MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (9)

The continuation of this comfy corner of Dave's Garden where we take off our shoes; a place where noone is ever off topic. We're at number 9 in the series.

We came from: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/671753/#new

Enjoy.
Sylvain.

Hokay Folks, Laff time: Here i am in my brace w/ a smile on my face. Yup Darius so to true. Hi All, xoxoxoxo Corky

Darn, I didn't see this one until I had already posted in the other one.. Oh well..

Wow, that's definitely one heck of a brace.. But it's good you have such a comfy looking chair to relax in.. = )

Yuck there Cork! Man that looks awful! Does it itch?

Best of luck with that one, Corky. You do look comfortable.

Gail and Sylvain.

Corky! I didn't know you had such nice looking legs, sans the brace of course.

Yesterday on my way home from work I noticed on the side of the road a lot of 55 gallon garbage bags lined up in rows. They were full of leaves from maples, oaks and sycamore trees. I was driving to fast to stop, but made a note to look back again.

So today I did. I stopped in and spoke to the homeowner. Asked him if he would like me to haul away as many as I could fit in the van. He said he had a guy coming to haul them, but I could take as many as I wanted.

So add it up: 17 bags X 55 gallons: 935 gallons of leaves to compost!!!!! Ain't that exciting? And for free. Anything that will turn my sand into some rich soil is fine by me. I opened all the tops of the bags so they can catch the rain and drizzle thats falling now and tomorrow. The quicker it gets watered, the quicker it composts out. Some I will be putting into the organic compost bin, the rest will be spread over the tops of my piles of sticks and florists' cut flower discards.

There were a little over a dozen left in the rows, and if they are there tomorrow when I return from meeting Skaz, then I'll load them up. If I didn't have that extra bench seat, boxes and dock cart in the van, I could have taken them all.

See?

Oh I forgot one complaint today. Seems Dish Network is having to drop their distant network broadcasting due to some stupid thing. I bought the Jacksonville network coverages because Gainesville doesn't have NBC, you know, the channel that has ALL the Law and Orders and "Medium"?

So they turned that off today. Don't know why Directv can offer distant networks but not Dish. And I have a 2 year contract with Dish, so I'm stuck with it. Oh they are offering up antenna but that's just plain silly. Antenna isn't going to pick up Jax tv.

Guess I'll be going to bed early every night now.

Molly

Molly, it just goes to confirm a conclusion that has stuck its ugly head since we started renovating the kitchen. Simply put, you could sum it up as: nothing is ever simple in Florida. It's a wonderful place but the garbage inflicted onto the customer is jut unbelievable. So far, I have run into situations that my northern heritage simply conceives as unacceptable. Consider these:

- a bank cashiers who processed my transaction while talking on his cell phone and gave me a dirty look when I insisted that he hang up immediately.
- a cashier at Checkers that I could not understand (at the microphone or at the window) because she had had her tongue pierced with what looked like 3 stainless steel ball bearings. She sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher: Won, Won, Won-Won. There was no way to know how much my order cost, so I gave her a $20 just to be on the safe side. The manager just waved the complaint away.
- a clerk in Lowes, wearing their employee garb, who told me he didn't work there.
- returning a rental car and reporting my finding a paper towel covered in what appeared to be (and smelled) like poo under the back seat only to be told that these things happen.
- a kitchen cabinet installer who installs a drawer's face plate (1 inch thick) with a 1 1/2 inch screw and tells you he can't understand how it happened when the screw emeerges on the finished side.
- reporting a series of sprinklers outside our building who most water the canal. I was told: "So what?". Well big news, fella... the canal is wet enough as it is.
- never managing to go through the self-service checkout at Home Depot without needing help. Close them if they don't work, ever! It's even worse at Winn-Dixie.
- staying home all day because a worker may come and work on the kitchen project, only to realize around 5PM that maybe he won't come today. That happened this Friday and we're expecting him Monday.
- complaining about disgusting toilets at a Roadhouse restaurant and being told that they just finished cleaning in there. Yeah, but that was in the Nixon administration.
- always getting the village idiot when you get lost and ask for directions. Now you know why real men don't stop and ask for directions.
- getting a brand-new car and the rear-window windshield washer doesn't work, getting an appointment at the dealer 3 weeks later. You end up finding the problem and fixing it yourself, which is why they schedule them for 3 weeks later. Well, revenge is sweet, I am not cancelling the appointment and not showing up for it, either. Let them have a mechanic twiddling his thumbs waiting for me.

I could go on like this until the cows come home. I can't wait until, in true floridian fashion, I don't notice these things any more and life becomes easier for me. Thank Him above I met such wonderful people here and nature is so beautiful and generous around here.

Sorry about the rant.
Sylvain.

This message was edited Dec 3, 2006 8:31 AM

Sorry, Sylvain, but your revenge will only be sweet for the customer who'll be able to get in sooner when you don't show up...because the service dept. always overbooks. Surely you wouldn't expect to get your work done at the appointed time?! It's only the customers who twiddle their thumbs while they wait for the service dept.

Hey, there's not much I can do. I'm grasping at straws here.

Sylvain

Show up and waste their time. Tell them it only works intermittently and let them try to find the problem. LOL

Nah, that's a waste of your time.. They're getting paid to stand around and look at your car with a blank stare.. When the manager of an establishment blows you off, write a letter to the headquarters or call a service number.. You can even ask them for the number and let them know you're going to call.. It can get them fired or at least reprimanded.. That is the only way they are going to learn to respect the customers.. Of course the customers have to respect the employees also.. It's a two way deal.. Many years in retail has taught me this..

And then you move to S Florida and realize all the standards have been lowered to meet the lacksadaizical habits of the workers.

After a few years, your expectations are lower, as are your levels of disappointments.

Tardiness and poor workmanship is the norm and not the exception. And unfortunately, one finger in the dike does not hold back the dam.

I thought that attitude was the big city, but it's not. You have it here out in the country. You'd think that rather than resent the big city folks from moving up here, the locals would be grateful for the work and money brought in with the migrants (like me?, oh yeah, I ran out of money, they already got mine). But yet, they still were not johnny on the spot. They took their time, did poor work and disappointed me still.

Sorry Sylvain, so is life, it seems wherever you go.

Molly

I've also been on the receiving end of poor customer service. However, I am sometimes pleasantly surprised. I had surgery last week at the Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute. Every employee that I encountered from the physicians to the food service workers was courteous, friendly, and professional. I initially thought that I was confused by the morphine drip but when I stopped using it, they were still stellar people!

I was born and raised in south Florida.. Not everybody is like that.. = ) I sure wasn't.. I wasn't always on time but I tried.. And I was never outright rude to customers.. I like doing a good job.. But I am probably the exception to the rule.. People these days just don't care anymore.. It's really saddening.. But that's why it's so important to be polite ourselves and smile and say please and thank you.. You could make somebody's bad day better just by doing those things.. Also calling into that service number to compliment that good employee can do positive things.. Customer satisfaction is very important to companies, even if that particular store isn't showing it.. Celebrate the stores and employees that do a good job.. Visit them often and compliment them on a job well done.. Help them gain pride in their job.. I worked in a grooming salon for a year where the manager was a jerk and made my day miserable.. All he cared about was the salon making as much money as possible so he could get a nice bonus.. But I was still always polite even to him.. But the customers that appreciated the job I did on their pets was well worth it.. I had people specifically request me just because they knew I would do a good job.. Made me happy to go to work.. Too many people are willing to complain about things.. But it's a lot more rare to get a compliment of appreciation for doing your job right..

Budgielover, I like your idea of telling them it's intermittent but I would be without a car for at least a week in that kind of situation. The car's warranty says I'll get a replacement car but I don't want that. Had this been my goal, I would have bought a 2nd-hand car from a car rental company.

Kitty, if I took the time to write the higher-ups of every place where customer service stinks, I'd have to give up sleeping. I was born saying please and thank you. The other day, a cashier at the $1 store handed me my change and receipt. I said Thank You. She did a double-take and said Whut? Oh yeah, right, Whatever. Now isn't that a delight to the customer? That one went to customer service university. I could tell.

I agree that service is a two-way street. But listen, I'm a mild mannered canadian. We are the tofu of the world, FTLOG!

Still, I love it here. I'll put up with it and eventually it will not be so noticeable any more.
Sylvain.

What is FTLOG? Oh, nevermind.. Think I just realized what it was.. lol

This message was edited Dec 3, 2006 8:46 AM

Sylvain,
When someone does something like the cashier and doesn't say thank you, you should say "You're welcome" instead. Will make them think more. Otherwise, some are obtuse enough to think you are actually thanking them for doing their job. LOL

DELECIE!!!!! Always glad to see you posting.....miss you, your Mangoes and Plumies! I hope you have a quick recovery from your surgery.

My mother had a good experience also with the Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute. When her tests indicated that amputation was indicated at her age (90) and we returned home, a young doctor called that night and said he wasn't going to give up on her. He performed a very successful "rotor-rooter" procedure and saved her foot. This from an over 6 ft doc who looked about 14 and wore bunny print "greens" and high top tennis shoes! LOL Dedication sometimes come in strange packages!
((hugs))
Pati

Hi Pati!!! I hope that all is well with you. I'm taking it easy and following my discharge instructions. I walk a bit everyday and my need for pain medication has decreased. Yay!!! I'm contemplating jumping into my pickup and taking a very short drive to Florida City sometime this week. :-) Take good care of yourself!

XOX

Bad customer service makes me wonder if it's a chicken and the egg sort of question. Which came first...rude customers who made employees become rude, or rude employees who made customers become rude?

I once worked in retail and remember three particularly bad experiences with rude customers. Once, a man's imported order was delayed (which I had advised him was possible at the time he placed the order). His reaction was to call me "a stupid little idiot"! Believe it or not, I kept my cool.

Then there was the woman whose problem I don't even recall now. She was unhappy over something--not with me--but with something to do with the store. Her way of handling it was by trying to intimidate: "My husband's a very influential man in this town!" Yes, we knew; we'd all seen the story of his success in the newspaper, including a picture of their multi-million dollar house. I might add that no one was intimidated; but we were impressed, negatively, by her rudeness and her crass behavior. A few years later there was an entirely different news story about her husband and his house of cards constructed by his illegal practices in the insurance industry. I don't remember how long his prison sentence was.

And don't forget the melees we've all seen recently on tv! I'd hate to be a retail employee facing those hordes of people trampling each other to get the first new gadget on the shelves! In some cases, there was actually violence, and people required medical assistance.

So, who came first? Rude customers or lousy employees? Maybe the whole customer service mess is simply a result of squeezing too many people into too little space...sort of like too many rats in a box. Perhaps neither came first, and both are simply sociological phenomena. I lived in Miami from 1973-1981, but you couldn't pay me to live in S. FL now...waaaaay too crowded and not nearly so laid back as it was then. (Central FL is undergoing the same changes, unfortunately.)

Orlando was listed as one of the ruder cities in a recent study, and certainly the murder rate is getting downright scary around here. However, I don't find rudeness to be out of hand. (Perhaps it's worse in tourist areas, which is too bad.) And just yesterday I was very pleased with the helpfulness of an employee in Walgreen's. Of course, I told her so and even repeated the compliment when my husband arrived. When we left, she was beaming...and so was I. It just feels good to be nice to people, and I've always thought it takes more effort to be nasty than it does to be nice. It's also better for your health.

So, Sylvain, I really sympathize. It's very frustrating and unpleasant to be on the receiving end of rudeness and bad service. But if my theory is correct, it's only going to get worse! Besides, I think it's also a case of the work ethic no longer being what it once was, and I doubt that's going to improve either.

This message was edited Dec 3, 2006 4:32 PM

I'm a transplanted Northerner, very laid back so I thought I'd fit in quickly. Well, my recent experience at a Walmart blew my mind. My order totaled 21.08. I mistakenly gave her just a $20 bill. She calmly puts it in the register and hands me $1.10 change ????? I was out on the sidewalk before it dawned on me so back in I went.
She got very upset--almost scared--when I told her the problem. She was absolutely amazed that I came back.
Since I only had 2 $20s I was positive it was her mistake and didn't want her to have to pay the shortage. I've had this happen before downhere...noone knows how to make change!!! With the holidays make sure you get your right change.
By the way we were also charged on another visit for nuts and candy with nuts. Since my husband is allergic to nuts we knew we didn't buy them---so how did they end up on our ticker tape??? The store just said no problem and refunded the money but it made another trip to the store necessary.

The automated registers make it unnecessary for anyone to still add and subtract.... in your particular case it probably came up with MINUS 1.08 when she input the $ 20.... and she just overlooked the minus.
Our Publix has just installed new scanners and you can read every item they are scanning; almost every time I go there is a small discrepancy... not giving the right price being the most prevalent one. Or putting in 'braeburn' apples when they are 'mackintosh' (which are NOT the same price. I ALWAYS watch the screen.

I had a wonderfully gratifying experience last year when a person in front of me at the checkout was SO rude to the cashier that it made me cringe..... THEN she walked off AND LEFT HER WALLET which I immediately spotted and handed to the cashier. The woman had to come back and eat crow.... I made a comment about how INCREDIBLY LUCKY she was that a very kind person had handed in her wallet instead of walking off with it. She was 2 inches tall by the time she left the store..... haha.

They will work that out Dutchlady.. We got new scanners at the pet store I used to work at an some of the things would come up incorrectly.. Probably the fault of whoever programmed in the items and prices.. Not something done by the store employees.. But do keep an eye on the prices for now until they get it worked out..

Kitti, I think you're being overly optimistic. This is an ongoing problem and always has been. I think that's why they put the new screens where customers can see them. It's one way they're trying to combat the problem, even though it puts the onus on the customer. But it gives us a way to look out for our own pocketbooks, and I appreciate their doing it. I just don't think the pricing system will ever be infallible because computers can only do what they're told to do by human beings.

I always loved that chicken and egg conumdrum. Well guys, Professer Bear will hereby demistify this circular piece of logic. Dinosaurs were laying eggs way before chickens showed up on this earth.

Sylvain.

Overly optimistic? Now that's a first.. lol People usually call me a pessimist.. Me and Mr. Murphy don't get along well.. Usually when I try to do something, things will go wrong.. I've come to expect it.. I guess I am a bit of an optimist anyway since I just keep trying.. Then again, it could be because I'm very stubborn.. = )

The chicken and egg thing could be explained with what you're beliefs are.. If you believe in God then the chicken came first because God created the creatures.. If you believe more in evolution then the egg came first.. Some sort of dinosaur mutation layed the egg which was also mutated and the first chicken hatched out.. Not quiet that drastic a change.. But the first chicken had to have come from an egg layed by something else..

Jacquie

Are chickens dinosaurs. The debate goes on....
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html

Or consider this, the resulting chicken that came from the egg was a hybrid of 2 other differing birds, long time after the original creation. Look at the beefalo. These things are possible.

I thought I would check in here this time before the thread became a full length novel, but I already had a lot of catchup reading to do! LOL Hope the brace comes off soon, Corky. Congrats on the leaf & mulch "motherlode," Molly. If you don't have room in your vehicle for gardening supplies, you can do as I did with my van and rip out all the headliner, trim, and accessories and leave nothing but the bare bones of the driver's seat -- creates a lot more room for plants & stuff!

Well, no one has snapped up my soul for sale on eBay yet (though a few days still remain in the auction), so I decided to sell something far more valuable. Check it out! A "must have" item just in time for holiday gift giving:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&viewitem=&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.com%3A80%2Fsearch%2Fsearch.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26satitle%3D120060804839%26fvi%3D1&item=120060804839&rd=1#ebayphotohosting

I've been on both sides of the fence in regard to customer service and have been both the giver and receiver of rude and ruderer behavior and the recipient of all sorts of complaints. The one that really got to me was when I was working in air pollution control for the City of Jacksonville and a woman complained about dust from a neighboring trucking facility (that was there when she bought her house). Our inspectors went out time and time again in response to her complaints, the trucking company did just about all they could do (short of paving the entire lot), but the complaints continued. Somehow, after repeated calls, her call was referred to me (I suppose after everyone else had passed on the call). I didn't typically at that point in my civil service career go out on field investigations, working instead as a legal assistant with the city attorneys on litigation matters, but I thought I might be able to placate this woman if I calmly and rationally tried to explain the situation to her and how limited we were in what we could do for her. Her response to my efforts was to call the Mayor's office and complain bitterly about how I had ignored her and was rude to her and the Mayor's office (assuming the customer is always right) hauled me out on the carpet and I had to then answer to all my superiors without much understanding for the reality that I had gone beyond the call of duty to try to resolve the situation. That was the last time I made a special effort to help out!!

It doesn't happen so much anymore, but there was a time when cashiers and clerks felt it was their duty to coerce a smile out of me, chirpily saying something like, "Smile, it can't be that bad!" If I was in one of my really bad moods and "dark places of the soul," I would go ballistic with the cashier. I didn't feel it was my obligation to try to change my mood in order to make them feel better. My friends got to the point when we were waiting together to pay a restaurant check at the register and the cashier came out with one of those exhortations for me to provide the facial expression of their choice, that they would just groan loudly and head for the nearest exit, knowing the tirade on my part that was coming. Another tact I would use would be to say something like, "Well, I would love to smile, but my house burned down last week and my wife was incinerated and I lost everything, and I just came from burying what was left of her, and then I had an auto accident on the way from the cemetary and both my children were brutally killed. But maybe you are right, it can't be all that bad." and give a them a pained, faint squiggle of a smile. That was usually more effective than the tirade and complaints to the management.

My most recent cash register experience was at Publix and dealing with their guarantee that if an item scans incorrectly, you get that item free. I found some gourmet cheese that I wanted but it didn't scan at all (no price for it in the system). When I asked for the item free according to the store policy, the manager told me that the policy didn't apply to this situation. I argued that if the item didn't scan at all, then it "prima facie" it scanned incorrectly -- a scan with no resulting price is an incorrect scan. He didn't agree and said that in this situation, he had to go find the list of the store inventory, determine the price of the item, return to the cash register and tell the cashier what the price should be. And I'm supposed to wait for this without thinking it is an inconvenience! I called the Publix headquarters and they repeated the manager's mantra that the policy did not apply to this situation, but they sent me a $25 gift card for my troubles and complaints. Fine by me. I only wanted free cheese!!

As for the chicken and the egg conundrum, I'll go with the latest theory in Quantum Physics and membrane theory that neither came first, they both existed simultaneously in parallel universes.

Jeremy

I'm back! What a long and busy weekend! I had a lot of cooking to do and plants to work on. I even fit in a trip to the oncologist. My son and 3 others came out yesterday to play shotgun bowling so I made them a nice lunch too. I hadn't seen one of the guys in 30 years!

It's a shame people can be mean or rude. It takes a lot less energy to be nice.

Speaking of mean people...my mean neighbor got thrown out! Yippeeeeee!!!! He told my hubby the other day that the guy who owns the property (nice guy) asked him to move because he doesn't like how he disrespects his (good neighbor's) girlfriend. Well, duh! Did he think he would stop at me? He has so much junk- it will take him months to move out but still, it sure makes me happy he's leaving. He has even bragged about being thrown out everywhere he lived for either making a pass at a woman (usually married) or being a jerk.

My hubby is getting a bonus soon and says he will buy me a brand new oven! Cool beans!

Carol - great news all around. I'm happy for you.

Thank you, Hetty! Also, I might even get to talk to the girl that lives there. That would be nice to have a female neighbor to do stuff with. She's very nice but I don't know what she likes to do.

I have alot of anxiety attacks and I bet they will calm down a bit when the mean guy is gone- if only he would take the bear with him!

Of all the things to be proud of and some people have to choose the stupidest ones..

We went grocery shopping at Walmart yesterday and I asked hubby if I could go look at the succulents.. This was a different Walmart then I got the other ones so I wanted to see if they had anything interesting.. The didn't have any succulents.. They had the occasional aloe stuck in between other plants here and there but no actual succulent rack.. I was very disappointed.. So instead I got some gloves and some little pruners.. Already broke in both.. I repotted the hyacinth bean vines I had growing and leaned some decorative plastic flower bed fencing against the window as a makeshift trellis.. Also got our 3 yr old daughter some kids gloves since she likes to dig in the dirt too.. She used them to put the soil in the new containers for the hyacinth beans.. She really seemed to enjoy doing just that simple task.. I do believe I have a little gardener in the works here..

Well, hope everybody has a good day today..

Jacquie

Congrats, Cyber, on the ousting of the negative neighbor! I know that will make your life much easier and reduce a lot of stress.

A new oven sounds good, too. We're looking here for a used toaster oven. Our previous one (a few years old) suddenly blew the glass front out one day! Christina was warming some food with aluminum foil around it, but I can't imagine what got the toaster oven hot enough to cause the glass to explode. It may have somehow gotten a hairline crack in the glass that led to the failure. I had that happen with a glass topped dining room table. I sat some hot Chinese take out food down on the table and heard a pop -- the glass had cracked from the heat directly under the hot aluminum food tray. I didn't think much about it because the glass top was one of my "off the trash" finds that someone had thrown out when moving. I continued to watch the crack grow over the next month or so until one morning when I was having breakfast, the crack finally spread all the way across the glass and the table top broke in half. A momentous breakfast!

Jacquie, I have some small succulents that came with the Lowe's bargain plants a while ago. I'm so far behind in trades and mailing SASE offers that it may take me a while to get them to you, but if you are interested in freebies, send me a D-mail and I'll send you pix to see if you want any of them. I'm not much of a succulent expert, but they seem to be relatives of the jade plants. Also, I do have several jade plants (Crassula ovata) if you want some leaves or stems to start your own. I have both the standard type jades and some with odd shaped leaves (the 'Hobbit Pipe' cultivars). I would love to have the String of Pearls succulent (Senecio rowleyanus) if you have some of that plant to trade.

Jeremy

Jeremy

Jeremy,
Go on freecycle to find one. I have an extra used one here but it will probably cost more to ship than to by locally but you're welcome to it.
Jan...

Jeremy, I had 12 customer service employees under my "command" at one point. They were strictly forbidden to raise their voice, be sarcastic or antagonize the customer in any way. This was when I worked at the federal government: an unemployment insurance office. Often, we dealt with people who came in after they got their letter explaining why they couldn't be paid. Inevitably, they wanted someone's head. The rule was: "Never try discussing anything logically with someone who wants to strangle you".

What we did was listen to the person, ask a few questions to clarify matters and let them talk until they winded themselves out. Then came a good 15-second silence where noone spoke. The clerk would say something like: "Didn't that feel good?". Both could laugh about it - and they usually did. This pent-up angst relieved, we could start talking about the matter at hand and why it happened. I can't say it worked every time but at least 90% of the time. If the customer started carrying on again, we started the procedure at the beginning as many time as it took. Our office was one of the very few in Montreal that didn't call the police to calm down a client. After a few years of using that method, I got a cash bonus (premium to initiative) for coming up with that. I shared the amount with my 12 employees by taking them out to a great restaurant. Happy employees work better, try harder.

Jeremy, what kind of cheese was it? We miss our european cheeses so much here. We manage to get some Saint-André and very pedestrian Brie at Costco but, amazingly, it is on the old side, with traces of ammonia in it. What we wouldn't do for a good piece of Stilton. So far in this area, we have spotted an italian bakery and an asian market near us. Left on our list of places to find are: a good greek restaurant, a genuine french bakery/grocery store with real crust on the bread, an oriental market (Oh, to make molokya again) and a genuine dim sum restaurant that serves chicken feet and other delicacies. We only have been here a year now and this is a big place. We'll find them all eventually.

Carol, here's a thought: catch the bear, sedate it, put it in a shipping crate and put on the guy's moving truck when he's not looking. When he gets to his new place, he'll open the shipping crate and TaDah, poetic justice. I watch too many cartoons.

Today, we are sitting around, waiting for his excellence Mr. David to come in and finally finish the kitchen's ceiling. We waited all day Friday until about 2:30PM when he called in saying he would make it that day. He rescheduled for today. He'll probably show up at the crack of 2PM. I have bad news for him. He doesn't leave this place until EVERYTHING is finished. I'll go as fas as to sequester him if it has to come to that. The guy doesn't understand that he is dealing with a cranky polar bear here. Father, why hath thou abandonned me?

I put some red castor bean plant seeds to soak in a glass of water this morning. I'll plant them tomorrow. I'll get some more loofa seeds going again because the first batch didn't turn out. Maybe soaking them will help.

Be good, all.
Sylvain.

I'd love to see the pics.. I don't have any of the String of Pearls really.. A found a little piece of a succulent that looks a lot like it on another succulent I got from Lowes.. I've got it sitting in some soil to see if it'll root.. But it might take a long while.. I'll go back today and see if they have an actual plant.. Hopefully it'll actually have a label on it.. Besides, I get to use you as an excuse for another trip to Lowes.. = )

I've only started my little succulent collection.. I've got about 10 little plants so far.. They're usually right in my budget of a couple dollars each.. I do have a zebra plant that I've had for about a year.. It looks like a little dark green aloe with white raised stripes on it.. Very cute little plant.. I just divided it into two ceramic pots a couple weeks ago..

This message was edited Dec 4, 2006 10:18 AM

Sylvain, I'm afraid my "gourmet" cheese was nothing more than shaved parmesan in a prepackaged container -- we ain't got much fer good eatins around these parts, either. I haven't had a choice of fine cheeses since I left Greenwich Village in 1983 and was no longer a block away from Murray's Cheeses, which had an international selection to try. We do have a fairly authentic Greek Restaurant here, so if you come this way, we can see what you think of it. Also, we have a French Pantry bakery that may not meet your more cosmopolitan, high culinary expectations, but is very popular locally.

You customer service calm down method sounds like a winning approach. I'll have to let Christina know. If all continues to go well, she is scheduled to start an excellent, new job on 12/11 with Citibank in their IRA investments customer service. I'm glad she is finally moving out of transient restaurant work to something more career oriented (and very glad she will be bringing in about twice as much money!, plus have other good benefits!)

Be certain not to let anyone mistake the soaking castor beans for red zinger tea! There might be enouch racin in the soaking water to kill Carol's bear!

I'll see if I can get a quick photo of the succulents KittyK. The crises d' jour is trying to get the Mustang battery to hold a charge and then snake out the upstairs bathroom lavatory sink. I'd rather be gardening! (or doing just about ANYTHING else!)

Jeremy