|
My Profile
Can you hear it now? - 2009-07-02
|
8:09 p.m. - 2009-07-02
Wolf and I went shopping this afternoon. First to Best Buy so he could spend the gift card that came as part of his birthday loot and then over to the mall to Old Navy for shorts. I had a mission at Best Buy too. Headphones. Both wired and wireless. My rapidly deteriorating hearing and the rackety a/c next to my head finally drove me to use my old clunky DiscmanŽ headphone set when I need to hear the computer. Mostly for watching 'Buffy' and movies, the usual pings and bloops of writing programs and downloading stuff I can get okay, but dialog is imposs. Dratted rear facing speakers built into my monitor are for crap, especially since the back of my monitor is open to the rest of the office instead of snugged against a wall or the back of a computer desk. The bounce back of the monitor being against something is supposed to make the rear facing speakers sound okay. Bah! So headphones it is. I'd love to use ear buds but they never, ever fit, I have weirdly shaped ear holes I guess. Anyway, I was going to treat myself to new plug-in headphones for the computer and investigate a wireless set-up for the bedroom TV. As usual when I shop for electronics and ask for information from one of the young twerps in the blue shirts I got the patented Generation Entitled Brat eye roll and accompanying snotty smirk that says, "Helloooo Dinosaur!" Listen, I can't be the only person in the universe who can't use ear buds. For sure Best Buy had actual headphones but they were for professional sound mixers and cost eleventy zillion dollars. (Though I will say they looked comfortably familiar to those big ear muffins I grew up with.) As for wireless, again with the smirky eye roll and I was led to a dim dusty corner in the butt end of the TV department and shown a small heap of battered boxes. Despite the slum real estate and shoddy dinged up packaging the wireless dealie was over $120. Too rich for this partially deaf girl's blood. All I want is to hear Alton do the play-by-play on 'Iron Chef' without blowing Mick out of the bed with the volume, not fly the damn TV to the moon. Am I out of touch here? I mean for $50 you can buy a fricken cell phone that shoots and edits video, stores 30,000 hours of music, and runs a stock ticker. You can play 'Need For Speed', watch 'Gone With The Wind' and mix a damn fine banana daiquiri with it too. For $50! And all I wanted was to hear my TV a bit better. Sigh. Though while I'm on the subject of wretchedly atitudinous service people (I was, go back a few paragraphs.) a couple weeks ago when Mick and I went to the VW show in Conn, on the way home we stopped for a bite in one of those cozy luncheonettes with the gingham curtains and homemade pie. One of those places where you'd expect the waitress to call you, "Hon" and waggle her finger at you if you didn't eat all the string beans that came with your pot roast. Wrong! Our server was nice enough, a young thing and not overly chatty but competent. However the other server on duty - mid-30s, probably at one time was a low-rent hot mess but whatever glory days she'd ever had were long past and now she was just an ugly mess- was leaning across the counter supposedly to speak to the couple at the table next to us. But really she had one of those voices that drilled directly into your cerebral cortex and made you wish for a quick merciful death. And brother, she had NO problems with HER volume. Holy crow this chick was LOUD. So all the other customers, us, and everyone in the surrounding four counties got to hear all about Ugly Mess's broken refrigerator, her broken car, her jailed boyfriend and her evil landlord. Okay, fine, I could deal having my lunch at trailer trash theater, not happily but whatever. But then she started talking about her horse. Yes, her horse. Her horse who'd scratched its eye on some barbed wire. Now the horse's eye was infected! Infected soooo bad it was running pus and drawing flies! This is where I spoke up. I turned to Ms Clarion and said, "Excuse me, could we have a change of subject? We're eating." Well! Off huffed Ugly Mess. Flounced her ass right into the kitchen where she began quacking and crying to the others about the uppity bitch out front who'd been RUDE to her! Out trundled Ugly Mess's (mother/boss/something) Ma Kettle to glare at me, which I ignored. Mick and I finished up while the little girl who'd waited on us bussed the tables of the other customers who'd fled the instant they were released from Ugly Mess's horse eye monolog. Knowing she was behind me but acting like I was speaking solely to Mick I said, "Bad enough she's running her mouth at top volume, but pus covered infected horse eyes? This is good customer service? It's a restaurant for Pete's sake. Most disgusting thing ever." Mick told me when we got outside the little waitress got the message and had obviously agreed with it, because she flinched, nodded and then made a bit of a smile. Apparently the near constant victim of Ugly Mess's auditory assaults, our little server was most pleased to have her disgusting co-worker called out by a rightly outraged customer. I'm not usually one who resorts to being deliberately overheard to get my message across, I have no problem speaking to a manager, but since Ma Kettle had already established whose side she was on and I had zero desire to get into a Jerry Springer blue plate special I said my piece as I did and left.
|
