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!

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.

1. When you get on an elevator and I’m the only other person already on, there is absolutely no reason why there should be any physical contact between us.  I have never been on an elevator so small that two people can’t ride comfortably without being close to each other.  Step back.  Chances are, you smell and I don’t want you rubbing up against me.
2. If you walk up to the elevator and I’m standing there waiting, and the button is glowing, you can safely assume that I did not just choose that spot randomly to hang out at.  I pushed the button and am waiting for an elevator to arrive.  There is no need for you to walk over, make eye contact with me, and push the button 7 times – it won’t make the elevator come any faster.  It will however make me step on your foot when I get off the elevator at my floor.
3. Do not listen to your voicemails on speaker-phone.  We don’t care if your spouse left you a romantic message telling you to be confident and try your hardest.  We don’t care if your stalker left a message simply of their heavy breathing.  And we don’t care if you left yourself a message reminding you not to forget your gym shorts in the bottom drawer again.  Stop being lazy and pick up the damn receiver and listen to the messages instead of inflicting them on the whole office.  Otherwise, I’m going to call you after hours and leave a message stating that we’re foreclosing your home because your last mortgage payment bounced and our research shows it was due to your excessive amount of money spent on hookers, and then I’ll laugh hysterically when you listen to that on speaker-phone the following day.
4. I don’t care how much you love your ringtone or text message alert sound, nobody else in the office does.  If we hear it once, we assume you forgot to put it on silent and we let it go by without much thought.  18 times later, I’m going to beat you over the head with a 3 hole punch.  I don’t want to hear the same sound over and over again all day long just so you can feel important that someone is text messaging you.  You’re not.  The autopsy will confirm that.
5. If a meeting starts at 2 and ends at 3, an appropriate time to show up is not 2:52.  The meeting is over.  At this point, we’re all wondering where you were, and figuring out a way to punish you for not showing up.  Your half-hearted claim that you were busy and couldn’t get away from your desk is bull.  I saw you surfing Facebook earlier and updating your twitter all morning.  We will now shun you.  That big luncheon that was scheduled for next week which we told you was cancelled?  It wasn’t.  We’re gonna have a blast.  Then call you 8 minutes before it’s over and ask why you couldn’t make it.  Tweet about that.
6. You’re busy.  I’m busy.  We’re all busy.  When do you ever see me sitting around telling anyone who passes by how much I wish I had more work to do?  Oh yeah, it was never.  Stop trying to get me to do your job and mine as well simply because you’re feeling overwhelmed.  Once or twice, fine, I’m a reasonable guy.  Every day?  I’ll bite you, I swear I will.
7. Parking garages (and even parking lots) often have spaces designated as being for “compact cars”.  So why is it they’re always filled with Hummers and Ford F350s?  And I say filled because I mean filled.  They take up the whole spot, plus some overflow on each side, making it impossible for anyone else to park in the directly surrounding spots for fear of not being able to open their doors.  So instead of 3 cars getting spots, your one humongously oversized truck/SUV/tank gets it.  I would spread a rumor that you have tiny genitalia, but it’s no fun to spread a rumor that’s very likely true.  I’ll just consistently let the air out of your tires, and practice my voodoo.  Just wait.  I’ll getcha.
8. If you see me approaching the elevator and start pushing the button to close the doors because you want it to yourself, I will purposely run and throw my body onto the elevator and stare at you the whole ride up.  And if I get off before you, I’ll push the buttons for every other floor and then stare at you with a smile as the doors close behind me.  Stop being an ass.
9. If you need to have more than 30 second conversation with someone, schedule time in a small conference room to discuss your issues.  I don’t want you standing right behind me talking to someone about how the deadline for the such and such is tomorrow and you haven’t finished the thingamajig and you’re gonna jump off the roof if you don’t get it done in time since you’ll almost certainly be fired for being incompetent.  If I have to listen to you talking about that for more than 30 seconds, I’ll show you the way to the roof and advise you not to land in any bushes or soft objects below.
10. Please don’t bring Chinese food into work for lunch, and then eat it at your desk.  Just about every corporate building has a cafeteria – a place specifically designed to smell like food and facilitate its being eaten.  You wanna eat a sandwich at your desk?  Fine.  Go for it.  You wanna eat something that’s going to smell up the whole office?  Be aware that I’m going to lean over your cube and spray you in the face with air freshener to try and balance it out.  You have been given fair warning.
11. If you’re going to bring up every fundraiser your child’s school has and expect your coworkers to buy all that useless crap that we don’t really want, then you had better be willing to do the same when we start peddling our kids’ crap.  Too many times have I seen people sell popcorn, girl scout cookies, wrapping paper, and all other kinds of ridiculously random stuff to coworkers, then turn around and say that they don’t have any money to return the favor, all the while planning their next family trip to who-knows-where.  If you don’t buy the stuff I’m peddling, I will sneak sugar into your carry-on baggage and warn the airport that you’re smuggling cocaine.  Enjoy your cavity search.
12. Newsflash: sound travels.  If you’re listening to a radio at your desk, everyone you can hear it.  There does not exist a comfortable volume that you can both hear the music over the sound of your keyboard and mouse clicks, but still keep your neighbors from having to listen to it.  What’s worse is that the people who listen to music loudly at their desk rarely have commonly shared taste – they’re usually huge fans of heavy metal, deep south country, or polka.  Stop it, or I’ll be forced to modify the system files on your computer, and from now on when your computer starts up you’ll be greeted by farm animal noises, thus perpetuating the rumor I also started about your torrid love affairs with sheep.  Write a country song about that.
13. If you are cold, do not complain to building management and request the temperature be raised.  How about you stop wearing short sleeve shirts to work if you’re feeling chilly?  Some people are required to wear dress shirts and slacks, and those don’t really breathe very well, so said people get quite warm.  They don’t need you requesting the temperature be set to 82 so you can feel nice and toasty at your desk.  Wear a sweater.  Wear a jacket.  Get up off your ass and move around to stimulate blood flow.  When you’re cold, you can do something about it.  When everyone else gets hot, it’s not really work appropriate to strip down to cool off.  If you don’t follow this rule, I’ll be forced to sneak hot sauce into all the food you brought for lunch.  You won’t be feeling very cold after eating that.
14. Don’t print out a 300 page report all at once in the middle of the day.  Other people need to use that printer too, likely for one or two pages, and they shouldn’t have to sit around all day waiting for your document to finish.  Split it up into a few smaller sized pieces.  You’ll still get your report printed, but other people will be able to intermittently print their documents too.  Everyone wins.  If you don’t comply, I’ll steal pages 109-147 out of your report.  Hope there wasn’t anything important in there.
15. During a fire drill/alarm, do not push everyone out of your way to make it to the stairs faster.  We would all like to escape, thank you.  Pushing me over will not facilitate your safe escape without any repercussions.  Chances are, I’ll get back on my feet and make it downstairs just fine.  However, when it’s safe to return inside I’ll rush straight to your desk and start taking things.  And shredding things.  And then I’ll limp past you later feigning innocence as you cry over your missing Snoopy pen.
16. If you have to have a badge of some sort to activate the elevator or the parking garage or the door to your area of the office, please have it out and ready when you get to said spot.  I am tired of being behind you while you dig in your car to find your badge, or upend your purse in the elevator looking for it, or dig through your pockets all the while laughing awkwardly and pretending you haven’t done the same thing everyday of your employment here.  I’m tired of it, and so is everyone else.  If we can have the necessary identification ready and available when necessary, so can you.  Get with it, or next time I see you I’m going to rush over and tape it to your forehead.
17. We live in the 21st century, not the Dark Ages.  When it comes to trivial little questions or ramblings, an instant message or an email will more than suffice.  You can even throw in an “lol” or an emoticon and then go along with your day, never having gotten up from your desk.  But no, that’s no good.  You have to get up and walk across the office to talk to your friend, then walk back to your desk, then walk to someone else’s desk 3 minutes later with a follow-up question, then back to your desk, and so on and so forth all day long.  I tire of seeing your face walk past my desk.  Technology is a great asset.  I’m not asking you to plug your brain into your computer and disconnect all social interaction, just to be aware of the fact that your constant pacing back and forth across the office is distracting to those of us actually working, and your conversations are also a nuisance, one which could be accomplished even quicker and with absolute silence via the computer.  Take advantage of the technology, or I will build a sentient robot to shoot laser beams at you every time you pass my desk.

As you can see, I’m moderately bitter.  Working in corporate America is tough, but if everyone followed the rules we’d all be just fine.  Spread the word.  Or else…

My friend Jayme was the first person I knew personally to own a Prius.  She dreamed of it for eons (or a couple years, one of the two) and finally managed to purloin one.  According to my recollection, her cousin Sarah then decided that a Prius is way cooler than a “Slug Bug” and that no longer would anyone get hit when a Bug drove past – now the only people getting hit would be the ones who didn’t spot a nearby Prius fast enough to claim it for themselves.  The game caught on like wildfire (between the three of us) and we laughed away all the bruises.

As of late, the game has begun to spread.  Jayme’s mom now plays, a fact I learned while riding in the car with her last month when she surprised me by severely beating me on 5 different occasions in the course of one afternoon of errands, all with a huge smile on her face that she was part of the cool crowd playing Prius.  Even after my embarrassing defeat at the fist of Judy, I foolishly taught the game to both my youngest brother and Keith.  Since teaching them this game, I have suffered many a beating at their delight.  Sure, every once in a while I manage to smack them, but being the driver puts me in the unfortunate role of having to watch the road, not the surrounding cars.  I remember Keith thinking the game was stupid at first, but now he seems to excel at it.  Damn.

In spite of all this, there seems to be a few questions as to how the game is played and what all it entails.  I’d like to take this chance to teach the public (meaning the 8 people who read this blog) how to play Prius and be cool.

1. The first rule of Prius, is to tell everyone about Prius.  You can’t play a game nobody is aware of, so spread the word far and wide.  If you don’t, I’m pretty sure that makes you a communist.
2. No longer does seeing a Volkswagen Beetle/Bug entitle you to punch someone in the arm.  Doing so authorizes the driver to push the eject button and launch your ass out of the car.  If their car doesn’t come equipped with an eject button (but whose doesn’t nowadays?), then be prepared to have the passenger door opened, your seatbelt unbuckled, and your body ingloriously pushed from the moving vehicle.  We’re not kidding about this one – Slug Bug is dead people, it’s now the age of the Prius.
3. When a Prius is spotted in the wild, simply hitting someone doesn’t count, and will likely get you a great big shiner.  To truly claim the beautiful hybrid, you must shout “PRIUS!” and point it out.  This will protect you from unjustified return beatings as promised by the bylaws of Prius.
4. If you own a Toyota Prius, you can’t smack anyone nearby everytime you see your own vehicle, nor can they hit you or anyone else.  Owned Priuses (or as Jayme refers to them, Prii) do not count towards the game, as that is not very sportsman-like.  You may only hit someone if you spot a Prius that is not owned by you or your traveling companions.
5. A Prius on TV doesn’t count.  If you don’t see it in person, you can’t begin beating anyone in your direct proximity.
6. Toyota Dealerships do indeed count, so if you happen to drive past one with anyone near you, be sure to sneakily spot the section of Priuses/Prii and commence beating the crap out of anyone within reach.
7. There used to be an archaic rule that when playing Slug Bug you had to say “no slug backs” or the slugee was allowed to hit you back.  That’s stupid, and in keeping with the caliber of people who still play Slug Bug.  Prius is above that.  Once you spot one and hit someone, that Prius has been claimed and no further hits are allowed.  Deal with it cry babies.
8. When in the role of “passenger” of a car, please be cautious as to with how much force you wail on the driver.  If you don’t want the driver to lose consciousness and careen the car off the side of a cliff (assuming you often drive near cliffs), simply smack them gently and yell “PRIUS!” to validate the smack.  Drivers however are allowed to beat passengers as thoroughly as they desire.  Again – deal with it cry babies.
9. You cannot store up Prius sightings and then let loose on a clueless victim (stranger or otherwise) later on.  Any Priuses/Prii spotted while alone are immediately invalidated.  Sucks to be you – make some friends and ride around with them.
10. Other hybrids don’t count, so don’t even try it.  Hybrid Camrys, beautiful though they are, are not Priuses/Prii, thus they are not covered by the Prius game.  Neither is any other hybrid vehicle, so if you hit someone and try to shout “Hybrid Highlander!”, be prepared to be hit back since you won’t be covered by the protection of the Prius rules.  (As a side note, yes, all my hybrid references are made by Toyota.  That’s because any other hybrid sucks.  Toyota makes the Prius, thus they are the best.)

These are the rules as of the time of this posting.  Feel free to post your own rules in the comments.  If I feel they’re worthy of being added to the rulebook, I’ll amend the list and provide credit.  By the power invested in me by the Toyota Corporation (not really, but let’s pretend for the sake of Priuses/Prii everywhere), I declare the Prius game officially begun.

Here we go…:

1. Please always wash your hands.  Even if you don’t feel that there was any mess warranting it, do it anyways.  For men especially, you touched your junk.  Even if there was no mess when you micturated, there was hand-to-junk contact.  Nobody wants to touch your hand later without it having been washed.  Be sensible.  Be polite.  Be clean.  Wash your hands.
2. You may be buddies outside the bathroom, but inside you had better pretend you’re strangers.  It’s inappropriate and awkward to walk into a bathroom and stand side-by-side with a work colleague or friend at the urinals while talking about anything.  The only acceptable deviation from this rule is at a sporting event of some kind; in those situations it is okay to reference a recent phenomenal play, but don’t drag it out.  Take care of business and get out of the bathroom.  There should be no friendliness and socializing while toilets are nearby.  We’re not women.
3. The courtesy flush is an important part of bathroom etiquette that apparently almost nobody understands.  When you know you’re going to be camped out for a while in the bathroom due to the 4 bowls of chili you had for lunch, please be sure to be concious of the fact that your stall doesn’t smell like roses, and said un-rosey smell isn’t contained to just your stall.  Flush a couple times throughout your stay and make sure nothing lingers long.  A couple flushes goes a long way at relieving the eye-watering stench that prevails in most public restrooms.  Be courteous.  Nobody wants to smell that.
4. Do not wash anything but your hands in the bathroom sink.  This is not the place to make up for the fact that you were running too late this morning to take a shower.  I personally have come across the same guy numerous times washing his feet in the bathroom sink at work.  Standing there on one leg, socks and shoes off, foot in sink, scrubbing with soap and drying with paper towels.  That’s nasty.  I don’t want to get close to you.  I don’t want to smell the feet that apparently need to be washed so badly.  Don’t splash soapy water into your armpits to compensate for the fact that you worked out over lunch.  None of this is acceptable bathroom etiquette.  Sinks are for hand washing only.
5. Always flush.  Yes, you heard me – always flush.  I know the toilets in a public restroom aren’t always the most hygenic places in the world, but part of this comes from the fact that people don’t flush.  I don’t want to walk up to a urinal or toilet to see anything leftover from the person there before me.  That’s weird and gross and unnecessary.  Even if the handle to the toilet isn’t the cleanest thing in the world, it takes all of 10 seconds to walk from the toilet to the sink to scrub it off your hands, and you saved the next person from seeing your business you left behind.
6. Do not talk on your cell phone.  If you are on your phone while on your way to the restroom, fine.  Once you reach the door, say good-bye.  Nobody in the bathroom wants to hear you telling your wife that lasagna sounds good tonight but that Timmy will have to get a ride home from soccer practice with a friend.  And chances are, your wife doesn’t want to hear you pooping.  I don’t even want to hear it, and I’m in the stall next to you.  To further discourage people from talking on their phones (existing conversations, or new ones that started when already in the bathroom), I flush the toilet over and over again until they hang up.  I figure it’s either going to be too loud for them to hear anything, or the person on the other end of the line is going to realize they’re in the bathroom and just call them back later.  Either way, I’m satisfied when they shut up.  (Side note…texting is acceptable)
7. Cleanliness is important, but don’t be crazy about it.  Most bathrooms don’t have many sinks.  The sinks to toilet ratio is quite low actually.  So chances are there will be more people using the restroom than sinks are available.  This is sometimes the excuse people use to not wash their hands, but this could be avoided if people didn’t spend 5 minutes washing their hands.  I want to be clean just as much as the next guy, but I don’t have to soap and rinse, soap and rinse, soap and rinse, over and over and over again.  There’s being clean, and there’s being rude.  When there are only a few sinks and there is a line of people wanting to wash their hands, finish quickly and move.  If you notice the person at the sink next to you switch more than once, you’re taking too long.  Hurry up and get out of the bathroom.  Think of it this way – the longer you remain washing your hands, the longer you’re exposed to any other germs that might be floating around.  Save yourself – escape!

If anyone else has anymore they’d like to throw in, feel free.  I know I haven’t listed near all of them.