A couple of years ago I got a similar call and since I was unemployed at the time I dropped everything and packed a bag to go to Arizona and stay with my grandmother for a week.  My grandfather was in the hospital and not doing well, and the doctors didn’t know if they’d be able to fix whatever was causing his health problems (which ultimately was a large number of blood clots).  I spent days in the hospital with him, and nights at home with grandma, trying my best to take care of the two of them in the only way I knew how – being there.  He was conscious but weak, and she was putting on a brave face and trying to stay strong.  One night while sitting at home on the couch talking with her about that day’s visit with his doctors she broke down and cried, not knowing what she was going to do or what would happen to him.  That was the first time I’d ever seen her cry.

Grandpa was stubborn though, and he pulled through and had moved from the hospital into the recovery facility to get back on his feet before I even left to go back home.  He’d soon be up and around, insisting on being capable of doing anything he needed done.  That was the man I’d grown up knowing, resilient and gruff, but strong-willed and unable to accept defeat.  He wanted to get better and go back to playing poker with his friends before the sun had cast first light, and that’s exactly what he did.  And more than anything, I know he wanted to be home with Grandma.  I was in the hospital room with him almost every day as friends and church members came by to wish him well, but never did he smile or perk up as much as when she came to visit.  I don’t think anything kept him alive more than the will to stay with her for a few more years.

When I was much younger I spent a lot of time at their house.  I played board games with Grandma and pretty much just avoided Grandpa as much as I could.  He was never mean to me, but let’s face it – grandmas are the fun ones.  He intimidated me before I even knew what that meant, but I still loved him unconditionally.  He taught me the value of the American flag, and the respect it deserves.  A military man and patriot to his core, he made sure to impress that upon me even at a young age.  I had a small flag on a stick, and he taught me how to stand it up, and never let it touch the ground.  The flag was always to be respected, something I’ve never been more aware of then at that young age getting a lesson from Grandpa.

Grandpa had a chair in the living room that was his chair and only his.  Nobody was allowed to lean on it, look at it, or breathe in its general vicinity.  You didn’t roughhouse near the chair, and most of importantly – you were never to sit in it.  So naturally, the grandkids sat in it all the time.  It became a game of who could sit in the chair the longest without getting caught, bonus points if you heard him approaching and held your ground.  Get caught and everyone else denied all knowledge of you being there.  Grandma used to sit in his chair when he wasn’t home (she must’ve had some kind of immunity to his Chair Rules) and often she’d pull me up in her lap and we’d play card games together, usually hand solitaire.  Even under my grandmother’s protection, when I heard the garage door open and close as he walked in, I bolted.  Every time.  I used to think I was so slick, pulling one over on Grandpa, sitting in his chair and getting away with it.  What fun was he anyways, denying us something so silly as a chair?  Now I know.  I know that he knew all along what we did when he wasn’t in the room.  He let us think he was mean and grumpy, because maybe he thought that’s what a grandpa should be most of the time.  But in his own way, he let us play our games and he let us feel powerful.  We were scolded when we broke the rules, but the Chair Rules seemed flimsy at best, only being enforced when we were too slow to get away before he made it in the room.  I wish I had thanked him for all the fun he let us have.  That he let me have.

I hopped on a plane with my dad just 14 hours after getting the phone call about my grandfather’s declining health.  It still didn’t seem fast enough.  I was convinced we were going to miss him somehow, that he wouldn’t be there to say goodbye to.  We actually ended up making with time to spare, and spent the next two days in his hospice room listening to him breathe and waiting for him to let go.  It still feels like such a horrible and heartless thing to say, to admit that in a way we were all just in the room waiting for him to pass away, but it’s true and it was something that we all knew was going to happen soon.  He was in pain, and we all wanted him to be at peace, and it’s really hard to look at someone you love so much and know that the only way they’ll ever get better is to not be alive anymore.  I sat in that room and I just stared at him.  Stared and hoped that something would happen and he’d be all better.  By the time we’d arrived on Saturday he was so far gone that he couldn’t see or speak, he mostly just slept or lay there breathing.  I watched and listened as my grandmother told him over and over that she’d be okay and that he could let go.  And it killed me inside each time I heard it.  Before that weekend, I had seen her cry once.  Now I was seeing it every other hour or so when his breath would catch, or he’d wince in pain if the nurses adjusted his bed sheets.  A man I’d grown up viewing as strong and ironclad, a bastion of strength, was lying in bed holding onto his life and I didn’t know why.  We all thought it was time.  We wanted it to be, as awful as that sounds.  Seeing him in that bed day in and day out was gut wrenching.  It was hard to merge the image I’d had of him all my life with this new image I was seeing in that bed.

The family all gathered in the room, coming in from all over the country that weekend, and stories were shared at his bedside.  There was laughter and tears, but it all felt really good.  One thing that I’ll always remember is how my dad described his relationship with Grandpa.  He said that as tough and strict as Grandpa had been while he was growing up, he’d never feared him.  Never been afraid of physical harm.  What scared him most was disappointing Grandpa.  My dad pulled some crazy stunts as a kid, most of which my rebellious youth couldn’t hold a candle to, but he always said the thing he hated most was seeing Grandpa look at him with disappointment.  Just hours before Grandpa died I held my dad close and let him cry.  Another example of tears not often seen, my dad had held back so much for so long, and he couldn’t any longer.  He wanted so bad to fix everything and make it all better, but he couldn’t and it hurt him immensely to have to admit it.  He wanted to fix it, but he knew deep down that it wasn’t a situation that could be fixed.  It had to play out, to the bitter end we all knew was coming, but nobody wanted to arrive.

I woke up the next morning to a phone call that he’d passed away overnight.  I was both sad and relieved.  It was over.  No more pain, no more sickness, no more struggling.  He was done with all that and resting at last.  The service was scheduled for a few days later, and even more family started arriving to comfort Grandma and to comfort each other.  I saw cousins and extended relatives that I hadn’t seen in years.  It was a somber occasion that brought us all together, but we used that occasion to make something positive and spent our time together catching up and sharing our own stories.  The service had a military aspect to it that would’ve made my grandfather very proud.  My cousin attended in his active duty army uniform and I know that Grandpa was/is so proud of him for his service.  The Navy had been a large part of his life, but any military service at all was looked at as very significant in his eyes, something I hope my cousin knows and cherishes.  Grandma was presented with a United States flag, and I sat in the church row behind her crying.  The service was short, with a reception for fellowship to follow.  A slideshow video was shown that had been put together for his 80th birthday, and again I couldn’t hold back.  It all still seemed so surreal.  My grandparents had just been to visit in December and he’d seemed fine.  Now he’s gone and all I can think is that at least I got to see him and spend time with him so recently.  That I couldn’t say it had been too long since I’d seen him.  Luckily it hadn’t been.

Death is hard to deal with.  Everyone handles it differently, no matter who it is we’ve lost.  We all handle it in our own way, but I just hope that it’s not something I have to handle again, on any level, for quite some time.

Goodbye Grandpa.  Thank you for all that you did for our family, and all that made you the man you were, a man I will always remember and admire.  I love you.

For the first 5 months of the year Keith and I were struggling through the process of building our first home.  We learned that people weren’t exaggerating when they always say that buying a home is one of the most stressful things you’ll do in life – and if you add to that the process of buying and then building it, you can just imagine where we were at for the 5 and a half months we dealt with it.  But it was during those times that I knew how much we really do belong together.  We fought more in those months than we had in the years of being together combined, but we always managed to come through it for the better.  Neither one of us would “win”, we just came to understand that the arguments were useless.  In the middle of such a hard time we didn’t need to be getting angry with each other, we needed to focus that attention elsewhere.  And in the end, doing so got the house built and us moved into it together.  And we’ve been making the house into a home ever since.  It’s amazing.

Right in the middle of moving my job made some major changes and the company began a massive project that would change the way everyone uses computers on a daily basis.  It has been a nightmare ever since.  Nobody will admit that the project was a mistake and that it’s failing miserably, and the users are suffering only slightly more than those of us in IT that are having to hear about it and try to fix it all.  The executives that made the decision have seen the problems and made sure they don’t get switched over to the new system, but they refuse to admit that it is not working out the way they’d planned for everyone else; admitting this would be admitting a mistake and they’d rather let the company and employees suffer rather than do that.  This has been a life lesson for me though, one I intend to take to heart and remember – there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, but you have to be willing to admit them, learn from them, and move past them.  Acting like it never happened doesn’t make anything better.

I have spent more time with Keith’s parents this year than in past years, partially due to us living so much closer now.  They come visit us sometimes, but mostly we drive out to visit them and there is not a drop of complaint coming from me when stating that.  They’ve been nothing but amazing to me since first meeting me, but this past year has only shown it more.  They came to the house when we first moved in, though hesitant about the big step we’d taken together, and helped us hang ceiling fans.  Keith has pointed out to me that even his stoic father has come to care for me in his own way, a man that I feared meeting from the very beginning.  I was worried he’d hate me or never want to see me, but from the first time they invited me over he’s been awesome.  I research things about sports sometimes before going over to their house just so I can sit and talk to him while he watches whatever game happens to be on, usually prompting curious looks from Keith as though I’ve sprouted wings and a tail.  I don’t care for sports one bit, but his dad does and I’ll take whatever opportunities I can to try and bond.  Not that I have to luckily, but I still try.  He refers to us as “the boys” when asking about when we’re coming out next or what we’re up to, and that gives me warm fuzzies.  I called his mom to wish her a happy birthday just last week and she told me she loved me, catching me off guard and almost making me cry.  Keith swears she’s said it to me before, but I only remember her saying it to us as a pair when we were leaving to head home after a visit, never directly to me.  Maybe she has and I just don’t remember it, but hearing it from her over the phone made me really realize that they do care about me and that’s all I ever wanted from them.  The fact that they are so much fun to hang out with only makes it better.  My in-laws (as it were) are just wonderful.

As the year is closing I know that next year won’t bring about any drastic differences, but I’m ready for it all the same.  I make no big promises of change to come, or bid adieu to 2011 with rampant joy that it’s over with.  Time isn’t the enemy, it’s what you do with it that can cause frustrations.  I plan no big feats for this coming 12 months, but I do plan to make the most of them and have some fun along the way.  :)

Things started going wrong from the very beginning.  Paperwork was signed by mid-December to get the process started, but because it was so close to the holidays we were unable to schedule any appointments with the design studio for a number of weeks.  Without being able to pick out the options for the house, this put the build process on hold for almost a month.  Once the choices were picked out we found out the lot we owned was pre-zoned and permitted for a house with a covered patio in the back (the exact opposite of what we’d been told during the sales meetings), but we weren’t including that in our design; this meant having to wait for the permit to be revised which took over a month.  Yes, that’s right, over a month for a revision.  Turns out that the city office that handles permit revisions only processes them on Mondays and Fridays, so if yours doesn’t get done on one of those days it just sits in the pile for the rest of the week.  Bureaucracy at its finest.

Due to already being well into February, we had to sign and extend our apartment lease by a little over a month to ensure we were covered with a place to live through the end of May.  This one month extension cost us an extra $400 on top of the rent we already paid monthly, so we were not at all pleased with the money these delays were costing us.  By extending this extra month and a half we were giving KB Home ample time to finish the house by May 11th as they were planning with plenty leftover for us to schedule closing and a move date.  Or so we thought.

We put in the required 60 days notice at the apartment complex at the end of March, and less than one week later the house was vandalized and the copper wiring was all stripped and stolen.  We were devastated.  I went out the next morning to see the damage and it was all I could do not to cry in front of the builder.  Holes in the walls and ceiling, wires hanging from the support beams, and any feeling of safety and security stripped away.  It was at that point that we began to give serious consideration to abandoning the build process and looking elsewhere.  Our builder assured us the vandalism would only set us back a few days.  Fast forward 2 weeks and the copper was still not in.  We received a voicemail on April 18th that the copper was going in and being inspected and that we were “on schedule” for completion the last day of May.  Again, our hearts sank and we weren’t sure what to do.  We had to be out of the apartment by the last day of May, there was no budge room on that.  If the house wasn’t even completed until May 31st we would have no time to close on the mortgage, let alone get moved out.

After a very angry phone call back to the sales staff and builder at KB Home, they were magically able to condense the schedule to complete the house by May 20th and closing set for the 27th.  This didn’t give us much room at all for any further delays since the following Monday would be a national holiday, but we decided to try and hold onto hope that something might go right for us finally, and we plowed ahead.  As the deadline got closer and closer, calls were ignored and emails went unanswered.  We went to the house every weekend to check progress, and sometimes during the week, and noticed many things done wrong or not done at all, yet nobody at KB would communicate with us what was going on.  I took matters into my own hands at this point and sent a lengthy email to KB Home’s corporate office explaining the situation and everything that had happened so far in the process, and all of a sudden phone calls were returned and emails started getting replied to.  When we finally got a hold of someone, the update we were given was that they were a week behind schedule again and that the house would be completed on the 27th.  This meant that closing would absolutely have to be the next business day, the following Tuesday and we would have to move the same day or else we’d be in violation of our apartment lease agreement.

Fast forward again and the 27th arrived with the house not being complete.  All the major work was done, but cosmetic fixes were still being applied, and cleaning had yet to take place to get all the trash out and the counters and windows clean.  That weekend of last minute packing was the culmination of all the stress of the whole build process, waiting for something else to fall apart and ruin everything.  By some miracle, it didn’t.  We inspected the house a final time on Tuesday morning and then closing immediately followed.  Complications caused the process to take almost 4 hours, but when it was finally done keys were handed over and we owned our house.  Huge sigh of relief that it was all over, right?  Not quite.

The movers were 3 hours late that afternoon, and then took 4 hours to move everything, breaking quite a few items in the process (still waiting to be compensated for that, thanks a lot AB Moving).  By the time they left is was 11 o’clock at night and Keith and I were physically, mentally, and emotionally drained.  But the fun of home ownership had just begun.  We spent the next few days running all over the place making appointments for various service installs at the house, getting utilities turned on in our name, ordering furniture (which was delayed 2 weeks and then still arrived damaged just this past weekend, thanks a lot Rooms To Go), etc.  By the end of the first week, I don’t know how we still had the ability to string two sentences together.  I wanted to crawl under a rock and never come back out.

We’ve been in the house for a few weeks now and are getting adjusted.  We still find things here and there that need to be fixed, but we’re making our own changes and improvements along the way.  I’m responsible for watering the lawn, and as much of a pain as it is to do so, I do get a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that I’m keeping the lawn alive (or more to the point, revitalizing what has been almost dead since we moved in), and I like that.  We still have a lot to learn and a lot to do, but we’re getting there and we’re doing so together.  For the first time, we have a home, not just a place we rent from someone and know that eventually we’ll be moving out of.  This has a more solid and stable feeling to it, and that means a lot to me.  Was it worth the 6 months of stress and frustration?  I honestly don’t know how to answer that.  But I do know that I’m glad it’s over with and I’m glad we’re getting settled into our first house – our home.

1.  When in doubt, restart your computer.  You would be surprised how often that fixes whatever problems you’re experiencing.  Application crashed and you can’t get it to open again?  Restart.  Computer moving very slowly for no particular reason?  Restart.  Just about anything else?  Restart.  Seriously, restarting not only clears out the virtual memory that may have become bogged down the longer the PC has been on, but it ends any active applications running and gives you a fresh start when it reboots.  One of my my favorite British comedies, “The IT Crowd“, addresses this best.  When one of the main characters answers the helpdesk line, his introduction consists of “IT this is Roy, have you tried turning it off and on again?”  Brilliant, and entirely accurate.

2.  Don’t be afraid to use Google.  Search engines have evolved by leaps and bounds in the past 10 years, and now you can find just about anything you could possibly want using only the internet by making use of the tools available to you.  If you have a question about computers, the odds are very likely that at least one thousand other people have at one point had the same question, and the answer is on the internet just waiting for you to ask.  You want to know how to add a printer to your computer? Google it.  Want to know how to change the background picture on your desktop? Google it.  The internet is a vast encyclopedia of knowledge, you just have to pose the right question to get an answer.  If you get an error and you don’t know what it means, type the first sentence into Google and see what you get; chances are it will auto-complete before you’re half through typing because others have also had this problem.

3.  When in doubt, don’t do it.  If your printer stops working and you think that maybe prying it apart with a screwdriver will help you find the problem, don’t do it.  There’s a difference between being proactive and being ridiculous.  You can’t do everything for yourself.  Yes, you can use the internet to search for possible causes to your problem, but you’re not helping matters by taking tools to the machine to try and get it working again.  You have to know when to stop and ask for help.  Don’t call someone for help if you can’t find the power button.  Do call someone for help if the printer is powered on, has paper and ink, yet doesn’t seem to print for some reason.  If you aren’t sure you know what you’re doing, don’t try.  There is a pretty good chance you’ll only make matters worse (even unintentionally) and that isn’t necessary.  I have never been upset or frustrated with someone for having a genuine problem they need help with; what does get frustrating however is the person who calls a few times a week with problems that they’ve either had before or are easily fixed by anyone with common sense.  You don’t have to have a college degree in technology to get by on a daily basis, no matter how much you may want to pretend that’s the case.

4.  Try to be realistic with your expectations.  I cannot even attempt to count how many times I’ve gotten calls from family, friends, and people in the workplace where they express frustration over something not working like they expect, but their expectations are unrealistic.  Technology is amazing nowadays, I’ll grant you that, but if you think for a second that you should be able to restart your PC and have it back up and running in 30 seconds, you’ve lost your mind.  Yes, some will do that.  Those “some” would be the computers with a very powerful processor, a large amount of RAM, and that were made in the last year or less.  Please don’t expect your 4 year old Dell running Windows XP with 512 MB of RAM to restart in less  than a couple minutes.  It won’t happen.  If you are connecting to the internet using DSL and trying to load a 4 minute video on YouTube, please don’t complain that it takes a few minutes.  You are using a slow internet connection and accessing a data intensive website.  It’ll load.  You just have to be realistic with your expectations.  People who don’t understand how things work often assume they’re broken when in actuality they’re performing exactly as they should be.  If you want a fast computer, you’re gonna pay for it.  That $395 laptop you bought on sale at Best Buy isn’t going to be “state of the art” for more than a couple months (sad truth, but there you have it).  Don’t expect it to last you until your toddler graduates college.

5.  If and when your computer someday breaks, please be courteous to whoever you take it to for repairs.  If you call a helpdesk or a PC repair shop, please don’t yell at them or vent your frustration on them because your computer crashed.  They didn’t build your PC.  They didn’t fill it with data and crash it.  They didn’t have anything to do with it whatsoever, yet it is not at all uncommon for people in the IT field to bear the brunt of the frustration you feel when something goes wrong.  Being in the service industry doesn’t mean they should have to stand there and listen to you whine and complain and berate them.  I’ve had it happen to me all too often, and it’s uncalled for.  Things break, it’s a fact of life.  There is an entire professional field of people who are solely there to help you find the problem and attempt to fix it.  Just please be nice when asking for help.  The fact that you’re having to ask at all shows us that something’s wrong and you’re in need of assistance, so yelling and screaming about how you didn’t do anything and it just randomly broke one day isn’t going to help matters.

And there you have it.  Five easy and user-friendly tips for handling some of the most common problems you’ll run across.  Pain free, right?  You’re on your way to being self-sufficient.  Congratulations!

I find it extremely frustrating that this is the only reason that I’m not allowed to donate my blood for a good cause.  Someone could be dying somewhere, in need of a transfusion, and my blood could be being put to use, but instead I am turned away because I’ve “had sex with other men, at any time since 1977“.  So anyone who was gay before 1977 seems to be okay, but if you have been gay since then your blood might as well be murky oil.  Or more to the point of what they’re assuming, swimming with AIDS.

I once knew someone who had tried to donate blood and received the same results; he started referring to the problem as “GAIDS”.  Anyone gay is automatically assumed to have AIDS, and their blood can’t be taken.  It’s apparently too big a risk.  Isn’t all blood tested though anyways?  Shouldn’t the perfectly healthy people be allowed to give blood since it’s going to be tested and proved healthy?  And on  the off-chance that someone doesn’t know they’re sick, that blood will be caught in the test process and disposed of before being given to anyone else.  No blood should be given to someone in need of a transfusion without being tested, so there’s no excuse for this.  From what I’ve heard in the past, it’s that the amount of infected blood in gay donors is much higher than straight donors, so they waste money taking the blood and testing it only to have to reject it.  I might find this plausible except for one big flaw…there are plenty of infected straight donors.  Plenty.

I read through the restrictions on giving blood even after seeing the very first one on the list being the one that eliminated me.  The rest were related to drug use (sharing needles), or traveling to foreign countries.  What bothers me even more than the question that ruled out my potential donation is the lack of a question that should’ve ruled out others.  Where was the question regarding promiscuous heterosexuals?  I have been in a monogamous relationship for years, after having had a blood test in the past to confirm that I had no problems (not that I was ever wild enough in the past to contract any, but peace of mind is a very good thing), and yet I’m still considered a very high risk; on the other hand you have a heterosexual male who could’ve come to work today after hooking up with a stranger last night, who’s had more partners in the past year  than there are stars on the American flag, and he’s not even questioned about his sexual history.  Because he’s straight, he’s not considered a risk.  His lifestyle is far more prone to potential problems than mine or my partner’s, but we are ruled out because of something we can’t help, and he’s not even asked about something he willingly takes part in.  ”He” being a hypothetical figment of my frustrated imagination of course.

The point is that not every heterosexual that walks in to donate blood is a healthy and sexually responsible candidate.  But on that same token, you must also admit that not every homosexual who comes in is a promiscuous potentially hazardous risk that should be shunned.  It’s discrimination, pure and simple, and it needs to be stopped.  If you look at the statistics, black men or more likely to contract AIDS than white men, gay or straight.  Does that mean that anyone black who wishes to donate blood should be turned away at the door?  Absolutely not, and anyone who tried to put a restriction like that in place would be branded a racist.  So why is it okay to restrict based solely on sexual orientation but not on race?

It isn’t.  Things need to change, and soon.

This will be my 3rd Valentine’s Day with Keith, and we’ve never made a big deal of it.  I think the first year we got cards or something like that, but that was likely due to the fact that our relationship was still so new.  I don’t recall doing anything last year, and I know we haven’t done anything for this year.   I love him every single day of the year, none any more than the others, and I refuse to believe that I should give in to the hype and go crazy one day a year to make sure he knows how special he is to me.

When I was single, I would’ve given anything to be in a relationship on Valentine’s.  I had this fantasy that it would be amazing and romantic and there’d be flowers and dinner and soft whispers of how much we’re in love.  What I didn’t realize was that to its own extent, each day can be like that.  Every morning when Keith wakes me up as he leaves for work, he kisses me and tells me he loves me.  When I get home from work, I tell him how much I missed him and we generally talk about our day together.  If we talk on the phone, we always end the call with “I love you” not because it’s habit, but because it’s true.  I love him every day of the year, no exceptions.  There’s no reason why Valentine’s Day should make me love him even more, or feel the need to show him.  He knows I love him, I show him all year.  We go out to dinner, we do things together other times; I no longer see this one day a year as the pinnacle of romance that it’s made out to be.  I see it as what it is – another day of the year.

I love it when people call IT to open a ticket for something, then call us back 2 and 3 times a day to check the status.  We haven’t forgotten you.  The system kicks us constant email reminders letting us know there are pending issues.  We don’t need you checking up on us like we’re toddlers getting into the paste.

I just got off the phone with someone who opened a ticket a couple days ago and called in to tell me that it should’ve been a simple fix and there’s no way it should take 2 days to resolve; add to that the fact that he said “there’s no way you’re that busy” and I have no more patience.

Fact is, we are “that busy” and it’s mostly due to people like him.  You want us to fix your issue?  Don’t call us 3 times a day asking us the status – that takes away time it could be being worked on.  Don’t berate us for taking long.  That lessens our motivation to help you any faster than we’re already moving.

And most importantly, don’t presume to know how busy we are.  While I’m on the phone with you, there are 3 calls holding right behind you waiting for my attention.  The irony is, the reason we’re so busy is people calling all the time when there aren’t actually issues.  About half the daily call volume at any IT helpdesk is people either complaining that something’s broken when they’re actually doing it wrong, or calling to check the status of something they reported 30 minutes ago.

I love working in IT, and I fully acknowledge the fact that I probably wouldn’t have a job if some people weren’t so completely inept, but there comes a time when it goes beyond customer service and into being a kindergarten teacher.  When I have to tell a half dozen people a day that they locked themselves out of an account because they had their caps lock on when typing their password, that’s too much.  It’s just too much.

And on that note…it’s back to work I go.

We celebrated the two year anniversary of our first date a few weeks ago.  Had a nice dinner together and then came home and curled up on the couch to watch TV.  Nothing exorbitant or out of the ordinary for us, but it was nice to remember where it all started.  I remember our awkward start.  The conversations where we tried to find common topics to discuss.  The constant texting and butterflies in my stomach when he’d make me smile.  Before Keith I had gone out on a few dates, but never clicked with anyone.  There wasn’t even the thought that any of them could have been the one.  I knew before our first date that Keith was special, and he proved me right that first time we met and has kept proving it since.

I remember that we used to joke about not having any differences.  Every time one of us would bring up an interest, the other one jumped in and emphatically expressed their interest as well; it became a game with us to find something the other one didn’t like.  And what was so great is that to this day our differences don’t cause any rifts.  We each have things we enjoy that the other doesn’t necessarily want to share in, and that’s perfectly fine.  To be honest, I’ve seen those couples where they want to do absolutely everything together and I’m glad that’s not us.  I’m glad he has his separate interests and I enjoy having my own.  We bond over many things, but we both know that it doesn’t have to be everything. This is a man I can talk about Star Trek with.  A man who doesn’t think I’m ridiculous for still loving Pokemon.  A man who lights up when he tells me about his favorite episodes of Power Rangers.  A man who wakes me up every morning with a kiss, and tells me he loves me every night before bed.  He’s everything I used to think I would want someday, and so much more.

Over the years he’s met my dad and much of his side of the family, and likewise I’ve met his parents and enjoyed many homemade meals at their home.  Keith’s father has always frowned on him being gay, but even with that being said he has welcomed me into their home and treated me as a guest many times over.  He’s laughed with me and even discussed sports with me (the shocker is that for the most part I was able to keep up my side of the conversation).  I know that his personal opinion doesn’t agree with our relationship, but in spite of that he treats his son and me as human beings and has come to accept me as a part of his family.  Keith’s mother on the other hand has been amazing and wonderful to me since the first time I was invited over.  She is clearly where Keith gets his sense of humor, and seeing their dynamic together makes me wish that I had that same bond.

Everyone who’s met Keith has always told me how obvious it is that we’re good for each other.  Whenever I go somewhere without Keith I never hear the end of it from some of my friends who love his company as much as they love mine.  He’s a permanent fixture in my life and they know it, and they want to make sure he knows that they want him around too.  It warms my heart to hear people ask me how he’s doing, or to tell him they say hello.  My youngest brother adores Keith and loves it when he comes to visit.  The bond they have is so special and seeing them laugh and hang out is very important to me.  I can’t imagine having someone in my life that I didn’t want to introduce to my family or friends.

We’ve discussed getting a house together in the next 6 months.  We’ve discussed children in our future.  These are things that I know will happen one way or another, it’s just a matter of getting there.  But if these past two years are any indication of how happy we’ll be in the years to come, I can’t wait to see what’s next.  I love you Keith.

Just about every job is customer service related in one way or another.  It really just depends on what you do and who you interact with, but almost every job requires some amount of human interaction, be it by phone, email, or in person.  However, this post isn’t about the people working on the CS side of things as much as it is about the people who in some form or fashion use that customer service.  While my particular observations will mainly be based on my work in the IT field (and will be presented as such), many are pretty universal.  So sit back, grab a pen and paper, and take notes ladies and gentlemen.  It’s time to learn how to be a decent human being.

1.  First and foremost, PLEASE do not chew gum or eat while you’re on the phone with us (and I speak for anyone and everyone who answers a phone as any part of their CS job).  The last thing I wanna hear in between sentences (let alone while you’re talking) is you smacking your gum in my ear, or chewing your granola bar.  As a common courtesy, you could wait until you’re off the phone to do that.  If you don’t, we reserve the right to pull up your address and send you a care package with laxative laced snacks.  Enjoy.

2.  The majority of the call centers you call for any kind of assistance have a queue setup where the agent’s phone automatically picks up when your call goes through.  They most likely don’t have a ringing phone that they have to pick up.  The reason I say this is because that also means that when the call is over, they don’t have a receiver to hang up – they’re usually using a headset that’s always on.  The moral of the story?  Please hang up when the call is over.  When the call is over and you just say bye and go back to what you were doing before (this mainly applies to people who call on speakerphone) without hanging up, we have to listen to you talking and rambling in the background, or manually release the call ourselves; and speaking from experiences, some companies don’t look kindly on any force-released calls because it could be construed as them hanging up on the customer.  So do us a favor – when the call is over, hang up.

3.  Depending on what you’re calling about, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be providing us with some specific information in order to help you.  Please don’t give us all that information in the first sentence you speak.  I can’t tell you how many conversations have gone something like this:

Me:  IT Support, may I have your full name please?

Them:  Yeah, this is Mary Johnson and I’m calling from 800-555-0000 in Nowhereville, USA and I have a question about my Dell Optiplex 780 computer running Windows XP SP3 and how it handles this program that I’m trying to use which was given to me by my coworker named David Rodriguez and I can’t seem to get it to install correctly even though his works fine.  What’s wrong with it?

Me:  Umm…so your name is Mary Johnson?

Please don’t flood the rep with information they haven’t asked for.  It’s overkill.  Call centers require information be tracked when people call in, and every ticketing system is different.  We have to move around from screen to screen to put your information in correctly to make sure it all gets handled and notated.  If you throw everything at us in one sentence when we’re not ready, you’re just gonna have to repeat yourself in a few moments and we both know you’re gonna get frustrated with us because you already said it once.  Please, just wait until we ask for the information.  Because if we feel like it, we can ask you for the information 8 times even though we already have it just to frustrate you more.  And we will.  Trust me.

4.  If you’re calling in to tell IT that your printer doesn’t work, the correct answer to our question of what type of printer you have should not be “umm…I don’t know, let me look”.  Prepare yourself.  You’re calling about a printer, chances are we’ll need to know what kind.  If you insist on not being any help at all, I’ll tell you that we also require the teeny tiny serial number on the back of the big printer, as well as the barcode number for the ink.  We don’t really need that.  But you must learn to be prepared.  Better to have more information than we’ll need than to keep us waiting while you look everything up.  There are other people calling for help, and they’re having to wait because you didn’t have any common sense.

5.  Computers can be fickle.  Sometimes, problems resolve themselves without any external influence.  Or sometimes, you might not be the only having the problem and someone else reports it and it’s been fixed.  Please don’t notice a problem, then wait 30 minutes to call and report it.  It might’ve been fixed already.  I can’t even express how many times someone has called to report a problem and in the middle of the call say “oh…well it’s working now” while they’re talking to me.  Please check before you call in.  You’re wasting your time and ours.  And I like my time.  Yours I don’t care about.

6.  Punctuation exists for a reason.  If you see something that has a hyphen or a period in it, it’s almost definitely meant to be there for one reason or another.  A perfect IT example would be what’s known as your IP address, a unique identifier of your computer on a network (or the web as a whole).  A basic example would be 172.24.14.3 which if read without punctuation comes across as 17224143.  That’s not helpful to me, because that could be 172.24.1.43 or 17.22.41.43 or any other number of combinations.  Those periods are there because they need to be.  When you give me the number, place them there.  You don’t get to pick and choose what you think is important – acting like that is probably why you’re needing to call in and report something isn’t working.

7.  Please, for the love of all that is good and decent in this world, do not call IT and read us the error message on your screen word for word with all the reference numbers and program names and so forth.  Unless we ask you to.  Which we won’t.  99 times out of 100, we don’t need to hear the whole message.  Most of the time we can get it by the first few words, or even better – by seeing it.  Send us a screenshot, or tell us what you were doing when it popped up.  It would be rude of us to interrupt you while you read that practically useless error message jargon, but it’s also rude of you to just keep going non-stop without taking a breath long enough for us to interject.  ASK what we need to help you, don’t presume to think you know what’s necessary.  You think you’re being helpful, so you get partial points for that – but you aren’t being helpful, you’re being annoying, so now you have negative points.  Bummer for you.

8.  If you had to wait on hold to talk to someone, I apologize.  Chances are there’s some kind of issue that’s causing a higher than normal call volume, or perhaps someone is out at lunch and there are less people operating the phones, or maybe it’s just a randomly high call volume afternoon.  The first words I hear out of your mouth don’t need to be “gosh it took forever to reach someone!” in an agitated and rude voice.  If you had to wait to reach someone, that means we’ve all been on back-to-back phone calls trying to get through everyone else who is also calling for whatever reason at that moment in time.  We know we’re busy.  We know it more than you do.  Don’t be an ass and get mad at us for it.  One of the nicest things I’ve heard someone say in a similar situation was something to the tune of, “Goodness, you must be busy since I had to wait a few minutes more than normal to reach someone.  I hate to be adding to that, but I do have a question for you.”  That person was awesome.  How hard is that?  How difficult is it to be polite?  From the trend I’ve noticed over the years of working IT and customer service, apparently it’s VERY difficult for people to be polite.  And that’s a sad truth.

9.  People who work in IT are usually big nerds who love gadgets and toys and doing things themselves.  It’s not always the case, but speaking for myself and most of the people I know doing similar things – it’s true.  As such, we enjoy building tools that help to automate the most common issues that come up.  What’s the number one issue in the history of IT?  ”Umm…yeah…I…uh…forgot my password.”  We hear this approximately 15 million times a day.  Give or take about 14.99 million, but it’s still a lot.  Most companies have automated tools in place that you can reset your own password, but nobody wants to use them.  The number one excuse people give when we ask why they chose not to use that tool is that they think it’s faster to call IT than to use the tool.  No it isn’t.  You had to pick up the phone, dial, wait to reach someone, give us your information, then we had to pull you up and reset it, then give it to you and wait for you to test.  All you had to do for the automated tool was pull up the site and type in your ID.  How hard is that?  How long did that take?  People use computers daily in this day and age, but they still seem afraid of anything automated.  Embrace the changes people.  Except for robot overlords.  Don’t embrace that change.  No good will come of it.

10.  Be conscious of how you breathe.  Right up there with chewing in my ear, people who breathe heavily straight into the phone are at the top of my pet peeve list.  It’s very frustrating to be trying to talk to someone and all you hear on the other end is deep wheezing because the phone is right up against their mouth and for whatever reason they’re gasping for air.  You’re not Darth Vader.  Breathe normally and quietly.  You sound like you just climbed 5 flights of stairs.  Which you didn’t.  Don’t lie.

11.  If the instructions on screen say to create a password with numbers and letters, don’t call us complaining of an error when you entered “password” and expected it to work.  Probably half of the calls to IT could be solved if the person calling had simply glanced at their screen to look for a clue as to what might’ve gone wrong.  In many cases, the error message itself will tell you exactly what you did wrong or how to fix it, but people will still call IT because they got an error and don’t know what to do.  Stop being afraid of your computer.  It would take you less time to read what’s on the screen to see if it’s something you can fix yourself than to pick up the phone, call us, wait on hold, then reach someone and try to explain it to them.  We’re here to help, obviously, but there are more than enough genuine problems to keep us busy – we’d really like it if half our calls weren’t “it says my password’s expired and needs to be changed, does that mean I have to change it to a new password?”

12.  Speakerphone is one of the worst features ever introduced to a phone.  It has some good uses, yes, but the bad far outweigh the good.  Please please please do not call anyone on speakerphone simply because you’re too lazy to hold the phone to your ear.  On speakerphone everything you do is amplified times 10.  Every key you type, every squeak of your chair, ever drawer you open and shut, and every word you feel the need to shout directly into the speaker – all of this is blaring straight into my ear.  It’s painful and infuriating and I’m not able to concentrate on how I’m going to solve your problem, because all I’m thinking about is where I’m going to hide your lifeless body that was beaten to death with the phone’s base station that you insisted on screaming into.

13.  If you call ANY customer service place and they know you by name alone, that’s not a good thing.  I don’t care how nice you are, if you’re calling often enough that everyone knows you, you’re calling way too much.  I’ve worked in a few different IT positions over the years, and in every one of them the IT department as a whole would discuss the people who called the most often.  Granted, we talked more about the rude people who called all the time and were no fun to talk to, but even if you’re nice – you’re still getting talked about.  Just understand that.  You may call and laugh when we recognize your voice, but we’re not laughing.  At all.

14.  No matter what position you’re in within a company, don’t call IT acting like you’re better than us.  I’m not saying this because I feel that I’m better than anyone else, I’m saying it because I deserve to be talked to like a human being, not a servant who merely exists to reset your password and install software for you.  Being a manager or a VP doesn’t mean you’re a superior human being above the lowly IT helpdesk.  Just remember, better or not, you’re still the one having to call us because you have a problem.  And I can just as easily reset your password to “AssHat1″ as anything else.  So be nice.  :-)

15.  Customer service is a mixed field.  You’ll get people who genuinely love what they do, and people who only see it as a job and nothing else.  I can look back on calls I have had to make myself and there were only a few where the rep I spoke with was overly pleasant and extremely helpful, above and beyond what was to be expected by the circumstances I was calling under.  I can also look back and remember many many more times when I spoke to someone rude who wasn’t interested in helping and even occasionally disconnected the call if they didn’t understand what I was asking for.  What’s my point?  Try to focus on the good reps.  I’ve had bad days before where my tone wasn’t what it should’ve been or where I was a little short with someone who frustrated me, and people will jump on any opportunity to demand to speak to a manager and complain.  However, I’ve had far more days where I’m in a good mood and pleasant and helpful, and I can count on one hand the number of times anyone has asked to talk to my manager to compliment me.  Don’t be so quick to complain and hesitant to compliment.  Nothing can make a bad day better like hearing someone tell you that you were really awesome and that they’d like to pass along their satisfaction to your boss.  If you talk a customer service rep of any type that has really helped you, take a minute and make sure their boss knows they’re doing a good job.  It makes all the difference in the world, trust me.

Alright, the list was longer than I thought it would be, and I’ll probably still add to it in the future.  But I feel very strongly about these things.  Maybe you do too.  Maybe you don’t.  The point is, just try to remember some of these when you have to call IT or any other kind of call center.  It makes a world of difference in how you’re treated, believe me.