If Shakespeare had lived in 21st-century America, he would have named his play “Like You Like It.”

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As many of you probably know, we Kansans had us some rains yesterday.  “Torrential” is a word overused in this situation, but this was the kind of rain where, if you were caught out in it, you would have to keep your face pointed down in order to breath.  It looked as if someone were continuously pouring 55-gallon drums of water over everything.

This afternoon I heard of one Topekan who came home from work to find every bit of cedar mulch from his front yard was gone — from the flower beds, from around the trees, all of it — washed down the driveway, into the street, into the gutter, down the storm drain.  All gone.

He let himself into his house and walked out to his patio.  There were five bags of cedar mulch, washed into his back yard from somebody else’s landscaping project.

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Once upon a time there was a marine biologist who developed a group of porpoises which would live forever if they were fed a diet of a specific seagull.

Everything was going along well (swimmingly?), until he ran out of seagulls.

So he walked down to the beach, found the birds he was looking for, harvested some of them, and put them in a bag.  He was carrying them back up to the lab when he came across two lions sleeping in the path.

Not wanting to wake them, he began tiptoeing carefully across them.  Of course, he was immediately arrested for transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.

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“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

– George Bernard Shaw

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Today I am not the online Libertarian, trying to say something insightful and maybe even helpful about our world. Today I am not the rational writer looking to offer perceptions and humor to her readers.

Nope. Today I am the whiny and petulant customer who is being denied a service to which she has become accustomed. Today I don’t care about efficiencies and profits and jobs and overhead expenses and such. Today I just want my machine back.

I do quite a bit of business with the United States Postal Service. I am well aware that I’m not even a blip on their radar screen, but it looks like a significant amount to me. Whenever one of my Senior Ease customers specifies that a shipment is to be sent by USPS mail, I take the package to one of their Topeka offices and send it off.

For the past few years, the two USPS offices that I use have each had a really dandy little machine. You could mail a package there without having to stand in line or even talk to anyone. The machine would weigh your package and ask you a bunch of pretty standard questions: Does this package contain explosives? Liquids? What’s the addressee’s zip code? Do you want regular or priority mail?

Then you would swipe your credit or debit card, and the machine would dispense the correct postage. There was even a receptacle into which you could drop your package.

It worked wonderfully. I cannot tell you how many times I have breezed in and out of the building while others were standing in line waiting to pay for their postage. The only down side to using the machine at the Gage Center office is that I didn’t get to harass my buddies who work there.

Several months ago, the machine was removed from the downtown office. When I asked about it, the clerk told me it had been taken out because it didn’t pay for itself. But then, she added flippantly, they didn’t want it there anyway because it took jobs away from them. That remark, of course, annoyed me no end. I stood there for a minute trying to decide between giving her my opinion and writing an entire column about it. Fortunately, I did neither. There is no way anything good could have come from either one. Besides, I don’t use the downtown office any more than is absolutely necessary.

But one recent morning, trying to send a shipment from the Gage Center office, I discovered that their machine – MY machine – is being removed later this month, too. I am devastated.

Why, oh why, I asked one of my favorite USPS employees. It’s not cost-effective, I was told. It’s supposed to bring in a certain amount of money, and it’s not living up to expectations. It’s being sent to Colorado. I told him I would chain myself to the weighing platform, but he didn’t think that would do any good.

I don’t care. I love that machine – MY machine. So here I am, the whiny customer who cares way more about her personal convenience than about whether the business I patronize makes any money. I don’t care whether it’s cost-effective or not. Isn’t there something to be said for the fact that it was already in place? How about the fact that at least one customer thinks it’s wonderful? Doesn’t it count that it’s pretty low-maintenance once it’s installed? Did anyone figure the cost of ripping it out and putting it in a crate? What about the cost of shipping the thing several hundred miles? It must weigh a ton. What about patching the wall? Doesn’t that count for something? Huh?

I don’t care about the efficiencies.

I just want my machine back.

KsSmallBiz.com, October 11, 2006

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A few days ago I saw one of the bravest sights I’ve seen in a long time. On a small marquee outside a small business just west of 21^st and Gage, the owner had placed the following (I have removed the name to protect everyone involved, including me):

firstNAME lastNAME, I HAVE YOUR BAD CHECK.

Wow.

Now, I’ve seen lists of names of people who consistently write bad checks displayed beside cash registers, but that’s the first time I’ve seen a name displayed like that, right outside, 20 feet in the air, for everyone in Topeka to see. I gasped, literally, out loud. I laughed, partly in amusement but mostly in shock. And then I realized that, if the sign had that strong an effect on me, who has not written a bad check in 30 years, how emphatically would it impress a customer getting ready to walk in there and write a check she didn’t have enough money to cover?

What effect would it have on firstNAME lastNAME?

What the heck kind of customer relations is that, anyway?

In this country we have accepted the myth that the customer is always right. It is just not true. Most businesses understand and tolerate one insufficient-funds episode, especially if the customer makes it good right away. But customers who do not make their bad check good, or who write bad checks over and over, are committing theft, plain and simple. And my guess is that this was not the first bad check that firstNAME lastNAME had written at that little business.

Last time I looked, the message was still up there. Apparently firstNAME lastNAME has not yet got herself in there and forked over enough cash to pay for her previous purchase and to minimize her humiliation. Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she skipped town.

I wonder how many other customers, having written bad checks after firstNAME lastNAME shopped there, rushed in to redeem their checks before they were forced to see their own names on display right along with hers.

Now that I’ve had a few days to digest the situation, I’ve decided I admire that business owner with all my heart. I believe that sign was one of the best examples of customer relations I’ve ever seen. It will almost certainly not deter honest buyers from shopping there. They are, after all, in no danger of being humiliated as firstNAME lastNAME was, and as she deserved to be. The only people that sign will scare away are people who are driving up the price of products and services because you and I have to pay more to cover their theft. That brave sign will, in the long run, hold prices down for the rest of us.

Now, that’s great customer service. I think I may just stop by there on my way home and spend a little money.

KsSmallBiz.com, November 1, 2006

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Once upon a time there were three Native American women.  They each lived in a different teepee, and each slept on a different animal hide.  One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and one slept on a hippopotamus skin.

They were all pregnant, and when it came time for them to have their babies the one who slept on the deer skin had a little boy, the one who slept on the elk skin had a little boy, and the one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys.

That proves that the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.

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The year 2002 should have been entitled the Year of Obligation.

Aught two.  Ought to.

Har.

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In the middle of a (temporarily) successful diet, I have realized I was delighted to be down to what at one time I had been horrified to be up to.

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