Last week our final move was completed. We call it our final move because our plan is not to move until, as Karen puts it, we're transferred to Shady Acres. That may well be the case, but if it weren't, this move would strongly argue in favor of it being our last move.
We closed on the house on June 19. Because the seller was a World War II widow who needed the help of her adult children to move, we agreed that she could have some time to get out of the house. Originally, this was going to be two weeks, but she decided for financial reasons to scoot after only three days. Once we got the keys, we began bringing over carloads of our belongings to our new residence, which was only about five miles away from our then current lodging.
Because we'd had the foresight to not unpack everything and leave the boxes in the garage, we didn't have as much packing to do as we had the year before. Of course, we couldn't predict that we'd go through a winter with record snowfall, making getting into our cars dreary at best and unsafe at worst, but we had to do it. We survived the winter and had a lot of things ready to move, so once the keys were in our hands, that's what we proceeded to do.
One of the first tasks in the new house was to replace the toilet in the master bathroom. Given my previous experience in toilet replacement, one can only surmise the joy that spread through my being when I became aware of the upcoming task. One might also think that the previous experience would have put me a leg up on this replacement, but one would be wrong. O', I knew well how to replace the toilet. I knew which tools I needed, what went where when and how to test it. But the problem this time stemmed from the manufacturer, Kohler, who has an otherwise excellent reputation for its products. Unfortunately, Kohler didn't exactly provide all the materials needed in its box for me to finish the job, which necessitated three visits to the local Home Depot that sold us the toilet to get the replacement parts for the replacement toilet. Suffice it to say Home Depot got tired of seeing me, but they were great.
The upshot is that between this replacement and the one back in Illinois, I lost a week of my life replacing toilets.
Every day we would load up our cars with something and cart it over to the new house. Beside the seemingly endless stream of boxes that needed moved, we had myriad details to arrange, including the shutting off and turning on of utilities at the respective residences, getting registered to vote, transferring the address with the bank, getting our mail forwarded, etc. While this was going on, Karen and I were still working full time (she more than I), trying to arrange for a lawn service to mow what was quickly becoming a hay field with he cool weather and too attentive rain showers and take care of various projects that required our attention in the new house.
I've detailed in an earlier post the fight to get wallpaper stripped in the master bedroom, so I won't belabor the point here. But that effort hit a snag when, the week before our anticipated move date -- the date on which movers came to cart off the furniture that we couldn't move ourselves -- Karen was admitted to the hospital. In fact, she'd gone to the ER the week before, only to have the witch doctor there prescribe medicine that made her illness worse. Nothing points to the futility of modern medicine more than the process of what I've deemed medical whack-a-mole: Eliminating various potential illnesses took four days, at the end of which the doctors were no closer to a decision on what ailed Karen. So Karen lost four days in the hospital essentially to be hydrated. In the meantime, I was only able to bring carloads of belongings to the house and scrape an errant strip of wallpaper here or there. This could have seriously derailed our move.
Karen, ever the trooper, got back into the fray the next day. We stripped the wallpaper, spackled, cleaned and sanded the walls furiously, like teenagers trying to hide all the booze and porn before the parents returned from a long weekend away. Two days before our scheduled move we (read: Karen) were able to put paint on the the walls to allow it sufficient time to dry before our move.
At this point, one would think that a well-deserved sigh of relief was in order.
One would be wrong, of course.
The day before our move I got calls from the movers confirming our date and from Budget confirming what I thought was to be a sixteen-foot truck. I was told that the sixteen foot was unavailable and that I could take the ten foot truck that was there -- take it or leave it. That this message was delivered insouciantly by the local Budget agent as he sat in the garage nonchalantly smoking only served to stoke my ire. We returned to the apartment to get more things moved and I went on a jihad with Budget, calling the corporate offices and asking if Budget had franchises that were being run by the mob. Within twenty minutes I got a call from corporate's distribution office telling me that a sixteen-footer was on its way to our local Budget office. Almost laughably I got a call shortly thereafter from Mr. Take-It-Or-Leave-It happily telling me that a sixteen-footer had been found and would be at his office shortly. Sometimes, throwing people under the bus does wonders for their attitudes.
The next day dawned and, as planned, Karen drove me to pick up the truck and then went back to house to wrangle the boys into a room where they wouldn't interfere with the move. I awaited the movers at the apartment and loaded up what furniture I could move myself. Shortly thereafter the movers arrived. Although I'm no giant myself, I'm a good-sized 6'2" tall. Not one of these movers crested six feet. What's more, one of them looked like the product of a mating of Marilyn Manson with an anorexic. Needless to say, my confidence in getting this done was diminishing.
I quickly explained what the layout of the new house was so we could pack the truck accordingly and stepped aside. It became readily apparent that I would need to be more involved given Manson's Mini-Me's inability to carry more than a cushion capably. A couple of times I thought he'd be crushed by the furniture he was struggling to carry. The results of his incompetence were later found all over the apartment's walls that I would have to spackle. The four movers dithered so many times over how to put the furniture in the truck that we ended up having to make two runs.
When we arrived at the house, I hustled them along to cut down on the amount of time we'd need to unload the truck. A curious game ensued whereby the four movers tried to guess my profession. Hilariously, one of the first things they guessed was that I was an electrician. It took them over an hour to get it right. In the meantime, the clock continued to run.
So did the dings, scratches and dents in our furniture and walls. After we had all our belongings in the house, we surveyed the damage and found a number of things injured by the movers. Mini-Me's participation had hurt badly.
Karen and I began to square things away after they left only to find a message on her phone from her doctors telling her she needed to go back to the hospital the next day for yet another test, the result of which would do nothing to provide any clarity on her condition. That excursion cost us another three hours of time that we needed to clean up the old apartment so we could get our deposit back.
That afternoon and the following Saturday we we slaved away at removing what few belongings were in the apartement and cleaning everything to Karen's exacting standards. Given that she'd spent four days in the hospital the week before, it's little wonder the apartment was almost antiseptic by the time we turned the keys in this past Tuesday. At long last, our time in the apartment hard against the expressway.
We'd traded the noise and congestion of a utilitarian apartment for the relative tranquility of a somewhat rural house with more yardwork and less square footage than the apartment. It's a toss-up as to whether the boys or Karen and I are happier in the new house. We brought the boys to the house one day during the Great Wallpaper Strip and when we told them to come to the car to go back to the apartment, neither of them would budge.
Our move is now complete. No longer are we denizens of a town where people are rude and entitled. We live with plenty of space around us, no interference from anyone and majestic views. Our dining area overlooks a bucolic scene of a large tree beside a pond. Blue spruce ring the property in the front, with a huge mutli-branched maple that shades the house from the sun in the afternoons. The private dirt road gives off a distinct rumble when cars careen down it, and the wheat field across it will be harvested soon. Wildlife makes an appearance now and then, whether it be deer, raccoons or the chickens next door. So far, the only neighbors we've met are Pepper and Jack, the lab retrievers from one of our as-yet nameless neighbors. Last night there was a breakthrough of sorts as the fellow next door -- Larry, Darryl or Darryl; we can't determine which -- nodded at us with a broad smile as he drove his lawn mower around his lot.
This, now is home. It took three long, arduous years, and at times we wondered if it would happen. Yet it did, and we couldn't be happier.
Well, I could. I still have to replace one of the toilets in the house.
There go another three days of my life.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
How to Remove Wallpaper At Your New House
Karen and I recently moved into what is possibly the last house in which we'll live until retirement. We bought it from a kindly ninety-year-old World War II widow who, after her husband died, decided to lighten the mood in their home by redecorating. Ordinarily, this wouldn't provoke much comment, as the notion that a change in one's residence to improve the mood is quite typical. To be sure, there are differences of opinion as to what constitutes good taste, and certainly beauty continues to be in the eye of the beholder, but there is probably one decorative accessory that provokes very visceral reactions.
That accessory would be wallpaper.
I've only had one other experience with wallpapering, and it was relatively benign, given that my involvement was minimal. That, in hindsight, was both a blessing and a mistake.
The house into which we moved has four rooms that were, to varying degrees, wallpapered. Two only had wallpaper borders at the tops and bottoms of the walls. One, the kitchen, has a very blasé wallpapering from floor to ceiling, with banners across the tops of the walls. It's unattractive, but nowhere near the eyesore that confronted us in the master bedroom and bathroom. Those who are mathematically gifted will point out that the two bedrooms with borders, the kitchen, the master bedroom AND the master bathroom count as five rooms, and technically, that would be correct from a purely empirical standpoint. The difference with my reckoning is twofold: The master bedroom and bathroom are connected by a doorway, as would be expected, and the same wallpaper was used in both rooms, thus making it seem as if it was one big room and not two separate rooms.
And it's not just the same wallpaper, but the most nauseating, wretched, seizure-inducing floral print floor-to-ceiling wallpaper man ever invented. We warned people not to look too long at it for fear they would suffer dementia or be traumatized to the point of dizzy spells, delusions and/or apoplexy.
That woman was so proud of her wallpaper that she even accessorized it. More of that later.
Anyhow, having now tackled the master bedroom out of not only necessity but urgency, I've learned a thing or two about removing wallpaper. I offer, therefore, free of charge, my suggestions on how to remove wallpaper that may confront a home buyer that isn't enough to nullify the purchase but that requires its removal forthwith:
1. Buy a house without wallpaper. I'm not being facetious.
2. If one cannot avoid my first suggestion, here are some tools that are are indispensable to the successful removal or wallpaper:
a. Scraper. Get the metal one. Trust me. The plastic ones are all right, but not for a monumental task.
b. Tarp. You'll need it.
c. Vacuum. You'll need it no matter how much tarp you put down.
d. Stepstool. Unless, of course, you qualify to play in the NBA. That is, unless you're Mugsy Boggs.
e. Spray bottle. This will moisten the wallpaper making it easier to remove, after you use...
f. Wallpaper scorer. This perforates the wallpaper, allowing the moisture to penetrate it more quickly.
g. A wallpaper steamer. This item is truly the key component to successful wallpaper removal.
h. Patience. An infinite amount of patience.
i. Lacking patience, booze. Not copious amounts, mind you, because one could be scalded from improper use of the wallpaper steamer.
j. Garbage bags. No matter how well one removes wallpaper, multiple bags will be necessary.
k. Liquid chemical compound that is sprayed on the perforated wallpaper to loosen it once it's steamed to make scraping it easier.
l. Spackle. No matter what, it will be needed.
3. Really, buy a house without any wallpaper. If one follows this advice, step 2 and its attendant purchases are rendered unnecessary.
Our task was made Herculean by virtue of the fact that the people who applied the wallpaper (presumably the seller's children, because she was too old to have done this by herself) did so in such a slap-dash manner that they used too much glue in places, overlapped pieces in others and applied it all directly onto the painted walls that were painted without the benefit of primer. When we got done stripping the four walls of the master bedroom, the spackle jobs we had to do to repair the walls prior to painting it made it look like a dog with a horrible case of mange. Given that the faucets were put in backwards, that is, with hot being cold and cold being hot, it's not surprising that the former owners came from a particular ethnic group (with which I share the gene pool) that fosters plenty of jokes, would apply the wallpaper in the most ham-fisted way possible.
Essentially, we lost a week of our lives stripping the wallpaper, spackling and sanding the walls and then painting and replacing the wall plates in the master bedroom. For now, we'll suffer through the rest of the summer and early fall before tackling the master bathroom. The kitchen will also be stripped and painted during the fall. Thankfully, we already have the necessary tools for the jobs. Patience is slowly being restored while we unpack boxes and put pictures on the walls.
Yes, it could have been avoided had we not bought the house, but the lot is wonderful, the location preferable and the house itself otherwise ideal for our needs. Removing wallpaper is no picnic, and it's no fun on any level, but it is possible.
The one nice thing about this is that Karen, upon hearing how much the wallpaper meant to the seller, decided that at the appropriate time, she'd frame a section of the wallpaper and send it to her at the assisted living location where she now resides. We're not sure what that gesture might do to the lady, since she truly valued the wallpaper and how it made her feel.
In fact, it meant so much to her that she told Karen at the closing that she was leaving the hand towels that matched the wallpaper so we'd have the full effect. Needless to say, we were tickled at her gesture, since we'd decided the minute we saw the room of horrors that that wallpaper was coming down. By no means do we intend to insult the seller, rather give her a tangible memory of the home she loved so much. And we certainly can't give her back the towels.
I'd rather use them to wipe the sweat off our brows from having to work so hard to remove the wallpaper, to shield our eyes from the wallpaper remaining in the master bathroom or to use to wipe the tears from our eyes after we've finally removed the last of the wallpaper in the house.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
That accessory would be wallpaper.
I've only had one other experience with wallpapering, and it was relatively benign, given that my involvement was minimal. That, in hindsight, was both a blessing and a mistake.
The house into which we moved has four rooms that were, to varying degrees, wallpapered. Two only had wallpaper borders at the tops and bottoms of the walls. One, the kitchen, has a very blasé wallpapering from floor to ceiling, with banners across the tops of the walls. It's unattractive, but nowhere near the eyesore that confronted us in the master bedroom and bathroom. Those who are mathematically gifted will point out that the two bedrooms with borders, the kitchen, the master bedroom AND the master bathroom count as five rooms, and technically, that would be correct from a purely empirical standpoint. The difference with my reckoning is twofold: The master bedroom and bathroom are connected by a doorway, as would be expected, and the same wallpaper was used in both rooms, thus making it seem as if it was one big room and not two separate rooms.
And it's not just the same wallpaper, but the most nauseating, wretched, seizure-inducing floral print floor-to-ceiling wallpaper man ever invented. We warned people not to look too long at it for fear they would suffer dementia or be traumatized to the point of dizzy spells, delusions and/or apoplexy.
That woman was so proud of her wallpaper that she even accessorized it. More of that later.
Anyhow, having now tackled the master bedroom out of not only necessity but urgency, I've learned a thing or two about removing wallpaper. I offer, therefore, free of charge, my suggestions on how to remove wallpaper that may confront a home buyer that isn't enough to nullify the purchase but that requires its removal forthwith:
1. Buy a house without wallpaper. I'm not being facetious.
2. If one cannot avoid my first suggestion, here are some tools that are are indispensable to the successful removal or wallpaper:
a. Scraper. Get the metal one. Trust me. The plastic ones are all right, but not for a monumental task.
b. Tarp. You'll need it.
c. Vacuum. You'll need it no matter how much tarp you put down.
d. Stepstool. Unless, of course, you qualify to play in the NBA. That is, unless you're Mugsy Boggs.
e. Spray bottle. This will moisten the wallpaper making it easier to remove, after you use...
f. Wallpaper scorer. This perforates the wallpaper, allowing the moisture to penetrate it more quickly.
g. A wallpaper steamer. This item is truly the key component to successful wallpaper removal.
h. Patience. An infinite amount of patience.
i. Lacking patience, booze. Not copious amounts, mind you, because one could be scalded from improper use of the wallpaper steamer.
j. Garbage bags. No matter how well one removes wallpaper, multiple bags will be necessary.
k. Liquid chemical compound that is sprayed on the perforated wallpaper to loosen it once it's steamed to make scraping it easier.
l. Spackle. No matter what, it will be needed.
3. Really, buy a house without any wallpaper. If one follows this advice, step 2 and its attendant purchases are rendered unnecessary.
Our task was made Herculean by virtue of the fact that the people who applied the wallpaper (presumably the seller's children, because she was too old to have done this by herself) did so in such a slap-dash manner that they used too much glue in places, overlapped pieces in others and applied it all directly onto the painted walls that were painted without the benefit of primer. When we got done stripping the four walls of the master bedroom, the spackle jobs we had to do to repair the walls prior to painting it made it look like a dog with a horrible case of mange. Given that the faucets were put in backwards, that is, with hot being cold and cold being hot, it's not surprising that the former owners came from a particular ethnic group (with which I share the gene pool) that fosters plenty of jokes, would apply the wallpaper in the most ham-fisted way possible.
Essentially, we lost a week of our lives stripping the wallpaper, spackling and sanding the walls and then painting and replacing the wall plates in the master bedroom. For now, we'll suffer through the rest of the summer and early fall before tackling the master bathroom. The kitchen will also be stripped and painted during the fall. Thankfully, we already have the necessary tools for the jobs. Patience is slowly being restored while we unpack boxes and put pictures on the walls.
Yes, it could have been avoided had we not bought the house, but the lot is wonderful, the location preferable and the house itself otherwise ideal for our needs. Removing wallpaper is no picnic, and it's no fun on any level, but it is possible.
The one nice thing about this is that Karen, upon hearing how much the wallpaper meant to the seller, decided that at the appropriate time, she'd frame a section of the wallpaper and send it to her at the assisted living location where she now resides. We're not sure what that gesture might do to the lady, since she truly valued the wallpaper and how it made her feel.
In fact, it meant so much to her that she told Karen at the closing that she was leaving the hand towels that matched the wallpaper so we'd have the full effect. Needless to say, we were tickled at her gesture, since we'd decided the minute we saw the room of horrors that that wallpaper was coming down. By no means do we intend to insult the seller, rather give her a tangible memory of the home she loved so much. And we certainly can't give her back the towels.
I'd rather use them to wipe the sweat off our brows from having to work so hard to remove the wallpaper, to shield our eyes from the wallpaper remaining in the master bathroom or to use to wipe the tears from our eyes after we've finally removed the last of the wallpaper in the house.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
Monday, July 7, 2014
Monday Musings II
After a long holiday weekend chock-full with plenty of non-leisure activities, I'm pretty much toast. I still haven't read the Sunday newspaper, for heaven's sake. So here goes. I promise this isn't half-hearted:
-- I'm not sure we can rank presidents in terms of their excellence or their wretched performance, and the race to deem this president the worst in modern history is a little premature, but it appears to me that he's doing a woeful job governing.
-- On a similar note, it's fun watching Cankles squirm. I can't recall a more incompetent book release tour from a seasoned public figure. All she lacks is the opportunity to go on Oprah and have the world find out she falsified certain details in her book.
-- Whoever developed wallpaper should be tarred and feathered. Then wrapped in wallpaper.
-- I said it years ago and I stand by it today: Withdraw the American military from the DMZ in Korea, since they don't want us there anyway, and redeploy along the border with Mexico. Then let's see how the illegal immigrants and the drug cartels get in the country.
-- Bluebs are just good eatin'.
-- Nothing wakes me up faster than a three-month-old cat jumping on my sleeping face wanting to play.
-- I don't miss television no matter how much Karen thinks I do.
-- I've lost a cumulative week of my life replacing toilets. This is ridiculous.
-- Listening to a train while eating dinner with my girl is one of the unmentioned benefits of living outside of suburbia.
-- I'm fed up with Mexico and Mexicans. Enough with the entitlement mentality. Get your own country straightened out. And learn English if you come here.
-- This business about LeBron signing here or there is so tiresome.
-- Isn't it interesting how the MSM is dealing with the administration and Cankles? Or, more correctly, how it isn't dealing with them?
-- Grilling is such fun. I just wish I did it better.
-- Higher education is like beauty contests: Just because someone graduates from college doesn't mean he's smarter than a person who didn't go to college, just like a woman winning a beauty contest means she's prettier than a woman who didn't enter the contest.
-- I don't miss Illinois at all.
-- I wonder if Jesse Jackson actually followed through and paid for the education of the woman who accused the Duke lacrosse players of raping her.
-- It boggles the mind just how the Hobby Lobby decision is being misrepresented by its opponents. I can understand the unsophisticated, but for the self-proclaimed constitutional lawyer in the White House to spin it the way he's spinning it is detestable.
-- This year I'm going to try and watch the All Star Futures Game to catch two of the Cubs' best prospects, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez.
-- Even though none of you knows me or my girl, please say a little prayer for Karen, who's bravely facing some serious health issues.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
-- I'm not sure we can rank presidents in terms of their excellence or their wretched performance, and the race to deem this president the worst in modern history is a little premature, but it appears to me that he's doing a woeful job governing.
-- On a similar note, it's fun watching Cankles squirm. I can't recall a more incompetent book release tour from a seasoned public figure. All she lacks is the opportunity to go on Oprah and have the world find out she falsified certain details in her book.
-- Whoever developed wallpaper should be tarred and feathered. Then wrapped in wallpaper.
-- I said it years ago and I stand by it today: Withdraw the American military from the DMZ in Korea, since they don't want us there anyway, and redeploy along the border with Mexico. Then let's see how the illegal immigrants and the drug cartels get in the country.
-- Bluebs are just good eatin'.
-- Nothing wakes me up faster than a three-month-old cat jumping on my sleeping face wanting to play.
-- I don't miss television no matter how much Karen thinks I do.
-- I've lost a cumulative week of my life replacing toilets. This is ridiculous.
-- Listening to a train while eating dinner with my girl is one of the unmentioned benefits of living outside of suburbia.
-- I'm fed up with Mexico and Mexicans. Enough with the entitlement mentality. Get your own country straightened out. And learn English if you come here.
-- This business about LeBron signing here or there is so tiresome.
-- Isn't it interesting how the MSM is dealing with the administration and Cankles? Or, more correctly, how it isn't dealing with them?
-- Grilling is such fun. I just wish I did it better.
-- Higher education is like beauty contests: Just because someone graduates from college doesn't mean he's smarter than a person who didn't go to college, just like a woman winning a beauty contest means she's prettier than a woman who didn't enter the contest.
-- I don't miss Illinois at all.
-- I wonder if Jesse Jackson actually followed through and paid for the education of the woman who accused the Duke lacrosse players of raping her.
-- It boggles the mind just how the Hobby Lobby decision is being misrepresented by its opponents. I can understand the unsophisticated, but for the self-proclaimed constitutional lawyer in the White House to spin it the way he's spinning it is detestable.
-- This year I'm going to try and watch the All Star Futures Game to catch two of the Cubs' best prospects, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez.
-- Even though none of you knows me or my girl, please say a little prayer for Karen, who's bravely facing some serious health issues.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Dealing With Outsourcing
Globalization has its benefits, to be sure. In theory, lower prices, increased sales, introduction of new items and greater understanding through trade are but a few of the positive outcomes of globalization. There are certainly drawbacks to globalization as well, which I'll leave to the economists to sort. From a practical perspective, however, there is one very enervating feature of globalization that goes beyond mere frustration: Outsourcing. Particularly, outsourcing customer service to the Philippines and India. Allow me to explain.
As a general matter, I don't have much against either the country or their peoples. I'm not nearly as interested in their cultures or their lands as others are, but I'm not nearly as opposed to them as I am the Brits; after all, what did they ever do to the Irish?
But I digress.
From what I've been able to ascertain, there are three levels of Dante's Outsourcing Inferno. I draw these conclusions from painful personal experience. In ascending order, they are:
Mawkishly Inefficient: These are the type of people who are almost robotic with their assistance. Their English is the best of the group, but they also have cultural differences that render their assistance frustratingly inefficient. To wit: Most calls begin with a request for the caller, i.e. me, to identify myself. Were it an American asking the question, the question would be, May I ask who's calling? or Can you give me the name on the account? But when we get an outsourced worker, the question becomes, May I ask with whom I have the pleasure of speaking? Seriously? How do you know it's going to be a pleasure?
The next thing they ask for is some identifying information, such as the address on the account, the phone number, the last four digits of my social security number, my blood type and the prospective names of my children (I only kid about the last two). Again, an American would ask, What's the address/ phone number on the account? The outsourced worker is beyond polite: Would it be too much trouble for you to give me the address that is associated with this account? or some such fluff.
Again, none of this is rude. It's just unnecessarily Victorian and therefore inefficient. The last thing an angry customer wants to do is deal with someone still living under the Raj. Yes, it's polite, and an argument can be made that American customer service workers could learn a thing or two about being polite from the outsourced workers. But when you add up all the verbiage they use, outsourced workers extend the phone calls by minutes that only serve to anger further an upset customer.
Clueless Drones: The next class of outsourced worker is the group that has next to no interest in doing the job. Usually, their English isn't as good as that of the Mawkishly Inefficient class. What's more, the caller, who sounds like he was in the Slumdog Millionaire cast, will identify himself by an incongruous name like John Smith (this actually happened yesterday). When they start out with what I am fairly certain that I know is a lie, all bets are off. So when Matt Jones tells me he's calling from Education USA (or whatever the group is) and I can tell his next job is as an extra in a Bollywood production, I tell him my name is Patel, or Rajiv. Since they've already asked for me by my decidedly Anglo-Saxon name, this throws them for a loop. But I don't leave it at that. I then start to mimic their accent.
I know, I'm going to hell. But he lied first.
What started this was one guy blew right by my declaration that my name was Rajiv and asked me if I wanted to further my education. I told the tool that I had a law degree, a master's degree and a double major undergraduate degree and then asked just how much more education he thought I needed. He hung up on me.
I know he's only doing his job, but is it too much to ask that he pay attention? I had also asked one of his coworkers who had called me earlier to remove me from their call list, and since he was calling me again, I figured my earlier request had been ignored. Hence my belligerence.
But that belligerence pales in comparison to what I do to the next class of callers.
Calcutta Collectors: I'm going for alliteration here, for lack of anything better. This group spawns from my experience as an attorney and as Karen's fiancé. And their English is the worst of the lot.
This group isn't really an outsourced worker but someone whose boss bought debt and hopes to collect on his investment.
As an attorney, I had clients calling me months after they'd gotten a bankruptcy discharge from someone claiming that unless they paid up, they (the callers) were going to have the Sheriff come to their place of business to arrest them. Beside the FDCPA violation, this also happens to be a violation of the debtor's discharge. So I took the call and was immediately subjected to epithets and challenges to my licensure. One fool asked me for my bar number, which I immediately rattled off, much to his surprise. His only comeback was to call me more names.
Karen repeatedly gets collection calls for someone named David Williams. When I'm given the number, the bumbling collector gives me the name of some fictitious law firm for which he's working. They use some sort of phone number scrambler that allows them to piggyback on numbers in other area codes to confuse the recipient of the call and make it difficult to track them. The problem for these fools is that they didn't count on me calling every single number they use. I warn them that unless they remove Karen's number I'll keep their lines tied up, but they refuse to believe me. So I call them up, suffer their abuse and force them to stop calling Karen, if only for awhile.
Because they're offshore, there's no legal remedy for these people. They're the lowest of the low. They have no compunction about calling and threatening people. They also don't count on people fighting back, no matter how useless it is.
No matter which class of outsourced worker is calling, it's annoying.
I long for the days when outsourcing meant someone pitching Fiber One bars in television commercials.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
As a general matter, I don't have much against either the country or their peoples. I'm not nearly as interested in their cultures or their lands as others are, but I'm not nearly as opposed to them as I am the Brits; after all, what did they ever do to the Irish?
But I digress.
From what I've been able to ascertain, there are three levels of Dante's Outsourcing Inferno. I draw these conclusions from painful personal experience. In ascending order, they are:
Mawkishly Inefficient: These are the type of people who are almost robotic with their assistance. Their English is the best of the group, but they also have cultural differences that render their assistance frustratingly inefficient. To wit: Most calls begin with a request for the caller, i.e. me, to identify myself. Were it an American asking the question, the question would be, May I ask who's calling? or Can you give me the name on the account? But when we get an outsourced worker, the question becomes, May I ask with whom I have the pleasure of speaking? Seriously? How do you know it's going to be a pleasure?
The next thing they ask for is some identifying information, such as the address on the account, the phone number, the last four digits of my social security number, my blood type and the prospective names of my children (I only kid about the last two). Again, an American would ask, What's the address/ phone number on the account? The outsourced worker is beyond polite: Would it be too much trouble for you to give me the address that is associated with this account? or some such fluff.
Again, none of this is rude. It's just unnecessarily Victorian and therefore inefficient. The last thing an angry customer wants to do is deal with someone still living under the Raj. Yes, it's polite, and an argument can be made that American customer service workers could learn a thing or two about being polite from the outsourced workers. But when you add up all the verbiage they use, outsourced workers extend the phone calls by minutes that only serve to anger further an upset customer.
Clueless Drones: The next class of outsourced worker is the group that has next to no interest in doing the job. Usually, their English isn't as good as that of the Mawkishly Inefficient class. What's more, the caller, who sounds like he was in the Slumdog Millionaire cast, will identify himself by an incongruous name like John Smith (this actually happened yesterday). When they start out with what I am fairly certain that I know is a lie, all bets are off. So when Matt Jones tells me he's calling from Education USA (or whatever the group is) and I can tell his next job is as an extra in a Bollywood production, I tell him my name is Patel, or Rajiv. Since they've already asked for me by my decidedly Anglo-Saxon name, this throws them for a loop. But I don't leave it at that. I then start to mimic their accent.
I know, I'm going to hell. But he lied first.
What started this was one guy blew right by my declaration that my name was Rajiv and asked me if I wanted to further my education. I told the tool that I had a law degree, a master's degree and a double major undergraduate degree and then asked just how much more education he thought I needed. He hung up on me.
I know he's only doing his job, but is it too much to ask that he pay attention? I had also asked one of his coworkers who had called me earlier to remove me from their call list, and since he was calling me again, I figured my earlier request had been ignored. Hence my belligerence.
But that belligerence pales in comparison to what I do to the next class of callers.
Calcutta Collectors: I'm going for alliteration here, for lack of anything better. This group spawns from my experience as an attorney and as Karen's fiancé. And their English is the worst of the lot.
This group isn't really an outsourced worker but someone whose boss bought debt and hopes to collect on his investment.
As an attorney, I had clients calling me months after they'd gotten a bankruptcy discharge from someone claiming that unless they paid up, they (the callers) were going to have the Sheriff come to their place of business to arrest them. Beside the FDCPA violation, this also happens to be a violation of the debtor's discharge. So I took the call and was immediately subjected to epithets and challenges to my licensure. One fool asked me for my bar number, which I immediately rattled off, much to his surprise. His only comeback was to call me more names.
Karen repeatedly gets collection calls for someone named David Williams. When I'm given the number, the bumbling collector gives me the name of some fictitious law firm for which he's working. They use some sort of phone number scrambler that allows them to piggyback on numbers in other area codes to confuse the recipient of the call and make it difficult to track them. The problem for these fools is that they didn't count on me calling every single number they use. I warn them that unless they remove Karen's number I'll keep their lines tied up, but they refuse to believe me. So I call them up, suffer their abuse and force them to stop calling Karen, if only for awhile.
Because they're offshore, there's no legal remedy for these people. They're the lowest of the low. They have no compunction about calling and threatening people. They also don't count on people fighting back, no matter how useless it is.
No matter which class of outsourced worker is calling, it's annoying.
I long for the days when outsourcing meant someone pitching Fiber One bars in television commercials.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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