Save the Drama for yo' Mama

Apparently someone at my work found it necessary to point out my blog to upper management and HR and it was being passed around. I will probably either get fired or get a stern talking to today when I go in to work. Save the drama for yo' mama. More to come.

-Matt

Customers..The Most Miserable People on the Planet (plus a lot of F bombs)

As most friends, family, acquaintances and blog followers know, I came back to the U.S. in September after spending almost two and a half years abroad. I have a college degree, experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia, experience as a teacher in Cambodia, experience as a supervisor for UPS, and I'm a veteran of the Marine Corps Reserves and Operation Iraqi Freedom. On top of that I've worked an obnoxious amount of other random jobs since I turned 16. Needless to say, I have some experience in the working world.

Anyways, getting back on track, when I came back to Colorado I had plans to chill for a few weeks (months maybe?) and enjoy the company of friends and family before I started working again. After hearing from numerous friends and acquaintances how bad the job market was, I started applying to jobs much sooner than originally planned. Luckily, I was able to land quite a few job offers and interviews within a short period of time. Nothing spectacular but jobs nonetheless. I had to turn down a few jobs due to low pay and no benefits and I was denied jobs (cough cough Progressive) because, I shit you not I was told this, I seemed more passionate about helping children than about customer service. I had some laughs but kept looking. Eventually a pretty good company offered me a job and I took it because the pay was decent, the benefits good and it seemed like a good company to work for. Obviously for someone with my interests and experience (at the risk of sounding pretentious) it wasn't ideal but I wasn't going to complain, it was a job. I took the job and began my training. I met some cool people in my training class, got along well with most of my coworkers and had a pretty good experience.

When I got out of training and started working, things went really well. I had the fortune of being surrounded by some really cool and helpful people. I get along really well with all of the people on my team and I've made some pretty good friends at work. I wouldn't say that I'm spectacular at my job but I think I do pretty well and I'm learning more and more every day. I try to learn from my mistakes, I do my best to be a good employee and I honestly put forth the effort. This is my first experience working in a call center environment and as anyone who's ever had to deal with customers knows, it can be pretty stressful at times. I've worked customer service jobs where I had face to face interactions and while it can suck at times, dealing with customers over the phone is far worse.

*this is where the filter comes off...parental advisory: explicit lyrics and honesty ahead*

Much like the internet, but probably not as extreme, people on the phone, both men and women, grow balls like they would never have in person. As many of you have probably witnessed, the evil, ignorant shit that people will post from the anonymity behind a keyboard, is often mind blowing and very disturbing. It's slightly less terrible when they are on the phone. On a daily basis I deal with some of the most ignorant, miserable, assholish, trashy people you could imagine. As I sit here thinking about how to word this accurately, I find myself at a loss for words. There is literally no possible way I can describe some of the people I deal with that would make you understand what it's like. If you are a coworker, you know. If not, you can only imagine.

If I were to count how many times a day I deal with customers who have the highest services available from our company but are absolutely incapable of paying their bill on time each month, I'd lose track two or three hours into my shift. I'm a sympathetic guy, no doubt. I was in the fucking Peace Corps for fuck sake. I am also a guy who believes in personal responsibility and living within your means. If you are living off of an unemployment check that comes once a month and you have a cable/phone/internet bill that consists of the highest speed internet available, all of the fucking cable channels available, and unlimited phone features + premium channels like HBO,Showtime, etc. for $16 a piece a month, making your total monthly bill around 200 fucking dollars, and you are so behind that you are incurring late fees every month and having to ask for your services to be restored due to non payment, maybe....just MAYBE, you should consider downgrading your fucking services. If the only thing you do with the internet is mindlessly browse, check your email and update your fucking Farmville, you probably don't need the same internet speed that World of Warcraft/hardcore gaming nerds use. Save yourself ten-twenty bucks a month, downgrade your speed and wait a few fucking seconds for your stupid fucking Youtube clip to load.

300 channels? Who the fuck needs 300 channels? What could you possibly watch in a given day, provided you have a job and other priorities besides sitting on your lazy fucking ass, that would require you to have 300 fucking channels? I hardly watch tv and when I do, I flip between ESPN and Comedy Central. If I had 300 channels, I wouldn't even know what to do. If your A.D.D. is so fucking bad that you need 300 plus channels, you might as well just get rid of cable and spend all your fucking time on the internet.

Porn. Where to begin. It's two thousand fucking eleven. There is free porn on the internet. If you are too fucking stupid too realize that and find it, you deserve to pay hundreds of dollars each month for your services. Who the fuck orders porn movies on PPV for $13 a piece? Seriously? If you run up 60-70 dollars worth of porn on your cable bill because you are too stupid to look for the absurd amount of free shit on the internet, and then call me to bitch about it and pretend like you ordered it on accident or your 3 year old son ordered it, you deserve to be punched in the face....multiple times, and then charged for it, you stupid fuck.

On top of the people who are incapable of paying their monthly bills, I get to deal with the people who are incapable of going through the most simple of trouble shooting steps without groaning, whining, moaning and bitching about something. Look, I understand that it sucks when your internet isn't working or when your cable is out and you can't watch the big game. I lived in fucking Mongolia for almost two years. Sometimes my internet (yes, they have internet in Mongolia and no, Mongolia is not in Africa idiot) went out. I survived. I read books, I exercised, listened to music and I wrote a bit. Mind blowing, I know. I even managed to survive without elecricity at times. Incredible. Hearing the reactions of people who find out their cable or internet won't be fixed for two days (two fucking days), I can't imagine that they'd be able to survive without electricity for two hours. Common reactions have included:

"You mean I'm not gonna have cable for two days? What am I going to dooooo?"(usually in a whiney, bitchy ass fucking voice)

I'd love to react with: "Pick up a fucking book or go exercise you stupid fucking fuck", but unfortunately I need a paycheck and dental benefits for now.

This is often followed by "Weeeeelllll, can I get a credit or something?"

I'd love to react with: "Ya know, I lived in countries where people went without electricity, heat and food for days or weeks at a time, they didn't get 'credit' for that. Suck it up and quit your bitching."

When you tell someone that you're going to have to send a technician to their house and that there are no appointments available for two days, you'd think you just told them you murdered their dog. It's fucking pathetic.

I have a lot more venting/writing to do about the miserable people I deal with at my job but I will leave that for another day. I am not going to take the time to check for spelling or grammatical errors on this blog post...at least not until I'm sober tomorrow. I also don't apologize for the ridiculous amount of f-bombs in this blog post. More to come.

Masters?

As I mentioned in recent posts, I've been in the process of applying for grad schools for the past few weeks. I took the GRE a few weeks back, was rather disappointed in my scores, but I did well enough for some of the programs I applied to. I've still got two applications to finish and submit and I'm hoping to complete those this weekend (fingers crossed, focused).

While most of the programs I'm applying for start in the Fall semester (2011), I managed to get everything done in time to be considered for the Spring 2011 semester at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). I'm happy to say that I was admitted and I will be starting classes for my Masters in Public Administration in a couple of weeks. Public administration is not my first choice, as my passion and what I really want to study more than anything is international relations/global affairs, but I feel like this will be a very beneficial program. At the risk of sounding like I'm writing another graduate application statement of purpose, I know that having an MPA will increase my education in the oh so important areas of leadership and management, as well as my understanding of other types of administrative work, nonprofit management, economics and finance, and public policy/the democratic process. I feel very privileged to have been accepted into the program and I'm looking forward to being back in the classroom soon. < Keep this in mind in March or April when I'm writing blog posts about how my brain is melting due to too much studying and reading.

I haven't signed up for my classes yet officially but once I get my registration materials I should be able to sign up next week. I'm going to take two classes, so I'll be full time and I'm going to continue to try and work full time at my job. If it gets to be too much I might have the option of switching to part time at work. I'm gonna test the water the first few weeks and see how it goes.

I should know about the other schools and programs in March and depending on where (if any) else I get accepted and how the classes at UCCS go, I'll decide what to do for the summer and fall. If I get into a program in Denver or New York, I should still be able to take online classes at UCCS and work on both my MPA and MA. Now isn't a bad time to be a student so I figure two and a half to three years in school working on two masters degrees can't be that bad.

In other news, life is good for the most part. I'm done working overtime for now and just trying to focus on reading and working out as often as I can, as well as trying to catch up with friends and spend quality time with friends and family. I've got some ideas for some 'life projects' I want to try out in the next few months. More on that later. :) My good friend Sam is in town from Alaska right now. Needless to say, my liver has been taking some damage the past few days but it's been fun. I'm looking forward to seeing my health increase tenfold when Sam flies back to Alaska. Love ya Samson.

As also mentioned previously, I was hoping to take the Foreign Service Officer written exam this year and as luck would have it, I was able to register and schedule and I'm taking the test in Denver on February 9th. I've got a study guide and I'm hoping to brush up a bit on my history and politics over the next few weeks. Looking forward to seeing how I do on that and determining whether or not a career in the Foreign Service is realistic for me.

Just wanted to get a quick update in, will write more soon when I have some time. Thanks for reading.

Lil Wayne line of the month: "I been fly so long I fell asleep on the f*cking plane'.

God I love that guy.

GRE, Grad Apps, I hate math, etc.

Over the past two months or so I've been doing my best to try and prepare for the GRE, which I took today. The test wasn't quite as horrible as I was expecting but the quantitative section(or math as it is so often called) was pretty bad. I have done quite a bit of math practice with my friend Kirsten, a mathematics major, and Hanna, who is just one smart cookie in every subject. The math problems I encountered on the GRE were not what I expected and I found myself perplexed at many of the problems. Looking back I probably shouldn't have even attempted to answer some of the questions but it's over and done with, nothing I can do about it now. I got a decent score on the verbal section, higher than the national average and apparently good enough to still be considered for the schools that I'm applying to. I finished up my application the the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs(UCCS) for their Masters in Public Administration program and I'm still finishing my statements and applications for The New School(International Affairs), New York University(Global Affairs) and the University of Denver(International Studies). I'm hoping to have those finished up in the next few days and hopefully won't be distracted too much by the holidays and the extra hours at work I signed up for.

I'm probably going to sign up to take the Foreign Service Officer written examination in February and I also need to finish up my application for the El Pomar Fellowship here in Colorado Springs. The next few weeks, provided I can finish my applications as soon as possible, should be somewhat relaxed. I want to do some reading, hit the gym as often as possible, and then start studying for the FSO exam. I should know sometime soon if I'm accepted into UCCS and the other applications it looks like I'll have to wait until at least March. I'm excited about the prospect of going back to school but the application process and the GRE have been quite stressful.

In other news, I'm reading a really interesting book called 'The Food Revolution' by John Robbins. I'm only a few chapters in but it's focus is how plant based and vegetarian or vegan diets can lead to a much healthier lifestyle and can also be really good for the environment. I never would have considered the possibility of trying out a vegetarian or vegan diet in the past but this book is slowly convincing me it might be worth looking into. :) We'll see though. Right now I'm just trying a month with no fast food and no soda(starting today, ha!) so we'll see how that goes and then I'll look into some other possible challenges or endeavors. Kind of a short post but I just wanted to write something while I had some time. Happy birthday to my mom today!

Act of Kindness or Enabling?

Today I was on my way to the gym and at the corner of Briargate and Academy, I saw a man standing on the side of the street holding a sign. The sign said something along the lines of 'I'm hungry, please help. I'd rather beg than steal'. As I sat in my car waiting for the light to change, I thought to myself that maybe I should do something to help this man. There's a Burger King across the street so I thought, maybe I'll grab this guy some deliciousness from the BK Lounge and help a little bit. Even as I was pulling into the parking lot I found myself wondering if it was just good intentions flashing through my head and whether or not I would actually follow through. I thought back to one of my favorite quotes, attributed to William Shakespeare, that says ''Be great in act as you have in thought." It's a quote that I often remind myself of whenever I find my imagination wandering and thinking of all the great things I would like to do or would like to believe I am capable of. So as I so often due, mostly because of my A.D.D., I wrote a note to myself that said 'Buy BK lunch for panhandler', left it in my passenger seat, and went in to the gym to work out.

After about 45 minutes or so of working out, I walked out to my vehicle, sat down and noticed the note again. I decided that if the guy was still there, I was gonna buy him some Burger King. I saw that he was still here, pulled into the Burger King drive through and ordered a Whopper value meal. I figured, almost everyone loves a Whopper, so why not? I parked my car just past the drive thru, waited for the crosswalk light to change and walked across the street to present this man with a Burger King lunch, in all its glory. The man didn't seem particularly surprised or excited but he did seem thankful and appreciative. I didn't really talk to him for very long, as I needed to get home to shower, change and get ready for work. I hope that he enjoyed the Burger King as much as I know I would have.

The point of this blog post is not necessarily to brag about my random act of kindness or to try and bring attention to my Burger King lunch for panhandler buying skills but more to sort of bring up a question that I have spent a lot of time contemplating over the years, as I'm sure many other people have. If you give something, whether it be food or money, to a panhandler, is it an act of kindness, is it an act that enables them and allows them to continue receiving free stuff (or 'hand outs' as some would say), or maybe both? Did this man who I bought lunch for actually need it or was I duped? I'll probably never know but I know that I feel better about having made the effort than I would if I had ignored him completely and did nothing.

I find some form of this question running through my head almost every single time I see someone on the street or a street corner who is homeless, impoverished, and/or holding up a sign expressing their particular dilemma. Do you give money? What if you give money? There's the possibility that the person you are giving money to could use it for drugs, alcohol, etc., as we hear so often, and of course there's always the possibility that the person who is begging doesn't even need the money but is just preying on the sympathy of strangers. While I have become increasingly more cynical in the recent past and I'm not quite the optimistic, idealistic dreamer that I once was, I still believe in doing the right thing when given the opportunity. I can often be skeptical and while I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt, it's a struggle at times. Also, depsite my lack of traditional religious and spiritual beliefs, I do, to a certain extent, believe very much in Karma. If I have an opportunity to make someone's day or in some way, their life, more pleasant, I will do my best to take the opportunity to do so.

Anyways, maybe getting a little bit off topic but I'm curious as to what other's peoples thoughts are on giving to panhandlers. How do you approach the situation? When is it ok to give something and when is it not?

This may have been a bit rushed but I wanted to post something while it was fresh on my mind. I'd like to see what sorts of responses or comments I get and maybe I'll write more about it. I'm also going to paste this on Facebook, as it's a much more popular venue for 'commentary'. Thanks for reading. More to come. :)

Your Tax Dollars at Work?

http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/wikileaks_reveals_us_tax_dollars_fund_child_sex_slavery_in_afghanistan#share_source

Just got this from my friend Jessica. U.S. Tax dollars given to American security contractors in Afghanistan are being used to fund child sex slavery and trafficking. This is an outrage.

The Case Against Christmas Presents

I'm going to write an update again soon but I just wanted to post this link to what I thought was a great read. I got this from my good friend Travis Hellstrom, very interesting and worth taking a look at. :)

http://zenhabits.net/bah/

Also, here's a good song/video that I took from my friend Tabassum.