At first I thought it was just a complicated order he was inputting for the couple that was in front of me. As the man stood talking to the order taker pictured above he pawed his girlfriend and squeezed her and generally acted like he was NOT in public. Turned out he and the Tender Greens dude were just buddies catching up on old times.

Finally, the customer (not the order taker who should have known better) said, OK, let’s see, I’d like…
OMG you mean you were just having a friendly conversation while you watched other customers standing and waiting? Nice. Bye now.

My friend was horrified that this woman was telling this story loudly at Trader Joe’s – and frankly, the only reason I’m posting it is so that someone who works with the tall, butch-haircutted woman might identify her to her bosses so they can teach her a little bit about keeping her big mouth shut when talking on her cell phone in public.

The only Cellphone Exhibitionist who beats this one so far is the man who was discussing a comatose organ donor while eating at the UCLA medical center cafe.

I assume the woman at Trader Joe’s wanted everyone to think she was really important – she knows the inside scoop on poor Paula. I tend to suspect that people who talk loudly on cell phones about Hollywood business are pretty freaking LOW on the totem pole so to speak – so they need to blab in public because they think it makes them look “important.”

I have one of Verizon’s PDAs – the XV6700 – and I just hate it. I have hated it for almost a year now. The battery life is pathetic, so I bought an extended-life battery, which makes the phone feel like a damn brick. The battery cover slips off sometimes too. I was so fed up with it today, I decided to stop into my local Verizon store (where I have bought my other phones) to see about changing. I was fully prepared to pay full retail, even though they must be smoking crack to think these phones are really worth $400 when they are largely made in China. The full-retail price is a scam.

The gal at the door put my name on “The List” for customer service. No other names were ahead of me. The two agents were busy with customers. I looked at phones, read all the specs, and my hair grew about half an inch while waiting patiently for them to finish up. One did, then took a phone call. The gal with “The List” told me I’d be next right after the phone call. I’m not sure why I came after the phone call when I was on “The List” before the call came in. I watched this guy wander across the store – I gather for more information for the person on the other end of th ephone. He wandered across like he had cement in his shoes, very casual and relaxed. Now I’m starting to get irritated.

Out of the back of the store comes some other guy who stands around looking bored and generally useless. Maybe it wasn’t his job to take care of customers (ironically, he’s probably the freaking manager). The guy on the phone hangs up, wanders over to the bored guy and they start casually chatting.
Enough. That was 45 minutes of waiting. I told the girl with “The List” that I was leaving because they seem more interested in casual conversation than in customers. She nods and says, “Ok.”

OK?

OK.

I defected from AT&T some years ago because of their poor customer service, now Verizon Wilreless is imitating that poor customer service. With the iPhone coming out soon – a very attractive temptation – and only Cingular getting the exclusive – they should be particularly cautious about alienating customers.

UPDATE: Dumped Verizon for AT&T and the iPhone

Someone named George called this woman who appeared to be in her late 50s – or she could be younger but have had a lot of sun exposure because she referred often during the conversation to “paddling or biking.”
She started out by saying, “I was just thinking about you. Last night I think it was.” She seemed to be hedging about some plans – like maybe she was supposed to call him back but didn’t. Her excuse? “I thought maybe I’d bump into you.”

Apparently the plans were for tonight, but she couldn’t really do it because she is taking care of a neighbor’s dog, a Yorkie – what she described as “a pain in the ass.” She has to walk HER dog separately because the yorkie is too small and can’t keep up with her dog.

She thought about doing whatever next week, but then realized she can’t because she has yoga all next weekend.

The conversation continued for a while, with lots of responses of “Cool” on her end. George is apparently on a diet, but had some problems that must have been gross because the lady kept saying “Ew.” and then later said, “Oh my gosh.” I’m thinking really bad puking and diarrhea were being discussed.

Then she chimed in that they should get together because she “can’t eat anything either” as she is cutting down on salt and trying to lower her cholesterol. She is going to try a new fiber – Benefiber – because she heard it is really good to bring your cholesterol down.

More “ews” on her part as she listened to the fellow named George. Apparently he wanted to tell her more about his recent digestive problems. The conversation moved to flax seed oil. She thought that sounded interesting and planned to try it possibly.

She suddenly shifted the conversation to a plastic boat she’s selling. “It’s a good boat. It’s got a, whaddayacallit on the back, a rudder!” (LOL).

She only wanted $400 for the boat. “I paid 5. I think I’ll throw in a paddle. Not my good one, a cheap one I bought.”

[FYI - She mentioned she might be putting this boat on Craig's List - so if you see it for $500 you will know there is some negotiating room and you can bargan her down to 400.]

She told George she’s sorry he’s been ill and hopes they can do some paddling or biking soon. (She asks him if they all ate at the same restaurant, which makes me think the “ew” discussion was about a case of food poisoning.)

George has kids apparently – she asked about them. They decided that they would try to go bike riding in two weeks, and the conversation ended.

Thank you. Now I can read my paper in peace.

Now I am on hold for the fourth person to try to fix the issue – their system basically does not recognize me no matter what I do. Of course, no surprise, their billing system has had NO PROBLEM recognizing me and billing me each month.

This really should be one of those things where they credit you for a month of service because the long holds, the inability to fix the problem, and the continued issue time after time makes me feel like they should reimburse me for my time wasted on this idiocy.

It’s funny too – because they walk you through all the same things – even when you tell them, not gonna work, tried it, uh uh, not that, won’t work.

If I had used that email for my credit cards, personal websites etc I would have been crying the past few weeks. I feel sorry for anyone who was screwed by this email problem with Time Warner. Comcast really was an amazing company – and I am sorry to see them leave the area.

My father was first at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater – which is the hospital he worked in for many years – it’s a wonderful place with pleasant staff and amazing customer service.

Tampa General does have great doctors and nurses, but they have serious customer service problems with some of their staff. I call it a customer service problem because anytime staff acts in such a way that is negative for the patient (customer), it is essentially poor customer service. I believe any company or institution that approaches the culture of their organization from a customer service perspective can solve a myriad of problems, including the potential for lawsuits.

My father reported to us a number of stories of staff swearing at each other in the hallways – this seemed awfully unprofessional so I figured it was maybe an isolated event. Then one day while visiting I experience this completely unprofessional behavior. An assistant or tech of some sort in the hallway said, “I’m not disconnecting nothing – that’s not my job, that’s BULLSHIT!” She then proceeded to complain for a few minutes in a hostile tone with all sorts of vulgarities tossed in.

My dad looked at me and nodded and said, “That’s what I’m talking about. It goes on all the time.” I was shocked!

I immediately knew what the problem was: the insitution’s culture. All entities – whether it be a mega-corporation, a nonprofit, or a hospital – has a culture. You can think of it as a micro-society. Culture is influenced by many things – such as the rules of the “society,” the positive reinforcement for following those rules, the extra reward for going above and beyond the “society’s” expectations, and negative consequences when you defy the rules.

Essentially, customer service works from the inside out – if you have a negative internal culture, it seeps out to the “visiting foreigners” (in this setting, the patient), either by how they are treated (from impatient to downright hostile) or what they are subjected to (angry employees yelling bullshit in the hallways while you are trying to heal).

When you expect employees to treat each other with respect, and create incentives to treat each other with dignity (and help out when needed even if it ain’t your job), they become that culture – and they naturally treat their customers/patients with this same respect and dignity.
Case in point:

My father did not understand the alarm cord in the bathroom – he though you pulled it and it would do something – so he pulled it a few times thinking it wasn’t working.

Now if you had this happen and were a healthcare professional – you might think – whoah! Is someone in serious trouble? But not in this case – the woman came barrelling in furious – basically angry he pulled it more than once. Whoah, Nelly! That is no way to treat someone who has had life-saving surgery and is feeling weak and vulnerable. But this “professional” was used to treating her fellow employees poorly with inpugnity – the obvious extension of that is to treat all people in her work environment poorly. My father said even when he apologized she simply would not accept it – he pissed her off and that was that. Yikes! That is not someone who belongs in a hospital full of sick, vulnerable people!

Tampa General Hospital is in desperate need of what is traditionally called “Internal Customer Service” – a set of guidelines that helps employees know what is expected of them and gives them ways to reward EACH OTHER when they feel someone has shown exceptional customer service toward another employee. The company I work for uses “scratcher cards” – which you hand to a fellow employee to thank them for being especially helpful or positive. They scratch off a gold seal and see points or some reward which they can redeem in the company store. The feeling of good will this elicits is really wonderful – and the interesting thing is that it feels better to give than receive. It feels great to walk up to a fellow employee and say, “You really were great today – you took care of that request so quickly and really helped me out, so I’d like to give you a token of my appreciation.”

The feeling you get from recognizing your fellow workers starts to permeate the workplace, and soon the idea of saying, ‘That’s bullshit – I’m not doing that.” goes against your grain. You have created a positive customer service culture.

Various things can be used to remind people of this culture – from posters to games to pep rallies of a sort. It takes about a year for the culture to start to show significant changes. Usually the negative people feel more and more marginalized and eventually no longer feel comfortable – they either leave the culture by quitting or find ways to change and be part of the culture.

Tampa General would do well by its staff and its patients if it created an internal customer service initiative to deal with the high level of negative employee behavior in its hospital corridors. The benefits are great – it becomes a nice place to work so you get far less turnover of healthy employees and you also are less likely to get sued. Face it – it is a lot harder to sue people you like than a faceless hospital with nasty and hostile employees!

1. A person must manually approve each one. How annoying is this?
2. It implies that you don’t trust people. I want to see if you read my e-mail! I want proof!
3. Some might say, you can set your Outlook to automatically send the receipt each time. Well, experience web folks know this is a bad idea because you could be sending confirmation to spammers/junk mail people that you received their unsolicited offer.

My new policy is to simply deny all of these return receipt requests. For others who are bothered by this cumbersome even insulting request, this is how you do this. In Outlook go to Tools > Options > Email Options > Tracking Options. Under how to respond to requests for read receipts, check off “never respond”.

While folks may now “believe” I am not reading their email, the truth is, I am simply not deciding my work processes based on their paranoid need for confirmation. As someone who gets upwards of 100 emails a day (and that’s on a light day), I don’t have time to send this little security blanket to everyone.

Yesterday this woman was doing this outside the Pavillion’s in Culver City. She wanted everyone all up in her business it seems. I could literally hear her talking about some guy who pissed her off even though I was across the parking lot, about 10 cars away. I kept looking over trying to get more of the gist of the rant, but she actually looked at me with this look that said, “Do you mind, I am having a personal conversation here.”

I’m sure many people have at one time or another been subjected to these bizarre, one-sided conversations in which the cellphone user seems completely oblivious to how inappropriate it is to say what they are saying in public, around strangers – I wonder if they are profoundly damaged people who either:

A. Suffer from the delusion that they are so interesting or fascinating or important that EVERYone will feel privileged to have a glimpse into their private or professional life.
B. Completely unaware of their boundaries or personal space
C. Are completely aware but feel utterly entitled to be horses’ asses

I’m sure many others are sick to death of hearing someone describe their boyfriend’s failings, boss’ underhanded dealings, or how they told a friend her husband was cheating on her…or one of the worst I’ve had to endure – a bipolar ADULT woman in competition with her clearly also bipolar boyfriend – “No, you hang up first. No you. No. hahaha. No you hang up first. Really! You first! Hahahahaha. Noooo. You hang up first.”

Read on for the first conversation. And know, you cellphone exhibitionists, that I might be sitting next to you in that cafe, in front of you in that movie theater (believe it or not – TWICE), or standing in the grocery aisle, memorizing your conversation so I can send it out to the world right here in black and white.

I will set myself a few rules (and anyone else who wants to post crazy overheard calls should abide by these):

-Only post conversations where the person is in an obviously public place with no expectation of privacy

-Only post such conversations if the person clearly wants others to overhear the conversation (e.g., makes no attempt at being discreet by moving away from people and talking in a low voice).

In other words, I won’t “try” to hear these convos (God knows most of them are wretchedly dull), I will only write about those I was FORCED to listen to by one of this new breed: Cellphone Exhibitionists.

My first conversation below that finally pushed me to this point!

I was early for an appointment so stopped in at a little cafe for a quick sandwich. I sat two tables over from a man who was eating alone. His conversation made me feel queasy. I ate fast and left as soon as I could.
He was clearly talking about a relative who needed an organ transplant and finally had a viable donor – discussing how many days in ICU, when they would be down to only “IVs” and when they would come home.
Then, in a very loud voice mind you, he discussed the FREAKING ORGAN DONOR.
“She’s 5’4″ 140 pounds. A little heavy, but not too bad. A good donation. She was in a car accident and is brain dead. Didn’t have much damage to her body….yes, it’s a good donation.”
Sounded like he was discussing a blob filled with organs all in good shape (though maybe a bit on the fatty side) for his relative.
Bastard. Save the conversation for “private time.”