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The joy of spleen
I probably slept twelve to fifteen hours yesterday. I went home sick right after posting the entry, slept until the late afternoon, did some things, played a computer game (wasn't alert enough to actually write anything), and then went back to bed at about ten-thirty. I haven't been to bed that early since ... hmm ... the last time I was sick.
But I don't think this is a head cold. It doesn't feel like one. Head colds are wet and mucusy; this is dry, too dry, and scratchy. Nonelvis says the mold spore count is stratospheric. Maybe that's it.
Anyway, I'm back at work, and I've finished some of the most vital stuff, so if I leave early today I've at least appeased the appropriate deities.
Today has been a good day to express my righteous indignation. I have written some scathing mail for Network Solutions, the domain registrars, explaining to them exactly how boneheaded their new free web email (which I didn't ask for, but got anyway) is. I am not the only one. Their inbox is being flooded by outraged humans. Anytime you open up an opportunity for someone to impersonate you and possibly read private mail (were you stupid enough to actually use the thing), it's bad. When you do this to a million domain-holders without asking them, it's ultra-bad.
You may not understand what I'm talking about. If you got a letter from NSI ("the dot com morons") telling you that you had this nifty new web email account, write me and I'll explain. And don't use it.
I also had to call my former credit card company, which somehow got the idea in their head that I reopened my account, when I hadn't. In fact I had been wondering where my refund was. Yes, they owe me money. I was expecting to vent three kinds of spleen at them over the phone, but in fact they were prompt and gracious and I didn't even have any hold time.
Where's the fun in that?
There's a certain amount of joy in flaming someone. I'll be the first to admit that. But flaming other people, even when they're wrong, is a bad idea. It just leads to hatred and long arguments that don't go anywhere and people stalking off in a huff.
An inflammatory conversation quickly reaches a point where it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. It becomes a matter of each person inflicting more damage on the other person in order to retain the image that they're the blameless one. Especially if the war is conducted in public. The participants are thinking, "Geez, I have to say something or I'll look like an ass in front of these bystanders." Meanwhile the bystanders have already given up on all the parties involved and have retired from the field in disgust with the whole process.
Or, to say all that more quaintly: Nobody looks pretty after a mud fight.
So I don't attack humans if I can avoid it. Attacking large, faceless corporations, though, is still acceptable.
Of course, at every corporation, there's a human being who has to actually read the complaints. That poor person. Must be a lousy job. But they get paid for that, and it's not directed at them personally.
I think the boss should read all the hate mail. (Let me tell you, if NSI had been stupid enough to post actual addresses for any of its management staff, I'd have sent my email to them in an instant.) Or at least a sampling of it. A boss who doesn't know what the customers think of the company is a boss who is not running the company on effective information.
Or maybe the boss knows and doesn't care. As I wrote to NSI: "Doesn't it bother you that eight-tenths of your customers hate you and the other two-tenths are scared of you?"
But I think I already know the answer to that.
© Columbine
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Today's still not much of a boy day or a girl day. I am feeling pretty hellish.
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