The Downfall of Big Coffee

Well, it is 6:15 a.m., and I am at work. However, this fact alone has established two very important bits of information:

UNIVERSAL TRUTH 1. It is still dark at 6:15 a.m.

UNIVERSAL TRUTH 2. There is no traffic at 6:15 a.m.

I am fairly confident these two truths are related. I think we can draw a third certainty from these two. Heck, let's call it a paradigm:

UNIVERSAL PARADIGM 1. 6:15 a.m is a Godforsaken time to be getting to work, and most people, realizing this, decline to rise before the sun does. Good for them.

Meanwhile, in my God forsaken cubicle in my God forsaken building on my God forsaken installation at this God forsaken time, I am enjoying the peace and quiet reserved for us God forsakers. I bought a new coffee maker, thereby shunning the established coffee mess (we call it Big Coffee) and introducing a fresher, disease-free medium blend into the office.

I had hoped the coffee maker ($8.93 at Wal-Mart) would be slightly more stealthy, but no, as it brews it emits these "Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark" type whispers. It turns out that my coffee maker is not only God forsaken--it is possessed. Strictly following the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in such landmark decisions as Wallace v. Jaffree regarding the separation of Church and State (Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically mentioned devil-incarnate kitchen appliances in her written opinion), my coffee maker is definitely, definitely not allowed in a government building.

However, until the ACLU inevitably finds out, my satanic coffee maker will continue to whisper sweet, evil nothings in my ear.
I have an unholy urge to support Rudy Giuliani.

The Art of Corporate Grievance (or, How To Get Stuff For Free)

We are a society of consumers. The technical definition of a consumer is--stay with me here--someone who consumes stuff. And we buy lots of it. Thumbtacks, cottage cheese, Hyundais, instructional Yoga DVDs, private islands--these can all be classified as stuff. In the process of buying all this stuff, we are sometimes disappointed with our purchasing experience. People react to this is one of three ways:

1. Get all pissed off and swear off forever the establishment that provided the product and forbid your children and your children's children from ever stepping foot into that store or, so help you God, you will disown them for the rest of your natural life, and Jesus, why would they want to put you through that, given your heart condition most likely caused by your hatred of said establishment.

2. Return to the faulty product's establishment and abuse the acne-covered teenager who was unfortunately assigned to customer service while cudgeling him with the toaster or pork chop or whatever happened to be defective.

3. Calmly return to the establishment, purchase an identical item, and return the defective item in the new item's packaging. This option is self-perpetuating, and pretty soon you have a store full of broken products in new packaging, thereby increasing the risk of consumer-induced homicides.

I used to be a Number 1, and my Dad, on more than one occasion, urged me to go the Number 3 route. However, it seems that, at the individual store level, there is no authority to give you what you really want--an unconditional admission of guilt for providing a crappy product and something for your trouble. To get that level of satisfaction, you have to go up to the corporate level, and, thanks to corporate storefronts on the internet, you can email just about anyone. And they have to answer you, lest they take the risk you will mail them a bomb. You never can tell with people who write letters and emails. They tend to be, as they say in the Old Country, "touched."

So I've become somewhat of an expert at writing these emails, and I'll share a portion of my impressive resume of free crap:

-Free Barq's T-shirt. Sonny Barq's address is on every can. I wrote him and said thanks. He gave me a t-shirt.
-$50 credit for a small dent in a pool table. I ordered a ridiculously cheap ($350) pool table off Walmart.com. It arrived with a miniscule dent (over the course of 10,000 games of pool, it affected our game once).
-New HP Printer (~$80)
-New shaver base cleaner (~$40) I got this after I completely dismantled (and voided the warranty) the old unit trying to fix it. I was horribly unsuccessful.
-USB extension cable for cordless mouse
-New Roomba (~$200)
-$20 Gift Certificate to Carrabba's
-$10 Gift Certificate to BestBuy

All of these achievements followed the same format, which I think is key to my success. Customer Service folks appreciate a calm, courteous customer who won't try to send them a mail bomb. If you ever need to get free stuff in reparation for a minor consumer affront, the following three-paragraph format is gold:

Paragraph 1: Establish your loyalty to the company and the product. Before they give you free stuff, they want to know if it is worth it to keep your business. NEVER THREATEN. The first paragraph is all positive. For example, say I bought a Samsung MP3 player and the headphones stopped working after three months (beyond the warranty period and return period) I didn't give a model number, but you should be as detailed as possible, include model and serial number, if applicable.

"Dear Sir/Madam:

I recently purchased a Samsung mp3 player and have been enjoying it thoroughly. I am an enthusiastic owner of two Samsung TVs and my experience with your quality and workmanship played heavily in my purchase of one of your mp3 players. For the first three months your product has once again exceeded expectations."

Paragraph 2: Bring up the issue, but gently. Sound remorseful that you have to bother them with this issue. Be as detailed as possible to avoid stupid follow-up emails that insult your intelligence. Generally, paragraph 1 should separate you from the crowd, but you have to be aware of stubborn outsourced customer service people. Your goal is to get kicked up the chain to the stateside people, who are able to make these "free stuff" decisions.

"However, only recently the left speaker of my headphones ceased to function. Subsequent examination of the cable revealed no kinks or pinch points, and the plug seems intact. When plugged into another device, the problem repeats. There doesn't seem to be a user-serviceable means to fix it."

Paragraph 3: Close with a reaffirmation of your loyalty, but suggest this will hurt it. You should regret this experience and offer that it is not indicative of the brand. Don't suggest any course of action. They'll do that.

"Your reputation for workmanship and quality closely parallels my previous experience with Samsung, and I am confident that my headphones are not representative of what your brand represents. In the future I hope to be able to consider Samsung for my home electronics needs. Thank you for your time to read and reply to this email, and I appreciate the value Samsung places on its customer service.

Thank you,

Bryan"

One week later, BAM! free headphones. I am pretty sure for a small item like this they wouldn't do any background work, so if you were unethical and in need of headphones this would work. However, be careful with big-ticket items and restaurants. They have a smaller profit margin and will actually look up your receipt.

More good fun on watch. The computer is kind of freaking out with the Java applet, so if this isn't in a right format I'll fix it later.

The Bic Effect

Having been gainfully employed in my current capacity by Uncle Sam for approximately two hundred thirty-six days, thirteen hours and fifty-four minutes I am considered a novice bureaucrat, but with my youthful enthusiasm and naive self-righteousness my frenetic pace allows me to outrun my colleagues like a paranoid squirrel jacked up on Pixie Sticks. I am often told rather condescendingly (what we call “talking down the chain”) that this will change. The Global War on Terror has no room for feelings of self accomplishment.

I am the kind of guy who likes jotting down thoughts and ideas (hence this blog), so I find myself in constant need of something to write with. However, one of the basic tenants of government life is that a humble servant such as me has no hope of keeping a pen from first stroke to its final death scribble. It just doesn’t happen. I frequently leave a small fortune in personal electronics on my desk with no incident, but if I dare leave a ballpoint unguarded it will be gone in seconds. I call this the Bic Effect.

The discovery and documentation of the Bic Effect is perhaps one of my proudest achievements to date. With a cubicle close to both the conference room and the fax machine, I can carefully observe this behavioral science at work. Kind of like a Jane Goodall of GS-13s. In fact, watching your coworkers like hawks is encouraged in government service. I believe the Chief of Naval Operations calls it “Focus on Execution.” (I added this hyperlink to add legitimacy to this post. However, I have not actually read this guidance in detail. If colleague espionage is not covered in the CNO's guidance, please pretend that it does.)

The key to a government worker’s inherent kleptomaniacal habits is the understanding that there is no privacy associated with cubicles. My cubicle is your cubicle is the taxpayer’s cubicle, and all government property inside said cubicle is in the public domain. An individual at the fax machine will have no problem walking into a cubicle of a lesser-ranking coworker (i.e., me) and retrieving a pen to sign a page or to make a note on the fax document. This individual might have every intention of returning the pen, but 64 percent of the time (I am required to tell you that my study has a margin of error of +/- 3 points) the pen is pocketed for later convenient use.

Therein lies the Bic Effect: The likelihood of retaining an unsupervised writing utensil is directly proportional to the relative seniority of the current owner and inversely proportional to the traffic passing within visual observation of the writing utensil. If you can't quite figure out the math in the previous sentence, find the nearest engineer. If you don't work anywhere close to an engineer, you are probably much happier for it.

You can expect a PowerPoint presentation of the Bic Effect shortly. But if you will excuse me, Rich just left his desk, and he has a sweet new UniBall…

The Games Catholics Play

Every Sunday millions of Americans routinely attend their local church service and devoutly turn their attention to sitting as far away from each other as possible. This is particularly true for Catholics, who start feeling crowded unless you could comfortably park an adult rhinoceros (not the pygmy kind, either) in the empty space between parishioners. In fact, your average man would rather a rhinoceros sit on his lap throughout the service if only for the chance they didn't have to shake hands with the other guys sitting nearby. This is the same guy who, if not for his wife dragging him to this goddamn service, would be watching the Redskins' first preseason game with his buddies, high-fiving, chest-bumping, group-hugging and performing other mildly pornographic activities that, in the absence of beer and placekickers, would earn a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

As a registered Engineer-in-Training, I have it on good authority (read: no authority) that when designing seating arrangements for a Catholic church, architects are required to utilize the following formula released by the Second Vatican Council:

Total Pew Footage = (# of people at Easter who show up because they feel that Catholic guilt)*(the year of the Second Coming)/[Average Length of an Adult Rhinoceros (in cubits)]

Unfortunately, architects, when presented with impossible units like cubits or inches, cross it out and substitute the number 1.618,which they heard about in a Discovery Channel documentary. This is why the average Catholic church, which by the formula should be the size of New Hampshire, is no bigger than your average room at Motel 6.

But nonetheless, Catholics are a resourceful people (see: The Inquisition), and with pesky laws against torturing infidels we have turned to inventing seating patterns to maximize inter-parishioner space. In fact, I have perfected this holy art, and I am routinely the only person in my row. This is a luxury normally reserved for people with infants, those who have slightly ungodly odors and individuals directly affected by the provisions of Jessica's Law.

I like to think my incredible talent is because I am a registered Engineer-in-Training, able to perform, without my direct knowledge or effort, the many calculations necessary to pick that optimal seat.

But just in case, I am changing my deodorant.

This should have come first. . .

Being that I'm new to the whole blog thing, I decided to look into what I should do when starting my blog. There is no dearth of information on the subject. Everyone who blogs (I refuse to use the term "blogger" or "blogosphere") seems to think they are the bees' knees when it comes to dispensing advice. I found a single of information that seem to be reliably linked to happy little blogs.

1. Post an introduction.

Fiddlesticks. I have already messed up the development of my blog-child. Now it is doomed to a life of whore mongering and AA meetings.

Well my name is Bryan. And this is my blog. It is little, but still good. Yeah, still good.

Short Stories

(I wrote this on watch. Please do not assume I have the time and/or energy to write like this often. It would ruin my image.)

I am no literary expert. I mean, I did take a college class once and spent (one and a half) hours every (other) day listening to my professor talk about books (movies). And my professor is a close and personal friend of Stephen Soderbergh (really!), the talented director of "Sex, Lies, Videotape," which empirical evidence gathered by legions of misguided grad students suggests that despite the obvious hurdle of not being a book, would actually do very well in (adult) bookstores. So, I am only two degrees separated from Mr. Soderbergh, which is the same thing as saying that I am only two degrees away from being Mr. Soderbergh, and if I were Mr. Soderbergh I'd be using my "Erin Brockovich" royalties to buy a literary expert instead of pretending to be one. But I almost know Stephen Soderbergh, which should be able to get me on Fox News. Yeah, I'm the real deal.

Just kidding....for now.

Short stories. Right. I find short stories to be the best kind of story to both read and write. I justify this with the following reasons:

1. Short stories are short.

2. If you need a second reason, you obviously did not grasp Reason No. 1. Find the nearest unabridged hardcover copy of A Tale of Two Cities, grasp it firmly in your hands, and promptly drop it on your favorite toe (you know you have one). Perhaps the weight of Reason No. 1 will become apparent to you.

Short stories are the lazy man's novel. And it is a sweet deal for authors, too. Hemingway was perhaps the laziest of them all. Despite the hours you may have spent fervently wishing to toll his bell, you have to admit that Hemingway knew how to write. Instead of working to describe in assiduous detail every moss-covered crack of every stone in every building , Hemingway's minimalist style forced the reader to actually use their imagination while they read. I should probably qualify that I have never actually read a Hemingway novel, but I know people who have. If this doesn't work for you, remember that I (almost) know Stephen Soderbergh, and that can get me on Fox News.

In addition to his novels that I have never read but know the names of, Hemingway also wrote short stories--60 in all. In fact, when asked for the most perfect story, he answered in six words: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never used." Amazing! Hemingway can sell a classified ad as a story.

To be serious, though, these six words evoke powerful emotional questions that hijack your brain and force you to imagine the story that Hemingway didn't tell. Powerful stuff. I feel like trying a couple. I could never match the brevity or power of Hemingway's story, but it seems like a fun way to pass a lonely evening away from home.

Among his possessions they found a diamond ring, size 4.

--Oooh, what is it? A young man who died broken hearted when his petite fiancee returned the token of his affection? Or a drunk midget who liked his "bling?"

In the beggar's coat was a letter, unopened, containing a cashier's check for $50,000.

--Hmmm, did he know about the check? Who wrote the letter? Was it blood money that led him to choose a life in the gutter? Okay, that's two about finding dead people. They seem to be easy to write, but I'll try something else.

She saw the two men, and fear gripped her.

--This isn't really along the same lines. It isn't a complete story in my opinion. I can think of quite a few scenarios that could be played out with this sentence.

Mittens was missing, but the chicken was unusually tender that evening.

--That's not right.