field trip!

well as you've prolly gathered by now i'm starting back to school in august for my phd. i'm ecstatic and cannot wait! so i get this e-mail the other day telling me there's a coupla extra spots available for this trip to georgetown to the baruch marine laboratory for those of us who aren't in marine biology and would i like to go...of course i'd love to go! so i hastily send back my reply and i currently feel like an excited 5th grader.

"To this end, we cordially invite you to join us Friday, August 15th for this orientation at the Baruch Field Lab. We will provide the transportation, but you will need to bring food for breakfast and lunch, sleeping bag, old shoes, etc."

so i'm off to find me a sleeping bag as the one i have currently is of the 101 dalmatians variety and is being used by my dogs as a bed. jon tells me i ought to buy a viva pinata sleeping bag. i think i'm going to opt for a solid color.

also i've picked up playing lord of the rings online again recently on top of my normal everquest 2 duties. i'm hanging out on the brandywine server as that's the server i was on in beta. i've got two minstrels [pyper and lealwyn] and a loremaster [rawien]. if ever in game feel free to look me up. i'm actually enjoying the slow solo leveling right now [talk to me next week and see if i still feel the same].

enjoy the silence.

-pyper

the death of customer service

having worked in the retail or customer service industry since i was 15 years old [cashier at publix] i have somewhat high standards when it comes to how i'm treated at various locations. i don't expect someone to offer to carry out my groceries or give me something for nothing, i'm just looking for a modicum of courteous behavior from those in any customer oriented job. so in the past six or so years i've had some bad experiences with customer service ranging from best buy to petsmart and everywhere in between. my recent encounters with mcdonalds have led me to want to put them here.

first, you need to know that sean and i go to the same mcdonalds every morning on sunset boulevard in west columbia about 5 minutes from my work. i ALWAYS [look caps, it must be true] order 2 fruit & yogurt parfaits and sean either a. orders nothing, b. orders hotcakes with sausage, or c. orders a sausage biscuit with pancake syrup [apparently he likes syrup on his sausage as i like syrup on my bacon...sweet]. so on july 8th i order 2 parfaits and sean orders a sausage biscuit with pancake syrup. with those wonderful digital screens you can tell up front if they've got your order correct [if they use the screens since half the time they don't] and the person working the cash register put hotcakes up on our order. sean responded saying he just wanted the syrup not the hotcakes and she removed the hotcakes from the screen. we pull up to the first window and pay for our order. we travel to the second window to receive our grub and lo and behold there is no syrup. so he asks for syrup and the employee proceeds to argue with him about it saying that he didn't order it [first off - it doesn't even matter whether or not he ordered it (which he did, i was there) the customer is always right, second - what the hell difference does it make if you give this guy one small pancake syrup anyways?]. so then after sean insists that he ordered the syrup the employee proceeds to tell him it's going to cost him if he wants pancake syrup. he says fine and hands her some change. it then takes about four more attempts to prove he ordered the syrup before she finally goes to get the pancake syrup. we leave to realize there were no spoons and no granola in with my parfaits. i decide we should just go to my work and not go back and start another conflict.

okay so at this point, sean is mad. i'm a little angry but not too upset. why even argue with a customer at all over something so trivial? and why make such a huge deal about pancake syrup when it's doing nothing but making your job harder? maybe she had a bad day at that point or hates her job at mcdonalds or whatever but that's not an excuse for the amount of time and energy wasted not to mention the horrible experience she just provided a customer with. not that we're the end all of customers and mcdonalds everywhere would shut down without us but we are constant return customers and regardless should have been treated with a bit more service and a lot less disrespect.

so let's fast forward to today, july 10th. same mcdonalds. this time i'm ordering just the 2 parfaits. the girl from the magical drive thru voice machine tells us that it'll be $2.14 [which is what 2 parfaits cost with tax]. on this particular morning she did not employ the use of the drive thru screen. alright at this point in the story the mcdonalds' employees are not the only ones at fault here. i will take the blame for not looking at my receipt as i have been conditioned through many years of quick drive thru experiences. i gave sean my debit card. he handed it to the girl at the cash register and she handed it back with the receipt. he pulled forward and i crinkled up the receipt. the receipt had the wrong order on it. i should have looked at it. so we pull up to the next window and the guy standing there says, "sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit?" sean says, "no, we had two parfaits." another employee comes up and she begins to argue with us about how we paid for a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit [which we did, which is more ($2.35), and i should have looked at the damned receipt] and how we didn't order 2 parfaits. but again why even argue with us over this? why would we lie about what we ordered? i was to the point of using foul language today in the drive thru. i was that mad.

suffice it to say i will not be going back to this particular mcdonalds and i'm sure it won't hurt their business at all. but just as i e-mail companies about when i have a great customer service experience i sure as hell e-mailed them this morning about the bad experiences i've had this week. i just can't wrap my brain around the reasoning behind being so rude to a customer. i would have been fired had i ever acted that way toward a customer at eb games, hollywood video, publix, lazy creek, clemson dining services, or at the surgical referral [i've worked at a lot of jobs that require customer service obviously]. it's not like i haven't been there with a jackass customer before and have wanted to say all sorts of things yet i have held my tongue because i knew that it wouldn't do anything to help me or my current position at the time to argue with a customer or tell them they were wrong [i have explained to many customers why they will never see pokemon or mario on the xbox]. and i would be a bit more sympathetic with the employee if we had been rude and hadn't ordered correctly but we were perfectly normal everyday customers.

off to work with insurance companies for now...

enjoy the silence.

-pyper

you want me to go where?

so in the wonderful world of everquest 2 we're working on the newly released epic weapons [newly released meaning 6 to 8 months ago plus]. i have mine ::grin::, my dad has his [in fact he's almost got his second one], and my mom has hers [which required an incredibly difficult final fight to obtain involving me yelling 3 3 3 at the top of my lungs while at my parents' house followed by my mother and i screaming and jumping up and down]. sean on the other hand does not have his yet. so these epic weapons are all nifty and you typically have to be maxxed out at level 80 to start the quest lines required to obtain your weapon. so for most epic weapons there are these series of difficult kills that requires a group of level 75-80 toons or even a coupla groups depending on mob difficulty...well...sean's starts that way and we kill the two initial mobs. not so bad, we're on our way. the next step for the brigands is a bit ridiculous. you have to obtain 4 robes. the robes drop off mobs that are currently grey to sean's character. when you kill a mob that is grey to you in everquest 2 as with many mmorpgs, you get no loot. therefore the only way to get loot in everquest 2 is to find a lower level toon who will go with you to the zones that said mobs are residing in and mentor to make yourself a lower level and allow the mob to drop loot. we find a guy who's willing to help us with the first named and get him out of the way in sos. the second robe is from a heritage quest that we complete so fantastic! robe 2 out of the way. the third and fourth mobs are in not so easy places to drag a lower level character. so looking at the quest there are alternate ways to obtain the 3rd and 4th robes by clicking two chests in some higher level zones known as karnor's castle and sebilis. so karnor's castle and sebilis are some high end group zones and we decide to hit up karnor's castle first because we've been to the area where eq2i suggests there is a chest. so we get in there and see this guy just run past all the initial mobs which are really nasty high level 73 and 74 ^^^ heroic drolvargs [imagine a werewolf that's in control of himself but extremely angry at the world and wants to kill you for no apparent reason...now you've got a drolvarg and heroic mobs are those meant for a group of six]. so we try it, like idiots, about 5 times. we die about 5 times. so then sean [fievall] realizes he has his god power that will drop all aggro from the group so we attempt the run a 6th time and make it to where the drolvargs keep their riding rhinos which don't hate us and drop all the mobs from the entrance. we then fight our way up the stairs and along the ledge on the outside of the castle slaying drolvargs as we go. we make our way to the hallway with the stairs leading down to the undead spirits that are some other inhabitants of karnors. for some reason these undead are unable to see past invisibility or stealth so fievall invises himself and i use a jaguar totem for stealth. we creep down to xalgoz's lair. he's floating there with his mistmoore emissary both of which can see through our invis. the chest is supposed to be behind xalgoz so in thinking that somehow i can rescue fievall if he is seen i remain in stealth on the stairs in front of xalgoz as fievall goes to sneak around behind him for the chest, hoping not to get close enough for xalgoz to spot him. fievall finally makes it around behind him and spots the small chest. he creeps up and waits for the other floating spirits to move away and quickly opens the chest, retrieving the robe! fievall recasts his invis and makes his way back to the stairs where i immediately cast escape and we're out of the castle with robe in hand.

next we're off to sebilis where the mobs become level 80 and 84^^^ heroic. we get pretty close to where the chest is supposed to be located and are slain several times when we finally give up. more attempts to follow this evening.

eeep! time to get back to work.

enjoy the silence.

-pyper

sunday sunday sunday!

we went to meet tandra [carole] and her husband [tony] at ihop on st. andrews. this is so incredibly totally super cool seeing as how most of the people we play with in game, we don't ever get to meet in person. tony doesn't play but carole and i hang out a lot in game even if she is a fae [heehee]. we had a really great breakfast and saw them off on their way back to florida from their family camping trip in north carolina. i'll post a picture later cause tony took one of the three of us and carole promises to send it to me tomorrow.

wanted 8/10 - finally convinced sean to go see it...actually it was his suggestion, maybe i put something in his lemonless water [he also said i could get a kitten so i obviously drugged him at some point]. anywho. it was great. i'm normally a bit more critical of movies but lately we seem to be on some plateau of sorts where most of the movies i've gone to see have been pretty spectacular or at least entertaining. the action scenes were fantastic. i liked everyone's role in this film; all the performances were well done. i have not read the comic and have heard from those that have read it that there is nothing in the movie that is in the comic except for the mention of one of the character's names so i apologize to those huge fans who were expecting it to be along the comics' lines. but to those fans i'd like to remind them that i have yet to see my favorite x-man [gambit] in any of their films although i did get his actual name [remy lebeau] on a computer screen [yeah i feel he was just a skosh overlooked] so i understand how you can be feeling if you were looking for it to relate a bit more to the comic.

i've dvred the ant bully and still have yet to watch charlie bartlett as i had some killer migraine yesterday and just zonked out on the bed when the power went out in concert to a really nice storm that made the dogs a bit anxious. aurora basically landed on my head as she flew onto the bed to get closer to me.

in other news i'm still behind on reading that bio book and didn't even crack it this weekend which isn't good. joni's out at work this week so rita [mom] and i have to do her job and ours so i'll be working a little more than normal. other than that not much other news.

have a nice day everyone and enjoy the silence.

-pyper