28 March 2010

COMCAST escalated me... this would be laughable if it wasn't so damn frustrating....

In the chat posted below I'm typing back and forth with "Mark" because I'm trying to resolve a payment problem, one of the most common life experiences of modern consumerist mankind. I signed up for automatic payments, but I'm getting LATE notices because Comcast isn't actually doing what they said they'd do... take my money! If you have the patience, read all the way through the dialog below, because you'll see how they eventually handled my inquiry today. Your comments are very welcome on this, by the way....

I got what they call "escalated" at least twice. I feel so important!

 Problem: Ask Comcast Escalation 
chat id : f26ccc60-d89b-49cd-aebf-c230efa61e0b
Problem : Ask Comcast Escalation

Anthony Miksak > Ask Comcast Escalation

Mark > Hello Anthony Miksak, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Mark. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Mark > How are you doing today?

Anthony Miksak > I have signed up (some time ago) for automatic payments, and have requested paper statements. It appears that I now own for two months, and that automatic payments are not being posted. Can you please check on this?

Anthony Miksak > I meant to write "I now owe..."

Mark > I see here that you signed up for automatic payments and it is not yet activated and now the account is past due.

Mark > I understand the trouble that this has caused you and I want you to know how sorry I am for the inconvenience. As your service representative today, I want you to know that your satisfaction is of my topmost priority and I assure you that we can resolve this issue together on this chat.

Mark > May I have the account number please.

Anthony Miksak > ok

Anthony Miksak > (snip snip snip)

Mark > Thank you.

Mark > Let me check this out for you Anthony.

Mark > Please give me a moment while I am pulling up the account.

Mark > While waiting, let me share with you a great Comcast feature. Have you heard of THE top TV destination on the Web? That's Fancast, dedicated to celebrating television by giving fans instant access to an extensive video collection of television shows, movies, trailers, and clips, so you can tune-in, catch-up, and chat about your favorite programming. Fancast also offers comprehensive editorial and blog coverage with in-depth recaps and analysis on what's hot and happening everyday in the world of television and entertainment. Want to start watching now? Go to http://www.fancast.com

Mark > Thank you for waiting.

Mark > Let me review on the account information carefully. Please standby.

Anthony Miksak > no problem...thank you

Mark > Thank you for waiting.

Mark > Anthony, may I ask when did you register for automatic payment?

Mark > Activation would usually take 30-45 days Anthony.

Anthony Miksak > not certain... probably 2-3 months ago.

Anthony Miksak > I'm going to find a previous bill...

Anthony Miksak > I have three bills here. On Jan 4 I talked with a comcast rep and paid my bill by Amex. Then I noted on the next bill dated Feb 19 "we are set up for auto payments" and now on the current bill it appears we are NOT set up correctly... Does this match what you are seeing?

Anthony Miksak > I think 3-45 days have passed. What should I do now?

Mark > I apologize for the inconvenience Anthony. I would like to escalate this chat to our Internet Support.

Anthony Miksak > 30-45 days

Mark > PLease stay on the line.

Anthony Miksak > OK

Mark > Please wait, while the problem is escalated to another analyst

Tiwanna > Hi. How are you today?

Anthony Miksak > hello... a bit frustrated... can we please get this resolved?

Tiwanna > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

24 March 2010

It's Customer Appreciation Day

Since we spoke last week I’ve suddenly gotten old enough to enroll in Medicare. I now qualify for discounts on BART and Muni and half off my groceries, why not? I even managed this week finally to join the American Association of Altogether Ancient People (AAAAP).

This somewhat disconcerting plod to the grave is alleviated by the certain knowledge that some good things in life, mainly books and reading, will continue their march long after we drop away.

Two very strong essays appeared this week, both written by booksellers dedicated to their trade, their craft.

The newsletter Shelf Awareness reprinted a tribute to bookstore customers which had first appeared in the newsletter of Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island in Washington. It was written by Ann Combs. She is talking to you:

“As we continue to celebrate the 40th  Anniversary of Eagle Harbor Books, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that one of the best things about working here is our customers: the small children who march into the store and know exactly where they are going even when a visiting grandparent doesn't, the people who patiently follow us around the store as we search for a book the computer assures us is available.

“We delight in customers who come to us for recommendations when they are about to go on a trip, or need a birthday present for a son-in-law and are particularly pleased when they come back later to report that our suggestion was a big success.

“We appreciate the customers who understand when a book takes longer to order and bring into the store than expected. We're grateful to those of you who tell us that you may check on the availability of a book on Amazon but ‘I come here to buy it.’ We listen when you describe your own favorite books, and we often find ourselves adding them to our own bedside stack.

“You customers amaze and intrigue us with your varied interests and opinions. We enjoy the conversations, the banter, the laughter. And we're thrilled that you customers come in to browse, to meet friends, to get a treat for your dog and simply to say hello. No wonder the 40 years seem to have sped by in a minute,” she writes.

That is true customer appreciation. Here in Mendocino, Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop, composed her own essay, her answer to the frequently asked question, why be an independent bookseller in this difficult era.

Christie writes, “We believe in the book. We believe in quieting the noise and listening to the stories. We believe in traveling far and wide between paper pages. We believe in touching the words, scribbling in the margins, and dogging the ears. We believe in surrounding ourselves with books long finished and books not yet read; in revisiting our younger selves each time we pull old favorites off the shelf.

“We believe in five-year-olds inking their names in big letters on the flyleaf.  We believe in becoming someone else for four hundred pages. We believe in turning off the screens and unplugging the networks once in awhile. We believe in meeting the author, reading the footnotes, looking up the words and checking the references. We believe in holding our children on our laps and turning the pages together.

“We believe in standing shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence with our fellow citizens before a good shelf of books; we believe in talking face to face with friends and strangers in the aisles of a good bookstore. We believe that together, readers, writers, books and bookstores can work magic.

“If you believe, please join us:  SAVE THE WORLD.  BUY A BOOK.”

I asked Christie how she came to write her manifesto, and she responded, “Well, a couple of very enthusiastic and committed staffers had been telling me for months that the bookshop needed a mission statement. I had played around with some ideas, but everything sounded sort of corporate to me. They didn't sound like (our store). I thought a mission statement should answer the ‘why’ question: Why does this business exist? Why are we working so very hard at what we do? I didn't come up with anything that I wanted to plaster all over the store, though, until one weekend when I was at home, doing chores. The Manifesto just started running through my head -- along with the word: ‘Manifesto’ --  and it really is the reason we're here.”


NOTES:

The Eagle Harbor Book Company runs one of the more interesting bookseller web sites:.

You can find my local bookstore, the inimitable Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, here.

18 March 2010

Bilingual and Lovin' It

I speak two languages. Many of you do that and more.

In English, I do fine. In Italian, well, let’s just say I have the language skills of a bright four year-old, but I’m working on it. In French? Don’t ask, and for certain don’t ask in French.

Still, I would be considered bilingual by scholarly definition, and therefore by Francois Grosjean, author of the newly published book “Bilingual: Life and Reality.”

Grosjean writes, “In a bicultural’s lifetime, cultures can wax and wane, become dominant for a while before taking a secondary role. In my own case, I feel that I have changed my dominant culture four times since becoming bicultural: it was English in my teenage years, French until age twenty-eight, American until I was forty, and it has been Swiss since then.”

When I was very small, living on Wood Street in San Francisco, Yiddish was the lingua franca; everyone shouted to everyone else in that friendly hybrid of a Jewish middle-European language. Then came English, Polish, Russian, you name it.

Soon the Yiddish faded away, through attrition and a general move to less ghetto-ish neighborhoods. When I got around to reading Leo Rosten’s books “The Joys of Yiddish” and the hilarious “The Education of H*y*m*a*n  K*a*p*l*a*n” I felt somehow at home again.

There are something like 7,000 languages alive in the world today. Europe has 239 of them; there are as many as 1,310 languages spoken on various islands in the Pacific Ocean. “With so many languages in the world... a lot of contact is bound to take place between people of different language groups,” Grosjean writes.

Bilingualism can result from geographic proximity, immigration, acquisition in school, global trade, military invasions, deafness, even colonization. In fact, the person who doesn’t have some familiarity with one or more other languages is rare.

In the US after English, Spanish is the most frequently used first or second language of some 28 million speakers. After Spanish “one finds several Asian languages (Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese) as well as European languages... A number of languages that were in the top ten in the middle of the 20th century, such as Yiddish and the Scandinavian languages, had fallen off strongly by the census of 2000... Yiddish speakers had gone from 1.7 million in 1940 to fewer than 200,000 in (that census) and it was mainly being spoken by elderly individuals.”

In this book Grosjean sets out to dispel fifteen myths, among them that bilinguals have equal and perfect knowledge of their languages; that bilinguals have split personalities; that knowing two languages somehow hurts the development of children.

He starts with a story that can’t fail to draw you into this interesting book:

“In the span of a few hours this Monday morning, I bought croissants in French from the baker’s wife, who then served the next client in Swiss German; I accompanied my bilingual wife into town to meet her trilingual Italian-French-German friend; I stopped by my garage to have my car checked by a mechanic of Portuguese origin, who explained to me, in French, how the cooling system worked. While going from one place to another, I listened to the radio... and heard... Roger Federer in London, talking about the final he had played at Wimbeldon. He was tired, having... given interviews in his four different languages (Swiss German, German, French, and English).

“Now, as I am settling down at my desk, accompanied by the music of George Frideric Handel, a German-Italian-English trilingual, I can hear the children in the day-care center across the street singing songs in French and Italian.  Bilingualism is indeed present in practically every country in the world, in all classes of society, in all age groups. It has been estimated that half of the world’s population, if not more, is bilingual. This book is about them.”


NOTES:

Bilingual: Life & Reality by Francois Grosjean. Harvard University Press hard cover $25.95. ISBN 978-0-674-04887-4.

Interested readers can contact the author by means of his Web site.

The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n by Leo Rosten. Mariner Books paperback $12.00. ISBN 0156278111. From the publisher: “The humorous adventures of Hyman Kaplan, the irrepressible student at the American Night Preparatory School for Adults, and his personal war with the English language. A classic work of American humor.”

The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten (revised in 2003 by Lawrence Bush). Three Rivers Press paperback $19.95. ISBN 0609806920.

11 March 2010

I don't know and I don't care...

As grammatical or syntax errors go, I’ve always been fond of this one – modifying the word “unique.” Either something is one of a kind, or it is not, I’ve always believed. However, in our present not-rational world, things can be very unique, the most unique, uniquer-than-thou.

The word “uniqueness” passes spell checkers quite well, but it’s a clumsy word. I’d rather say “uniquity” for the quality of being unique, but although Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary recognizes uniquity as a word, it hasn’t caught on, probably because “uniquity” sounds a lot like “iniquity” or injustice, which reminds me that it’s always a mistake to write run-on sentences, not because you were told not to in high school, but because the reader will run out of breath reading or saying the whole thing at one go.

Uniquity/iniquity somehow reminds me of the use of the word “disinterested” to signify “uninterested,” as in bored. These two have become through usage interchangeable, but we don’t have to like it. To be disinterested is to be unbiased, fair-minded. Uninterested is just that – a distinct lack of interest, or apathy.

This all is very interesting, at least to me. Yesterday’s misused words may become tomorrow’s new words. No one can resist the progression of meaning in English. But we can try.

Teacher: What does the word “apathy” mean?
Student:  I don’t know, and I don’t care.

Apathy arrived in English about 1600, from the French/Latin/Greek “apathia” or “apátheia” meaning “insensibility to suffering.”

If you are not apathetic, you must be “pathetic,” from the Latin “patheticus” and the Greek “pathetikós.” Call someone pathetic on the school yard and you’ll start a fight, yet pathetic didn’t start out that way.

About 1600, we adopted the French “pathétique” to mean “affecting the emotions, exciting the passions.” A hundred years later “pathetic” had shifted meaning to “arousing pity, pitiful.” It wasn’t until the 1930s that scholars recorded the most current meaning: “so miserable as to be ridiculous,” and thus your Dead End Kids, your Bowery Boys, your East Side Kids brawling in movie school yards during the Depression.

Pathos derives from the same roots as pathetic, but it is no longer pathetic’s first cousin. You experience pathos as a kind of down feeling, a sense of sorrow. You may say an excellent novel has plenty of pathos, but people will mistake it if you instead describe the novel as pathetic.

My favorite book on English is Bill Bryson’s “The Mother Tongue, English and How it Got That Way.” Bryson has nothing to say about pathos. But he’s eloquent on American dialects (yes, we have them), plosives and runes, and word origins.

He calls English “an adoptive, borrowing tongue” – shampoo from India, chaparral from the Basques, and so on. “As long ago as the sixteenth century English had already adopted words from more than fifty other languages – a phenomenal number for the age,” Bryson writes.

Take garbage. In fact, please take out the garbage. “It has had its present meaning of food waste since the Middle Ages, was brought to England by the Normans, who had adopted it from an Italian dialectical word, ‘garbuzo,’ which in turn had been taken from the Old Italian ‘garbuglio’ ‘a mess’ which ultimately had come from the Latin ‘bullire’ (to boil or bubble).”

In modern Italian, to boil or bubble is “bollire,” a change of one single letter from the Latin of two thousand years ago. That’s the Italians for you: slow food and slow language. Italians do change, but they take their time about it.

NOTES:

“The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson. Harper Perennial paperback $14.99. ISBN 0380715430.

Jimmy Buffett is credited with saying “Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.”

“Disinterestedly Apathetic” is “disinteressatamente apatico” in Italian. Memorize this.

Not to mention lay and lie... less and fewer... “rest” rooms... it and it’s... irregardless... and so many more!.

A fascinating usage note  ... “Disinterested and uninterested share a confused and confusing history. Disinterested was originally used to mean ‘not interested, indifferent;’ uninterested in its earliest use meant ‘impartial.’ By various developmental twists, disinterested is now used in both senses. Uninterested is used mainly in the sense ‘not interested, indifferent.’ It is occasionally used to mean ‘not having a personal or property interest.’ Many object to the use of disinterested to mean ‘not interested, indifferent.’ They insist that disinterested can mean only ‘impartial’: A disinterested observer is the best judge of behavior. However, both senses are well established in all varieties of English, and the sense intended is almost always clear from the context.”

If I have made any mistakes in this essay, please don’t tell me. Okay, do tell me, but be kind.

04 March 2010

Looking Backward, WAY back...

Over the years this column has had many names (and been called many names). Here is my selection of Golden Nuggets from the past:

From the very first Words on Books, published on this date in 1902:

“The lumber schooner Amazon LLC hove into Mendocino harbor today carrying four seasick passengers and a crate of books destined for the new bookstore on Main Street. Idle bystanders, curious to discover what books were in the box, were told to wait until store opens Monday next.”

From 1903: “No doubt writing in haste for money, Polish writer Joseph Conrad (nee Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) undermines The Empire with a feverish tale of misbehavior. In one lovely passage, indeed the only lovely passage, set on shipboard, at sunset, on the Thames, the reader senses ‘The Heart of Darkness’ may be an edifying story well told. However, Korzeniowski soon dives into literary territory of the African variety.”

From 1908: “Well-known humorist Mark Twain, investor in the Mechanical Type-Writer, works daily on his autobiography, utilizing that machine with the assistance of a secretary, thereby risking further deterioration of an already deplorable handwriting.”

From 1912: “To celebrate ten successful years of insightful commentary, this column will now be named ‘The Discourse of Excursis Bibliomanicus.’

Forced by an editor to invent a name that would fit on one page, this column was renamed “The Back Number” in July, 1917:

‘In the room the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo.’ With these words the Irish expatriate T.S. Eliot signals that writers of his generation will have nothing new to offer us. We know the women speak of Michelangelo. What else is there to speak of in Italy? Really, Mr Eliot, must we hear again from these insufferable women?”

Renamed “Saddle Stitched,” 1918: “Would I were to say ‘We told you so!’ would I be, thereby, gilding a lily? I think not! Hereby the remarks of Anonymous in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry.’ ”
1920: “Is my column, Folio Fiddle-Faddle, worth a hoot? I wonder, then receive this letter:

“Pa and I enjoy reading Fiddle-Folio-Faddle (sic) in the Mendocino Beacon news paper, which makes its way to us at Camp 24. Harvesting of the redwoods proceeds apace, and after church of a Sunday afternoon Pa will catch and skin a raccoon – a squirrel if we’re lucky. Soon the savory smell of simmering squirrel stew, or roasting raccoon ragout, signals Sunday supper. Later, we catch up with the literary life. We cannot afford to purchase even one of the books you recommend. Regardless, Sunday would be much less interesting without our Fiddle-Faddle-Folio.” (sic)

From the newly named Excursis Bibliomanicus Romanticus, 1934: “The Devil resides in Washington and bread lines stretch around the block. Yet here in Mendocino we are stuffed with the filling news of books and literature.”

From Bibliomania Exfoliosis, 1937: “The improved bridge over Big River brings new books to us almost every couple of months. Arriving rain-soaked and torn, yet these tomes were packed in excelsior, nailed firmly into wooden boxes by unionized longshoremen sitting on the dock of the San Francisco Bay.”

From The Reading Radar, 1942: “Buy Liberty Bonds, save tin foil, conserve words, that’s the ticket. Few travel far on gasoline coupons. More Americans stay home & read. Used books bundled by Boy Scouts for shipment overseas may have covers removed to fill paper drive quotas.”

1961: “Today we are reborn as ‘Crazy for Books!’ We are ‘crazy!’ about books! We are not ‘crazy!’ and we are not smoking anything herbal or stuffing white powder up our nose! Got it? Just writing! About books!”

1979: “The Man says I’ve served my time, so I’m back with ‘A Few Words on Books.’ Banned from the Beacon and fired by the Advertiser (and because community radio station KZYX has not yet gone live) this mimeographed flyer is yours to keep.”

Hang on to it, bro. It’s collectible.


NOTES: None this week.