Common Sense: The Universal Stumper

My company moved into a brand new office in March. We built it out top to bottom. I decided it would be totally cool to have one of those instant water heater faucets so I could have my English Breakfast tea without using the microwave. I buy it. Plumbing sub installs it, and then I get a call that the unit was broken. Go back and forth with the supplier and end up getting it replaced under warranty. Only USPS didn't have our address (for which, please read previous blog)and so it was returned to the manufacturer. Then I tracked it down and had it resent. After it arrived the plumbing sub sent over some guy. He was here for about 3 hours. He entered and exited our suite multiple times, never talking to anyone, never telling us what he was doing. Check the faucet after he left and it's still not working. I do a walk through with the building management and open the sink to show them what I assume is an unattached tank, and nothing. Tank's not there. A few days later I hear from our superintendent that the second tank broke and the plumber said it was because our office water pressure was too high. I tell him that the plumber must have taken it then because it's not in the kitchen. He comes to the office, we scour the place top to bottom. No tank.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to yesterday. The contractor, superintendent and plumbing sub come into my office. The contractor says he has no idea what happened to the thing, but he's gonna buy us another one and make sure it works with our water pressure. The plumbing sub starts getting all bent out of shape, insists that they left the tank here. I repeat that the tank is not here. He says his guy left it on the floor. I ask, "Where on the floor?" He says in front of the sink. I look at him and say, very casually, "On the floor in front of the sink next to the TRASH CAN maybe? Hmm. I don't suppose janitorial assumed the box leaking water on the floor next to the trash can was TRASH, do you?"

Unspoken was the word IDIOT.

And yes, should anyone like the name of the plumber so as to avoid him - let me know. I do have it.

Why the USPS Operates in the Red

Inability to make the right changes. That's it really I think. They initiate change and they just can't get it right. They automated their retail into a machine, but frankly the old school stamp machines gave me more choices and were a lot faster to use. Inevitably now I have to wait in line for several people that are flummoxed by the new ATM styled machine in order to buy more stamps than I will use in a year.

But my latest interaction I will dub cyclical bureaucracy.

My company moved on March 26. About 10 days before the move I went to the post office to pick up a change of address form. These are ubiquitous at post offices - they have them laying around like candy. Only they don't anymore. In an effort to streamline the process the USPS really, really wants you to do the change of address online. And to make sure you comply they no longer leave the cards out for the public to pick up. I know this because I went to 4 post offices looking for them.

Did I mention that they charge you $1 to make the change online?

So I go online to submit the change request, but every time I do and the system asks me to check the address before I hit submit, the address is wrong. It keeps leaving off the suite number. See, in the new office we are in a complex, so I have to show the building number and the suite number. And the online form doesn't allow for enough characters for the 2nd address line to read Bldg 1, Ste 150.

Back to the post office I go. Where I have to stand in a line for 35 minutes in order to ask for a change of address card, explain to the USPS guy that yes I realize I'm supposed to do it online but I can't, and then grudgingly be given the card. I dutifully complete said card and pop it in the mailbox. Done and done.

Or not.

Because yesterday - some 3 weeks after this - I receive my confirmation of change of address from the USPS. And on the outside of the envelope my carrier has handwritten "which box?" I'm confused, but then I realize that the official address on the confirmation letter has NO suite number. Sigh.

I call the number on the confirmation letter, go through multiple layers of automation to get to a human who tells me that now I have to submit a change of address form for the incorrect address that I've just changed, and that I can do it online for only $1. And she hangs up.

Instead I go to the USPS, wait in line, speak to a carrier who bounces me to a clerk who passes me to a supervisor. All of them in turn laugh uproariously when they hear that I tried calling the toll free number. The supervisor pulls up my submission, which includes a scan of the card I turned in, and it very clearly shows that I wrote the suite number and the USPS left it off.

And then I have to fill out a correction to the change of address card form. Of course, I could have saved myself the trip and done it online for only $1! I wonder about all the people who don't have online access or a method of getting to the post office. Way to use automation poorly and without planning USPS!

I Hate When I Don't Know Stuff

This weekend my company moved offices. We'd been in the same building for 12 years. It was nice enough - good location, close to the house and the boys' schools, beautiful view, plush digs in a rather ugly building. There were annoyances - mice for one. I've grown to hate the very sight of mousetraps, even the "humane" ones. The other was an ongoing battle with the break room sink. It leaked - twice we had to replace the tile in the break room. It would back up, we would call the building, they would send their plumber (always THEIR plumber, building regulation apparently), they would tell us the problem was we were putting coffee grounds in the sink (we weren't), they'd show us gunky black stuff to prove that we were putting coffee grounds down the sink (we weren't), they'd proclaim it fixed and the building would send us some outrageous bill for plumbing services. One time they even said we needed a new disposal, so they installed one. That bill had a 75% markup on the disposal and a labor charge of 2 men for 6 hours of work! I disputed both with the building management and they dropped one man's labor. I decided that was victory enough.

Last week, with less than 5 days left before move-out, the sink backed up again. I didn't even call it in. Let it be someone else's problem, I thought. And so, with a brand new dishwasher awaiting me at the new office (something we never had at the old) I packed up all the dirty dishes to take with me and told all my coworkers not to use the sink.

Last night I took Roy, the boys and my dad to the old building to get the old refrigerator - it will be much happier as my new beer fridge than as a boring office fridge, after all! I asked my dad, a contractor by trade, to please turn off the water line to the RO system. As he reached into the small space under the sink his hand brushed against the main pipe and water started pouring out. "What the hell is that mess?" he said and laid on the ground to get a closer look.

What that mess was was the water from the backed up sink. And herein lies my complaint about hating it when I don't know stuff. If I had known more about plumbing I might have noticed at some point during the 12 years we leased the space that the plumbers the building kept sending were idiots. I might have realized that what I took for padding hours was incompetence. I might have saved the aggravation of constantly dealing with a backed up sink. Because what my dad saw in 5 seconds was that the damn pipe was never really connected! No threads, no gasket, no nut, no sealant. Simply one ill fitting pipe shoved up inside another about about an eight of an inch.

The moral to this story is that everyone needs to learn the basics of plumbing. Although apparently you don't even need to know that much to get paid by a large commercial management company to "fix" tenant's shit.

See, I keep forgetting that I have this blog...

and I realize that in an era of tweets and apps blogs are more than a little passé. But for the first time in a long time - since 2006 to be precise - I'm not coaching a team. I have some free time on my hands. And my friends are reviving their blogs, although to be fair my blog was never much of anything, so why not me too?

My goal is to tell an entertaining story that maybe someone, somewhere will want to read. Now I just have to think of some.

Crap! I really haven't posted in a while

In like a year. I guess I just got too busy to keep up with things. Sorry about that.

My Comments to the AISD Task Force

Here's what I said - but you'll have to imagine the tone of voice and inflection I used. I do that to pretty good effect! Of course, both the Tarrytown and Circle C contingents booed me (and a Meridian rep yelled out at me), which certainly spotlighted their maturity, but I obviously touched a nerve or they wouldn't have bothered.

My name is Traci Anderson. As an OHYSA commissioner, I have personally coached children from every single one of the affected schools. But I am also the Mills PTA Treasurer and parent of 7 and 10 year old boys. I am frustrated with the task force, and I am angry at the district. I am angry that instead of being planned to serve the needs of this community, the school was built and now we are being forced to serve its needs.

But, this process has been flawed since the beginning. AISD should never have allowed Circle C such a prominent role in the purchase of the land, a role which has given them a sense of entitlement to attend SWMS to the exclusion of other, much closer communities – my community. This is more than supported by the CCHOA Treasurer’s June 2nd statement posted online that without them, there would not be a new middle school.

I am angry that geographic members of this task force were appointed to represent their schools, but are instead voting in the interests of their HOAs. I am frustrated that AISD refuses to recognize the fact that O’Henry is no longer a viable, neighborhood school, but has become little more than a publicly funded private school, vetting transfer applications to fill almost half of its classrooms. I attend task force meetings and am frustrated that items which are considered CONS on maps keeping Mills together, suddenly become PROS on maps tearing Mills apart. I am angry that while I write letters to the board, walk door to door in my neighborhood, and time impassioned 2 minute speeches, Mr. Silva is giving interviews to KUT stating that Mills will have to split for fear of hurting Small, but conveniently fails to mention the effect losing Kiker will have on Bailey.

I am angry that my child may not attend a school just over a mile from his home, but a hypothetical child in a yet to be built house, can and most likely will. But mostly I am saddened that AISD repeatedly asks for our support for bond issues and propositions, but may fail to support us in this one crucial moment when we are only asking them to do what is right. To them, my son may just be a green dot on a map, but that green dot lives closer to the SWMS than a single one of Kiker’s.

My 15 seconds

Pretty clearly, I'm bad at this blogging thing. BUT - here's an update on me! Ha! Ignore how I look - that's no makeup, 2 hours of sleep, and only 1 cup of coffee talking. But the reporter said I was a good interview. I also talked for about 3 minutes, and they only included this little bit. Bastards!

Check it out, over there to the left. I'm about 20 seconds into the video.