What Would You Do?

The fam has watched a couple versions of What Would You Do? It's a "candid camera" sort of show with actors in very public, well-traveled places who perform certain things like...

• Very obviously stealing a bike in a park by sawing through the lock/chain.
• Trying to take advantage of (and take home) a very inebriated young woman in a bar.
• Harassing an overweight woman and her daughter with a grocery cart full of unhealthy, sugary foods.

It's interesting to see who intervenes by directly confronting the offenders, who walks on and who stops to consider getting involved but turns away in the end. It's also interesting to see how reactions differ when the race of the actors or the age of the actors is changed.

As a pretty vocal and opinionated woman myself, I don't usually have a problem speaking my mind. People who are unfairly treated or who are at risk for being taken advantage of are naturally compelling.

But I'll admit that in certain situations, I'm more likely to call someone like the police or a store manager. I totally get it that I could end up in a really scary situation myself if I insert myself with a stranger who could easily be nuts or drugged out.

How do you react in these situations? Is it easier for you to speak up if others are there to support you? How far are you willing to go if it looks like your own safety could be in danger?

Dear Metro PCS:

You've been pretty good to me. I mean where else can I get unlimited everything for 2 people for $110 a month with no contract? Although it's no secret that your phones are really crappy and don't really have the features I want, it's been a good trade off. Technically, I don't really need all those features.

I have to admit though, Metro PCS, that I was pretty annoyed about what happened this weekend when one of our mutual friends in India gave me a fax number instead of a phone number when I called directory assistance.

See, I asked for the charge to be removed and I was literally transferred to 5 different people until I was finally disconnected. This was after I spent 10 minutes talking to an auto-mamma trying to reach a real life Indian.

It's not that I totally love spending time shouting at your sweet sounding auto service.  But when I've said the word "CUSTOMER SERVICE" and "REPRESENTATIVE" and "AGENT" 39 times and keep hearing a female RoboCop say "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you," a plethora of four letter words start coming out of the woodwork. 

It's not very professional of me, I know, but it's just so frustrating to have you purposely make it difficult to contact a living human being. But again, Metro, I'm getting it now. That's what's up with the cheap rates.

So the Number Three person you transferred me to (after all the auto drama) told me that in order for you to help me, I needed to recite some pass code I created 2 years ago when I first signed up for Metro PCS. Sorry, I didn't remember that. Later, after yet another person helped me cut through 98 layers of security to get the pass code, I was transferred again. 

Number Four argued with me about the charge insisting that it was "only fifty cents."   Wait...did I really hear that?  It must have been a joke.  After all, after investing half of my afternoon meeting all of your associates--both real and computer generated--it's clearly the principle of the whole thing. By the time I was finished, I would have gladly paid YOU fifty cents an hour for the time remaining before I get an iPhone if you would just stop passing me around.

I'm ashamed to admit, Metro, that you won. Basically, you totally wore me out. After speaking briefly with Number Five, holding for what seemed like an eternity and then realizing no one was on the other end of the call, I gave up. 

Thanks for clarifying why the service is so cheap. I appreciate knowing the back story. Now, what would I give to have a recording of my dialogue with your auto service.

Buena Vista Inn A Day Keeps the New Smyrna Tourists Away

New Smyrna Beach is a great little town on the east coast of Florida with beautiful beaches and parks, boutique stores and restaurants and a charming downtown area.

But if the town is interested in dismissing visitors with money in their pockets, Tactic 1 would be to send 'em to Buena Vista Inn. I can't recall meeting anyone in the service industry as rude, crude and socially unacceptable as Owner.

My in-laws booked two rooms there during our weekend celebrating Niece's first birthday. After they spent one night, the moldy smell was a little too much. While cancellation policies are understandable to prevent lost income, it would have been the Kosher thing to let them out of the second night, given the reason. 

If it's just not possible to do that, fine. I repeat, that's fine. But the attitude and carrying on copped by the owner were almost comical. Almost.

She smugly lectured us about how many people were pounding down the doors to book a room for the weekend, and how she had to turn them down because all rooms were taken. "You're asking me to take money out of my own pocket so you can put money in your pocket. Do you know what this does to me?"  she went on.

Taking it a step further, as Owner was charging each credit card for the full amount, allowing one person to sign for all, she three times mentioned how much we had "changed her day."

"Well, this just never happens. In the last 11 years I've only had 3 people request a cancellation of their reservation. This has just changed my entire day."

Oh, I'm so sure.

Finally, after hearing it for the third time, I said, "In what way has this changed your day? You're still charging them the same as you would have if they didn't make this request...You're not losing a dime."

Owner: "Well, it must be so nice not to have any stress in your life."
Gropius: "Oh I have plenty of stress in my life. I just choose to deal with it in a different way."
Owner: "Well aren't you special?"

At this point, things went downhill. Names were exchanged. Owner said that she would only share where one member of our party could obtain a nebulizer for her son if "the other girls are controlled and are made not to say things about me all over town since I'm held in such high esteem."

Right.  It would seem that this situation has repeated itself many times. With that, I was pretty sure that blogging would be a well-deserved reward for the behavior.

After getting to my parents' house, we called the inn innocently to ask if rooms were available.  Oh yes, there were three. I checked out Trip Advisor, and we weren't the first to call out Owners for rudeness.

Bottom line: It's her right to be excessively rude and dishonest to customers. And it's my right to share the experience. You never know what's going on in someone's life. I don't know what her life is like behind the attitude. Nor does she know what her customers might have on their shoulders. It's hard to guess about anyone, so being a nice human being usually works out just fine.

The Things I Feel Guilty About Hating

Doctor's appointments. Car maintenance.  Trips to the grocery store.

My goodness, what the hell is wrong with me?  I have access to health care, transportation and food, and I dread the very vehicles that allow me to thrive as a free and healthy individual. It's terrible and I'm working to change my perspective on it all.

Yes, I'm one of those people who believes that once you buy a car, it should give itself oil changes, change its own tires, you know...anything that might need to be taken care of after 8,976 miles.

Today's short visit to the Honda dealership wasn't so bad. I was carefully anticipating that moment, however, that we all know will come. The tech appears in the waiting room with a clipboard and a look of seriousness to explain an additional $300 service I need to add to the oil change. Oh, okay! I don't think so, buddy. But thanks anyway.

In a way, it's frighteningly similar to the doctor's office. Although my true hatred of the doctor's office began with the start of annuals, it didn't help a few years ago when I went in and had a nurse freak out on me. I'd always had very low blood pressure. That was before the craziness of family, intense work and volunteer life overtook me. So I went in for an annual several years back and sat down for the mandatory blood pressure check. Here's what happened:

Nurse:  "Um. This can't be right."
Me: "What?! What?!
Nurse: "Uncross your legs, maybe that will help."
Me: "Is something wrong?"
Nurse: "Hey, Betsy...could you come in here and do this reading for me?"
Me (freaking out): "Could you PLEASE tell me why you're freaking out?"
Nurse: "Your blood pressure is REALLY high."
Me (thinking): "You are a complete and total idiot. You should work in a place where you have no human contact."

So it turned out by THIS time, after all of this unprofessional BS, my blood pressure was really high. Of course.

It wasn't high enough to be on medication, but I still get full of anticipation about what my blood pressure could be everytime I go in. We'll see tomorrow morning. I, um, posponed my appointment by like 6 months.

Terrible, I know. Too bad I can't postpone grocery shopping that long.

And really, I am grateful everyday for the opportunities I have for such gifts in my life.

A Girl Can Dream...

Sometimes I go through these periods of intense nightly dreams, ones that make me seriously wonder...

a.) what sorts of crazy crap I'm subconciously soaking up on TV, radio or in conversations and
b.) what underlying psychological donuts I'm dealing with digesting.

Last night I dreamt of returning to a natural place I loved and finding that it had been completely mowed down and destroyed, replaced with sidewalks, stores and empty buildings happily awaiting new commerce. 

This natural place doesn't exist but is one resulting from a mental combination of many beautiful places I visit in the flesh-- a nature trail in my old neighborhood that goes through mangroves and brackish water bridges; a path across freshwater marshes and tall grasses at a nature center where I once worked; and a woodsy trail of subtle beauty I know well.

I was panicked when I saw what had happened in my dream.  I knew it was too late to get back what was once there. And there was no one there to tell.

Years ago, I went through a stage where I thought every little stinking dream needed interpretation to de-code its symbolism or to determine whether it was a premonition of sorts.  I read all kinds of themed books that indicated when you dream about teeth, it's really about money; if you dream about hairbrushes, it's really about sex; you know, asinine generalizations.  I then decided to keep a dream journal, but just like all journals, stopped after a few entries. For Pete's sake, I write enough!! 

What do you suppose this dream means?  I could pay someone a few hundred dollars to try and decipher my inner expressionism for me or decide that one of my favorite real-life places will soon be bulldozed, but instead, I thought I'd ask you for your insightful--or humorous--thoughts about the whole thing.

Are you a dreamer at night?

The Landings: Pure Comedy

I miss the days of living in the Landings neighborhood here in Sarasota. ...Not quite enough to want to be back there, but the regular comedy provided by the neighborhood rules, the insanity of "neighborly" aggression and residents terrified of nature were pretty much unbeatable. Just a few of my fondest Landings memories include...

• My father being woken up at 2:30 a.m. by the guard house to a warning that we were breaching the neighborhood covenant by mistakenly leaving our garage door open.
• Residents calling the cops to remove an alligator in one of the neighborhood wetlands...just because it was there. (This was a frequent occurrence.)
• Countless $100 fines for brother being "caught" on the nature trail at night.
• A resident claiming that kangaroos came out on the streets at night. And they were big.
• Having a woman stalk me in her car to see if I would clean up the defecation of my now deceased (and legendary) yellow lab...even before he stopped to take one. The second the act originated, she started screaming wildly, "You gotta clean that up! You gotta clean that up!"

My bro (now in Texas) is at home with a new baby and apparently bored to the point of checking out the newest Landings news online. So happy to hear a report that things are still just as hilarious as they were years ago.

In the recent Landings news, we have reports of the security guard being summoned by a homeowner to clean up dog poo that a walker failed to pick up and a call from a neighbor concerned about a woman sprawled out in her driveway...who was just drunk, for the love of Pete, and just wanted to spend the night outside. All I have to say is, mind your own feaking business and learn to deal with poop in life--literally--people!

It's still a damn shame we're not part of the excitement anymore. And like always, I wonder how the residents would react if a real tragedy hit, God forbid. Thank goodness for the entertainment provided at Landings online.

Publix, Where Shopping Was Not a Pleasure

USUALLY shopping at Publix is a pleasure. It's a good company that does a lot philanthropically and most of the time, employs good people that at least pretend to love customers.

But today I felt like saying, "Oh jeez, I'm so sorry I had to bother your important work to order a cake. Let me go, ah, like crawl under a hole or something since I dared to interrupt you."

Brief background: I needed to order this Twitter cake to help my work celebrate the fact that we had reached 1,000 followers. (I know. Don't even start on me.) So the first thing I encounter as I approached the bakery counter is one lady asking another one to go ahead and "take me." She loudly replies, "Like I ain't got anything I'M tryin' to do."

The obvious message: "Welcome to my miserable world of bread and cake hell. I hate your guts because you are stading here. You probably want something stupid."

I won't bore you with the dialogue, but literally, she had a problem with every aspect of the order, from the date I wanted the cake, to the size, to...yeah, the design. I did arrive with several Twitter logos and graphics for the cake. Evidently, it was somewhat complicated and extra annoying of me. My secret hope: that the cake is an absolute fugly disaster. I will have a good submission for Cake Wrecks.

So here's to you, Publix! When customers stand in the way of getting work done, it totally bites.

The $5 Non-Science Germ-O-Rama

I honestly don't know what I thought when I suggested we go to $5 admission Saturday at the Museum of Science and Industry, when it also happened to be raining like a monsoon and past noon.

Yes, nearly every person with at least 3 kids from Tampa Bay and beyond was there. Yes, it was a complete germ-o-rama. And yes, it felt more like an arcade than a science museum.

Running, yelling from all sides. On each and every "hands-on" exhibit, rampant knob turning, trigger-finger button pressing, wheel spinning and incessant screen tapping. Of course, to my horror--and I assume to every staff member's horror--absolutely no reading or learning whatsoever was taking place. Never mind the human body, magnetism, space science or earth science which these exhibits were supposed to convey.

I need a stress massage after this experience. And a hot, anti-bacterial shower. And someone to wipe the last 3 hours from my memory. Except for the part about how I never want to go back there again under these conditions. (Not to give you the wrong idea; it is most likely a very cool place on different sort of day.) On the bright side, I can now walk in the backyard without drowning. The rain must have slowed down during our time in the Romper Room.