My letter to McDonald's

I had a pretty wrong experience at my local McDonald's. So bad that I decided to write a letter, which I'm sharing with you.

Today, I was embarrassed for my local McDonald's.

Today, I visited the McDonald's on Powers Ferry just south of Delk. I spent two or three minutes waiting to decide when another customer told me about the 2 for $2.50 Egg McMuffins. So, I made my purchase of 2 Egg McMuffins, a pair of hashbrowns, and a large soda at 9:47am.

During the time I was waiting for my food, three customers complained about the orange juice filling an inch below the cup lid. The employee's response was always "That's for room in case you want ice." Seriously, who wants ice in their orange juice? I say charge an extra nickel and fill it -- and if someone wants ice in their OJ, it becomes their loss of volume and a few cents in McD's pockets. (This is not my first complaint about this as when I order through the drive through, my soda is always an inch from the top -- and it has ice in it)

I digress -- I continued waiting for my food. Eventually, people who ordered as I walked in had finished eating their meals and left. In the end, it took thirteen minutes from the time I ordered to the time I got my food. Thirteen minutes to get something off the menu labeled a "Number One." That is beyond ridiculous for a "fast food" restaurant when there was only one order in front of mine.

Is insurance REALLY a good thing?

I confess. I have a bit of a medical condition. The good news is it's in the "pretty much cured" phase, but I still have a few doctor followup visits to go to to ensure I'm continuing staying healthy. This blog posting is NOT about my condition. I will not reveal that condition because it's irrelevant to anyone outside my close personal friends and family.

Anyways, I've been seeing my specialist ever since I was diagnosed with this condition. I want to say that was like 6-7 years ago. At the time of me being diagnosed, my then employer's biggest source of revenue was insurance companies -- because I was working for a health care company (corporate offices, of course -- we all know I can't deal with sick people).

During my visits with my specialist, I've always had to pay my "Specialist Co-Pay". We'll call it $40.

Then, came the unfortunate incident. But, then came the awesome event where I got new employment. Due to timings and other wait times between the two, I had to get on COBRA for about 2 months (And it's minimum 2 months on COBRA, but that's yet another story).

I had a specialist appointment sometime during the month of November -- COBRA had not kicked in yet (you hafta sign paperwork and get that mailed in and processed and yada yada yada), so when I went to see the specialist, they said I was uninsured and charged me for the office visit -- $75. Not a big deal, and I was pleasantly surprised.

This year marked a change in The Company's health insurance plans. We went from a "Co-Pay" system to a "Co-Insurance" system with the non-HMO plan. This means I'm required to pay out of pocket 100% of a doctor's visit until I meet my deductible, then I have to pay whatever co-insurance percentage is. For example, if I have a $500 deductible then 10% after that and I have a $1000 medical bill, I would have to pay $550 ($500 deductible plus 10% of the remaining $500) and insurance would cover the remaining $450. This is where people spent hours of calculations to find the break-even point in medical costs, but that's not the scope of this blog entry.

Back on topic, I had an appointment with my specialist this year. Due to the co-insurance thing, we pay $0 up front and get billed afterward after insurance pays their portion (which is after contractual discounts and whatever other BS goes into the calculations). I got the bill in the mail the other day.

$185.01.

The same visit type as when I was virtually uninsured before COBRA kicked in. Nothing extra.

How the HELL can you justify charging a patient MORE if they have insurance than if they don't? That's like a company offering a program where if you sign up and pay the premium, you get all kinds of perks -- including 200+% markup on products and services -- all just for being associated with them.

It makes me wonder how Obama's Healthcare Reform Bill will impact the same charges. Will the option of "I'm waiting for COBRA to kick in, so charge me the $75" go away? Will people, by default, have a co-insurance plan like The Company rolled out and if I'm waiting for COBRA to kick in I'll be charged $185?

If I had my choice, I would have said "charge me as if I don't have insurance." -- and send the bill to the insurance company to demonstrate I'm working towards my deductible (because they're not going to reimburse anything until I hit that number). And, if I break my leg, I may have more deductible to work through, but it's that much money I've saved if I don't break my leg.

Why can't we do things like this? Or can we? I really would like to know.

Going Green

Ok, don't get me wrong. I'm all for saving energy to help the planet. But, I have a few problems.

1) Recycling. It's not easy. It requires a separate trash receptacle in your house. I have a TIGHT kitchen. Which means I barely have room for the one trash can I have, much less having a second. I DO have recycling, but the only time it usually happens is when the recycling bucket gets full from the freebie newspapers that show up on my driveway I don't read.

2) CFLs. Yes, they are AWESOME when it comes to energy savings... 11 watts versus 75 watts. I'm all for that... Except for the warm-up time. I went through a phase where I shifted all the bulbs that weren't on dimmers to CFLs (as most CFLs you can't dim, but they're getting those in the market now). It happened as bulbs died and I replaced all in the set. But, it gets annoying when I turn on my kitchen light during the day and start something and a minute later try to turn it on again, only to realize "oh yeah, I already turned it on... it just hasn't warmed up yet."

3) Priuses (and other hybrid vehicles). I once thought about wanting a Ford Escape Hybrid. I admit it. But, seriously... Prius owners... You DO have a bit of get-up-and-go in your vehicles, USE IT! Sure, you'll kick on your gas engine, but YOU'RE ON THE FRIGGIN' INTERSTATE!

4) Saving money. Have you noticed how much more it costs to go green? Have you actually done the ROI on some of those? Most of them are generally 2-3 years (if not longer). I bought six 60-watt bulbs at The Home Depot the other day for 35 cents for the pack. One Philips CFL is $10 at WalMart (Sorry, I'm going for the bulb that looks like a bulb and not a squiggly.. those are ugly.. I have SOME taste). How long does it take to save $9.95 difference? My electric bill says I pay about $.09 per KWh. Now, this math is fuzzy (especially if I did it right), but for $9.95 in electricity you can get either (rounded) 1850 hours of a 60-watt bulb (aren't they generally rated for 1000 hours?), or 10000 hours of the 11-watt CFL. How many people run a light bulb for 10,000 hours? That's 416 days straight. Seriously, I'm now back on a move back to incandescent bulbs and putting everything on dimmers (which provides energy savings in themselves).

5) Jesus Chicken cups. I know they're probably not green. Whether it's an "environmentally healthy" styrofoam-esque product or not, they best not change their cups. They're probably the bestest fast food cups out there as they keep your beverage insulated awesomely and don't sweat.

6) You Can't Do That On Televsion. The original "Green" show... Green slime that is. I REALLY want it on DVD because that was a huge part of my childhood. It was an awesome show!! I don't quite understand why I wanted to be on that show and say "I don't know..." (although, it explains a lot about me now... and SHUT UP!) And, it basically made Nickelodeon... Not that Nick is really worth much now...

Yes, I moved from being environmentally friendly to not to a random childhood television show. Sue me!

Don't mess with me, I'm PMSing

So, the past few days I've had EXTRA road rage, it seems. I blame it mostly on the new Invisalign trays I put in Wednesday. But, I'd rather blame it more on the STUPID IDIOTS who are on the roads.

Today was no exception.

This morning, I was exiting the Interstate to get to work.

At the end of the exit ramp, it's a bit interesting. It's an intersection where there's a true 4-way intersection as it drops you off into a side-street that has return traffic to get on the Interstate there.

Anyways, as I got to the intersection, the light turned red, I stopped, nobody was coming, so I proceeded to turn on red, which is legal. Apparently some asshole decided they wanted to run the red light from the opposite direction and make the left hand turn they shouldn't have done. Mind you, they weren't already in the intersection as the light turned red.

Not only did asshole illegally turn left on red, but they turned left on red INTO THE RIGHT-HAND LANE.

So, double-illegal.

Anyways, they had a "how is my driving?" sticker on their vehicle, so I called it complaining how the idiot driver almost hit me! (Ok, I was a bit more polite in my response as to be "professional". I figured that'd get a better reaction than "angry driver")

A bit ago, I got a callback from the company and they left a vmail thanking me for calling and they were going to take care of it with their driver.

911, I have a complaint!

Today, I read what was probably the thirty-seventh article about a person dialing 911 because of a food complaint. Whether it be because Burger King is out of lemonade, or there's not enough shrimp in shrimp fried rice.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people?

Then it hit me! First, it was just stupid people -- they had a complaint, felt wronged, but didn't know enough to call the non-emergency number. With this shrimp problem, I think there's something different.

The article talks about a woman calling 911 because they wanted more shrimp. The angry customer left prior to officials arriving. Then a satisfied customer talks to news to say there's always a lot of shrimp. Could it be a ploy by the restaurant to get their name out in the community to get more business in a stalled economy?

Nnaa... that would be unethical!

This posting is racist

Stupid non-Mexicans working at Taco Bell can't make things right. The soft taco shells are brittle as it is, so if they're not warmed properly, they break apart. Guess what happened to me today...

Yes, I agree that's racist, but it's true! It's the same thing like going to a sushi bar and having a white person fixing your sushi. There's nothing to say it's not right, but if I go out for sushi, I want to see a Japanese person fixing it! (Or at minimum Asian). As I was told by another friend, "I don't care if they had asian people pretending to make the sushi and it was premade." It's about the presentation!

Kids these days... I swear...

Growing up, we keep telling ourselves we'll never be like our parents. In some cases, we strive for it. We want to be better than them. But, there are some things we cannot avoid.

Growing up, when we did laundry, if there was an unmatched sock, we put it in a pile on top of the dryer. Eventually, we would go through that pile and pair up any matches, and every now and then we'd throw away the unmatched socks. (Made me wonder if there really WAS something in the washing machine or dryer that ate them).

A few years back, I was doing laundry, and there was an unmatched sock. Subconsciously, I threw said sock on the dryer and said to myself, "The other half will show up."

I stopped myself right there, went and hunted down the match, and put both in my dirty clothes basket. It was one less thing I wanted to be like my parents with.

I don't know why that side-story is in this post. It really is supposed to be about video games. In fact, I don't even know how I started on that. Anyways, let's let my ADHD go aside and hit the topic at hand. What was it? Oh yeah, video games.

Kids these days complain about how hard video games are. With all their cheat codes and gabillion lives, and let's not mention how many times your character is allowed to be shot, stepped on, trampled on, or whatever before you actually lose a life, what can you complain about? Then, when you regenerate your life, you're halfway through the level.

Back in my day, you got hit once, your character died. And when you regenerated, you were back at the beginning of the level. Oh, and we had a frog that couldn't freaking swim! What the flip is up with that, Konami?

And, let's not forget the imagination you had to have! If you look at Donkey Kong, he seemed terrifying to me as a child. I plugged in my Atari recently with Donkey Kong, and... well... laughed at him. What kind of crazy fool climbs some whatever that is supposed to be, and just stands there throwing barrels? (and I don't think he really did it... they just magically appear out of nowhere, it seems.) And, when you get closer, he doesn't do anything until you get next to dude's girlfriend? (And, seriously... an ape and a human... I don't get it...)

And who here doesn't know the swirling staticy noise that's at the beginning of a level of Defender? Seriously now!

Now, we had games that made absolutely no sense (Yars' Revenge, anyone?), but we still loved them. Except for maybe E.T. the Extra Terrestrial -- I think I was the only person who liked that one. But, no matter what, we had imagination to make it seem more awesome than the 8-bit graphics allowed.

Then video games progressed and we had games (like Super Mario Bros) that had never-ending pits. Not particularly realistic, but neither was The Mushroom Kingdom. In this unrealistic game, there were never-ending pits. You fall in one of them, and heaven knows where your character went. You never see the splat. But it was still hard because there were these mushroom people that killed you if you touched them any way but jumping on them. But there was this star that went "dat-dat-ble-dat..."

Nowadays, video games have to be extremely lifelike. But, they've gotten away from the things that make them truly lifelike. If your character gets shot, the chances of it being able to continue on and save the world are slim to none. Seriously. And we wonder why kids are getting in trouble "due to video games."

I liked them better when they were more cartooney. No way in our mind's eye that it could be real. We had to use our imagination to understand what was going on. If we forced our kids to go back to level of imagination, who knows where we'd be. Kids would probably do better in school because they're flexing their brain. Creativity would go up since they're flexing their imagination. The would could become a better place if we weren't focused on making video games "look real"

Six million years in jail!

I'm possibly violating some rules from The Company about posting something like this, but I'm going to stay as a high level about this.

The Brian Nichols case has just come to a verdict.

He was sentenced to a total of a thousand years and 11 life sentences without parole (I could be wrong, I wasn't paying full attention and keeping a tally). Each count he was convicted of was given the maximum sentence served consecutively.

The judge made a comment about how every count is as important as another due to the counts being against different people. Each person wants their count to come to completion. I admire that. But, there's also a point where adding another 20 year sentence becomes moot point. He's only going to live a certain number of years. What's the use in sentencing some obscene amount of time that is incomprehensible?

"I'm sorry, she died in a freak blender accident."

In case I haven't informed my vast three readers (or any future people who may venture across this blog), I'm gay.

Yes, I have just officially come out of the closet! Or something like that.

Now, we'll get to gay marriage. I can't decide which direction I am on the fence regarding this. On one hand, I love the concept and how it could help things in the gay community be more "stable" -- but then there's the idea that some sugar daddy is going to have to pay gay alimony when his twink boy leaves him. That's going to cause a bigger stir.

Anyway, that "marriage" conversation leads into a conversation I got to have yesterday -- not once, but TWICE!

Caller: "Is there a Mrs. ?"
Me: "I'm sorry, no. *Sniffle* She died last month in a freak blender accident. I can't drink margaritas without breaking down anymore."

Now, the caller -- whether they be a salesperson, telemarketer, or whathaveyou -- naturally goes "Oh, I'm sorry." Then you can hear them clicking back and forth wondering "Is he for real? I really want to know how someone could have died in a freak blender accident!" And, of course, they cannot ask for fear of being insensitive.

At dinner, I got a fortune cookie that said something like "Your sense of humor was greatly appreciated today." -- I found great humor in that one!

Happy Medium

So, last week I got a new laptop here at The Company. I utilized my massive storage space at home to copy my files over because 1) it'd be MUCH faster and B) I didn't feel like clogging up the shared network drives with multiple gigs of data that has a ton of mp3s.

I've been trying to get back in the groove. Then I realized I hadn't copied ALL my files back to my lappy and all my music is sitting in a zip file on my file server at home. And since the zip file is 1.5 gigs (little music music and a TON of documents and the like), I'm not going to try to push it out of my home network to work. Seems WAY out of the way.

So, I complain to Princess Sparklepants with this conversation:

Me: grr... my music is sitting in an extremely large zip file at home. I can't download it 'cuz it's so large. woe is me
PSP: Music is not supposed to be on your work computer, anyway!
Me: and CDs aren't supposed to be left in drives -- so what is the happy medium? utilize network resources to stream? :-)
PSP: Get an iPod
PSP: :-)
PSP: I love my little nanopants.
Me: LOL

So, yeah, I like to violate the rules. But it's better than carrying around an MP3 player that The Company will eventually decide confidential information could be put on and forbid them, just like they block web based email because of "increasing security risks" with the fact "The Company doesn’t have the ability to scan for viruses or security concerns as we would with our Company e-mail." (Yes, geeks, you and I know what's wrong with that statement.) Of course, my mp3 player is a little large... since it's a Creative Zen Vision:M. But I love being able to fit my mp3 empire on one device... until that runs out of space.

So, right now, I'm pretty much musicless except the RENT soundtrack (OBC, not OST). But, as much as I love it, I can't listen to it on repeat for eight hours. I'll end up mooing all over the place and wanting to jump over the moon!

I can identify colors and count!

Went to Microcenter today.

I was very impressed at the knowledge the dude on commission had!

Here's what happened:

Chinchilla's CPU fan decided it wanted to start dying. Not particularly a good thing. So, I brought the dying fan there to ensure I got the correct size. I'm not finding what I need, so I ask dude if he would know where the exact size I'm needing is.

He said I had a "proprietary fan" because the fan I brought in had two wires, one red, one black, and the ones they had had three wires, one red, one black, one yellow.

I had to respond with "Thank you very much for knowing how to count to at least three and how to identify at least three colors. I wouldn't have been able to determine that on my own. What I ASKED for was a fan that size -- I'm sure no matter what type of connector it is, I'd be able to power it up, because... look... all these fans have adapters that I'd be able to use in any case."

Needless to say, I removed his sticker so he didn't get the commission on the 6.99 fan.

OH MY GOD! THERE'S NO MORE GAS!

Ok. We all know the unfortunate circumstances that caused Hurricane Ike to hit the Galveston area. In the hours leading up to the turmoil, people in the Atlanta area decided to totally freak out -- similar to the way they freak when the word "snow" comes into the forecast. Except instead of buying all the bread and milk off the shelves, they went and bought up as much gas as they could.

Basic price / demand from my Economics class came into play. That, and some gas stations decided to make a few extra bucks on the gas. One station was charging $5.25/gal at one point. They decided to back down to 4.51, but that price was about $1 more than it was the day prior.

Even with the insane gas prices, people still decided they wanted to hoard up as much as they could in the event the Gulf region of Texas decided to not exist anymore after Ike. As if the US's entire gasoline supply comes from Texas. This resulted in several area gas stations running out of gas. There's a BP down the street from where I live that hasn't had gas since Saturday. With it being Thursday, I REALLY feel for them.

My sister lives in MA. Their gas is at least fifty cents cheaper than here. Since they're further away from the carnage, they didn't decide to freak out and are still reveling in "almost decent sounding" gas prices.

Shortly after I moved here, I remember seeing gas at 72 cents a gallon. It cost me less than ten dollars to fill up my tank. It's now more than five times that price, and is REALLY hurting my wallet. I'm all for alternate forms of energy. My next vehicle will be a hybrid. But something has to be done to help alleviate out wallets.

When do I get my super-human powers installed?

So, while working for The Company, every year we're required to take an online course called "Corporate Responsibilities." Ok, it's several online courses called that with different suffix numbers like in college (101, 102, 104.. not sure where 103 went). Anyways, today I took that course.

During the course of the course, there's "mini checkpoints" to make sure you're understanding what's going on. One of them was to identify twenty things wrong with a picture in accordance to the "clear desk policy" The Company has in place. Below is the answer:


Let's start with the #12. A CD is left in the computer. How am I supposed to know that? I'm not Superman with X-Ray vision. Besides, I don't think X-Ray vision works in pictures. And, for that matter, what if it's Duran Duran's Greatest Hits? Is that a violation of the Clean Desk Policy?

Then we'll move up to #3 -- My eyes aren't as great as they used to be, but I can't exactly tell that's a bank statement. Much less a checkbook for #4.

#6 -- That doesn't look like a briefcase. More like a laptop bag. Person has a desktop though (with a CD in the computer). I wonder if there's a CD in the laptop in the laptop bag....

#8 -- I only see one cell phone...

#11 -- Yeah, applications are left open. But, we're supposed to LOCK the computer. That is the real problem with that one. And, is it me, or does it look like they have some sort of chat conversation open? Nice use of The Company's time, dufus. No wonder we had sites like GMail and Facebook and Evite blocked!

#13 -- That sticky note can say anything -- like "Remember to go to the bathroom so you don't wet yourself again."

#15 -- There's a hallway over there? I'm glad we can pan and zoom static images to find all these problems... and interact with the environment. And I can't really see much, but it kinda looks like the window is from a higher floor. Are we protecting our information from window washers? Or maybe Superman....

#16 -- I'll bypass the obvious hallway comment and go onto the window. The contents of the whiteboard are IMPOSSIBLE to see from the window... Unless you're Superman... and can control your X-Ray vision to go JUST far enough in the whiteboard to see the marker on the otherside... then read it backwards.

So, in short, The Company is protecting it's information from super villians! Not sure when I stepped into the world of DC Comics.

That being said, I love our policy on keys:

To protect our keys, we need to lock the keys in a key box or cabinet and take THAT key with us. But, really... shouldn't we be locking THAT key, too? TECHNICALLY that key is a key used to secure assets. Sounds like some sort of endless battle... unless.... COMBINATION LOCKS! (Let me guess... the combination has to be stored inside the case?)



And, apparently I'm supposed to look extremely surprised to know I have some sort of role to maintain a safe workplace. I love that picture.

I'm not bad, I was just drawn that way

So, I'm the current head of a "let's do fun things" group at The Company. It's fun, albeit a lot of work trying to get things organized.

Now, for a tangent. I've decided to use "The Company" as the pseudonym of where I work just to keep it a little anonymous. Plus, I'm a huge Prison Break fan, so it fits well.

That being said, we're allotted 40 hours of Volunteer Time Off at work. Yes, people, we're allowed to do a FULL work week of things we enjoy that we wouldn't normally get paid for, and still get paid for it by The Company. A win-win situation, methinks!

In order to rally the troops, we send out fun emails in order to encourage participation. Now, you wouldn't expect a fun organization to send out boring emails, would you? So, I didn't. I made it as fun as possible, with a few probing terms to help encourage participation. I guess my problem was when I added the line "Now, I'm not saying that you'll be in trouble if you don't volunteer, but there's always the chance that your performance review could be impacted by the fact you didn't do any volunteer activities!"

Truth be said, volunteer activities are HIGHLY encouraged at The Company. In fact, upper management likes to see it because it impacts them when it comes to metrics. If you help make them look favorable, they'll look more favorable on you. You scratch their back, they'll scratch yours. It's how Corporate America works.

Apparently somebody had a snizzy with it. Which reminds me of the Family Guy line, "Gentlemen, we got 20 calls about the David Hyde-Pierce incident. And as you know, one call equals a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended by this. Needless to say, something must be done."

Of course, I think the snizzy was made under the assumption that our Super Admin Princess Sparklepants wrote the email encouraging participation. There's been this Hatfield and McCoy feud going on between Princess Sparklepants and another member of The Company. Except, it's been more one-sided... kinda like itch you have after getting crabs without "earning them."

I was notified of this "offense" and took offense that there was an offense. Especially since I know there was at least ONE other email that went out in the past that inferred this exact same notion. Not to mention the complaint email was CC'd to management without trying to resolve the perceived issue with Princess Sparklepants first, like any grown up would do.

This childish behavior is beyond me. What's next? I can't keep my Happy Meal toys out because the apparent children I work with will want them for their own?

That being said, what's done is done. The volunteer event should be a success. We already have about 10 people who have verbally committed to going. That's more than 10% of our group at The Company, so I would definitely say that's a success! Offense or not!