Giving Thanks

It is a tradition that is held in many various forms around the world. Thanksgiving is a time of year when Americans gather around a table with their families to reflect on the things in life that they are grateful for. It is a time of introspection and reflection, and a time to be with friends and family.

To some, it is one of the times of the year that Americans fly across the country to be with people that they don’t even like to talk to on the phone all that often. They gather around a smorgasbord that outweighs the collective group at the table, to eat more food than is reasonably healthy. They hold their hands, and bow their heads to pray to a god that they don’t believe in to thank him for things that they put absolutely no thought into.

Regardless of your religious beliefs, whether you thank Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, or a Golden Calf, I believe that spiritual figures give points for originality. Every time I think about the “pregame prayer”, as I like to call it, I imagine how bored god must get listening to the same drivel, over and over again.

In my head, he is sitting at his desk, floating above the clouds. There is a nameplate in the front that says “Big Guy” on it. Angels are scurrying about with headsets and PDA’s like busy stockbrokers, this is a modern heaven, after all. God’s administrative assistant, Stacy, walks in with a report.

“Sir, the last of the day’s prayers just came in.”

God puts his conference call on hold, “Ok Stacy, what do we have? Anything new?”

“Well sir, it looks like more of the same as every other year.”

“Give me the numbers Stacy.”

“Well sir, it looks like at least 248 million Americans would like to thank you for the meal they are about to receive. 230 million want to thank you for the roofs over their heads and the clothing on their backs. 266 million thank you for their kin, brothers, sisters, parents and the like.”

“Any weird ones?” God asks, accustomed to the outliers that occasionally pop up.

“Well, at least a couple hundred thousand want to thank you for being paroled this year.”

“Hmm… The number was higher last year.” God’s brow furrows.” Can’t these people be more creative?”

“What do you think we should do sir?” Stacy is concerned.

“Stacy, send out a memo. We’ll make the place cold and windy for the next few months; maybe drop some snow on their heads. Hopefully after that they will at least be thankful for summer.”

“Yes sir.”

The meal is over and I am watching football. Nearly comatose, I sit down on a recliner and think about the things that I couldn’t get along without. My family members are trying to talk to me, but I developed the ability to drown them out with my thoughts years ago. Halftime finally starts, and it gives me a few minutes to have a little one-on-one time with the “Big Guy.” I close my eyes and pray.

“God?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s me, Jake.”

“Yeah, thanks, I got that…” Sarcasm is oozing out of every word.

“I just thought that I would thank you personally for a few things.”

“Is this gonna be like the rest of them? Did you actually put some thought into this?”

“Yes, I put some thought into it, but I have to warn you, this might be, well… a little unorthodox.”

“As long as it’s not the same old food, roof, family thing that everyone keeps spitting out, I’ll be fine with it.”

“I want to thank you for caffeine and sugar, which make it possible to stay awake and alert long enough to get through work and school. I want to thank you for sleeping pills that counteract the caffeine and sugar long enough to get a few hours of sleep. I want to thank you for caller ID and text messaging, which allow me to ignore people’s calls when I’m stressed and don’t want to talk to anyone. Thanks for not allowing me to snap like a twig, even though I have been a little burned out lately. Thanks for all the little things that get me through the day.”

God smiles, amused. “Is there anything else?”

“Well you know, family and friends. I guess they are kind of important.”

“No food or roof talk?”

“Those are gifts I give myself.”

“Agreed.”

I am about to open my eyes to watch the rest of the halftime show, and I remembered one more thing.

“Oh yeah, that dream that I had a few months ago…”

“What about it?”

“I want to thank you for that, too!”

I opened my eyes to rejoin the halftime festivities, already in progress. I turned to see my entire family asleep in the living room, so I sneaked out to get a little time at home to myself. Interestingly enough, although it has been snowing and cold all week, I have yet to see a snowflake hit my car or frost cover my windshield.

Guys' Night Out

I am looking sharp, wearing a black collared shirt and blue jeans. My face is shaved, my hair is cut and gelled, and I am ready for anything that happens tonight.

Out with my friends, a Coke in my left hand, a cue in my right, rested on my foot. I have owned the table for the past few games, and I am waiting for my next shot. Aside from myself, there are three of my friends circling the pool table, discussing the week’s events and the women scattered about the pool hall. A petite, early twenty-something blonde from across the floor comes up to me and speaks.

“Hi, I’m new in town, and my new roomies and I were looking for some cute guys to party with after we get outta here. (Giggle Giggle)”

I divert my eyes for a second to look over her left shoulder. One of her friends waves at us. There are five of them in total, three brunettes, and two blondes. They are all in their early twenties, and all extremely hot. I wave them over.

“Why don’t you and your friends come and play pool with us for a while?”

She smiles at me, “That sounds good to me! (Giggle)” she says. The nine of us play pool until closing time, and then go back to the girls’ rented house for a while.

Things like this never happen to me.

More likely is a scenario in which, in a last minute effort to get out of my apartment for a few hours, I call fifteen or sixteen of my friends. I do this knowing full well that out of the people that I call, only two or three of them will want to leave their homes for a game or two of pool.

We get to the dive bar that I hate, but my friends love. One of my friends is wearing a faded t-shirt, torn blue jeans, and a hat that looks as if it hadn’t been washed since he received it as a birthday present in junior high school. Another wears a brownish-bluish hoodie over a stained, formerly white, t-shirt. The hoodie is smattered with paint from art projects and grease from working on his car.

After a number of times trying to look decent for these outings, and seeing my friends look as if they were homeless, I have become complacent and given up. I am wearing a pair of camouflage shorts, decade old sneakers, and a black hat to cover my uncut, uncombed hair. My face hasn’t been shaved in four or five days, and my shirt has the words ‘This Is What Cool Looks Like’ printed across it.

After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on the pool table, I take a seat on a bench a few feet away and await my next embarrassing game. My friends taunt me, and I blame the loss on the leaning, poorly maintained table.

After a few minutes of watching my friends play, I notice one of my friends actually talking to a woman. She isn’t the cute little blonde that I was hoping for. Instead, she is in her late thirties, her hair is gray and thinning. She is missing a few teeth, and bears a striking resemblance to someone I once saw on a Discovery Channel special about methamphetamines.

My turn to play finally comes up, so I stand and start walking to the table to put my quarters in. Joe stands next to me and bumps me with his elbow.

“Dude, she thinks you’re hot!” Joe says, laughing.

“Great…” I say in disgust. I take one of my rings and hurriedly move it over to my left ring finger.

“Alright Joe, let’s hurry up and play, I wouldn’t want to keep my wife waiting!” I say as loud as is reasonably possible, making sure she notices.

I sit down and wait for Joe to break, she comes and sits next to me. I pull my hat down and scoot away from her. She turns to me and tries to start a conversation.

“So, what’s your name?”

I try to keep the answers as short as possible. “Jake.”

“How come I don’t see you in here more often?” She asks, obviously flirting with me.

I hurry a response that I vaguely remember in an attempt to get her to leave me alone.

“(Blah blah blah) wife (blah blah blah) two kids (blah blah blah blah). (Blah blah blah blah, blah blah) happily married (blah blah). (Blah blah blah, blah blah blah) seven years.”

She inches closer to me, gives me a two-toothed grin, and puts her hand on my knee as she says, “Your wife isn’t here, is she?”

Trying to be as nice as possible, I get up and walk into the restroom, praying that she is gone by the time that I get out. Stalling for time, I splash water on my face in an attempt to get the circus-freak-attracting pheromone off.

Ten minutes later, I finally emerge from the restroom to find a friend from work had joined our party. Justin was an odd character that I had only hung out with once or twice. He said his hellos, and went about his business with the group of guys he came to meet.

I sit down again. Apparently not getting the clue, the crack head sits next to me again. She leans over and whispers in my ear, “You know what I like to do to guys?”

Before she could get another word out, I say, “Hey, you see my friend over there?” I point in Justin’s direction.
She looks at me, confused, “Yeah, what about him?”

“That dude thinks you’re hot! You should go talk to him!”

Finally getting the clue, she takes leave. The party animals that my friends are, they decide to head home.

“Guys, it’s only midnight!”

“I got things to do in the morning, man. I gotta run.”

“He’s my ride, sorry Jake.”

The next evening, I get a call from Justin.

“Jake, whatcha doin’ tonight?”

“I’m just gonna kick it at home tonight.”

“Dude, that chick that was hanging out with you guys was a freak!”

“You’re telling me!”

“Man, she didn’t get outta here ‘till noon today!”

Not fully grasping what he is saying, I continue the conversation. “She wouldn’t stop trying to hit on - wait, what did you say?”

“She didn’t leave here ‘till noon! She made me breakfast this morning and everything!”

In shock, I eek out, “Tell me you didn’t…”

He did.

He then proceeds to tell me the whole story. After ten or twelve too many drinks, he took the poster child for drug rehab centers back to his place for, what I will henceforth describe as, ‘relations’.

“Dude, she does this thing with her tongue-“

“Man, I don’t want to know! You should probably see a doctor and get tested, and then a shrink and get tested!”

I’m not sure what I find more disturbing, the fact that he actually had relations with the girl, or the fact that he is bragging about it.

“Jake ya gotta take what you can when you can. Anyway, we stayed up ‘till about four this morning and-“

“Justin, I think I’m gonna puke.”

I hang up the phone and run into the bathroom. I still get nauseous when I think about Justin, the side show, and their ‘relations’.

Days of Innocence

Summers spent at the local pool, playing Marco Polo. Celebrating with the team at the local pizza joint after winning the last game of the little league season. Ice cold lemonade and fresh baked cookies with friends after a water balloon fight. Many images can come to mind when one starts to reflect on their childhood.

For some reason, when I think of the times I had growing up, I tend to remember the pranks I played on my brothers. As long as I can remember, I have been somewhat mischievous. Strewn about my mother’s photo albums are pictures of me holding down one of my brothers, punching them or pouring some sort of liquid on their heads. In my defense, I saw it as toughening them up. I always saw myself as a very creative child, finding new and interesting ways to (as my parents described it) torture my family.

My brother, 4 years my junior, has always been terrified of Chucky from the “Child’s Play” movies. As a child, whenever a commercial for one of the films started, he would run to his room and shut the door. It would take my parents quite a bit of coaxing before he would come out again, requiring them to convince him that the ad had ended.

As what would be considered to most to be a thoughtful gesture, my grandmother once bought him a My Buddy doll for Christmas. The doll was intended as an educational toy, with buttons, zippers, Velcro fasteners and shoelaces. The popular toy, given to tens of thousands of children, also bore an uncanny resemblance to Chucky.

Upon opening the gift, my brother dropped it and ran to his room. He slammed the door, and was sheltered inside for half an hour before my parents were able to coax him out. The doll was stored in my closet, with my parents and my brother hoping that he would never see it again.

The My Buddy doll, which wrought terror into the heart of my little brother, was the best gift my grandmother ever gave me. Over the months following that Christmas it gave me unbridled joy. Somehow, the doll found its way to the most inexplicable of locations. My brother would often open his toy box to find it sitting atop a fire truck. He would awake early in the morning to find My Buddy lying beside him, smiling. Being woken at 3 A.M. by the screams of a three year old let me know that I had accomplished my mission. I would spend those nights giggling myself back to sleep.

After 3 months of not being able to sleep, and weekly trips to a local department store for replacement sheets, my parents curbed the activity by burying the doll in a box deep within the garage. It was never to be seen again.

At an early age, the youngest out of the three was my shadow. He tried to emulate or be involved with everything that our middle brother and I did. From swordfights in the front yard to chores around the house, he followed us every step of the way.

One summer afternoon, I had just pulled a jar from the refrigerator to snack when curiosity got the better of him. He approached me in the kitchen, wondering what I was eating.

“Whatcha eatin’?” He looked up and asked me.

I pulled the fork out of my mouth. With it still full, I garbled, “Pickles... Ya want some?”

His eyes lit up, and with enthusiasm, he said “Yeah!”

I took the fork and drove it to the bottom of the jar, making sure I could pile on as many of the small green disks as was physically possible. I handed him the fork, and with a swift bite, he cleaned off the tines. His eyes lit up again, when he came to the realization that the kosher dills that I had promised him were in fact, ultra-mega-wicked hot jalapenos. They were of the variety that had labels only written in Spanish. On the front of the jar was emblazoned a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, and underneath, the word “Aviso!”

He opened wide and started to try fanning the flames, but it did him no good. Laughing, I grabbed a class from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. I did this, knowing full well that water has the effect of opening the taste buds on the tongue, intensifying the effect.

“Here! Drink this!” I handed him the full glass of water, and he sucked down every last drop.

My brother started to scream obscenities that were, under the given circumstances, appropriate. However, at his age, they might have gotten the both of us grounded for ten to twenty years. I gave him a few slices of bread to scarf down, and he never asked me for food again.

My mother hated the little pranks I played on my brothers. My father on the other hand, had the tendency of encouraging this type of behavior. He snickered every time I described pranks I would play on by friends. The encouragement ended however, one April Fool’s Day, when he found himself as the target of one of my jokes.

My parents’ room and my brothers’ room happened to lie right across the hall from each other. They both had doors that opened inwards. This makes it rather easy to forcibly prevent the doors from opening by tying the door knobs together. I woke at 4 A.M., tied the doors with a jump rope, and sat in the end of the hall, waiting.

6 o’clock came around, and after a few rattles on the handle, my younger brothers started pounding.

“Jake! I hafta pee!” The youngest one started to scream.

“April Fool’s!” I went into the living room to watch my cartoons, but promptly untied the jump rope as soon as my dad started to yell.

These are the kinds of things that I look back on with a smile. It makes me proud to know that I had a hand in raising my brothers. This is especially true when I see the youngest, now 18, being scolded by his girlfriend for unscrewing the cap of the salt shaker at the dinner table.

Having burgers at my mom’s house, he asks me “Dude, can you pass the pickles?”

I open the jar of jalapenos and slide them his way.

“Very funny…”

Travel Diary Study of '06

I, like many other residence of Flagstaff, was asked to participate in a household travel survey last week. This was to depict the experiences and patterns of the average person while driving around our town.

These are the results of my survey.

Thursday, 9:06 AM:
When driving to school this morning, cut off by yippee (my name for a person who owns a black Excursion with a bumper sticker that says ‘save the trees’). Yippee comes within approximately 2 feet of front bumper when cutting me off. I pass the Excursion to the left hand side, beep twice, and after obtaining driver’s attention, display my right middle finger for him to see.

Driver retaliates by rolling down window and throwing large peanut butter and banana smoothie at my passenger side window. Smoothie container is destroyed upon impact, dispersing its contents about the entire right side of my vehicle.

No comment on how the flavor of the smoothie was ascertained.

10:15 AM:
While traveling behind Subaru Outback, I was forced to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision with said vehicle when it suddenly stops for no apparent reason. I glance in rear view mirror to notice that six vehicles brake and swerve to avoid a collision with each other and myself. Two of the vehicles behind me veer into oncoming traffic, narrowly adverting an accident with a motorcycle and a 16-wheeler. Two others swerve to the right. One goes off the road, the other stops just in time to avoid hitting a rather large pine tree. In my estimation, at least 7 people are nearly killed or seriously wounded.

Two seconds later, the reason the driver ahead of me stopped suddenly becomes obvious. A squirrel appears from the front of the Outback, and attempts to cross the street. Squirrel is then hit by opposing traffic.

10:33 AM:
I receive text message from classmate who previously requested assistance with homework problem in calculus. Classmate previously tried to convince me that I was wrong about a certain point that I had showed her on the problem. She had sent me the text message to explain that I was right and to apologize.

I attempt to respond to the message, while driving and not paying attention to the words that I was typing. I attempt to type phrase “I told you!” but somehow, it comes out “I love you!” I do not become aware of the mistake until she types back “I love you too!” By this time, the damage has been done. I am now being stalked by a 19 year old obese woman with three children.

11:45 AM:
I make the mistake of jumping on the freeway to make a “quick” trip to Target. I-40 westbound is backed up like a clogged toilet for 120 minutes. I take advantage of the time, traveling at less than 5 mph the entire trip, to finish my homework, balance my checkbook and play Lumines. I finally reach my destination at 1:50 PM.

2:30 PM:
Waiting for a light to turn, a cute blonde girl around my age in a red Focus pulls along my left side. She looks over and waves, I wave back. She smiles, I smile back. She starts making kissy faces at me; I write down my number and hold it against the window. She takes down my number and waves again. The light finally turns green and we both drive away.

My girlfriend is less than impressed. She slaps the back of my head and calls me some rather vulgar names. I loose my handle on the fresh cup of coffee I had just purchased at the Starbucks inside of Target. All 24 ounces of the piping hot coffee spill into my lap, causing burns and blisters.

I cry, girlfriend laughs.

Friday, 7:33 AM:
Now at work, God punishes finger used to flip-off yippee by lacerating it. I am working on computer, replacing a burnt-out power supply. Upon attempting to remove the wires from the motherboard, I jerk the wires away, forcing finger into sharp edge of case. Finger is punctured, causing bleeding for 5-10 minutes, as well as tainting the 26-year-old perfect safety record of my IT department.

Lost Cause

Over the years, a few responsibilities have become intrinsic parts to any position that I hold in a company. Besides being ‘the dude who rants a lot,’ ‘the dude who always looks like he needs sleep’ and ‘the really irritable guy’, I have also spent a portion of the last few years as a trainer, in one extent or another. First, as the lead mentor at a call center that offered directory service for cell phone users, and as a pseudo technical trainer for end users in my building.

I started training, specifically mentoring, with admittedly inauspicious intent. I wasn’t looking to share my knowledge with those who were lacking, or make the team better as a whole. I started training because I absolutely hated answering phone calls all day.

The job consisted of sitting in front of a computer with a headset on and connecting people to phone numbers we found in a database. I was one of the faster operators in the building, with my call times averaging between 15-25 seconds apiece. Stretch that out over a few hours, and there was often a case where I would take 1000 or more calls in a day. Stretch it out over the year, and well, you get the point. For someone who gets bored with everything easily, all the calls that I had answered had taken their toll.

I also saw training as an opportunity to impress management with the wide variety of abilities in my skill set, and hopefully, an opportunity to meet girls. Unfortunately, after just a few weeks, most of the management learned that I was an impatient ball of nerves. Even though my trainees would walk away from the experience with a greater knowledge of the job, they might also walk away emotionally scarred. Management kept me on as a mentor, but never promoted me any higher.

The experience with the women at the job wasn’t much better. With the exception of one girl that I met in my tenure, the girls that were coming in were too old, too young, too dumb, too aggravating, too boring, too crazy or just flat out not my type.

Although I started with mixed motives, but ultimately I found the experience rewarding. As many times as I had to prevent myself from choking the trainees, the time I spent with them taught me patience and teaching techniques that have traveled with me to other positions. The biggest lesson that I learned was, no matter how hard you try, no matter how intelligent some people are, not everyone is capable of learning everything. Most everyone is naturally either right or left brained, favoring one over the other since birth.

After a certain amount of time trying to teach someone, a trainer must write some trainees of as a lost cause, wish them the best of luck, and show them the door. It’s not something that a trainer likes to do, but is necessary as part of the job. A new hire who isn’t keeping up with the rest of the class, slows the class down as a whole, becomes a liability to the manager they are going to report to, wastes the trainer’s time, and ultimately, wastes their own time. Giving them their walking papers just helps them to find something they are better suited at.

Take one trainee I had for example. For our purposes, we will call her Sharon (mostly because I can’t remember her real name). Sharon was a woman in her early to mid-thirties. She had spent a good majority of her adulthood as a stay at home mother, taking care of her two kids and the home. With her kids getting a little older, and not needing her at home during the day, she decided to get a job to occupy her time.

Sharon was a musician by nature, more comfortable with the keys on a piano than the ones on a keyboard. The only real experience she had with computers was checking her e-mail and browsing the web. Her typing skills were sub-par, compared to the other trainees in her class, she barely had enough speed to pass the typing test required to get the job.

After three weeks in classroom training, learning the ins-and-outs of the job, like everyone else, she was handed off to the mentors to refine the skills she would need to be successful. I was the first one to sit with her and watch her work.

“Sharon, is it?”

The only response I received was a slight nod, indicating that she was a little nervous.

“Ok, Sharon, I am going to plug my headset in and listen in to a few calls of yours to see what rough spots you might have, and how we can polish them out.”

“Ok…”

I plugged myself in, took a seat next to her and began listening to a couple of calls, noticing that her average call time was well over a minute. The expression on her face was looking more and more anxious by the second. I tried to ease her into the experience as simply as possible.

“Just relax, pretend that I’m not even here.”

Her first call came across the line. A friendly recording played, asking the customer what city and state to look for information in. The customer promptly responded.

“Phoenix Arizona, please.”

Sharon managed to finally put a sentence together.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“I need the number for a Dairy Queen on Bell and 29th.”

“That will be just one second sir.”

Completely in a daze, she sat there and stared at her terminal for about twenty or thirty seconds. No typing, no looking at her notes, just sitting there and staring. She looked as if she was about to type something, then turned and looked at me, completely at a loss as what she should do next.

Hoping that all she needed was a direction, I wrote down ‘type the word dairy in the first box’ then showed her my notepad. She read the note, followed the directions to a letter, sat and stared for another twenty seconds, then stared at me again, looking for another clue.

I wrote her another note, ‘Begin your search’. She read the note, stared at me again, and then wrote. ‘How?’ directly below the message I had just written.

At this point, I was starting to get a little irritated. Either she was too nervous to function properly in this job, or after three weeks of paid training, she had not yet learned what key to use to complete her primary function. I pointed to the proper key, and she did something that no one I had ever mentored had done. She slid the keyboard in my direction.

As a general rule, to prevent dependency on others, everyone in the mentoring program had decided collectively not to enter anything into the trainee’s keyboard. We were there as advisors only, not to do their jobs. We wrote notes, gave them pertinent information and spelling, and gave them pointers along the way, but never did their job.

I slid the keyboard back in front of her hands, and pointed at the key again, this time more explicitly identifying the key she needed to use. She gave me a dirty look, angrier than any other I had ever seen, then pressed the button. Thirty or so listings appeared on her screen, they were various businesses with the word ‘dairy’ in the name from around the valley. With the listings and their street names in front of her, she should be able to scroll the listings to find the proper one. Instead, she starred at the screen for another twenty seconds, and slid the keyboard in my direction again.

“Sharon, I’m not here to do the job for you, just to help you out. Scroll down until you find the listing.”

She did as I had instructed, scrolling down to the bottom of the list, where I saw, quite clearly, a listing for Dairy Queen at 2900 E. Bell. I promptly took the tip of my pen and pointed it at the entry displayed on the screen.

She pulled her hands away from the keyboard, leaned back, and tried to soak in what I was telling her. To help get my point across, I started tapping the listing with my pen. Either completely oblivious to what I was trying to say, or functionally illiterate, she informed the customer of the progress of her search.

“Uh, I’m not finding anything for that listing, sir.”

Now, fairly irate, I took my pen and started poking at the listing on the screen with the enthusiasm and fervor of a convict shanking a prison guard. My pen tip bounced off the screen 6-7 times, leaving ink marks on the glass. I did everything I could think of to point out the correct entry besides taking a Sharpie, circling the listing and writing, “This one, stupid!” on the glass.

“Just one moment, sir.”

A two minutes after she picked up the phone, Sharon’s flickering, 3-watt light bulb she calls a brain, finally turned on. She turned to me and smiled with a sense of relief.

“Here we go sir, I have…”

I put her calls on hold and explained what she did wrong, making sure to inform her of every minutia of her errors. Repeating them 3 or 4 times to make sure that she was aware of them.

I took her calls off hold and the pattern repeated itself. For two hours, she would get a call, slide me the keyboard a few times, and I would resist the urge to smash it against the desk in front of me. After fifteen days of training, she was unable to make sense of the system. I took some time to browse the average call times of the other students in her class. Each and every one of them had reduced their times well below the recommended 48 seconds they needed before being passed off to their managers.

Sharon’s average time was in the 120-second ballpark.
Afraid of having an aneurysm, and fearing I was taking the wrong approach, I backed off for the day to let her get some time to go it alone. I headed back to my desk, chanting, and finished my notes on that day’s progress.

“…Calmblueocean, calmblueocean, calmblueocean, calmblueocean….”

I usually keep my notes rather professional, but I was so wound up from the day’s events that I couldn’t help myself.

Notes on first mentoring session for new hire Sharon:
Despite my apparent inability to aid in Sharon’s development whatsoever, I continued to sit with her in the hopes that something, anything; that I was trying to tell her was sinking in. I was sorely disappointed.

Sharon is completely unable to figure out even the most simple of calls on her own, turning to me as a crutch, even for listings that were well known landmarks down the street from the building we are now in. She repeatedly makes the same mistakes, even after being told how to correct the mistakes a multitude of times.

Her inability to retain any knowledge that I have given her whatsoever shows either complete contempt for my experience as a CSR, or the attention span of a 5 year old.

A short list mistakes Sharon made repeatedly in my two hours sitting with her:
Using the word ‘The’ as a keyword for searches
Asking what state ‘New York City’ was in
Letting the air go dead for more than 3 minutes
Putting customers on hold to get a drink of water
Mistaking the ‘call termination key’ for the ‘begin search’ key
Repeating words such as ‘crap’ on the air when unable to find a listing
Not searching all available outlets when trying to find a difficult entry

In short, she is completely unable to perform even the most basic tasks required of her as a CSR. Furthermore, I am not an expert, but it is my recommendation that she be tested for a learning disability. Sharon, at times, exhibits signs of illiteracy.

I also think that HR should review the requisites for hiring, if only to save the time, money, and effort it takes to train someone such as her.

My recommendation:
TERMINATION!!!

I came into the office the next day after some introspection. After much thought, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and figured that I might be the problem. I passed her off, along with my notes, to another mentor. I figured someone with a softer hand and more patience would have better luck.

Out of sight and out of mind, I was at my desk finishing up some notes on a rather successful session with another trainee in Sharon’s class. The training lead, Amy, took a seat next to me.

“Uh, we need to talk about your notes on Sharon…”

“What about them? I thought they were pretty concise.”

“Well, Jake, they’re rather…”

“Rather what?”

“Mean!”

“Mean?”

“Jake, listing mistakes she made is expected, but questioning her literacy? Don’t you think you are being just a bit rough on her?”

“Actually, I thought about it a lot last night, and came to the same conclusion.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I handed her off to Stacy.”

Stacy, was without a doubt, the best person I could think of to mentor Sharon. Calm, personable, patient, and persistent, she was always the best fit for someone who needed a seemingly insurmountable amount of improvement.

No sooner had I spoken her name, she walked up. Her face carried a look of shock, as if she had just witnessed a violent crime. This was completely out of the norm for someone who usually had a smile on her face, even when things were rough.

“How’s it going, kid?” I came to the conclusion that she had the same luck that I did, but she looked like she needed to vent.

“She typed the word ‘return’.”

“Say again…” Amy was confused, as was I.

Stacy started again. “I told her ‘now hit return’ after she typed the name of the listing. I looked down to write something, then looked back up, and the word ‘return’ was in the search box. I was with her for two hours and I still can’t drop her time below two minutes.”

I looked at Amy with a smirk that had ‘I told you so’ written all over it. “So Amy, you still think that I was being mean?”

“Well…”

Tired of the hemming and hawing, I looked over to Stacy. “Let’s just see what she has to say about it.”

“Can her!” Stacy is not known to be mean, but those words came out with so little hesitation that I think that she might have actually experienced some sort of joy saying them.

Amy looked at the both of us, shocked. “But she is so nice!”

“She sucks! She sucks a lot! She might be the dumbest person I have ever met in my life! We sat with her for four hours, Amy, four hours, and she hasn’t improved! You really think any manager is gonna take her with her times that high?” I’m never at a loss for words when frustrated.

“No… They won’t.”

“Nice is not competent, Amy, you know that as well as I do. She has had three weeks of training, two days on a fairly simple job, and shown no improvement at all.”

“Ok… I’ll take care of it…”

Amy reluctantly walked over to Sharon’s desk and started to talk to her. It was in inaudible conversation that I didn’t want to witness. I turned back to Stacy, still standing in front of me, aghast.

“Go to break, kid, you look like you need it.”

“I’m gonna go talk to HR.”

A few minutes later, after she had done the dirty deed, Amy came back with a look of relief on her face. Under the shadow of the muffled obscenities coming out of the HR office, we began to chat again.

“We both kind of decided that she was better off somewhere else.”

“So she wasn’t upset?”

“No, I actually think she was expecting it. Well it just goes to show you…”

“Goes to show you what?”

“Like my dad always said, you can’t expect a painter to fly.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Never mind.”

To this day, I still have no idea what she was talking about.

An Ode to Jake

A few days ago, my girlfriend and I were leaving a local coffee shop after breakfast. Upon opening my car door to get inside, I happened to glance at the front window of the shop. I saw a gentleman, about 5’10” tall, brown eyes, black hair, Hispanic. He carried an aura of confidence about him; he seemed like the type of guy who could and would accomplish anything he set his mind to.

My girlfriend glanced at me with a somewhat puzzled look, confused as I took a couple of seconds and stared into the window.

“What is it, Jake?”

I turned to her and smiled.

“God, that’s a handsome devil in the window!”

Still confused, with her mouth agape, she turned and looked at the window. Noticing that the window I had been ogling for the past few seconds was opaque and rather reflective, she turned back to me more confused than before.

“All I see is you, Jake.”

I turned back to her for a second, and smirked. As soon as she saw the smile on my face, she knew what I was going to say, but that didn’t stop me from saying it.

“Exactly!”

She looked at the ground in front of her, put the sunglasses she hand in her hands over her eyes, sighed, and shook her head. I turned my head towards the window, looked at myself for another second, and then got into my car. I took a grin with me that I carried for the next few hours.

How do I love me? Let me count the ways.

People have asked me time and time again if I am as cocky and vain as others observe me to be. I often repeat the phrase, ‘If I could, I would run across a grassy field into my own arms.’

Often sarcastic, occasionally inappropriate, always opinionated, I am my favorite person. I bathe in the glow of the intelligence that I possess. I carry it with me like a protester with a placard, holding it above my head for all to see. I love sharing the knowledge I have with the people around me.

I have a great sense of humor, if I do say so myself! Sharp, witty, and poignant, I have always had an intrinsic ability to make those around me laugh. Not afraid to be self-deprecating, my friends always have a great time in my presence.

I am ridiculously good looking. And let’s be honest, as much is you value the company of friends and family who are less than attractive, it’s always better to be seen surrounded by beautiful people. Being around attractive people makes you feel better about yourself. I make people feel better about themselves.

By no means whatsoever am I perfect. Every time I think about my attributes, I think about my flaws, my vices, and my errors. I look at these things the same way I look at my favorite work of art.

I stare at my favorite painting and admire the work. I look from afar and notice the time, skill, and soul that the artist put into the canvas. I begin see how much of himself he conveys through his hand. The closer I get to the work, and the more I begin to stare, the more flaws I begin to see.

I see sections of canvas that have frayed over time. I see portions of the painting that have faded, and streaks where the artist put a little too much pressure on the brush. I see the things that some might consider imperfections, and they make the picture more beautiful, they bring the picture to life and make it more real.

I love the picture that is me. I love my frayed canvas. I love my flaws. I believe they bring me to life, and make me a human. To hate the imperfections, is to hate the painting as a whole. I would love me if I weren’t smart, if I wasn’t funny, if I wasn’t attractive.

But I don't have to worry about that, because I am smart, I am funny, and I am attractive, and more than anything else, I love me because I am humble.

Who's Afraid of...

In my experience, there are two flavors of people who suffer from problems with anxiety. The first, and most common would be your normal, average, everyday moron. These are the type of people who get anxious about everything because they don’t know enough about anything to really know what goes on in the world. They know just enough about what could happen in the world, and they think they know why, but they are so far off that the reaction makes no logical sense.

These are the type of people who don’t get their children inoculated for diseases because they believe that the government is going to use the shot to chemically control their children. Conspiracy theorists without proof, a great deal of these people invent situations in their head to make them feel as if they are more important than they really are. Don’t get me wrong, there is a need for conspiracy theorists, especially in this country, but some just straddle the line between thinking outside of the box and paranoid.

Then, there are the polar opposites. A group of people who are informed enough about most things that they know enough to be dangerous to themselves and the people around them. These people are rarely conspiracy theorists, and more likely than not to be hypochondriacs, spending a great deal of time with their heads in medical texts of some sort, trying to figure out what that scratching in the back of their throat is.

Admittedly, I am one of the later. In the age of information, born of the Internet, it has become ever increasingly easy for us hypochondriacs to gather information about the diseases we have this week. All we need is a small symptom, a sneeze, a headache, or a cough to make us start looking on the net for information, and at our wills to make sure they are up to date. All we need do is to pick a disease, and our brain will fill in the blanks, developing any symptoms that we don’t already have.

In an age when we are bombarded by information about diseases from sources such as Web MD, Discovery Health Channel, and various other sources, there are very few sites or informational programs that wont tell you what will kill you in your sleep tonight. For those with Internet addictions, and a compulsion to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, this is a curse.

September 1999:
I had to be excused from a late morning Latin class because I thought I was having a heart attack. After much, much retrospection, I determined that the 6 cups of coffee I had that morning, nervousness I had due to an upcoming test, and an upset digestive system caused by my breakfast had caused me to have an acute anxiety attack with heartburn. I took four Tums and two Tylenol PM and the heart attack ended.

August 2000:
After staring at my red, itchy hands for an hour at work, I convinced myself that my hands were swelling up, and I was breaking out in hives. This was something that actually happened to me in high school, but not once since. At the time, I was a 411 operator, and when a customer was kind enough to ask me how my day was going, I replied:

“I think I am breaking out in hives, my hands are all itchy and swollen…”

This turned out to be a bad idea. Unbeknownst to me, a classroom of 35 new-hires was sitting in a room 30 feet away listening to every word I said over a muted speakerphone. This was only pointed out to me after I passed 15 people chuckling and pointing at me.

My dermatologist suggested I obtain a bottle of what he called ‘moisturizing lotion’ and use it on my hands. Within three days, my hives were gone.

Late 2001:
Sitting in a training class, after a long lunch and a news report about the latest anthrax scare, I started writing an email to my parents about what ‘arrangements’ I wanted to be made. This included, what songs I wanted at my funeral, who my pallbearers were to be, and who was to be invited to my rosary service and funeral reception. Interestingly enough, I had no symptoms whatsoever until I started to read a synopsis on Web MD.

February 2002:
After waking up with sharp, stabbing pain in my right hip off and on for a while, I was convinced that I either had a bone spur or some sort of ligament or cartilage problem in my hip. Interestingly enough, the problem stopped immediately following when I started to make sure that my keys weren’t in my pajama pants pocket before crashing for the night.

November 2002:
Could not sleep for three days before finally going to the doctor. Even though I had already started feeling better, and I was quite certain that I had never been to Asia, I was convinced that I had somehow contracted SARS. After a multitude of tests, and arguments with my physician trying to convince him of what I knew, regardless of the results of the tests, it was determined that what I had was, as he called it, ‘a common cold’.

June 2003:
After noticing an oddly suspicious red mark on my right forearm, I was determined that I had necrotizing fasciiatis, or as the common folk would call it, flesh-eating disease. After further inspection, and pacing about my apartment for 5 hours, I realized that the red mark was caused by accidentally bumping into a brick wall earlier that day. My killer bacteria was, in fact, a simple scrape.

November 2004:
After watching a Discovery Channel special, and feeling under the weather for a week or two, I somehow managed to convince myself that I was the first American to come down with the avian flu. I kept imagining myself giving interviews to various news sources from my hospital bed, with the eyes of the entire country on me, wondering if I was going to pull through or if others would come down with the disease. As it turned out, my fever and headache were caused by nothing other than sinusitis.

July 2005:
After awaking with my left arm numb, my heart started racing, and I believed that I had been in the middle of a stroke. My first instinct was to go online and double check the symptoms of a stroke before I called for an ambulance.

In a panic, I was unable to find any sites with stroke symptoms listed. After ten minutes of still being alive, with my arm getting less and less numb by the second, I started to calm down. Considering I was starting to feel better instead of worse, my vision wasn’t closing up, and there was no blood shooting out of my nose, I came to the conclusion that my arm was just asleep from lying on it all evening.

March 2006:
After bringing all of this to the attention of my shrink, plus a laundry list of psychological ailments that I thought I once had, including Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD, and Tourette’s Syndrome , she determined one thing. As she put it, I am a reasonably intelligent individual who knows too much about what can go wrong and has an overactive imagination, or as I like to call it, a dude with too much free time on his hands, or a fucking nutjob, for simplicity sake.

12:06 PM

“Watch, look to the left, over by the payphones.”

She had a daily routine that she followed religiously; I could practically set my watch by it. There had only been rare occasions since I had first seen her that it had changed.

“What the fuck is the deal Jake, are you stalking her or what?”

“Dude, just shut up and watch!”

Her daily early afternoon routine involved a large cup of coffee and a stroll into the basement of the student union to watch the drama majors perform monologues and improvisational comedy sketches, badly, I should add.

Today was no different, she had her coffee in her right hand, her backpack was on, and she was completely oblivious to my existence. She passed by the payphones across the hall from where Joe and I were sitting on this day, the same place I sit everyday at noon.

“12:06 P.M., I swear to Christ Joe, she shows up and passes the same spot within 4 minutes of 12:06 everyday,”

“So what?”

“So what? What do you mean ‘so what?’ You don’t think that’s a little fucking strange dude?”

“I’ll tell you what’s fucking strange man, the fact that you know that.”

“Don’t you think she’s cute?”

“She’s cute. So why don’t you just talk to her?”

“I don’t get to class in time to sit anywhere near her. I have class at Old Chem and then have to bolt up to AME.”

“How about now? Why don’t you catch her now?”

“What the hell am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I know you don’t know me, but I have had my eye on you for a few weeks now’? Do you have any idea how fucking odd that sounds?”

“That doesn’t seem odd at all.” There were more than subtle undertones of sarcasm in his voice.

“Goddamn smartass.”

Admittedly, it did sound kind of odd that I knew what time she pass that particular point in the hall, but it was entirely coincidental. She wasn’t the only student in Tucson who had a lunch routine. I would usually grab a cup of coffee and a pastry or bagel from the same small stand that she would frequent. I would then take a seat on a bench down the hall.

Over a matter of a couple of weeks, I slowly started to casually observe her lunch routine. I had first noticed her in my engineering 181 lectures. She was impossible not to notice. An attractive young female tends to stick out in a group of students that is predominately men and women who could only be described as such by the anatomical definition. I really hate to categorize people into stereotypes, but out of the 300 people in our lecture, no more than 50 of them were female. And out of those 50 women, only about 15 of them were anything you would want your friends to see you in public with.

She was 5’4”-ish, with shoulder-length brunette hair, blue eyes, and great legs. Physically, she had absolutely everything I was looking for in a girl. The fact that she was as engineering major let me know, that at least intellectually, she was my type.

A few days had past since I had pointed her out to Joe, with him unsettlingly quiet about the event. I walked into our engineering lecture to a surprise. Whether it was to be good or bad was to be determined.

“Jake! Over here, yo!”

I looked to the front of the room to find Joe sitting two seats away from her, with a single seat in between.

“Dude, I saved you a seat! Right here buddy!”

I begrudgingly took my place next to him, giving him a dirty look in the process, but giving him high-fives in my head. This was the opportunity that I was looking for; I had just wished that it wasn’t as contrived as it was. Considering the standard format for the lecture, it was also the perfect environment.

I will admit, this wasn’t the first time that I had taken a seat next to an attractive woman in one of my lectures. I will also admit that this wouldn’t be the first time I had tried to get one of them to notice me. Three times before, I had tried to strike up conversations with girls in lecture classes. Three times before, I was shot down or ignored before any substantial progress had been made.

The problem I faced was the fact that the professors in my other classes were almost strictly professors. They had few distractions in their personal or professional lives, and had plenty of time to prepare lectures and notes for their sessions. This means, in short, that these college teachers were actually teaching things that weren’t in the textbooks to their students. This ensured that the young, cute, impressionable females that I was trying to corrupt were paying attention and taking notes rather than talking to me.

This challenge simply did not exist in my engineering lecture. The few of us guys who were confident, thin, attractive, and all-around, normal enough to hit on the 15 desirable bachelorettes in the class were free to do as we will. The professor who led the lecture section of the class was completely overwhelmed with overseeing a project that was to be taken to a national competition at the end of the semester.

In the occasions that he did make it to class, his lectures were almost strictly taken from the text. There was little to no reason to take notes, because everything we were being taught we had already read over. He had little to no time to prepare, and neither did the substitute profs who filled in on occasion. The meat and potatoes of learning in the class happened in the discussion section, when we were in a group of 30, rather than 300, with a professor who had time to prepare.

Most of us did the honorable thing and showed up to lecture, even though we thought it was completely useless. Personally, I was afraid that the project would be completed and the professor would come back to actually teach us something. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the students weren’t really paying attention. At least a third of the attending used it as an opportunity to take a nap between classes in an air-conditioned building. Most of the rest caught up on their homework in other classes, or worked on the crossword in the Wildcat. Some kids actually took notes, which means that they truly didn’t understand the text, or they didn’t read it.

I took my copy of the Wildcat out of my messenger bag and feigned a lost pen. After a sufficient fake search, patting my pockets and glancing in my bag once or twice, I leaned over and bumped her with my elbow.

“Excuse me…”

She was thumbing through that week’s issue of ‘People’ magazine when she looked up and smiled.

“Yes?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a pen I could borrow, would you?”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe?”

“What do you need the pen for?”

“Writing…”

“I know that, I mean what are you writing?”

“The crossword.”

“How ‘bout we do it together? I’m kind of bored.”

“That works for me, what’s your name?”

“Kate.”

“Kate, my name is Jake. It’s a pleasure.”

“Same here. What’s with the smirk?”

I have an uncontrollable reaction to some things. The same way one would laugh when they are being tickled, or flinch when someone swings at them, I have the tendency to smirk when I am attracted to a girl, (or when I think I am getting away with something that I shouldn’t be.)

“Nothing, it’s nothing.”

We spent the next 40 minutes ignoring what we were supposed to be doing, making jokes at the others expense, and filling out the crossword to the best of our ability.

“Do you not know how to read, Jake?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Transceiver! It’s E-I not I-E!”

“It’s I before E-“

“Except after C, dork!”

“Engineering major, not English, remember?”

“Me too, remember?”

“Let’s see, 33-down, ‘Pain in Jake’s ass’ four letters, begins with K-A. Hmm, would could it be?”

She cocked back and punched me in the arm.

“Dammit woman!”

This was now noticeable enough to get the attention of the professor, who was at this point, reading his lecture directly from the book. He glanced up for a second, and attempted to discover the cause of the disturbance. Kate and I both slumped in our chairs and shut our mouths.

The prof leered at us for a couple of seconds, and then continued to read.

“What is it with women and punching me?” I whispered to her as she tried to hold in her laughter.

“I’m willing to bet that this isn’t the first or last time a girl has punched you.”

Class ended, Kate and I packed up our belongings and walked outside with Joe close behind. We parted with the usual ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘I’ll see you around’, then went our separate ways.

Joe walked up behind me and lit a cigarette. I waited until she was out of visual range and did the same.

“So, how did it go, man?”

“She is an insufferable, stubborn, sarcastic, cocky, pain in my ass.”

“Really? That sounds a lot like someone else I know.”

“Yeah, who?”

“Who do you think, dude? You! The way you describe her, she actually seems like she would be your type.”

“Joe, I’m thinking she is definitely my type.”

“So, what’s the next course of action?”

“We are going to lunch tomorrow.”

“Was it your idea or hers?”

“Actually, I just thought of it. She doesn’t know it yet, but we are going to have lunch tomorrow.”

“So, I take it you got her number.”

“Well…no, not, exactly.”

Joe gave me a confused, blank stare. It was akin to when you pretend to throw a tennis ball for your dog to retrieve, and he can’t seem to find it.

“I don’t follow Jake, we don’t have a lecture again this week, how are you meeting for lunch?”

“Damn, I really need to quit smoking…”

“Jake! Don’t change the- Uh oh…”

“What?”

“I’ve seen that look before. You have something up your sleeve, don’t you?

“Joe, you should know this by now, but once in a great while, you need to expedite things a little by arranging coincidences.”

“Arranging coincidences?”

I have never believed in karma, or kismet. I have never been the type of guy who was ever willing to let ‘fate take its course’, if you will. There are only two types of events in this world that takes place with a human being involved. There are entropic, or random, unplanned events; and there are planned events. Not events planned by a creator or some sort of spiritual being, but by one or more of the participants.

If someone trips on a rock, it’s entropy. If someone sticks a foot out as someone else is walking by, it is planned. Everything a human will experience falls into one of these sets, but there is room for a gray area. If someone walks down the sidewalk and trips on a rock that someone purposely kicked into their path it is both entropy and order. It is a planned or arranged coincidence.

In the dating sense, there may be times in your life where someone you might be a little interested in has the tendency to show up at really odd times, or more often than they did before. A good deal of the times when you are meandering about in your life and you happen to ‘run into’ someone who has caught your eye were planned out well in advance without your knowledge.

There is a caveat to be aware of. There is a very fine line between arranging coincidences and stalking someone. When setting up a ‘chance’ meeting with someone, you need to make sure it is a public place that they go to regularly and often. If you know, for example, someone happens to go to the same coffee shop everyday at about the same time, it would be a great opportunity to bump into her. It should be somewhere you have seen them before, a place where they frequent. Setting up an accidental run in with someone isn’t about knowing where she is going to be, it’s more about increasing the chances of encounters by frequenting the places she frequents.

On the other hand, if you start following someone to figure out their routine, have their phone tapped, bugs placed in their house, and a tracking device placed on their car, it’s a pretty good bet that you are the definition of a stalker. In review: running into a girl between classes, in public, is acceptable. Running into a girl on her driveway at 12:30 AM as she is throwing her trash, not cool.

It just so happened that I had a good idea where she was going to be at 12:06 the next afternoon.

I got out of class a little early, ran over to the union, grabbed some coffee and sat at the normal bench. 10 minutes later, at 12:09 PM, she walked by.

“Kate!”

“Hey, what’s up Jake?”

“I was supposed to meet a friend here for lunch, it looks like he flaked. He was supposed to be here 10 minutes ago.”

“Where were you going?”

“I dunno, it was my turn to pay, so some place cheap! You eating alone today?”

“Yeah.”

“Want some company?’

Our first date was lunch at the Taco Bell in the middle of the union. Neither one of us ate much. We both spent a majority of the hour together talking about or respective backgrounds, and it turned out that we had a lot in common. She was the elder of three children, two girls and one boy. She was born and raised in Palo Alto, and her parents had recently separated.

The thing that I found most intriguing about her was that she got my sense of humor, and she had one that was similar. She was smart, funny, and ridiculously hot, everything I am looking for. We exchanged numbers and planned on meeting up later for dinner and bowling, out of all things.

Three weeks, 9 dinners, 12 lunches, 4 breakfasts, and twelve flowers later, we were somewhat of an item. From the moment we started spending time together, absolutely everything seemed perfect. Every meal with her, every movie, every hole of miniature golf, every joke that we made at the other’s expense was perfect. The only thing left to do was to introduce her to some of my friends, and one night in particular seemed like a perfect time to do it.

Joe and I had recently had an encounter with a sophomore who happened to be the treasurer of U of A’s chapter of Theta Tau, the engineering fraternity. He practically accosted us as we were walking out of our physics class.

“Guys! Hey Guys!”

We both looked at each other with a ‘do-you-know-that-fucking-asshole?’ scowl on or faces, and then turned towards him.

“Yeah? What’s up?” Joe still looked confused when he answered.

“My name is Steve, and I was wondering if you guys have pledged.”

Having listened to a few of my frat buddies speeches from time to time, I was ready to walk away.

“Steve, I am meeting someone for lunch, then studying for a test I have in 2 hours. You are going to have to get to the point, rapidly.”

“I think you guys should join Theta Tau.”

“I already have friends Steve, and I don’t really want to pay for new ones.” Joe piped in with his two cents.

“Just hear me out, guys.”

I glanced at my watch and realized that I had been released from my last lecture a few minutes early.

“You have two minutes.”

“Theta Tau is a fraternity exclusively for engineering majors; we are a professional fraternity that focuses on building networking skills for the future. We are having a little membership get together next weekend and we would like you two to attend.”

“Why us? There are 200 engineers in that physics class, why choose us?” Joe was still confused.

“Well, quite frankly you two seem to be two of the most socially capable people in that room.”

“So essentially, you picked us because we seem to be cooler than everyone else?” It was just as I figured, even in a professional organization, acceptance was based on looks.

“Well, yes, and the fact that you seem quite popular among everyone in class, and could possibly bring more members to the table.”

“What’s in it for me?” Joe took the words out of my mouth.

“Free food and booze for you and a date. And if you don’t like us, just don’t come back.”

That’s about all I needed for the sale to be completed.

“I’m in.”

“Great! It’s next Friday at 6 PM, business casual. We are trying you out too, you know! Invite any other engineering majors you want.”

Steve handed us a couple of fliers with the when and where and went on his way.

“I’ve got a bad feeling, about this, Joe.”

“Then why did you agree to go?”

“Free booze dude, free booze.”

The day of the event came along, and I ran to Dillard’s for a new pair of shoes and pants. They were quite possibly the most expensive pair of dress shoes that I have ever purchased, putting me back at least a hundred bucks. I was looking to impress that evening, joining a frat didn’t really appeal to me, but one never knows if their mind will change. Kate and I had never done anything where we weren’t wearing t-shirts and jeans, so this was an opportunity for me to impress her as well.

The place where the party was being held was within mere walking distance of all of our dorms. Joe’s dorm was next door to mine, so we met up and walked to Kate’s together.

“So dude, have you and her…?”

“Have we what?”

“Oh you know, consummated the relationship!”

“That’s none of your fucking concern, dude!”

“So, I’ll take that as a no.”

We met Kate and walked the mile and a half to the house just off of campus, arriving at least 40 minutes before the event was to begin. As it turned out, we weren’t the only people from our section of our engineering lecture that were invited to partake in the festivities. Four others, three guys and one girl, were also there as potential pledges.

The guys were relatively unknown to me, but Camille, the girl, was a good friend of mine, and as it turns out, one of the other 15 smoking hot girls in our lecture. Kate went to the bar and grabbed a couple of drinks for the two of us.

“Camille! How are you doin’ hon?”

“I’m great, and you?”

The two of us carried on for a few minutes. Kate came back with our drinks and a scowl on her face. I introduced the two, we parted ways, and Camille kissed me on the cheek as we started heading to our seats for dinner. Thankfully, we were on opposite ends of the dinner table.

“What the hell was that, Jake?”

“What was what?”

“That little show with what’s-her-name? I saw the way she looked at you!”

I took a glance into her right hand, and it appeared to me that her drink was already more than halfway done. It was a Long Island that I could smell from 50 feet away, both from the glass and now, her breath. A few things became apparent to me at that moment. First, to the best of my knowledge, she was completely unaware that I had female friends, and I had no idea if she was the jealous type or not. Second, I had never seen her drink before.

“How many of those have you had, Kate?”

“This is only my second…”

“Christ, we have only been here 40 minutes!”

Dinner was a buffet, I wasn’t feeling too well, so I bypassed the food and out of courtesy, served Kate a plate. But when I turned around and walked back to the table, she was out of eyeshot.

“Where did she run off to, Joe?”

“I think she went to get another drink.”

“Son of a…”

As much as I wanted to say something to her, I kept my mouth shut. In my opinion, there was no point in drawing attention to us unless she was drawing attention to me. She hadn’t done anything to embarrass herself, or more importantly, me. I just figured that she was letting off a little steam from the midterms we had that week.

She sat down and ate, and the frat’s VP gave a small presentation about who they were and what they were about. Kate picked at the plate in front of her, visibly buzzed, but at least now slowing down. The dinner portion of the evening ended, and the fraternity president led all the gentlemen on a tour of the house, leaving the women alone.

Alone with an open bar.

The tour concluded, and a few of us went out back to smoke a cigarette. Four of us gathered and started talking about dues, activities and such, then our significant others. A classmate in my discussion group informed me that he had recently started hanging out with Camille, and mentioned that she was fond of me as a friend.

In suit, I started talking Kate up, and telling everyone how great I thought she was and how compatible we were, even after a short amount of time. I took a quick glance at my watch, to realize that it had been at least 30 minutes since the tour had started.

“Speaking of Kate, I wonder what she is up to…”

At that moment I heard a scream that changed the mood of the evening irrevocably.

“You fucking bitch!”

I burst through the back door and ran into the kitchen to find exactly what I was afraid was going to happen. Kate was staring down Camille and backing her into a corner, and as interesting as a cat fight would have been, I didn’t want to see one between these two.

“That’s it Kate, you’re done.”

I grabbed the drink from her hand, put it on the counter and as gently as I could, grabbed her arm. I quickly thanked everyone, and walked out of the door.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“I don’t know… I just don’t like to see other girls flirting with you…”

“I have a lot of female friends, if that is going to be a problem, then we are going to have a problem.”

“I know, and I know you wouldn’t do anything, I just… It’s been a long fucking week and I have been feeling a little insecure lately. I don’t… I don’t fucking drink that much normally and when I do, I have a hard time, ya know?”

“I know, this week sucked for me too babe, its ok. Let’s just go home.”

“I’m sorry…”

“I know, it’s ok…”

We started to trek back the mile and a half to her dorm, her shoulder on mine as not to fall over. She stumbled here and there, but not enough to bring her to the concrete. We passed a bus stop under a streetlight at about the midway point and she sat down on the bench. I stood beside her, rubbing her back and trying to comfort her.

“I’m sorry about tonight babe…”

“I know, I know, it’s ok…”

“I just love you so much, Jake…”

This was an interesting turn of events, considering that the L-bomb had never been dropped with us outside of the content of 24-hour restaurants or Magic Mountain. So I did what every guy does when his girl says something that he knows she is going to regret or forget in the morning, I changed the subject.

“There’s a 7-11 right here, do you need any water or anything babe?”

“Please stay here.”

I stood beside her and continued to rub her back as she held her head in her hand. At that moment, something happened within me that changed the way I saw her. I’m not sure if it was her behavior at the party, the fact that she said that she loved me, or the fact that the streetlight made me keenly aware that her hair was dyed and she was not a natural brunette. I am fairly certain that a great deal of my sudden loss of interest had to do with the fact that she took this opportunity to throw up all over the hundred dollar dress shoes I had just purchased.

To this day, I still don’t know how much she drank that night, unfortunately, I am all too aware of how much she ate.

The Morning Show

It had tried to make it become a force of habit. On the rare occasions when I did have my dorm room to myself weekday mornings my freshman year, I would always attempt to do the same thing: take a shower, get dressed, turn on the radio, and start working on my studies.

Of course, not only would I need the room to myself, but also I would need to wake up in time to lounge about in the morning before my classes started. This alone is a rare enough occasion to limit the morning study session to a weekly event, if I was lucky and feeling particularly ambitious. Most mornings, even those that I did have to myself, involved hitting the snooze bar 6-8 times, rolling off the bed and hitting the concrete floor, falling asleep in the shower (if I had time to take one at all), throwing on whatever clothes I had clean and getting my ass where it needed to be, approximately 2 minutes before it needed to be there. This is a tradition I still carry with me today, sans concrete floor.

I knew that the activities and pace of the morning would be indicative of the day that was to follow it. If I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed with enough time to study, and get the occasional cup of coffee and éclair on the way to class, I always felt more alert and had a better attitude that I did if I was in a rush. Bolting out the door and barely getting to class on time was a sure sign that paying attention that particular day was going to be rather difficult, especially when falling asleep in the middle of my classes.

When I did manage to get up early, my favorite activity when studying was listening to the local morning show on my favorite rock radio station. It was your normal, average, everyday morning show, hosted by two smart-ass guys in their early thirties. They talked about how much they hated the movie they saw the night before, the odors that emanated from their cohorts in the booth, and how much they hated the band Oasis. They would have guests such as bands that would be in town for a short stint, girls that could bend themselves into interesting shapes, and the occasional midget. Of course, none of these claims could be substantiated unless they posted pictures on the Internet.

Like every other morning radio show, they also had the propensity to give away prizes to their listeners who call in and answered a trivia question, identified a song that had just played or the likewise. One morning in particular, one of the hosts came on and announced a rather simple contest to win.

“The 99th listener to call in and correctly give us the name of the city that U2 hails from will get a limited edition copy of their, as of yet, unreleased ‘Best Of 1980-1990’ album!”

This to me just sounded too good to be true. I was never a huge fan of U2, but everyone knows where they are from. A fourth grader could answer the question. Not to mention, it was a chance to get free shit. I, like every other red-blooded American male, will jump at the chance to get free shit. It doesn’t even matter if you want the free shit, you will try to get it.

U2 wasn’t necessarily a band that reached out and said ‘buy me’ whenever I walked past their albums on the record store shelves, but I would listen to a free copy of their greatest hits CD. I’ll be honest; I really wouldn’t care if they were giving away a Chinese version of ‘Ishtar’ on Betamax, I would have tried to get my cheap hands on it. One never knows when they have to show a foreign exchange student who has an obsolete piece of technology how bad some movies could be.

I picked up the receiver and frantically dialed the phone, getting a busy signal at least 6 times before I got through. When I did manage to finally get through, I was in shock to hear my voice echo in the dorm room, emanating from the sound system inside of it.

“Hello… Sir, would you mind turning your radio down a bit?”

“No problem.”

I cranked down the volume almost all of the way so I could hear what he had to say. I was still in shock to hear my own voice over the radio, but I was even more shocked to realize that there was no tape delay. The conversation was going out over the airwaves live.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Jake!”

I was chomping at the bit; I had already known that they wouldn’t have put me live over the air if I wasn’t the 99th caller. I was a shoe-in to win. I had never been that excited before, I had spend a good portion of my life winning academic and athletic accolades, but I had never won anything important.

“Alright Jake, you’re the 99th caller! Can you tell me what city the band U2 is from?”

“Of course I can! They are from Dublin, Ohio!”

My nerves got the best of me; I think the host of the show just let it slide.

“What was that?”

“I said they are from Dublin, Ireland!”

“That’s correct! A copy of U2’s next album is yours! Now tell me Jake, what is Tucson’s number one rock station?”

“That would be K-… uh…”

At that moment some things became blaringly obvious to me. I had spent the past few months listening to and enjoying a rock station that had been the only station I had ever listened to in my, as of then, short tenure in the city of Tucson. I left the station on in my car as I drove around town. I left it on in my dorm room when I was there alone. I had listened to it at parties and other social gatherings around campus from time to time. It was preset number 2 on every radio receiver I owned.

In this short period of time, I had become an avid listener of the station. I had not, however, bothered to learn the call letters to my new favorite broadcaster.

“Uh… KROK?”

“Uh, no.”

“KZGL?”

I knew that wasn’t it. KZGL was a radio station in Flagstaff. At this point, I was grasping at straws.

“No, not KZGL.”

Getting more and more nervous, I started blurting out any four-letter combination beginning with ‘K’ that came to mind.

“KORN.”

“Korn?! Now you’re reaching! Let me help you out, it’s KFMA. Now, what is Tucson’s number one rock station? ”

Tripping over my words, dying of embarrassment, I tripped over my letters, and for the first time, demonstrated my dyslexia.

“KAFM!”

“Dammit Jake, you are killing me. Try it again, it’s KFMA. What is Tucson’s number one rock station?”

“It’s KFMA!”

“Thank you!”

Now thoroughly embarrassed, I grabbed a cup of coffee at the student union and tried to slither my way into my first class, as cool and as calm as I could possibly be. If need be, the event would not be spoken of for a few years, but apparently, I wasn’t the only listener of KFMA in my circle of friends.

I walked in to class greeted by six or seven of my friends, standing, clapping and cheering. My face turned red, which, believe it or not, does happen to Hispanics. I sat down and slumped in my seat, trying to dispel the scene that was developing in a lecture hall of 260 students.

“Jake, what’s your major again?”

“Aerospace engineering, why?”

“I would really reconsider that, buddy!”

“Fuck off.”

Over the next few months, the event somehow found its way into my dating life. I am still unsure as to whether every female I was asking out in this particular stretch of time was listening to the morning show that particular day, or if my chances were being sabotaged by my friends. One thing is for certain, over the next few weeks and months, I heard the following phrase far too often:

“You’re the jackass who got the call letters wrong, aren’t you?”

It was beginning to happen so often, that I began to start most of my conversations with women by posing one query in particular.

“I have an off the wall question for you.”

“Ok, what is it?”

“Tell me, what is Tucson’s number one rock station?”

Translation

I have over the years, taken much offence to the fact that due to my last name and the color of my skin, I have wrongfully been accused as an expert in certain things. A short list of the talents that have been falsely associated with my skill set are; picking grapes; fitting 40 people into a Volkswagen; swimming across rivers; jumping fences; digging tunnels; making tamales; and drug trafficking.

Although most things I have taken with a grain of salt, the one thing over the years that still irks me is the fact that a good portion of the people that I have met over the years have expected me to speak Spanish simply by the assumptions that have been made by looking at me.

I have never been able to speak the Spanish language. God knows that my parents, especially my mother, tried like hell to teach me the language. My mom speaks the language fluently, having learned it at a young age along with English. My father doesn’t exactly speak it fluently, he does however, understand it well enough to comprehend what my mom is trying to hide from her sons when she starts in on one of her rants.

Like any good set of parents, they only wanted to provide a better, more comfortable childhood than the ones they had. This led them to purchasing a home in a relatively stable, small, upper middle-class, predominately white community. The situation did not allow for a lot of the use of Spanish, unless you counted the ritual ordering of a burrito or tostada at the neighborhood Taco Bell.

In a four year span covering Junior High and High School, I managed to take 8 semesters of the language without failing one of them, but never getting anything other than a B. I am more than convinced that the only reason I did that well was that my parents paid my teachers to get me through, not wanting to bear the shame of having the only Hispanic son in the school who flunked his Spanish classes.

Entering 12th grade, after years of education, three different teachers, and some unknown thousands of dollars spent by my parents, I was no better off than I was when I started. I was, at most times, able to conjugate verbs solely based on a simple chart that had been browbeaten into me. My pronunciation made me sound like I was Keanu Reeves, in a Spanish version of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…

“Yo quiero mas nachos, dude!”

“Dammit, Jake, stop saying ‘dude’!”

My sentence formation wasn’t much better. It was as if I was a third grader who knew how to count to 100, but was completely convinced that 30+70 equaled eleventeen. In fact, one of my Spanish teachers once had a meeting with my parents and the Vice Principal of my High School to discuss the possibility that I might have a learning disability.

When I spoke to my Guidance Counselor as to what my options for a major would be as I was preparing for college, the choice was rather easy…

“So what lets me out of a foreign language prerequisite?”

“Well, Jake, there’s engineering, and…”

“I’ll take it!”

By 17, I was convinced that I would never have to deal with the subject or situation again. I had my plan laid out, my entrance tests were complete, my school and major were selected, and I had been accepted and given a scholarship. My life was on cruise control, and I had no reason to worry about Spanish again. That is, until one morning in April.

I was sitting in my Advanced Placement American Government class, discussing the questionable morality of the actions of the ACLU, when a darker skinned, older woman stepped into the room. She spoke with some of the worst broken English I had heard in my life. It was in fact, so bad, that I have no way of describing it visually.

“I need Jakob.”

“Excuse me, there is no Jakob, but my name is Jake.”

I am indeed aware that I misspelled my own first name, but that’s how she pronounced it. The name Jacob sounds different depending on how you chose to enunciate the letters and read the word. This particular woman decided to make it sound Swedish, rather than taking the straight Spanish translation of Jocobo, which was odd considering she spoke as if she just crossed the border.

We started walking down the hall, her, another minority student that was pulled out of the class, and I. The two of us were rather confused, considering the facts that neither one of us had been in an ounce of trouble, and the rather random person removing us from our AP class had no discernable authority and sounded as if she needed remedial English lessons.

“Ma’am, what is this about? I am in the middle of a rather important class, and with all due respect I don’t appreciate the interruption.”

“You need a test.”

“What kind of test?”

“It’s for your English, for your graduation.”

“You mean an English proficiency test?”

“Yeah, that is it.”

I have been known over the years, for a complete inability to keep my mouth shut when challenged by any form of authority. I have been called staunchly indignant and the type of person who will do the opposite of what I am told, just to prove a point.

“The fuck I do lady! I’m going back to the class that you interrupted. It sounds to me like you are the one who needs to take the test!”

“For your graduation…”

“If need be, I’ll speak with the Superintendent of the district. But for now, you can take the test your damn self!”

I realize that the situation was out of her control, and I realize that she was just doing her job. I just needed a way to vent, and that seemed as good as any. I had never been so insulted in my life. Considering the fact that my SAT scores were high enough to have me recruited by Ivy League schools, and my English grades in school were exemplary, higher than those of my Spanish grades, I was well aware that I was singled out due to my Hispanic last name.

Two classes later, she tried again, thinking that I had calmed down and was going to be more cooperative. This time, I dragged her to the Principal’s office. With my guns drawn and firing, I confronted the Principal.

“What the hell is this about? They want me to take some sort of English proficiency test!”

“I’m sorry Jake, I know how this looks…”

“Do you? It makes the staff of this district look like a bunch of assholes!”

The random Hispanic woman chose this time to pipe in with her two cents…

“For your graduation…”

“I am not taking the test, and I am walking with my friends. If there is going to be a problem with that, I can take it up with the Superintendent, clear?”

My Principal, always the voice of reason, apologized for the incident and assured me that the matter was settled. The administrator of the test was still a little confused by the situation.

“What is this word, clear?”

My friends have at times, been no different than the random people I have encountered, assuming that there is some Spanish gene that is passed down over the generations. Almost same way that hair color and eye color would be passed down, my friends expected that I popped out of the womb able to have fluent conversations with Mexican nationals.

This was never more apparent than a day trip with a couple of friends into the Mexican side of Nogales. My friends had picked out an ugly blanket that no self respecting Mexican would own, and decided that it would look great draped over their couch. Unsure how to begin negotiations, they turned to me.

“Jake, you talk to them.”

“Why me?”

“Well, you’re Mexican, right?”

“Yeah, man, we have a secret handshake and everything! You had better turn around; we don’t like white people to see it…”

“I didn’t mean anything by-“

“Oh shit, dude I forgot my card!”

“What car-“

“My race card! I usually keep it with my Green Card, but fuck it if I didn’t forget that too!”

“Jake, you’re a fucking-“

“Hey, you’re blonde haired, blue eyed! Can you speak German?”

“You know the answer to that-“

“Can you speak German?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought!”

I turned my head and scoffed.

“Retraso de mierda…”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Insight

It is a situation that has played out over and over in my long, tumultuous dating career. I am sitting on the couch, watching a movie or my favorite sitcom. My right arm is draped around the shoulders of a girl whose head is on my chest. She looks at me and smiles, I get a little uncomfortable at the stare that she starts to give me, then she says the words…

“Jake?”

“Uh huh?”

“What are you thinking?”

Being that I am male, there are only three possible categories of true answers that can possibly fit the question. The first, and most common for most men would the standard ‘nothing’. Men, unlike women, can actually be thinking nothing and be quite happy for sometime, requiring quiet time for our heads as well as our ears.

Although ‘nothing’ is the most common verbal answer to the question, it is most likely not the most common actual answer. In reality, at most given times, there are two types of things that are occupying our minds. The first would be something so vulgar, disgusting, or rude that if it were to come out of our mouths, you would never stop kicking us in the nuts.

I have been told that it is as of yet inappropriate to talk to girls we are dating about such things as dreams of their sisters doing things that are beyond description to a squad of female college cheerleaders. This is especially true in the early stages of dating. Unfortunately, honesty only goes so far when dealing with women. I learned this the hard way, forcing me to get in the habit of wearing a cup on all of my first dates.

It is said that a man thinks about sex once every 8 seconds. In truth, this is an approximation. Once every 8 seconds is an average, when the approximation takes into account the time we are asleep and not in REM, the number drops to every 5 seconds, and the average duration of the thought is 3 seconds, which means 60% of our thoughts are about sex.

In all honesty women, the thoughts are usually about us and another woman, or you with other women, or other women with other women, or us and you and other women. Well, you get the point.

The second type of thought that mills about in the brain of ours is usually the type that makes us look like morons. They are things that are so ridiculous that if we were to actually admit them to a women, they might have us declared clinically brain dead and try to have us euthanized. They are things that you might overhear guys talking about when they are hanging out with other guys.

Take my brother and me, for example. We are two smashing young men of intelligence that is far beyond average, yet every time we hang out, we tend to get into the most ridiculous conversations imaginable.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

“You’re telling me that you think that the professor got more action than anyone else on that island?”

“Ok, think about it, jackass! There are two single women on the island and three single dudes. The skipper is a fatty and Gilligan is functionally retarded, who do you think is going to get the most tail?”

“Mr. Howell!”

“Fuckhead, his wife is there, and she looks like she is quite a ways past menopause, of course he is going to get some from his wife!”

“No dude, I am talking about him nailing Ginger and Mary Ann.”

“What would Ginger and Mary Ann possibly see in his old ass?”

“Money, dude!”

“They live on a fucking desert island, asshole! What the fuck are they going to do with money? Not to mention, do you really think Mrs. Howell is cool with her husband banging a couple of other chicks?”

“They can do it when she is out picking berries or something.”

“You know how fast information travels in a small town? Think about how fast it travels in a community of seven! This whole thing is stupid! The show didn’t make any sense anyway!”

“How so?”

“Who the fuck takes a trunk of goddamn clothing, a chemistry set, or encyclopedias on a three hour tour? How far could they have possibly gone out to sea in those three hours? What kind of professor was he?”

“How would it matter what kind of professor he was?”

“How the hell would a philosophy professor know rare languages and chemistry?”

“Ok, you have a point."

“I know I have a point.”

Besides waxing intellectual about the sexual exploits of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island, (and in public, scaring away potential dates), we have argued over the directing prowess of Spielberg and Kubrick; debated who would be a better running back, Spider-Man or the Hulk; and discussed who would be the victor in a no-holds-barred fight between Superman and Jesus.

These things that we find important are mere trivia for women. These are things that they just don’t appreciate, and if we tried to explain what kinds of Kryptonite have what effect on Clark Kent, the conversation would just get lost in translation.

Besides the gratuitous, ‘nothing’ answer, there is always the I-am-trying-to-score-points-by-telling-you-a-bold-faced-lie answer…

“I’m just thinking of you, babe.”

This is only true in rare occasions. In the case it is true, it rarely if ever involves our feelings for you. We aren’t thinking of running across a field, hand in hand, with our as of yet unborn children in tow. There is no white picket fence surrounding a two story house in the suburbs, and I guarantee you, there is no minivan in the driveway.

The overly sweet answer of ‘I’m thinking of you’ has a way of backfiring horridly. One lie leads to another when you expect us to elaborate on the thought that wasn’t in our head in the first place.

“What about me?”

I am now engaged in a conversation that I did not want to be in when we sat down for the movie. I try to kill it as swiftly and vaguely as possible.

“Oh you know, stuff…”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I was just thinking about how beautiful you are…!”

…When you’re quiet.

Tier One

Most everyone I know who works on computers for a living has done it. It is a virtual right of passage for anyone who is an information technology professional. It is the foundation of a techie’s resume, the experience one needs with the certifications they have.

It’s tier one tech support.

I was a tier one tech in Tucson for a small software company that shall remain nameless. Whether you were a novice or you were an experienced IT professional, the job was arduous and frustrating, demanding flexible thinking skills and the utmost patience.

The turnover rate was the highest I had ever seen in any job. After one week on the floor only two of us remained from the thirty students that were in my training class. I am quite convinced that I know why people left in droves. It wasn’t cause the job itself was difficult, even though at times it was damn near impossible. It wasn’t cause the company treated us poorly, ‘cause I have never worked for a company that treated its employees better than they did.

The reason people were more than willing to run away from a great job to put on a resume is, for all intents and purposes, you. Ok, maybe not you, specifically, I mean you are intelligent enough to read my work. However, statistically speaking, at least 88 percent of calls to tech support are from the functionally illiterate. More often than not, it’s not the operating system or the software or hardware that needs to be fixed, it’s in fact the end user.

The hardest part of working with computers is the end user. A computer, with few exceptions, will be nice enough to tell you exactly what is wrong with it. A friendly ‘hey fix this’ or a ‘please install that’ in the event viewer can solve most of your problems. It’s the average end user that causes most of the problems.

You can tell the intelligent ones; they are friendly, polite and easy to talk to. They always start the call the same way:

“Hi, uh, I was a little unsure how to do this thing, I tried to look it up online, and some of the answers I got seemed to vary quite a bit. I didn’t want to do anything until I was absolutely certain that I was doing it right, can you help me out?”

“Absolutely! Just tell me what I can do for you.”

“I just need to set up a folder so that no one else on the machine can get to them but me.”

“That’s not a problem ma’am, we’ll get you set up in a few minutes. The first thing I want you to do is…”

It is as simple as that. The people that I appreciate are the ones who are willing to go out and do some leg work, people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and try to learn something new on their own. Ultimately, when they feel that something is out of their comfort zone, they call and ask for help before they kill the machine.

Unfortunately, most of my calls were from the ones that weren’t willing to learn. They were the ones who knew how to do more harm than good, and the ones who loved to waste my sweet time.

“Uh hi, Jake is it? Well anyway, I have a problem, I’m hoping you can help me out with it.”

“Go ahead and tell me about it sir.”

“Every time I log in to my computer everything turns black.”

“Does it restart? Does it shutdown?”

“No it just turns black, I went in to my display settings and turned all of the colors black.”

“You did what now?”

“I turned everything black, and now I can’t see anything.”

Tier one support is the kind of job that makes grown men bang their heads against the desk in front of them. It is the type of job that makes adults run of the door yelling and screaming in frustration.

“Hi, Jake, I just got XP and now I want to install it, can you walk me through it?”

“Sure thing, just give me some more information about your machine.”

We spend the next 5-7 minutes going over every detail of his machine, from CPU speed to front side bus, to RAM. We discussed every minutia of his computer.

“Well sir it sounds good, and it sure sounds like your machine meets the basic requirements for XP, so let’s get started. First I need you to put your CD in the CD-ROM drive.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“And why is that?”

I already knew the answer before he gave it to me.

“I’m not at my computer, I’m at work.”

“Sir, how do you want me to walk you through the procedure if you aren’t at your machine?”

“I don’t know, I never thought about it, really. I was just kind of hoping you could tell me how to do everything.”

If anyone wonders why I don’t have any tact anymore, it’s because I spent all of it doing tech support.

“Thank you for calling Windows XP technical support, my name is Jake, can I get your name and case number please?”

“Goddamnit! I just went out and spent two-hundred fucking dollars on this Windows Millennium 2000 and now it says it won’t install on all of my computers!”

“Ma’am, I need you to calm down for just a moment. I need your case number so that I can take notes about what we do here.”

“You don’t need my goddamn case number!! You just need to fix my computers so I can install fucking Millennium 2000 on all of my computers!”

It’s a good thing for me the case number popped up when the phone rang. The woman calling sounded so ignorant that I am surprised she was able to match the digits in the support number with the ones on her phone keypad.

“Ok ma’am, first thing is first, this is Windows XP technical support. I need to know if you are using Windows Millennium, 2000, or XP.”

“It’s Millennium 2000!”

“Ma’am, there is no such thing as Windows Millennium 2000, now, is it ME, 2000, or XP?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“It will say on the box, ma’am.”

It’s a good thing most people can’t tell if I am being sincere or if I am being smarmy.

“It’s XP, but it still won’t install on my fucking machines!”

“Ok, ma’am, let’s look at one of the machines it won’t install on, we need a bit more information. Tell me, what does the machine tell you when you try to install it?”

“It says you can’t do it.”

“Can you be a little more specific ma’am? Can you maybe try to put the disk in the CD-ROM drive and start the installation process?”

“Ok, there! It said it again!”

“Said what, ma’am?”

“You can’t do it!”

“Specifically, what did the error message say, ma’am?”

“Installation not a supported upgrade path.”

“Ma’am, what version of Windows are you currently running on this machine?”

I already new the answer but I wanted her to answer the question for herself, so she new exactly why the installation wouldn’t work.

“I have ’95 on this machine.”

“Windows ’95 cannot be upgraded to any version of Windows XP.

“Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that?”

“It says that on the box, ma’am.”

I was starting to lose my patience, but I knew that this call was far from over.

“Alright, let’s look at your other machines.”

“It installed fine on my laptop, but when I tried to install the fucking thing on my desktop it says something about activation!”

And there it is, the idiot’s trifecta, she bought one license for XP, tried installing it on one machine without reading the box, installed it onto a second machine and activated it, then tried to install it on another machine.

“Ma’am, how many copies of the software did you buy?”

“Just one.”

“Windows product activation allows the use of a single license on one machine only, that’s why it is saying you can’t activate it on more than one computer.”

“Goddammit! I bought the program, I can put it on as many machines as I fucking want!”

“No, ma’am, you didn’t buy the program.”

“Excuse the hell out of me? I have a receipt from Best Buy right here that says I did buy the program!”

“Ma’am, you bought a disk with the program on it, we own the program. You just own the product ID for it.”

“Explain that in English, asshole!”

“We own all rights and privileges to the program, we created it, and it is our intellectual property. You own the right to use the program on one, and only one, computer with the one license that you bought. We own the program, you just bought the right to use it, according to our terms.”

“Your terms? I didn’t see any terms that you gave.”

“Yes you did ma’am.”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?”

“Did you at any point click something that says ‘I agree’?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Did you read anything in the textbox that you agreed to?”

“It’s to damn long! How am I supposed to read it?”

“Ma’am those are the terms that you agreed to when you installed the program, the terms that I just outlined. So it seems that all of your problems are resolved, is there anything else I can help you with today?”

“All my problems aren’t resolved asshole! I still can’t do what I want!”

“You aren’t allowed to do what you want.”

“Fuck you!”

Click.

Now if they only let me answer the calls the way these people should be dealt with.

“Thank you for calling Windows XP tech support, my name is Jake, can I get your name and case number please?”

“Uh hi yeah, I need to get this antivirus program working with my computer, it’s causing all sorts of problems and I can’t seem to fix them.”

“Ok, what is the name and version of the program?”

“(Program name) by (Company name) version 6.”

“Sir, that antivirus program isn’t compatible with Windows XP.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s what the upgrader thing said. It had a big exclamation point in a yellow triangle and it wanted me to remove it but I thought it was just full of shit.”

“Let me get this straight, Upgrade Advisor explicitly told you that the program was incompatible, and you went ahead and installed Windows without uninstalling the program first?”

“Yeah, what’s your point?”

“You’re an idiot.”