanse” the body, improve my clarity, and do wonders for my complexion.  Celery juice is also a natural anti-inflammatory which if you read the current medical journals, chronic inflammation is the cause of 99% of our aliments.  I’m convinced I’ve found a miracle cure.

 

A little history - growing up I wrestled in high school.  Celery was a main staple as we were told that it had negative calories.  Also, we were told that the chewing motion of eating celery would burn off additional calories AS we got filled up – a win win!  And if you fill a celery stalk with peanut butter, cream cheese or cake it with salt, it actually tastes pretty good.  As much as it’s been a scary number of years since I graduated high school, this was still the culinary delight I expected.  

 

This was not the case with celery juice. I completely misjudged.  Celery, also known as “The Devil’s Vegetable” – is exactly what it tastes like.  But before the gag-fest begins, you start your day with 24 oz. of lemon water (one lemon a day, cut up and squeeze it into glasses of water.)  Fifteen minutes after the pucker fest, the Celery juice.  I thought celery juice might be in the food store in a jar.  It is not.  Instead, I opted to go to the local Dean’s health food store and pay a ridiculous amount of money to have them make the poison for me.  It takes a whole set of stalks to make the required 24 oz. of Celery juice.  That’s a lot of celery to swallow.  I liken it to the prep pack for a colonoscopy, with the same results.  But yet another benefit of being quarantined in your home.

 

After gaging down the Celery juice you can’t have any animal or vegetable fats till about noon.  The idea is to give your liver a chance to do it’s cleaning magic uninterrupted.  So no bacon and eggs, no milk products…  Just fruit or granola with no milk..   Oh and no coffee in the morning either.  Not painting a pretty picture?…

 

Forgetting about the digestive mayhem this has caused, nobody told me that you’d feel like crap until after the fourth day.  I naturally gave up after the forth day and moved to a place where Celery juice can’t be had.   My wife on the other hand has kept up the regiment and rejoined me last week.  Outside of her new Incredible Hulk-like complexion, which is freaking me out, she seems great.

Bad Habits of Quarantine

So with the new world of quarantine and virtual connectivity, my normal face to face job has been dehumanized to connecting with people over the phone or the digitized image of myself shoulders up.  The latter has proven to be a bit of a slippery slope for me.

I’ve taken quarantine very seriously.  I haven’t shaved in over 2 months and I can’t remember where my comb is.  I won’t go into how many days I’ve worn the same clothes but someone just saw a picture of me and thought I was a hostage.  There are very few things I’m still good at, one is growing a beard.  When I was much younger…much much younger, I had blonde hair and a red beard.  That red beard is now white…like Santa Claus White.  My red suit is on order and I’m figuring that for my second act I’ll work one month a year and spread some cheer. 

This look can be a good thing and a bad thing.  I decided I needed something from our local Walgreens store.  I have my new uniform on…sweat pants and flannel shirt.  As I park in front of the Walgreens I look down at my chest and lap and notice that it looks as though my clothes have been hosting a cheese fondue party.  I do my best to pick the cheese off (no I did not eat the aged cheese, but the thought did cross my mind.) but ultimately decided with my new costume and mask, no one will recognize me and I head in.  Instead of getting a basket or a cart (for fear of contracting said virus) I opted to carry the few items I needed in my arms.  This was fine until my eyes were bigger than my arms.  At one point I kept dropping items on the floor to the point where a middle aged woman felt compelled to help me with my ever tumbling packages.  I fought her off for a while feeling somewhat insulted, then decided, hey would Santa accept help?  Sure he would.

When you normally have to dress professionally for work and go to see customers, the gift of not having to get dressed can become problematic.  My company has standardized on the video conferencing product that runs on your laptop called, Zoom.  To protect my new way of life, I have made it a point to not turn on the live video camera during customer Zoom sessions.  The new me is not pleasing to the eye and definitely not customer friendly.  Unfortunately one of my younger teammates had arranged a Zoom meeting with one of our customers from Puurs, Belgium.  Since they’re seven hours ahead of us the meeting was earlier in the morning.  As we kicked off the call, my associate says, “Steve, I’m not sure if you’ve been formally introduced to Vilma, why don’t you introduce yourself.”  That would have been fine but both my associate and Vilma have their cameras on and without thinking too much, I patted the top of my hair and turned my camera on…forgetting I was still in my Incredible Hulk pajamas.  It gets better, when I turn the camera on, not only can other people see me, but I can see myself on the screen.  I’m now staring at the disheveled; Cheerios stuck in the beard chaos that is my new look.  After that, all I can remember is blabbering about what an idiot I am and how I bring no value to any meeting unless it involves cheese.

The moral of the story is, Stay Vigilant, this will be over soon and people might recognize you.

Work From Home - The Practice Session

So in February I had a business trip in San Diego.  I stayed at a nice hotel for three days, had great weather, and my employer footed the bill - all good stuff.  The first morning my internal clock went off at 4AM, and after staring at the ceiling for 15 minutes I decided to get out of bed.  It was still pitch black out and I wasn’t ready for an all-on light show in my room, so I groped around and found the clothes I had on the day before and recycled them.  Since the hotel restaurant didn’t open for breakfast until 6AM, I decided to get some work done.  With only the small desk lap on, I stumbled around the hotel room looking for my black computer bag.  Laptop was found and without uttering too many four-letter words I was able to log onto the hotel’s wifi system.  Then my next task was to negotiate my way through the myriad of security warnings and trick questions to ensure I was who I said I was.  But yet another example of the new normal.  I’m now into my company’s online work environment and I quickly get into my typical mind numbing, heads down work zone.   I come up for air and notice it’s 6:15AM – time for breakfast.  I grab my wallet and room key and head out the door.  As I’m leaving I check to make sure I have a shirt and pants on.  That would be embarrassing if I missed that, right?  I go to the counter where they seat you and in a happy to be in warm SoCal tone I say, “One Please.”  As I’m having my coffee, I notice I’m getting strange looks from the other patrons coming in.  I can’t imagine anyone is remembering yesterday’s clothes and just let it go.   I finish breakfast and head back to my hotel room.  I walk into the room and stroll past the full-length mirror on the sliding door of the closet.  I get a quick view of my head, actually my hair that almost caused me to trip over the bed.  You see over the years the once proud legion of hair on my head has deserted me.  The mob that’s left is a bunch of renegades that have minds of their own.  So during breakfast, at the public restaurant, I was sporting a hair do that any punk rock band would have been proud of.

Moving forward, I now work from home “WFH” like many.  My laptop is now my everything.  I do admin work on it.  I do calls from it.  I watch seminars on it.  I have internal and customer meetings on it using video tools like ZOOM and WebEx.  I currently have a piece of tape covering my laptop camera.  I’d like to say it’s a privacy thing, but the real situation is that like my San Diego trip, I now have trouble separating coffee time from hygiene time from work time from remember to put my clothes on time.  That and I have not shaved in about 20 days.  I once upon a time tried to hike the Appalachian Trail.  My new trail name will have to be, ”Kringle” as in Kris.  So the camera stays off for now…so as not to scare people.

What I’ve found helps make WFH less morose is to call friends and catch up.  So if you used to call folks once a month, call them once a week.  That and I’m instituting a new weekly ritual.  It’s called the Friday Night Oil Can…in honor of Fosters Lager.  It’s a large con call to get caught up, but no discussions about work.  Stay Healthy.