Happy Thanksgiving!

What are we thankful for this year? David Porterfield cooking us breakfast. Not having to wake up at 1 a.m to work tomorrow. Google maps to help us translate Donna Vore’s directions. Bulls-Jazz on TNT tonight. Friends & family. And you reading this blog.

Enjoy your tryptophan coma.

Things To Love About Ohio: The Day Before Thanksgiving

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For the fourth year running we are spending the day before Thanksgiving in Columbus, partaking in the finest that German Village has to offer: specifically, The Book Loft and its neighbor, Cup O Joe and the MoJoe Lounge. It has become a little pre-Thanksgiving tradition for us, perusing the labyrinthine offerings next door before camping out at the coffee shop with a hot beverage, newspapers and a stack of books (Eating Animals, Let The Great World Spin and The Poisonwood Bible). In certain religious traditions, while this may not qualify as heaven, it might be the bookstore and coffee shop you visit just outside heaven.

Should you find yourself in the greater Columbus area in the not-too-distant future, you owe it to yourself to stop at both.

Pain, Suffering and Inheritance: The Tricky Art of Handling the Customer Complaint

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At my job I (Ben) often get to handle customer complaints. Whether I’m any good at it may best be answered by those doing the complaining. As with all things, you get better with practice. So this little Saturday morning homily is not a seminar from an expert, just observations from someone on the learning curve.

First, it’s important to distinguish exactly which kind of complaint you’re dealing with here. I think there are two main categories: Justified and Unjustified.

Justified scenario: You have provided poor service. You or someone you manage has slighted the customer through rudeness, oversight or incompetence. Examples: You overcharge someone or leave an item out of their bag. You screw up their food order. You insult their personal appearance, their taste in literature or their appalling lack of fashion sense. You serve them undercooked wings and give them food poisoning and hire Jeremy Piven as a spokesperson. Etc.

Unjustified scenario: You have provided reasonable, maybe even exemplary, service but it is unequal to the customer’s desires (however unreasonable those may be). You moved mountains but didn’t walk on water. You did not have the book or CD or piece of clothing she wanted. You did not make a plane arrive on time. You did not not cook a meal that was as tasty as the one he had years before and has committed to memory with incomparable nostalgia. You did not prevent a hundred other people from rearranging their schedules so as to not impede the pre-made plans of your disgruntled customer’s Saturday. You did not murder in cold blood the person in the Toyota Camry who stole your customer’s spot even when he clearly saw it first and had his turn signal on to indicate this fact. You are incapable of making someone’s spouse finally forgive her or father love him more. You cannot personally bestow unto him or her the peace that passeth all understanding. Etc.

Both scenarios require the same basics in the tool kit: The ability to listen, empathize, apologize, make restitution. Every customer, regardless of scenario, wants to be heard. But from henceforth, I will address only the second category of complaint, the Unjustified.

The Unjustified Complaint always results from the customer not getting what she wanted. The sooner you acknowledge this and apologize for this fact ( “I realize you wanted x, and I’m sorry we couldn’t deliver x for you”), the sooner you arrive at the fork in the road. The customer will either be disarmed by you cutting to the chase (and may even come to her senses and say, “You’re right, my complaining is pointless”), or — more likely — she will redouble her efforts because you are trying, sincerely, to be direct, kind and understanding. Most angry customers hate this.

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,” say the Proverbs. “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” That last part sounds a bit like retribution, but Eugene Peterson translates it a little differently: “Your generosity will surprise him with goodness.”

This is really the only way I know how to deal with an Unjustified Customer Complaint. The customer has pain to dispense, and you give him back kindness.

This is of course the hardest path to take. You (I) want an eye for an eye. It doesn’t take long in retail to wonder if you have a bull’s-eye pinned to your chest. Even if you manage to avoid repaying an unkind customer with unkindness, you still have the problem of inheriting it. The Unjustified customers will win this battle nine times out of ten. They will resort to name-calling. They will spit bile and condescension. They will say, to use one example from my week, “I will do everything possible to take my business away from a store run by a bunch of flippin’ morons.” (Use your creativity to substitute other words for “flippin’.”)

What next? If you give into temptation, you will unload this venom on someone else. Maybe someone you manage, maybe someone you love. Then everyone’s miserable.

To borrow a spiritual analogy, it’s part of what Christians believe about Jesus dying on the cross. When handed injustice and persecution, Jesus took it but didn’t give it back. You don’t even have to believe that the symbolic weight of that injustice is “sin” or subscribe to the idea of atonement to agree with the basic transaction there. Something stopped at Jesus and went no further.

An Unjustified Customer Complaint isn’t persecution (or, obviously, crucifixion), but it’s the meager spiritual offering I could make this week, and I tried to receive it without passing it on. I resisted saying to that customer, “Well, your mom is a flippin’ moron. Sha-blam!” But just barely. You start where you are.

Enough preposterous spiritual/retail analogies for a Saturday. Especially a day off.

Sweeneyblog Documents Our Cleveland Adventures

See their take (and actual pictures of Erin and Emily at the Jazz/Cavs game) here.

Helping You Pass The Work Day: A Diversionary, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Voreblog Readers Forum

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Andrew Cashmere recently pleaded for something, anything, to help him pass the time at work. (Disclaimer: He works at a slaughterhouse.) He then offered the following four topics for consideration:

• Favorite bad movies
• Famous actor that would play you in the movie of your life
• Why Pittsburgh Steelers fans are awful
• Would you rather: Lorelai or Rory? (and why)

So as to make this equal opportunity for the sexes, we will add the fifth topic to counterbalance #4:

• Would you rather: Bob Wallace or Phil Davis?

(We saw White Christmas last night at the Aronoff.)

Take your pick! Answer any of the above five! (And keep it tasteful!)

Comment now!

A Correction

We take accuracy very seriously here at Voreblog, and when a correction is required we want to set the record straight as soon as possible.

In a recent post Ben wrote about his somewhat traumatic experience during a semen analysis appointment, and in that post he referenced a porno entitled Whispering Horses. You may have perhaps Googled Whispering Horses to verify the authenticity of this film. Had you done so, you would not have had any luck finding it.

This is because the title of the film was not, we regret to report, Whispering Horses. A return visit to this office confirmed that the title is actually Whispering Hearts (starring Star E. Knight). In his flustered state, Ben misread the second word in the title. (The words were in cursive lasso.) Coupled with the fact that the film opens with extended shots of men and women on horseback (it is set on a dude ranch), and we hope you can understand — if not forgive — the error.

The original post has been amended.

And Ben was able to give the thumbs up after visit #2.

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Question for discussion: How exactly do hearts whisper?

Soy Milk & Man Boobs

from The Huffington Post:

Hold the sushi and the soy lattes. Jeremy Piven, who recently recovered from a long battle with mercury poisoning, claims that he quit drinking soy milk because it caused confusion over his growing breasts.

“I was the guy that dabbled in soy milk, but now I’ve found out soy milk has enough estrogen for me to grow breasts,” he told STV. “I had to put the soy milk down. It was a very confusing time.”

Very confusing indeed.

Jeremy Piven: The gift that keeps on giving.

Things To Love About Ohio: Casinos

Daniel Craig, you have no good reason to avoid Cincinnati any longer.

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Ohio voters approved statewide casinos yesterday after previously voting them down four times in the past twenty years. What finally gave? Casino supporters successfully made the case that casinos would bring much-needed jobs and revenue. Or at least that’s what the MSM would have you believe.

Our hunch? Females in the twenty/thirtysomething bracket thought this might entice Daniel Craig to stop by more often.

(DANIEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Ohio: What Happens in Toledo Stays in Toledo!

More Ways We Might Spend Our Extra Hour

Last year we ruminated on a few possible ways we might make good use of that extra hour from Daylight Savings. (Perhaps that list may inspire you too.) This year we’ve got a few additional items on the docket:

• Taking Erik Brueggemann’s recommendation and finally reading Barb Johnson’s More of This World or Maybe Another.
• Taking Mike Allen’s recommendation and finally watching Role Models.
• Conceiving a child.
• Preparing a review of the New Moon soundtrack.
• Catching up on “30 Rock” episodes. ( “Lemon, when did you find time to eat a diaper you found on the beach?”)
• Checking StubHub for cheap Cavs/Jazz tickets.
• Raking all those infernal leaves.
• Loving our enemies.
• (After we’ve unscrewed the caps on their salt shakers.)
• Crushing The Walden Chimps at fantasy football. (This would have happened regardless.)

The world is our oyster! So is yours. Go get ‘em.

“What If The Swine Flu Vaccine (Shot/Nasal Mist) Is The Mark Of The Beast??”

We aren’t usually in the habit of quoting from flyers left under our wiper blades in parking lots, but the one somebody put on our car at the Showcase Cinemas in Milford — the one which begins with the quote above (two question marks and all) — presented us with a question we honestly had never once given a lick of thought: What if the swine flu vaccine is the Mark of the Beast?(?) Have biblical scholars misread The Book of Revelation for the past two millennia? Were the Left Behind books actually … fiction? And maybe most troubling of all, why was our car the only one in the entire parking lot with this flyer left on it? (????????????) If the H1N1 vaccine is The Mark of the Beast, shouldn’t everyone be forewarned?

As the flyer says, “Forget Pre-tribulation scenarios.” We, for one, were hazy on our Pre-tribulation scenarios to begin with. If you want your own answers regarding the alleged diabolicalness of the swine flu vaccine, you won’t find them at your doctor’s office (also known as “The Innermost Circle of Hell”). There’s only one place you can find them: our trash can.