Bill’s Content

After spending a half hour trying to rescue any real posts from among the 257 spams comments left ofernight at Peoria Pundit, I have decided to add “lactating” to my list of blacklisted terms. Apparently, that’s a big fetish, jusding by the number of porn sites devoted to it.

Geeze.

At least it isn’t eyeball porn (believe me, you don’t wanna know).

There’s a reward fund set up for information about the May 17 murder of Cory McGrane outside his home in the Rolling Acres subdivision. I’m sorry, but I can’t work up too much sympathy. I mean, I’m sorry for his surviving friends and relatives. By his own father’s admission, the murder was over a drug debt. I’m supposed to feel sympathy because he was white and lived north of War Memorial Drive intead of a black guy from the South Side? No. Sorry. If they catch the guy who shot him, hey so much the better. But we reap what we sow, folks.

I’m at my folks’ house when their phone rings.

The caller asks if my mother is home. I tell her ‘no’ and other to take her name and number.

She ignores this and asks if I am her husband or her son.

I again for her name and who she is with.

Then she asks me if I know where my mother is.

This time I but a little bass into my voice: “Give. Me. Your. Name. And. The. Company. You. Work. For.”

She says to never mind and she’ll call back later. If I answer, I’ll hang up on her.

Folks, I deal with people on the phone for a living. Most people have phone manners that fit within a range I would call acceptable.

There’s an occasional caller who sounds like he or she is chewing their cud. Others can’t resist having personal conversations with persons in the room with them at the exact same time they have the mouths pressed against their phones. It’s just a normal part of the job.

But nothing, nothing, nothing gets me madder than when someone calls MY house (in this case, my mother’s house) and begins asking personal questions and demanding to know MY identity. This happens when the caller is calling about a private business matter, is a relative or even someone I asked to give me a call.

It drives me freaking nuts. It is the heighth of modern-day rudeness, whether there is a smile in their voice or not.

THESE are the RULES: When you call someone’s house, YOU are intruding into their private world. YOU need to give YOUR name and politely ask to speak to the person you are seeking. If that person isn’t there, you POLITELY ask to leave a message. If the person on the other end offers to take a message, no not say you’ll call back at YOUR convenience, that’s a second invasion of their space. DO NOT quiz the caller about where this person is or when they will be back. Failure to do this is not only rude, it is asking the person on the other end to be unsafe.

Back when I was a reporter, I worked the phones a lot and almost never violated these simple rules.

NOTE: I originally posted this on Peoria Pundit, but took it down. I’m trying to limit the number of rants I run that site.

I trust everyone read the article on new Americans in this Sunday’s Parade (an insert in the Sunday Journal Star). The article told the story of a young Tibetan woman who was jailed and tortured for being a loyal follower of the Dali Lama.

These are the people with whom Caterpillar partners. This is where Peoria’s newest sister city is located. These are the people whose language they want to teach in Peoria School District 150.

When we do business with China, we do business with the Chinese Army, the very people responsible for the repression and the torture and the murders.

Ask the people of Tibet about how China is becoming Westernized.

I’m sorry. I know everyone wants to make money. I know that some people think peace and understanding is achived by holding hands and singing songs around a campfire. The reality is that communism equals slavery. That also is not a trendy thing to believe — Che Guevara T-shirts being all the rage — but it’s true.

My el-cheapo laptop — bought used two summers ago — is apparently permanently kaput. Ken — a co-worker and a computer wiz — can’t figure out what the Hell is wrong with it. It might be the hard-drive. I think it might be the permanently installed 32 Mbs of RAM. On the other hand, it might be the power supply.

He’s going to try a few things, but the prognosis is grim.

Life has it’s little ironies, doesn’t it? Peoria City Hall finally gets Wireless access and I don’t have a laptop anymore.

Liveblogging Peoria City Council will have to wait.

I went to Wal-Mart this morning to buy a fan for my bedroom.

As I walked past the chdeck out line, I noticed there was ONE lane open. Just one. Isn’t that just like Wal-Mart, I thought, to not schedule enough cashiers on a Sunday that’s going to see a lot of shopping because of all the family get-gethers.

I chose the fan I wanted — a reversable window unit that I’m going to use to suck the hot air out of my house — and took my item to the electronics department because I didn’t want to wait in line.

The cashier said they scheduled plenty of workers, but a bunch of people called in sick. That’s why there was only one lane open.

I ended up thanking the guy for actually showing up to work.
Several thoughts:

First: There’s a lot of griping about there being no good jobs out there, and there’s a lot of truth to that. I know Wal-Mart jobs are not the best in the world, but why should anyone hire someone for one of those few really good jobs who doesn’t take his or her entry-level job seriously enough to show up on a holiday? What does it say about YOU if you suck at a BAD job?

Second: If there’s a real shortage of workers, or a shortage of good workers who show up, then it’s time to raise wages. Good people seek out better situations for themselves.

After picking up the fan, I was having some hunger pangs, so I stopped at a fast-food joint to grab a burger and read a newspaper in peace.

I ordered a sandwich, large fries and large drink. I received a small drink, instead. It turned out the clerk accidentially rang me up for a small. No big deal, as far as I was concerned. I normally would have ordered a small, since refills were free, but I was planning to leave with a full refill. So the manager handed me a large cup and apologized.

That manager berated that poor girl in front of me and the other employees. I could hear the lecture continue after I had returned to my seat. Yeah, the mistake cost the corporation a few dimes and nickles. But it cost more than a few nickels and pennies to train this worker and it would cost the same to train her replacement, after she leaves because her boss is abusive.

Instead of me leaving feeling like I had been treated right, I left feeling bad about being there.

Folks, trainees and probationary employees are supposed to make mistakes. In a fantasy world, every employee off the streets would be able to do it all, perfectly, right away. In the real world, good employees need to be created. Remember, It’s not their job to make your life easier, at least while they are still new. In fact, the opposite is true: YOU are there to make their lives easier. Once their training is complete, they can be judged according to how much they simplify your life.

And take it from someone who has been there. Nothing causes more problems than an atmosphere in which employees are afraid to make mistakes.

Gee. What were the odds that these two wouldn’t give their unholy spawn a normal-sounding name?

You know those baseball movies about the rag-tag bunch of mistake-prone losers who somehow pull together by the end of the season? Movies like “Major League” or “Bad News Bears.”

Well, my Cubs are playing like these fictional teams.

Well, life ain’t like a movie. I don’t see my Cubs finishing less than 10 games out of first place. God, they are stinking up the place. Up until today, I was blaming Dusty Baker. Well, I’m still sick of Bakers act. Have been for two seasons now.

But you can’t blame him for the utter lack of talent and the insistance on relying on tired pitchers who never have lived up to potential. Kerry Woods, are your ears burning, you WORTHLESS HACK? You lost a MINOR LEAGUE GAME! Show some pride and QUIT!

Fire Andy MacPhail. Or is that “MacFail?”

Because he can’t post at MY site anymore, I’m absolutely certain a certain banned commenter will be pestering other sites, trying to get people to play his games.

I stopped being interested, finally, earlier today after he started in on one his “I have a right to call anyone anything I want on your site” rants. I insisted that I won’t allow libel. You know what? I won the argument.

He can go ahead and call anyone anything he wants. I hope someone sues his sorry self.

If anything thinks this is ego on my part, just browse Peoria Pundit for a while and you will see that I let people say pretty much anything. If I banned people because I didn’t like them or because of their ideology, there would be one/tenth the comments. And the site would be a lot less fun.

Feh. I’m sick of the babysitting.

Note to the dude who was using his cell phone instead of paying attention to congested traffic leaving Northwoods Mall today: Shove that cell phone someplace damp and dark, and spend a moment contemplating how your parents failed to teach you not to be a self-centered twit who thinks the world revolved around you.