Jury Duty, NaNoWriMo, and a Wee Rant

[dawn_felagund]

I had jury duty today. (For those of you who don't live in the good ol' USA and therefore have no need to have knowledge of our judicial process--if anything that slow can be called a "process"--jury duty involves random selection from a list of registered voters and drivers. It is basically considered to be one of the banes of life: a pleasing combination of boring and inconvenient. Oh! But they pay you $10 a day, which makes it very worthwhile to miss a day of work, especially if you don't get paid time off.

(Which, believe me, if I didn't get paid for the day I took for jury duty, I would have been out of the state this week.)

But, I do, so alas, I did my civic duty and went.

It was...interesting.

They kicked things off by showing us a video about jury duty. It was all grand-sounding and called "Your Turn to Serve" and included personal testimonials from jurors, beginning with how inconvenienced they felt and ending with--literally--testaments along the lines of, "This was such a wonderful experience! I can't wait to do it again!" (Seriously, one woman said that.)

I laughed through the whole thing.

I felt really bad about that. Well, not really bad; I felt a miniscule amount of badness because some underpaid bureaucrat (like myself) is probably so freakin' proud of that thing. I was thinking, "Do people actually buy this?" Yes, well, I suppose they do. They've bought worse.

After that, we sat. I finished a Joyce Carol Oates collection of horror stories called The Collector of Hearts (highly recommended to those of you out there who like darkfic), started the Chronicles of Narnia (which I want finished before the movie comes out), and wrote my brainstorm list for Nelyo's first official staff meeting (which means Bobby and me sitting on the couch in our PJs and probably eating some evol snack with a hockey game in the background, chatting about the imminent candy biz.) After two hours went by, the head guy (don't know what his position is actually called) came in and told us that no jury trials were going to be held today, and so we would be excused.

(Likely, I would have been excused anyway. The one trial that might have been a jury trial was a criminal case. I work for a law enforcement agency devoted to locking up parole violators. Really, I don't have much of a "cop mentality"--I'm just a statistician after all--but they don't need to know that this is one matter on which I am fairly unbiased. They see "Warrant Unit" and goodbye....)

So for two-and-a-half hours of work, I made ten dollars (four dollars an hour, yay! less than the legal minimum!) and got to go home early and work on my NaNo story.

Which because I know everyone is waiting with bated breath, is up to *exactly* 34,500 words. You don't need to tell me that I'm a sick person. I know I am.


So, all high on life because I got out of jury duty and had a whole afternoon to write (at home for once), I heated up some Pizza Hut pizza left over from our evol Monday night dinner, settled at the comp with Nelyo the Unicorn at my side, and set out reading what I'd done last night, to fix my typos and get back in the mood.

Right as I was about to start writing, I heard a scratching at the door like Bobby was home. (I won't give him a key and he's a big guy--a hockey player--and it's hard for him to squeeze through the doggie door I built him when he has his briefcase, necessitating that he scratch to be let in like any good hound. Okay, I'm wholly kidding about that. <--this is what 34,500 words in nine days does to you) But it was far too early for that, and so I sat like any suitably scared female (*scoff*) wondering if someone was breaking into our apartment in the middle of the day, but the sound went away, so I thought nothing more of it.

Well, actually, I got up and peeped into the hallway but saw nothing because something was blocking the peephole. Like the aforementioned suitably scared female, I did the smart thing and opened the door to check things out. A large, armed man wearing a ski mask jumped out at me...just kidding. There was a paper stuck in our door knocker, blocking the peephole, which was why I couldn't see out. So I removed the paper, thinking, "Huh," and unfolded it and read it and discovered that we were being threatened with legal action because our rent was nine days late.

Which sent me into a paranoid flutter because Bobby and I do not pay things late. Least of all our rather pricey rent. But Bobby wrote the check for last month's rent, and I kept wondering, maybe he forgot to drop it off? For a good hour, I could do no writing because of--pardon the language--the fucking bastards and their threatening letter. I tried to lay down for a nap--no dice. Just kept thinking about the threatening letter.

(And my State-issued cellphone is busted, so I couldn't even call him to settle things. Gah!)

Poor Bobby, when he came home after four hours of sleep last night ('twas pickup hockey night), was pounced on by a 130ish-pound woman (half of that weight is hair), with evol!long natural claws and a panicked gleam in her eye--and, no, not "pounced on" in a good way. I think I said, "Hi, did you pay the rent on time?" Nice greeting.

Wide-eyed, he insisted, "Of course!" and verified it in his checkbook and reminded me that we were on our way to pasta night when we dropped it off, and we were running late because a certain pervy Elf-fancying wife *ahem* was finishing the newsletter for silwritersguild, and then I remembered, "Of course!"

So we marched our cute selves to the leasing office and explained our predicament. We were told that we had a $50 late fee, but one look at the manic gleam in Bobby's eye, and that was quickly resolved.

But really.

Whatever happened to the decent assumption by businesses that the customer might actually be right? (Or at least shouldn't be outrightly threatened before a situation is fully understood.)

What would possess a leasing manager to send a threatening letter to the home of two people who have never paid their rent a day late in all the time they've been there? Not to even call to see what was wrong, to think maybe, just maybe, the mistake was theirs?

I work in an office with a lot of paperwork, and our community has literally thousands of units; I know how things get lost or put in the wrong piles, and I deal with at most 150 warrants a month. Yet, just the other day, I lost a stack of originals and found that they'd gotten mixed in with some stuff doomed for the shredder--luckily, I caught them in time.

Could that have been our rent check?

But no, their staff is impeccable and beyond reproach. No one loses checks here! They only have a couple thousand renters turning in checks each month! Where would one get a funny idea like that?

It was obviously our fault.

But I don't appreciate being spoken to like a delinquent or threatened for an error that is not mine, especially considering that they haven't had even a tiny quibble with us in all the time we've been here, when a thirty-second phone call or email or inquiring letter left in the doorknocker could have accomplished the same purpose...and made us feel like we're valued here beyond the check we write every month.

If we had been traveling--considering that we had until Friday, less than two days, to make our amends--we would have come home to an eviction notice, through no fault of our own.

Customer service dismays me. It is nonexistent in all but a few places. The conundrum is that the most egregious customer service belongs to the large chains--but it is nearly impossible to avoid them. Americans, raise your hand if you shop at WalMart or Target or Best Buy or Home Depot or any of the number of ginormous cheap chains popping up across the country?

*raises hand*

(Well, not WalMart, but that is an entirely different rant!)

And our apartment community is owned by one of them, more or less. The company even has a skyscraper in downtown Baltimore. Bobby and I laugh at this and say, "Well, I guess that's where our rent goes!" (When the eejits don't lose it, anyway.)

So why should they care if they piss us off? As soon as we leave here, there will be five other young couples standing in line to pay too much for a one-bedroom with new appliances and a washer and dryer, overlooking the woods. A drop leaks from the bucket--ten more plunk in.

Please, I beseech of you, my online and real life friends (who I trust enough to know my LJ name), please do not let me become that way.

Let me always value my customers and my employees. No matter how big my company gets, don't let me forget that I started in a one-bedroom apartment with a double boiler and a couple of candy molds, that I relied on loyal customers to make me successful.

(Hopefully, I will have this problem one day!)

I could write hours of highbrow rants about Big Corporate America and how it is destroying parts of American life, but for now, I am going to be totally frivolous and recall how not fun--often completely unpleasant--most shopping is these days. Or dealing with customer service at all. (We've yet to have a pleasant experience having things resolved with Comcast, our Internet and cable provider. They are slow giving us credits--and usually require several reminders to even do so--and when their stuff breaks, they never want to fix it.) If you are actually fortunate enough to find an employee to help you, most of the time, that person won't know how to answer your questions. And should you have a problem that requires the company to exert a teeny bit of effort on your behalf, watch how quickly they volunteer to do it. My husband and I have become proud of our ability to display a suitably threatening manner to strong-arm places into giving us proper service. This is sad, when you have to take boxing lessons to get a fucking refund at Best Buy.

I am not blaming the employees, by the way. I was one of them--for many years. I was considered "overpaid" at The Piece for my $10.50 an hour to manage the kitchen. I started there making minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. Kids think they have it good if they can make $7. For seven dollars, why should they care? For $10.50, as a manager and trainer, I shouldn't have cared. Lucky for The Piece, they hired an idealist and a pushover. Besides, most of the time, the companies don't train their staff properly anyway; they leave them open for failure. And they wonder why employee turnover is so high.

(My mom--who was in charge of the service side of training at The Piece while I handled production--and I once figured our turnover to be 4 out of 5 during training. Which meant that one person hired out of five would complete training. Beyond that--beyond those first super-stressful weeks--turnover was too staggering to even consider.)

Another interesting stat: Every person who has a bad experience at a place of business tells an average of nine people about it. Those who have good experiences rarely tell anyone.

Most complaints go unspoken to management. So take the number of complaints you have, multiply it by ten, and now you have a more realistic number. (And I think I'm being generous; the real stat, iirc, is something like two or three out of one hundred will tell management about a bad experience.)

But leak one droplet...gain ten more. And most people have no choice but to go back. So the cashier at Home Depot gave them the stink eye. Where else are they supposed to go? Family-owned hardware stores and nurseries are hard to find. Bad experience or not, they'll be back. In some communities, it's shop at WalMart or drive a half-hour (or more!) to another town...and with gas prices the way they are, who can afford that? Who wants to afford that? (Especially when the other town probably offers, at best, a Target or a K-Mart, slightly less evol but still far from perfect.)

Sometimes, I think, "What if Nelyo's becomes big? What if I have chains across the country? What if I become a household name?"

Part of me wonders: Do I want that? I look at the sacrifices; I look at the idea of millions of dollars in my hand. I'm not sure that I do.

Comments

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

Ah, jury duty. I've been called twice. First time was in college. I rearranged a final exam for it, then got myself nicely drunk on krambambuli at a party the night before (this was psychologically necessary for reasons almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated to the jury duty) and therefore slept through my alarm, missed the bus and basically had to bribe a stranger to drive me into the next town to the courthouse. I filled out a form, was sent to a room to watch "The Leeza Show," (today's topic: how you are being cheated by the funeral industry), and then got sent away at 10:30 in the morning on account of all the cases had been settled out of court.

The second time, I was called two weeks before I was supposed to move from Chicago to Grad School Town. I called up the Cook County jury duty person and requested to be excused from jury duty on account of I'd be living in an entirely different state by the time they wanted me. Oh, said the jury duty person, well, just mail us a photocopy of your new lease for proof, and that's that.

Speaking of Grad School Town, one thing that I love about it is its abundance of small, privately owned businesses. If I want to shop at a major chain store and have the time to bus out to the edge of town, I can. But why do that when I can buy my food at a local farmer's market, a small corner organic fair trade co-op, or a non-chain conventional grocery store? I live in a building built by the owner/landlord, a sweet elderly gentleman who, along with his wife and adult son, drop by regularly to inspect the building and chat with the tenants about what they need in the way of maintenance. Everywhere you look in Grad School Town, there are independent shops and community activist groups, and the words "organic" and "fair trade" and "worker-owned" (the local taxicab company is a co-op!) are so common as to be completely unremarkable. I read rants like yours and it just makes me feel even luckier to be living here.

Frankly, it's the perfect place for a business like Nelyo's, but it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the country for us to hoard up all of America's liberals. I think that Nelyo's could have a real future as a small, independent shop that makes enough profit to be worthwhile, but not so much as to be obscene. You'd be using fair-trade chocolate, right? You could become one of those lovely bohemian little places that attract students and become festooned with posters advertising The Revolution. Which is rather appropriate, considering who the shop is named after.

I should shut up now. I sense that I'm making rather less sense than usual.

[inkspotsbyisil.livejournal.com]

just when i think i have the lead, you blaze right by me! Now, how on earth will i be able to even match that word count? ;-) WTG!! now, finish by the weekend, and you can write an whole 'nuther NaNo novel just to pass the time... ;-)

as for jury duty, i was called up and service was for 9 days. yay! two weeks of not going to work. the cool thing was that i would get paid as if i were at work once i turned in the check i got from jury duty. glady, sez i, cuz $90 wouldn't have seen me through two weeks. but there was at least one major drawback. jury duty was early morning (9am) and lasted until 5pm. i work second shift. I had to keep myself awake through both trials i got to serve on. and boy was that hard! i was almost (ALMOST!) chosen to be on a sequestered jury (that would've been so cool!) but only sat for one second in the seat before being challenged, which meant i wasn't lucky. local high profile case, likely to be covered by the media (which it was). i happen to work for the local CBS affiliate. apparently they figured i'd have a biased opinion because i'd have heard about the story already. nope! i was hoping they'd ask me if i did, because i'd tell them that i know nothing because i'm not paid to pay attention to the newscasts. which is true.
anyhow, i got to serve on a civil case and a attempted murder trial (i forgot what they called it). the second case was better because we got to go eat and not pay for it! and we went to really nice places too! :-) i would love jury duty again, if only for that reason. free food. LOL! ;-)

i've also run across some heinous customer service, but most times it's more friendly than rude. the rude tends to come from outside circumstances. i've been known to cast the 'hairy eyeball' at a few kids who thought they were hot snot and all that. but most times, i just let it slide. no big deal. chances are, the kid is only there for a summer job and will be gone again soon. meanwhile, i go when they're not there. :-)

and... i *heart* wal-mart. so much better than target (over-priced cheap stuff) and k-mart (they do cheap?).

[1lady-so-divine.livejournal.com]

Did you find out a time for the 26th hon?

you have so much going on,hehe:p

[miss-nightowl.livejournal.com]

What kinda case is it? What is the crime I mean?
And don´t worry, I have black humour and tend to laugh at inappropirate times too.
Have you ever played a Satanist while sitting in one of the largest cathedrals in Europe? Didn´t think so... ;o)

Re: The Rant

[digdigil.livejournal.com]

*huggles* Dawn. I got called for jury duty in 1992. Sat around for four hours or so a day for a week bored out of my mind and never got called for a jury. Thank Eru for that because I didn't want to serve! (Is that bad? Being a bleeding heart liberal, I know that I probably would have felt sorry for the perpetrator and would want to let him/her off, so it's better that I don't EVER serve on a jury!) And then having to deal with large corporations that screw up is a frigging nightmare! I am old enough to remember what it was like to pay a rent check to a landlord who was just a person like you or I and a nice one at that! We've owned our own house for so long now that I didn't realize how much things have changed. Well, yes, I do, I guess, because the building where I work is owned by a large property management organization and we've had some problems in getting them to come and fix certain things, like a leaky toilet and a wonky elevator that had trapped a grandmother and her little grandchild in it. (I have personally used the stairs ever since that happened.) I have learned as life goes by that money really isn't everything. There is so much more that is more important than money and enjoyment of life is the main thing. When you're old enough to look back and realize that it would have been better if you'd done things differently, in a way that would have enabled you to enjoy life experiences more than constantly worrying about money, then it's too late to go back! That's about the best advice I could give anyone! Congrats on doing great with NaNo! I wish I had more time to write! This week has been a difficult one for me time-wise and I keep writing other things than my NaNo novel, but I think I'll be able to finish at 50K or more!

[fanged-geranium.livejournal.com]

Ah, but if you get a novel or two published and sell hundreds of thousands of copies, then you'll be well-known anyway.

Eee

[ssotknapsack.livejournal.com]

Eek, you didn't tell me about that yesterday! :( So what is the moral of the story? Have they found your rent cheque or is this still a pending issue?

[yuanrang.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose that getting screwed over by Microsoft twice for Xbox Live payments on accounts I had canceled doesn't seem that bad anymore. (Especially considering that I got it "taken care of" in just about 10 or 15 minutes on the phone each time.) Damn them and their addicting consoles! I'll have to tell you about how I almost got killed today when I get there. Cheers!

Oh, and I finally figured out a name for my arcade! I think Bobby will like this one. Details tonight.

[tarion-anarore.livejournal.com]

Rule Number 1: The customer is always right.
Rule Number 2: In the event that the customer is wrong, refer to Rule Number 1.
Sheesh, you'd think people should know this by now!!

And my personal favorite ice cream shop was a little place by the beach with lots of windows and sand on the floor! :) Plus, if Nelyo's is a chain, I won't have as much reason to come to your little shop! ;)