In order to provide the faithful with quality blog entertainment, Buck 99 decided to use a pair of enclosing quotation marks to get around the self-imposed 3rd person rule enforced on this blog.
The following excerpt is an email Buck sent to his enemy du jour, a company that is making it difficult for him to close a long-dead account, and who has instructed him that he should visit a branch:
“Dear [Evil Credit Card Company #1],
I will visit a branch, but I am displeased. I called the number you provided and was forwarded to [Evil Credit Card Company #2]. The call was disconnected but fortunately the [Evil Credit Card Company #1] agent had given me the phone number before attempting the transfer. Then I proceeded to call [Evil Credit Card Company #2] three times and was ultimately disconnected from each of those calls in three separate and distinct ways before making it to a single human being. All this taking time away from my day for an account I neither use nor want, and in fact believed to be already closed.
I suspect that the process has been intentionally engineered to make closing an account difficult. I include both [Evil Credit Card Company #1] and [Evil Credit Card Company #2] in this accusation. I also detect from your response that you haven't even looked at my account. The phrase "if the account balance exceeds $2500" gives it away. The balance is ZERO. The account has been dormant for years. Nice form letter, guys. Thanks for spending $0.25 servicing your customer with a pair of button clicks.
If the branch approach fails, then I may be forced to close the account by mail, but there is no way that I will pay a fee for that "service." How am I to ensure that my $20 won't be applied to the membership fee? Perhaps this is what happened the last time I tried to close this account.
No, I have a better idea. If the branch approach fails, I go to the Better Business Bureau and the SEC, with carbon copies for my senators and representatives at both the state and federal levels. I have personal experience with the success rate of this approach, having once been professionally responsible for responding to complaint letters forwarded to my major credit card corporation employer from these sources.
I've worked in the credit card industry for eight years and know how to ultimately win this engagement. Make it easy on yourselves and pave the way for me to close this account quickly and absolutely free of charge. No membership fee, no closing fee. You'll never get them from me, and you'll end up having to spend way more than $20 just fighting me and reversing any damage you do to my credit report. Expensive call center reps will experience very long talk times, and their supervisors and managers will end up on the phone a lot too. And the longer this takes me, the more I'll make sure it affects your bottom line. I'm already highly annoyed and frankly amazed that I have to physically go to a branch for this. This is the 21st century and I have to travel to close an account that has no balance? Are you kidding me? The manager there will get an earful, and I'll only just be getting started.
Since my statements say "[Evil Credit Card Company #1]" and not "[Evil Credit Card Company #2]", my battle is with you, not them. If you want me off your back, you will be my intermediary. You will do what is necessary to get [Evil Credit Card Company #2] to close this account (assuming your agent was speaking truthfully about [Evil Credit Card Company #2] servicing the account, but if you haven't noticed, I'm finding it challenging to trust you at the moment).
Good luck.
Regards,
[Buck 99]”
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
Tweaker
Tweaker was the only person Buck knew who could take a perfectly smooth day and somehow wring an emergency from it.
The walls of the Mission Control Center (MCC) held the faint green hue of the status light. Sure, there were issues, but by and large things were going well. The tasks captured in the By-the-Minute schedule - an abomination born of project management practices gone horribly awry that our faithful readers will recognize as the primary deliverable for which our protagonist, the intrepid Buck 99, is unfortunately responsible – were systematically completing ahead of forecast in most cases, and well in advance of deadline dates in all other cases. This particular day had absolutely zero planned milestones of level “CRITICAL,” nor were there any tasks due for completion of levels “CRUCIAL,” “ESSENTIAL,” or even “MIND-BOGGLINGLY IMPORTANT.” And the only risk for which there was no contingency plan had not occurred (Risk ID 722568: “Sol goes supernova and destroys all customer records, and yeah, the world too”) and was deemed extremely unlikely to occur today, especially since Sol is well known to have insufficient mass to go nova, let alone supernova. No, the sun would not burn out, it would gradually (i.e., on an astrological time scale) fade away into white dwarf status followed tens of billions of years later by cold, dark oblivion. No explosions today. Today would be slow.
“Buck, when are you going to have the report ready?” she asked.
Buck looked up at the atomic digital clock on the wall. The time was precisely 11:25:42.0078 EST, which was exactly 2 hours 4 minutes and 17.0022 seconds prior to when the report was due to arrive in her in-box. Buck recalled, however, that the previous day he had promised her that today he would deliver the report a half hour earlier for her convenience (an extra 30 minutes to complete a 10-minute copy/paste exercise), but that still gave him 1 hour 36 minutes plus change. He re-confirmed his commitment by replying, “You’ll have the report at 1300 hours.”
His experience with Tweaker informed him that she was well on her way to freaking out about absolutely nothing, a daily occurrence since the beginning of the MCC execution phase. So in a vain attempt to head off that bit of nastiness at the pass, he had begun to prepare the report at 11:00:00, the moment of his arrival. Since there were no milestones to report, all he had to do was take the report that was published by the previous shift’s By-the-Minute Manager (whom Buck will hereafter refer to as Dr. Quack if he actually has reason to refer to him again), fix the erroneous details, and republish it. This would be a fifteen minute task, punctuated by numerous and various interruptions by other individuals eager to justify their existences by finding things to worry about.
At 12:15:07, Tweaker asked for an ETA on the report. “Almost ready,” responded Buck gruffly.
“Good. I need that by 1300 hours today, remember.”
Buck remembered and told her so. He was nearly certain that his tone of voice accurately conveyed his annoyance. Couldn’t she see the two people standing at his desk?
At 12:30:55 Buck glanced over at Tweaker. It was difficult to determine whether her ill coloring was a function of her anxiety or the lighting of the status indicator. He took no chances and tried to reassure her with an update. “Just a few more minutes.”
“I need it by 1330 hours, but it would be better if I had it by 1300. Will it be ready?” she asked.
At that moment the light in the room could have been any color at all, but all Buck saw was red.
Her tone spoke volumes about the degree to which she felt she was being put out by Buck’s perceived delay. Never mind that Buck had explained to her before his shift started that there were unlikely to be any changes since the morning report and she could go ahead and get started early by simply copying the morning report. They could always take the two minutes to reconcile the “deltas” (there were none) at 1300 or 1330, whichever she preferred.
Buck sensed her fear, could almost smell it like a dog, and toyed with the idea of capitalizing on it. If she failed to deliver her report by 14:15:00 EST, then in her mind she would stand out like a sore thumb as an incompetent who failed to deliver her report on time. Phone calls would be received and uncomfortable conversations would take place. A notation would be added to her dossier. This would not do at all.
Of course she would pin the blame on Buck, and Buck didn’t relish uncomfortable conversations any more than she did. He’d had his fair share over the years and knew that brand of torture too intimately. No, he would deliver exactly what he said he would deliver, and he would do it earlier than planned in accordance with the natural laws of consultancy.
Nevertheless, Tweaker chimed in again five minutes later, desperate for good news. Buck’s mouse pointer was hovering over the “Send” button even as she spoke. The time on the wall was 12:36:01, and Buck’s faith in the half-life of Cesium 133 convinced him of the accuracy of this measurement.
If Tweaker had been a contractor rather than a Cubopolis agent, then Buck would have immediately spoken the necessary words to embarrass her straight into early retirement. Unfortunately this was not the reality of the situation. If he berated this moron in the manner she merited, it could mean the end of his career as a consultant. He briefly wondered why this should concern him and enjoyed a brief, bright, inner glimpse into a possible future as a bulldozer operator, but in the end he meekly chose the path prescribed by the Doctrine of Middle Class Compliance (DMCC), the same path that would condemn him to remain contained “within the box.” He clicked “Send” and cheerfully informed her that the information was in her email.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as though in shock. “It’s early!”
Now Buck’s record had been consistent in this regard, and yet here she was publicly acting surprised. Clearly it was a poorly conceived power play designed to portray a contrast between the strong, dependable up-and-comer and the weak, unreliable consultant. Buck’s teeth clenched in fury, but after he thought about it for a moment he realized he had no cause for concern. The audience in the MCC had watched this same drama unfold every single day and were themselves historically prone to being tweaked themselves by this same tweaker. Besides, it was his job to make his client look good, even if it wasn’t really his client, just someone who worked for the same company as his client, which made her his client by proxy.
Tweaker ended up remaining appeased for all of ten minutes. Then the next hour was spent with Tweaker worrying over the format that Buck would use on the next day’s report. Naturally Buck couldn’t be trusted to handle these crucial details himself. As she hovered over him, peering over his shoulder, pointing at his screen and issuing instructions, she was completely unaware that the tiny MS Word icon entitled “Tweaker” on the bottom of his screen represented the minimized window of a blog entry exposing her inner essence to the world via cyberspace. Meanwhile Buck sighed in resignation and nodded periodically whenever he detected a pause in the cadence of her speech. He’d end up doing it all his own way tomorrow, just like he always did, because he’d tried it her way before, and her way sucked.
The walls of the Mission Control Center (MCC) held the faint green hue of the status light. Sure, there were issues, but by and large things were going well. The tasks captured in the By-the-Minute schedule - an abomination born of project management practices gone horribly awry that our faithful readers will recognize as the primary deliverable for which our protagonist, the intrepid Buck 99, is unfortunately responsible – were systematically completing ahead of forecast in most cases, and well in advance of deadline dates in all other cases. This particular day had absolutely zero planned milestones of level “CRITICAL,” nor were there any tasks due for completion of levels “CRUCIAL,” “ESSENTIAL,” or even “MIND-BOGGLINGLY IMPORTANT.” And the only risk for which there was no contingency plan had not occurred (Risk ID 722568: “Sol goes supernova and destroys all customer records, and yeah, the world too”) and was deemed extremely unlikely to occur today, especially since Sol is well known to have insufficient mass to go nova, let alone supernova. No, the sun would not burn out, it would gradually (i.e., on an astrological time scale) fade away into white dwarf status followed tens of billions of years later by cold, dark oblivion. No explosions today. Today would be slow.
“Buck, when are you going to have the report ready?” she asked.
Buck looked up at the atomic digital clock on the wall. The time was precisely 11:25:42.0078 EST, which was exactly 2 hours 4 minutes and 17.0022 seconds prior to when the report was due to arrive in her in-box. Buck recalled, however, that the previous day he had promised her that today he would deliver the report a half hour earlier for her convenience (an extra 30 minutes to complete a 10-minute copy/paste exercise), but that still gave him 1 hour 36 minutes plus change. He re-confirmed his commitment by replying, “You’ll have the report at 1300 hours.”
His experience with Tweaker informed him that she was well on her way to freaking out about absolutely nothing, a daily occurrence since the beginning of the MCC execution phase. So in a vain attempt to head off that bit of nastiness at the pass, he had begun to prepare the report at 11:00:00, the moment of his arrival. Since there were no milestones to report, all he had to do was take the report that was published by the previous shift’s By-the-Minute Manager (whom Buck will hereafter refer to as Dr. Quack if he actually has reason to refer to him again), fix the erroneous details, and republish it. This would be a fifteen minute task, punctuated by numerous and various interruptions by other individuals eager to justify their existences by finding things to worry about.
At 12:15:07, Tweaker asked for an ETA on the report. “Almost ready,” responded Buck gruffly.
“Good. I need that by 1300 hours today, remember.”
Buck remembered and told her so. He was nearly certain that his tone of voice accurately conveyed his annoyance. Couldn’t she see the two people standing at his desk?
At 12:30:55 Buck glanced over at Tweaker. It was difficult to determine whether her ill coloring was a function of her anxiety or the lighting of the status indicator. He took no chances and tried to reassure her with an update. “Just a few more minutes.”
“I need it by 1330 hours, but it would be better if I had it by 1300. Will it be ready?” she asked.
At that moment the light in the room could have been any color at all, but all Buck saw was red.
Her tone spoke volumes about the degree to which she felt she was being put out by Buck’s perceived delay. Never mind that Buck had explained to her before his shift started that there were unlikely to be any changes since the morning report and she could go ahead and get started early by simply copying the morning report. They could always take the two minutes to reconcile the “deltas” (there were none) at 1300 or 1330, whichever she preferred.
Buck sensed her fear, could almost smell it like a dog, and toyed with the idea of capitalizing on it. If she failed to deliver her report by 14:15:00 EST, then in her mind she would stand out like a sore thumb as an incompetent who failed to deliver her report on time. Phone calls would be received and uncomfortable conversations would take place. A notation would be added to her dossier. This would not do at all.
Of course she would pin the blame on Buck, and Buck didn’t relish uncomfortable conversations any more than she did. He’d had his fair share over the years and knew that brand of torture too intimately. No, he would deliver exactly what he said he would deliver, and he would do it earlier than planned in accordance with the natural laws of consultancy.
Nevertheless, Tweaker chimed in again five minutes later, desperate for good news. Buck’s mouse pointer was hovering over the “Send” button even as she spoke. The time on the wall was 12:36:01, and Buck’s faith in the half-life of Cesium 133 convinced him of the accuracy of this measurement.
If Tweaker had been a contractor rather than a Cubopolis agent, then Buck would have immediately spoken the necessary words to embarrass her straight into early retirement. Unfortunately this was not the reality of the situation. If he berated this moron in the manner she merited, it could mean the end of his career as a consultant. He briefly wondered why this should concern him and enjoyed a brief, bright, inner glimpse into a possible future as a bulldozer operator, but in the end he meekly chose the path prescribed by the Doctrine of Middle Class Compliance (DMCC), the same path that would condemn him to remain contained “within the box.” He clicked “Send” and cheerfully informed her that the information was in her email.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as though in shock. “It’s early!”
Now Buck’s record had been consistent in this regard, and yet here she was publicly acting surprised. Clearly it was a poorly conceived power play designed to portray a contrast between the strong, dependable up-and-comer and the weak, unreliable consultant. Buck’s teeth clenched in fury, but after he thought about it for a moment he realized he had no cause for concern. The audience in the MCC had watched this same drama unfold every single day and were themselves historically prone to being tweaked themselves by this same tweaker. Besides, it was his job to make his client look good, even if it wasn’t really his client, just someone who worked for the same company as his client, which made her his client by proxy.
Tweaker ended up remaining appeased for all of ten minutes. Then the next hour was spent with Tweaker worrying over the format that Buck would use on the next day’s report. Naturally Buck couldn’t be trusted to handle these crucial details himself. As she hovered over him, peering over his shoulder, pointing at his screen and issuing instructions, she was completely unaware that the tiny MS Word icon entitled “Tweaker” on the bottom of his screen represented the minimized window of a blog entry exposing her inner essence to the world via cyberspace. Meanwhile Buck sighed in resignation and nodded periodically whenever he detected a pause in the cadence of her speech. He’d end up doing it all his own way tomorrow, just like he always did, because he’d tried it her way before, and her way sucked.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Mrs. 99's Tirade
Mrs. 99 was frustrated. Out of the blue a few nights ago she started venting to Buck about the direction the world seems to be going in and what kind of place it will be for their children. Some of the things she said along the way made a lot of sense.
She started with the way car and truck drivers behave around bicyclists on the road. She and Buck both know someone who was recently hit by a car and run off the road while he was riding his bike. He was o.k., and accidents happen, but was it really an accident? Everyone has seen how pushy and impatient car drivers get around bicyclists, as though they are being horribly inconvenienced by having to slow down just long enough to carefully pass the rider. How dare the cyclist interfere with the driver’s speedy progress toward his or her critical goal? Buck has seen drivers intentionally speed up and move closer to the cyclist as an intimidation tactic, and heard many a driver sound their horns in anger. “Get off the road!”
It goes way past bicycles, though. Mrs. 99’s pet peeve is the way people don’t use their turn signals to communicate their intention to change lanes. “Well of course they don’t,” explained Buck. “That’s just an invitation to the other drivers to speed up so nobody will get in front of them.” Mrs. 99 acknowledged the truth of this remark. Sure, there are folks who will let you in when you signal, but the other kind seem more common.
So why is everyone in such a mad rush? What can be so important that people will cast aside simple civility and sometimes even the physical well-being of others in exchange for gaining a single car length in traffic? Are they really that eager to get to their cubicles?
Somehow the topic of school homework got weaved into the conversation. Second graders get tons of homework these days and it takes them until bedtime to complete it. Yet only twenty minutes of total recess time is allotted to them during the school day. The punishment for talking out of turn in the classroom is reduced recess time, so Mrs. 99 is left to wonder: when are kids supposed to burn off their excess energy? When are they supposed to be kids?
Buck didn’t interrupt the tirade to point out the obvious link to obesity. Mrs. 99 was on a roll.
The 99 children are kicking ass in school. In every subject, Uno has received perfect scores on every homework paper, quiz, and test so far (Dos is in kindergarten and doesn’t have quizzes yet, but the teacher has pulled Mrs. 99 aside and asked if the 99s were aware that Dos can already read and write, so all is well). Yet Uno can barely finish the homework! How challenging must it be for children who aren’t quite as far along as Uno is? Why is society working these children so hard?
Is it for better opportunities in the workplace? Mrs. 99 really hammered her point home, her tone voice escalating to an exasperated frenzy. “Are we pushing our children to these ridiculous extremes just so they can get better jobs than we have? You hate your job. It pays well, but you hate it. If Uno does better than you in school, will she get a job like yours except higher up the ladder where there’s even more stress? Will she be driving like a maniac, honking her horn at bicyclists, blowing people off the road, and cutting people off all so she can make it on time to meetings at a job she despises where she works seventy hours a week away from her family? How stressed out will her kids be when she and the system push them to be better than her?”
The situation was dire, but Buck knew what he had to do. Mrs. 99 needed to get laid, and he knew just the man for the job.
She started with the way car and truck drivers behave around bicyclists on the road. She and Buck both know someone who was recently hit by a car and run off the road while he was riding his bike. He was o.k., and accidents happen, but was it really an accident? Everyone has seen how pushy and impatient car drivers get around bicyclists, as though they are being horribly inconvenienced by having to slow down just long enough to carefully pass the rider. How dare the cyclist interfere with the driver’s speedy progress toward his or her critical goal? Buck has seen drivers intentionally speed up and move closer to the cyclist as an intimidation tactic, and heard many a driver sound their horns in anger. “Get off the road!”
It goes way past bicycles, though. Mrs. 99’s pet peeve is the way people don’t use their turn signals to communicate their intention to change lanes. “Well of course they don’t,” explained Buck. “That’s just an invitation to the other drivers to speed up so nobody will get in front of them.” Mrs. 99 acknowledged the truth of this remark. Sure, there are folks who will let you in when you signal, but the other kind seem more common.
So why is everyone in such a mad rush? What can be so important that people will cast aside simple civility and sometimes even the physical well-being of others in exchange for gaining a single car length in traffic? Are they really that eager to get to their cubicles?
Somehow the topic of school homework got weaved into the conversation. Second graders get tons of homework these days and it takes them until bedtime to complete it. Yet only twenty minutes of total recess time is allotted to them during the school day. The punishment for talking out of turn in the classroom is reduced recess time, so Mrs. 99 is left to wonder: when are kids supposed to burn off their excess energy? When are they supposed to be kids?
Buck didn’t interrupt the tirade to point out the obvious link to obesity. Mrs. 99 was on a roll.
The 99 children are kicking ass in school. In every subject, Uno has received perfect scores on every homework paper, quiz, and test so far (Dos is in kindergarten and doesn’t have quizzes yet, but the teacher has pulled Mrs. 99 aside and asked if the 99s were aware that Dos can already read and write, so all is well). Yet Uno can barely finish the homework! How challenging must it be for children who aren’t quite as far along as Uno is? Why is society working these children so hard?
Is it for better opportunities in the workplace? Mrs. 99 really hammered her point home, her tone voice escalating to an exasperated frenzy. “Are we pushing our children to these ridiculous extremes just so they can get better jobs than we have? You hate your job. It pays well, but you hate it. If Uno does better than you in school, will she get a job like yours except higher up the ladder where there’s even more stress? Will she be driving like a maniac, honking her horn at bicyclists, blowing people off the road, and cutting people off all so she can make it on time to meetings at a job she despises where she works seventy hours a week away from her family? How stressed out will her kids be when she and the system push them to be better than her?”
The situation was dire, but Buck knew what he had to do. Mrs. 99 needed to get laid, and he knew just the man for the job.
Little Green Friend
Buck was walking from one office building to the next on his way to lunch when he noticed a splash of green flash suddenly across the sidewalk. It was a Rough Greensnake, a real, honest-to-God opheodrys aestivus!
Instantly Buck sprang into action. He crouched low and reached for the snake’s tail, but the serpent was too quick! It sped into the grass in search of cover, but fortunately for Buck the grass had been mown recently and he could see the snake clearly. He walked along after it, trying to corner it, but it was elusive, moving this way and that with startling quickness, and Buck missed it twice more before having to break into a run just to keep up. Finally he managed to snag it at the base of a tree.
The snake feinted toward Buck’s wrist and face as if to bite, but Buck had done his homework and held on firmly but gently. The Green Tree Snake (one of its other names) is very docile and does not bite. Buck knew this through both research and experience. He had caught one just like this one once when he was a teenager, and remembered that it had been quite friendly. This one was no different. After a few frightened moments the snake calmed right down, wrapped itself around Buck’s arm, and took a good gander at Buck’s ugly mug, forked tongue tasting the air between them. It was relaxed and curious and soon didn’t mind being handled at all. If anything, it seemed to be enjoying itself. Buck used the opportunity to get a good, close look, checked out its vernal side for coloration, observed the pattern of scales, and determined that Mr. Snake probably hadn’t eaten in awhile. It was a rare treat because the species’ natural camouflage makes it very difficult to spot, but it was especially rare to find one out and about so late in the year. “Aestivus” means “summer” in Latin, and the name was applied to these snakes because they tend to be inactive year round except for the hottest summer months. Buck had been looking for one for the last three months and had resigned himself to giving up for the year.
“What is that, a snake?” asked a guy standing on the sidewalk along with another dude and a hot brunette babe. “Is it trying to bite you?”
“No,” said Buck, suddenly self-conscious. “They don’t bite.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a Green Tree Snake, Virginia’s only true arboreal snake,” Buck replied, hearing how geeky he sounded even as he spoke the words.
“We were wondering what you were doing,” said the girl. Buck could only imagine how hilarious he’d looked running erratically through the grass and the mulch. Then the three people turned and walked away.
Buck was left alone with his captive. For a moment he actually considered trying to find a way to bring the snake home and keep it, but then reason and his genuine care for these creatures overcame his irrational impulse. The second quickest way to kill the snake would have been to take it home and try to figure out the ins and outs of snake ownership after acquiring it rather than before. Besides, true reptile lovers interested in husbandry always look for individuals born and bred in captivity to avoid depopulating the species in the wild.
The first quickest way to kill it, of course, would have been to step on it, which is exactly what many people would do if they came across the snake on the sidewalk. People can be funny about snakes, and Buck understood that. Buck had a thing against crickets. So rather than put his little green friend back where he’d found it, he walked closer to a cluster of trees and released the snake onto a branch.
Within ten seconds it had completely vanished.
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