Apparently, the United States Postal Service has made a remarkable breakthrough in artificial intelligence. This evening, I bought stamps from an USPS Automated Postal Center (APC) kiosk. As I was leaving after completing my purchase, the kiosk bid me farewell with the following message: “It was my pleasure to serve you.”
Remarkable!
I previously wrote about this in November 2005. Things have not improved. My newest attempt to shake things up:
I recently won a contest at www.trenchmice.com, and one of the prizes I received was the recently released book by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D., The No Asshole Rule — Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t. It’s a fabulous book, and one I heartily recommend.
I just left a job, with plans to start a new one in two weeks. On my last day, I was given a “Separation From Service Exit Interview” form to fill out if I wished to do so. The form has a series of ten questions in which I am asked to rate various aspects of my employment experience. Below each of these questions are three answers with checkboxes from which I am supposed to choose. The three valid answers are “Excellent”, “Good”, and “Average”.
Of course, it’s unthinkable for them to give a departing employee the opportunity to indicate that some aspect of their employment experience was below average. It’s Lake Wobegon (“Where all the children are above average”) meets corporate America!
I’m not planning on filling out the form.
The news media and the net are awash in opinions about Gerry and Julie Kulesza, the couple whose 3-year-old daughter Elly threw such a tantrum before take-off on an AirTran flight that the airline removed them from the flight. (more…)
Remember back on the playground, when you lost a favorite knickknack and later saw another kid playing with it? “Finders keepers, losers weepers!” the finder chanted, and that was the end of it, for how could you challenge such a time-honored saying? It is not surprising that children would resort to this defense, but how can it be that so many adults seem never to have grown out of believing it?
(more…)
Seen in an article in today’s Herald about the fact that tail-gaters weren’t allowed to carry in their own liquor for the Harvard-Yale game (although people 21 and over were allowed to buy up to five beers):
“Is this not the lamest tailgate?” Ellie Brophy, a 21-year-old Yale junior, complained to her friend. “You actually have people taking shots in the Port-O-Johns.”
…
“It’s the most painful experience of my life,” 20-year-old Lindsay Hong replied. “A lot of people are getting drunk beforehand to sustain them. And it’s so crowded.”
…
“There were a lot of parties last night and this morning,” said Kristen Kim, a 20-year-old Harvard sophomore. “Legal or not, people are going to drink. So all of the rules are kind of unnecessary. It’s just annoying.”
If I were Ellie Brophy’s, Lindsay Hong’s or Kristen Kim’s parents, I’d just be so, so proud right now.
Seen in the Boston Herald Tuesday, November 14, 2006:
Maine pair dies from CO2 poisoning
SMITHFIELD, Maine — Two men working in a house died of carbon monoxide poisoning…
Maybe it’s time to alert the Herald to the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
I recently read Tom Clancy’s two most recent novels in his “Jack Ryan” universe, Red Rabbit and The Teeth of the Tiger.
They are, quite simply, horrible. Not horrible in the sense of, ”if you don’t like Tom Clancy books you won’t like these either,” but rather, “incredibly bad even to people who liked previous Tom Clancy books, and in fact incredibly bad by any halfway objective measure.”
My family is in the middle of a two-week visit to Israel. Today is my “day off” to spend by myself, and of course, where else would I spend it than at an Internet cafe checking my email 
? I’m not one of those avid bloggers who must record every detail of his vacation, but I thought it would be amusing to recount one incident which fits the theme of my blog.
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