Oh readers, I am so sorry for how long it has been since I posted. I understand that three posts does not quite a blog make, and am currently hanging my head in utter shame. For serious.
See, the reason is that when I started back at my optical retail job (which should still probably remain nameless, as they like to fire people willy-nilly) I had it re-affirmed just how...special...people can be. Over and over and over. And so, dear readers, it has taken until this precise moment for me to sum up the courage to re-open this blog, to start penning my thoughts once again on the insane and inane world of customer service.
The topic today is about PDA. That's right folks. Public displays of affection. Or as I like to call it, uhh, something...disgusting...affliction? I should delete that.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Playing House
I know that this doesn't have to do with customer service, but I'm going to rant about it for a moment anyway.
The Calgary Herald prints articles monthly from a couple who moved from Calgary to Costa Rica, in search of a "simpler life". The wife (a Calgary Herald editor who no doubt has a handsome salary) writes back saying how much better life is for them in Costa Rica because they have zero stress, the freedom to do whatever they want in a country that has fewer laws (and more police corruption) etc. etc. They are going to live there for a full year so that they can come back and tell us how much better it is there as opposed to here.
What will probably not happen in the course of that year is that one of them will become deathly ill, or receive a life threatening injury. They will not have to try to find employment in a country that is still working on becoming an industrial nation. Suzanne (the writer) will not have to deal with being a female in the workforce, and they will not have to work from the ground up to build a life for themselves. They are Canadians, paid by a Canadian company, born and raised in Canada, living in Costa Rica for a year so they can play and pretend to be enlightened.
As well, last month I saw that there is a woman who will be living like a 1950's housewife for 2009. She will have dinner ready for her "man" when he comes home from winning the bacon, she will use 50's style electronics, keep the house nice and clean, and raise the kids just like June Cleaver. She will then write to us on a monthly basis telling us that they 50's were simpler times, in which the man and woman had clearly defined roles, life was all about being happy, and a whole bunch of other nonsense.
What she will not experience is the fact of trying to raise a family after World War two, a time in which men came back from the war emotionally traumatized, and had to adjust to going back to the daily tedium of their life. She will not have to deal with the taboo of spousal abuse and divorce, the disparity between men's and women's salaries, or trying to simply be a woman in the workforce when dual incomes were becoming a necessity.
Once again, we have a paid writer who will be playing house for a year, and then telling us all that the time/place they are living in is better than what we have now.
What is the use of this? First of all, they will be learning next to nothing about the time and place about which they are writing--the world of the 50's no longer exists, and cannot be replicated in one household, while the upper middle class family that moved to Costa Rica is experiencing an upper middle class Canadian's point of view in Costa Rica. neither of them are having a real experience whatsoever.
If the Costa Rican family really wanted to experience life there, they would have left everything (including salaries) and had to work their way up. Meanwhile, the 50's wife could move to a country in which women were still struggling to gain a voice, and are still seen by most more as objects than people.
Instead of going outside of our world as an exercise in pointing out the negatives in our way way of life, why not try to experience our world in a different way in order to point out the positives? Go to an elementary school and see how parents and teachers work together to educate our young. Head up to the mustard seed and talk to the volunteers and employees to find out why they are there. Go to a hospital in our country, then head over to a hospital in Afghanistan and see how lucky we are to live here. We have it so good in Canada, yet all so many people do is find ways to complain about the minor things that we find wrong.
Why make us feel bad for not being better?
The folly of these experiences is that they are not at all real experiences; they are romanticized excursions into worlds that do not, and never did, exist.
Good lord, I am now one of those people who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.
The Calgary Herald prints articles monthly from a couple who moved from Calgary to Costa Rica, in search of a "simpler life". The wife (a Calgary Herald editor who no doubt has a handsome salary) writes back saying how much better life is for them in Costa Rica because they have zero stress, the freedom to do whatever they want in a country that has fewer laws (and more police corruption) etc. etc. They are going to live there for a full year so that they can come back and tell us how much better it is there as opposed to here.
What will probably not happen in the course of that year is that one of them will become deathly ill, or receive a life threatening injury. They will not have to try to find employment in a country that is still working on becoming an industrial nation. Suzanne (the writer) will not have to deal with being a female in the workforce, and they will not have to work from the ground up to build a life for themselves. They are Canadians, paid by a Canadian company, born and raised in Canada, living in Costa Rica for a year so they can play and pretend to be enlightened.
As well, last month I saw that there is a woman who will be living like a 1950's housewife for 2009. She will have dinner ready for her "man" when he comes home from winning the bacon, she will use 50's style electronics, keep the house nice and clean, and raise the kids just like June Cleaver. She will then write to us on a monthly basis telling us that they 50's were simpler times, in which the man and woman had clearly defined roles, life was all about being happy, and a whole bunch of other nonsense.
What she will not experience is the fact of trying to raise a family after World War two, a time in which men came back from the war emotionally traumatized, and had to adjust to going back to the daily tedium of their life. She will not have to deal with the taboo of spousal abuse and divorce, the disparity between men's and women's salaries, or trying to simply be a woman in the workforce when dual incomes were becoming a necessity.
Once again, we have a paid writer who will be playing house for a year, and then telling us all that the time/place they are living in is better than what we have now.
What is the use of this? First of all, they will be learning next to nothing about the time and place about which they are writing--the world of the 50's no longer exists, and cannot be replicated in one household, while the upper middle class family that moved to Costa Rica is experiencing an upper middle class Canadian's point of view in Costa Rica. neither of them are having a real experience whatsoever.
If the Costa Rican family really wanted to experience life there, they would have left everything (including salaries) and had to work their way up. Meanwhile, the 50's wife could move to a country in which women were still struggling to gain a voice, and are still seen by most more as objects than people.
Instead of going outside of our world as an exercise in pointing out the negatives in our way way of life, why not try to experience our world in a different way in order to point out the positives? Go to an elementary school and see how parents and teachers work together to educate our young. Head up to the mustard seed and talk to the volunteers and employees to find out why they are there. Go to a hospital in our country, then head over to a hospital in Afghanistan and see how lucky we are to live here. We have it so good in Canada, yet all so many people do is find ways to complain about the minor things that we find wrong.
Why make us feel bad for not being better?
The folly of these experiences is that they are not at all real experiences; they are romanticized excursions into worlds that do not, and never did, exist.
Good lord, I am now one of those people who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.
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