Occasionally Amazed

Every once in a while, my faith in humanity is restored, at least a little bit. I'll be the first to admit that I am not perfect and on occasion, I screw things up in a manner that has consequences, usually the kind that hit my wallet. My most recent failure was in renewing my vehicle registration online. Some how, I botched the account type for my ACH payment resulting in the bank rejecting the request from the State of Colorado. The DMV finance group sent me a notice that my payment failed and to release my renewal, I would need to pay in person and include a $50 "short check" fee. I went through the normal reaction cycle starting with confusion, followed by rage, then anxiety, back to rage, then a profound feeling of hopelessness. Knowing that I was dealing with bureaucracy, the feelings of rage were natural, but useless and that's where the lack of hope came in. I figured I could place a few calls to try and explain my mistake and see if I could get what amounts to a 30% penalty on my renewal waived, but also figured that finding anybody even remotely sympathetic was unlikely. Shockingly I was wrong. I called the numbers listed, talked to a real person who was willing to see what could be done . . . problem solved.

Sometimes businesses say they want your feedback and sometimes . . . they actually listen to what you have to say. I was at Moe's a few weeks back getting a bagel and some coffee on the way to work. As I was driving down the road, I took the first sip of coffee and found it to be so gross that I knew I wouldn't be drinking any more of that coffee. It tasted like my thermal mug had years of rancid coffee oil in it, but I was drinking from their paper cup. In a moment of boredom at work, I hit the "feedback" button on the Moe's site and let them know their bagels were good as usual but their coffee was beyond undrinkable. Much to my surprise I got an email back from the manager saying to introduce myself next time I stopped in so she could pick up my breakfast. I was in Moe's this week and the manager was behind the counter, I introduced myself, we talked coffee, and my bagel and coffee were on the house. The offending thermal carafes had been replaced, but the manager very frankly told me she was not yet satisfied with their new beans and wanted to know what I thought. Yup, still bad coffee, but at least it doesn't taste like rancid foulness from the bottom of an old oil barrel.

I had a very compelling conversation today about workplace activities, animal hygiene, and education. How does this all fit together? Let me tell you.

-Alright I gotta go see a cat with poop stuck to its butt cause its too fat to groom himself!
*Ewww . . .
-Well that was a thriller. I went to 7 years of school so I could shave a dingleberry off a cat's butt.

When the topic was later revisited, I came across this list of crazy looking animals. It's a good little time killer. If you still need to kill some time, I highly recommend perusing the farm/garden classifieds on craigslist . . .