Oh man, I'm watching this 'Child of our Time' show on BBC right now. Seven year old girls are aspiring to be underweight, and think fat children will have no friends. However, they also aspire to be 'kind' and 'healthy' over other qualities. The boys, while not appearing to care about body type, value being'rich' above all other qualities. Seven freaking years old.
Edited for post-beer spelling.
Try this for fuckups from the service provider end (and some of it from the customer service end:
Bought a new phone from the same company (Virgin Mobile) have my current service with. Get all the numbers off the phone with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass (not joking).
Go to the web site to switch phones. Follow instructions. Message: there has been an error switching phones please call customer service at: blah blah blah. Call customer service. Informed: "Oh, this is a maintenance period. You can't swap phones until after blah-pm. " I think, nice of the web site to tell me that, but mindful of not taking out company fuckedness on low-lever service people thank her nicely.
Try back in an hour. No joy: same error message. Call customer service. Customer service tells me - oh you must have entered the wrong number. Try again. Use this different method of swapping: there are fewer key strokes so you have better odds of getting it right. Well I'm pretty use that I did in fact do it right. I tripled checked MEID I entered, and have everything in a text file to cut and paste into entry fields. But it is alway possible I could have screwed up, so I try again. Same results except that I'm automatically switched to live support person. I tell live support person the whole story:
"Oh, you shouldn't have tried to swap again so soon. Unsuccessful swaps generate an automatic lockout for four hours. And now that you tried so many times unsuccessfully you are locked out for 24 hours".
OK, I'm mad, but its a weekend and I already know I won't be able to get anyone willing to override a security lockdown. I do ask, just in case: "can someone in technical support override this?" The reply:
"I don't think so, but I don't see why we should. You should'nt have tried so soon. The lockdown is our standard policy".
"Umm, I'm looking at tabs with the web site and terms of service up. I don't see where anybody told me that was your standard policy. I just followed technical support instructions".
Support fuckcake: "you violated our standard terms sir".
I give up temporarily. I can live with the old phone for a weekend, and try again Monday. I do try again Monday. Still no swap. I call customer service. "Oh, the lockdown is for 24 business hours. You should not have tried again so soon".
At this point I am overcome with blinding hot rage. I say in very low calm tone. "OK, obviously the solution is to return the phone to target, and buy a different pay as you go plan from a different company. I'm sorry to have taken your time. I promise, neither I nor anyone I have influence over will ever take up any of Virgin Mobile's time again." I don't expect this to produce any response, but apparently there must be a customer retention branch in the script flow chart, because she says "Sir, before you give up, let me transfer you to a s supervisor. And in about three minutes there is a supervisor on the line who actually is able to pull up some records and see the story without my telling it again. And she say "I'm sorry all this has happened. I"ll submit a trouble ticked to technical support and get your phone swapped". (She also told me that the 24 business hour thing was not true - maybe made up to get rid of me. It is just that something went wrong on the network and locked out the swap permamently; it could only be fixed by actual techs.)
And great - she was able to be helpul. But there was some very fuckcake like behavior on the part of a number of customer support people until I got to her. And I finally only got useful customer service when I stopped being nice and got angry.
Miracleman I know you get fuckcake after fuckcake. But you know, I think some of this is that lousy customer service has trained people over the years that the only way to get any freaking customer service is to act like an asshole - which of course builds long term hostility right back into the customer service people.
Its a mutually reinforcing cycle. But people on your end of the cycle sure as hell play a role in it. It (continued...)
( continues...) is not just customers who are fuckcakes.
I am not going to engage in this discussion, as it is a hot-button issue for me.
I am making bread. Or at least attempting to. I've never made yeast bread by myself before. Hope this works. How exact does that 110 degrees thing for the yeast have to be?
How exact does that 110 degrees thing for the yeast have to be?
Not terribly. Warm-shower-ish but not scalding is probably close enough -- mostly, you don't want to boil it to death. I often make bread with water that's closer to room temperature, just because I'm too lazy to worry about it much, and the only ill effect is that it takes longer to get started rising.
OK, thanks. I went with what felt like about the temperature of a heated whirlpool. Currently waiting for the sponge to rise. Checking on it every five minutes is not really helping. It's sitting there. It seems to have a few more bubbles than it did before. Can't tell if it's rising or not when I'm looking at it this often.