Wednesday

I was talking to my oldest son on the phone tonight about angry customers. I am lucky enough to have only encountered two really angry people in my brief career at the hardware store. Unfortunately, both were today. More on that in a minute. Son Sneed is a highly-trained medical professional working in a large government facility for the exclusive use of our many veterans of the armed forces. In that capacity, he sees more pissed off people in a week than I will see in a year. In case you didn't know it, there are two things that veterans know about the quality of their free or nearly free health care. One is that they are entitled care that is free, plentiful and first-rate. The second thing they know is that they are disappointed. Hence, Son Sneed meets a lot of grouchy folks. The two angry folks I met today on the job were both elderly women in search of lightbulbs. One woman told me that she needed a light bulb for her candelabra. I made a suggest. No dice. I made another. Still no. Finally, I offered a third choice and she snapped, "Just forget it." Then she turned and walked off. The second lady came in with a strange-looking bulb and asked if we had one like it? When I said no, she told me that I was no help whatever and off she went. Son Sneed and I are constituted in the same way. We don't like unpleasantness all that much. Longtime readers might question that when comes to me, but it is basically true. I am more than happy to call a jackass, a jackass when needed, but I'm not inclined to take out my frustration on some schmuck who is just doing his job. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky