So This is What it Feels Like to be an Aunt!

I LOVE IT!! That's right, I'm now an aunt ;) My nephew Jonathan Warren (Warren is his middle name, not his last) was born last night at 7:15... a healthy 7 lb, 7 oz. BEAUTIFUL baby! I cried when I saw him :P But I couldn't help it, he's beautiful. Here are a couple of pictures of him, more to come later!

Just For Fun, I Bring You...

The Top 10 Things I'd Rather Do Than Go to Work at My Current Job (in no particular order):

1. Wake up at 5:30 in the morning in Santiago. Walk to the micro stop in the pouring rain. Wait an hour for a micro. Take 2 micros. Go teach English classes until 7:30 at night. Walk back in the pouring rain to the micro stop. Wait another hour for a micro. Take 2 micros to get back home.

2. Listen to the latest Jessica Simpson album on repeat for a full 24-hour period.

3. In a similar vein as #2, watch a 24-hour marathon of "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila."

4. Watch any basketball game with commentary by Dick Vitale.

5. Clean every bathroom in my house. Clean the kitchen. Wash every window, inside and out. Dust every visible surface. Vacuum every room.

6. Clean up the porch where my dog threw up on it after eating some weird, unidentifiable object.

7. Try to run a marathon without training at all.

8. Read every William Faulkner book without taking any breaks, except to go to the bathroom and eat something.

9. Translate Don Quixote from Spanish to English in its entirety. Then translate it back from English to Spanish. Then back from Spanish to English again one more time, just for good measure.

10. Eat the hottest pepper on earth, without drinking any water afterward.

Chile, Here I Come!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh I'm so excited!! I finally have a date for when I'm moving back to Santiago, and a flight! I'll be flying out of RDU on August 12 :) That means less than 2 months to wait! Now, the next question is... does anybody know of apartments available?? Or people looking for roommates? If so, please let me know :) Woooooooo estoy tan emocionada!

A Few More Pictures

The first picture is a few years old, but it's from a photo shoot for Diego's old band - Aqui y Ahora. I just always loved this picture - he looks like such a brooding "rockero" :)

The second picture is of me and Diego at Parque Arauco (a niiiiiiiice mall in Santiago) back in November '07.

My, That's Quite a Large Sense of Entitlement You Have

I've been thinking lately about starting a completely different blog. I would still keep this one, because I like writing about everyday events, and I want to use it to keep people updated when I move back to Chile. But I would also love to start an entirely separate blog - a new, fresh idea that would keep people coming back to read. The challenging part is coming up with a concept. Well, here's one concept I will NOT be using, but one that would no doubt provide me with endless material (at least for the next 2 months): a blog that would be updated daily, spotlighting a different crazy customer that I have to talk to in my tech support job.

So, humor me, and let's just pretend I am actually launching that blog, and that this is one of the entries (actually I just need an excuse to write about these insane people I talk to at work - it's very cathartic). So, today's spotlight would be on Crazy Customer #1 - we'll just call her CC, for convenience sake. My morning was going so well today, and then the phone rang, and who was it? None other than CC, who had a problem with the cordless phone she had just bought. One of the phones was ok, but the other one had been fully charged up and still only displayed 1 bar of battery power - uh oh. Well, here's the thing. In the past, I would have immediately said, no problem, we can ship you some new batteries. But we received an email from the "higher-ups" in my company last week saying we were sending up too many battery requests (read: tell the customers to go buy their own replacement batteries). So I politely advised CC to simply replace the batteries in that phone, and if she was still having trouble, to give us a call back as we may need to replace the whole phone for her. Well good Lord - you would've thought I had suggested she go bungee-jumping without a cord, from the way she reacted. She was upset at the notion that I even suggested she drive to a drug store and spend a couple of dollars for batteries, when she shouldn't have to. For the record, I completely emphathized with her. If it's not working out of the box, she shouldn't have to spend more money to make it work. But I was just doing what I'd been told.

Well, if the customer insists that they don't want to go buy batteries, we are then allowed to send a battery request to our headquarters. So I politely informed her we could send her some replacement batteries - but when I told her how long it usually takes to ship them out (which really isn't long), she was indignant. She basically DEMANDED that we have a box of brand new batteries on her doorstep tomorrow. Yeah. Right. I don't know how many times I uttered the phrase "I'm doing all that I can, ma'am" to her - but apparently not enough to get it through her thick skull. Refer to my last entry, where I clearly stated that I am a PEON in this company. I'm not a supervisor. I don't have any power. None whatsoever. And this woman has the audacity to demand of me that I get those batteries to her house TOMORROW? That's rich.

The point of this whole post is to ask one simple question: Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Seriously, I've been puzzling over this for awhile now. What makes a customer think that by buying your product, they then have the right to call up customer service and act like a complete tool, demanding completely outrageous things? And expecting a huge company to drop everything and forget about all other customer orders ahead of yours and kiss YOUR butt?

This post isn't at all to say that when someone buys a product, they shouldn't expect superior customer service. I'm just saying it doesn't give you the right to call me up and cuss me out when you're having a problem with it, or to expect me to be able to work miracles. I'm not in the miracle business - sorry to disappoint.

Welcome to the Inferno

I was going to say "Hell", buuuuut I guess I shouldn't be so harsh on my job (although, Inferno and Hell pretty much carry the same connotation, but "Inferno" sounds a little more...poetic, maybe) - mainly because it's a job, and it pays. And it's in an air-conditioned office, which, given the recent tally of over-100 degree days in NC, is a great thing. But those are about all of its redeeming qualities. So, to all 4 readers of my blog, I present... (drum roll please) the list of things that suck about my job (job, company, etc.):

1. The training. Or, more accurately, lack thereof. I could write an entire blog entry just on this. But suffice it to say, I'm expected to do technical support on products for which the training consists of about 5 minutes in a conference room, with me hastily scribbling notes on a notepad as my supervisor talks a mile a minute.

2. The lack of resources. Once again, I am expected to provide technical support on products for which we have no user manuals... not even a leaflet... not even a product image. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Null (I'm running out of ways to say NOTHING). Now, one day I made the mistake of actually questioning this, asking one of my supervisors, "I was just wondering, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but... why do we do support for products that we don't even have a user manual on?"... Let's just say I received a less-than-satisfactory answer on this one, as well as a look that basically said, "How dare you question our ridiculous policies?"... YEAH... won't make THAT mistake again.

3. My supervisors. I basically have 3. One is cool, the other two are... well, not. Quite frankly. Look, I understand that their job doesn't revolve around answering my questions 24-7. But answering questions from their employees is certainly PART of their job. And when I ask ONE question in a 5-hour time period, I'm pretty sure I haven't maxed out my quota of questions for the day. But to judge by the looks on their faces when I go to ask them a question - I mean, they look at me as if I've suddenly sprouted 3 heads! This isn't exactly what you'd call encouraging.

4. The customer service policies of the company as a whole SUCK. And I have no control over them. Which for whatever reason, the customers calling in don't understand. "People!", I want to say to them. "I'm a peon in this company! I'm a tech support rep! I have no control over what goes onto the packages for these products! Believe me, if I did, I sure as heck wouldn't put GUARANTEED to work on there, because I KNOW it's not!" But alas, they don't seem to get this. Or maybe, they just need a scapegoat - so they choose me. So I get cussed out because the product they bought doesn't work, or because they're too stupid to read the manual and figure it out. Oh well.

5. I'm sure there's a 5th reason, but I'm kind of tired of typing for now, so I'll leave that for another day ;)

Sorry, fellow bloggers... sometimes it just helps to vent. And to realize that 2 months from now (Lord willing), I'll be back in Chile con mi amor! :)

I Can Finally Roll My R's!!! (And other good news)

Wow, where to begin. It's been an interesting (read: mostly good) day. Monday was a pretty sub-par day at work, yesterday was better, and today was still better. I'm liking this pattern! But not naive enough to think it will continue, with tomorrow being even better than today. :P Nonetheless, it was good. And yes, I discovered that at long last, I can FINALLY roll my R's!! This is a loooooong time coming, believe me. I'm 24 years old. The first time I remember having Spanish class was in elementary school, in 1st grade. I'm sure I retained little to nothing from that class, haha... but it was fun anyway. All I remember is that my teacher had this policy that when we played games or did activities or whatever, we could earn "Muy Bien" cards. Then, when we'd saved up a certain amount of Muy Bien cards, we could cash them in for a prize. 5 would buy you some candy, 10 something else a little more cool, and if you saved up enough... you could get a REALLY cool prize. But that took self-discipline, something I didn't have a lot of back then (and something I'm still working on to this day). Anyway, that's about all I remember from that class. Then I didn't take Spanish again until high school, and took 3 years of that, then 1 semester in college. Then I spent 2 months in Salamanca, Spain and a total of 7 months in Chile (broken up over a period of about a year and a half). Over that time, I've NEVER been able to roll my r's. Which has always frustrated me so much - and especially now, dating a native Spanish speaker who is BORN being able to roll his r's, it's doubly frustrating. So then today I'm driving home from work, and just practicing in my car (Lord knows why, I must've been bored sitting in traffic). And suddenly, it just HAPPENED. I could do it! Who knows what happened, but it finally just clicked. Anyway, needless to say, I was stoked. D used to tease me and say, "Di Carolina Herrera" and I never could! But now I can :P

In other news, my sister-in-law is due on July 4th, but the baby is still in the breach position, so her doctors went ahead and scheduled her for a C-section... and which day?? June 26, none other than D's birthday!! Haha, he thought that was so cool when I told him the baby would be born on his birthday :) (Assuming he doesn't decide to make an early appearance!).

In other not-so-good news, I just spent 48 minutes on the phone with my credit card company, all because I'm having trouble accessing my account online (I've never had problems with it before, until just recently). I got transferred 3 times and put on hold SEVEN times. At least the guy I talked to was nice... and he apologized profusely for all the trouble I've had, and the delay. Oh well, if the problem gets fixed, those 48 minutes were worth it. I mainly just spent my time on hold watching the Stanley Cup final game and talking to D, anyway. ;) Alright, this blog entry is getting entirely too long, and if anyone has actually read this far - wow. I'm impressed. Good night all!