Archives for January 2005

This is how gosh-durn lazy I am right now. I’m on the couch, computer on my lap, knitting to my right, phone to my left, and I just took a picture of my knitting with the crap-qual camera-phone, instead of getting up to take a high-resolution photo. But that’s the way it goes on Monday mornings (which are my version of your Sunday mornings. Only I get a Sunday morning with Lala, too, now that I’m not getting up at 6am to go train. I’m spoiled.)

So here’s the pattern I’m working on:

It’s the bottom band of a vee-neck sweater I’m making — the sleeves, already done, have the same motif at the ends. The yarn is a wonderful alpaca from ArtFibers called Jadis. It’s going to be a store model for them, and Kira wrote the pattern using their program, to which I added the colorwork.

It’s fun.

I’m boring. Sleepy. Lazy. Oh, yeah.

Helped sister Christy move this weekend, into an apartment on Ivy Hill in Oakland that I absolutely covet. I mean, if I didn’t have my own sweet little home, I would, for the first time in memory, be jealous. You walk into the foyer, and there are dark carved wooden support beams with iron-work detail. Big, dark slate floors, and inlaid ceilings. Then you walk down the hall (which is the best-smelling hall ever, spice and cocoa and a little Trader Joes-ish), and her door, get this, her door is a dark wood arch with ROPE around the outside, as are all the doors in the castle/ship building.

Inside, she has this amazing green tile in the kitchen that should be hideous, but is gorgeous instead, and a huge living room with windows that overlook all the roofs near the Parkway, and she has a tub with a window over it, and a big ole bedroom with a big ole closet, and let’s not forget the gigantor closet in the living room that has two doors that used to house (and sadly doesn’t anymore) a Murphy bed.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. She deserves it. I fear, however, that when Bethany comes into town later this week, Christy will no longer be living alone.

All right. Off to give Digit the love he says he’s never received, ever.

https://rachaelherron.com/this_is_how_gos/

Waxing and whining.

(Work safe, and SO funny.)
Link via Scamper.

Y’all have a good weekend, okay? I’ve no plans beyond helping my sister Christy move (and Bethany’s ON the move, coming home the long way!) so I’ll be resting and hanging out and I’m HAPPY about that. No wax for me, thank you. Razors, they’re just fine.

MWAH.

Distract yourself from the unpleasantness below, which is now happily behind us, by going to see Lala’s dogs, who are, as Carrie would say, perfect schmoos. Don’t forget that the wet wee dog is only a little bigger than your HAND.

So I wrote an email  to the carpet guy. It was a good email saying "I know you were sick, I gave you two months to respond by mail, perhaps email is a better method for you. I’d love to hear why I haven’t ever heard from you, by phone or by mail." I attached the old letter as a reminder, in case he had never received it, since I knew his office help was stunningly unhelpful.

I got an email back.

It said I was free to pay for the $750 polygraph to prove that his employee (who wouldn’t lie) was telling the truth about not burglarizing my home.

I sat on the couch for a while and thought about how freaking MAD I was. Then I called him. A woman answered the cell phone, but I bamboozled my way around her, "Who is this?" "Oh, this is Ruth, returning his phone call." "What call?" "His call. This is Ruth." "Ruth?" "Returning his phone call. This is Ruth." But every time I said Ruth, I kind of mumbled it, until she gave up in frustration and handed him the phone.

"Hi, Michael," I said very clearly. "This is Rachael."

You could almost hear the "oh, shit," in his pause.

We proceeded to argue for the next twenty minutes. And I hate arguing. He went on and on about how he believed his employee, and how I was just trying to get a free carpet cleaning, and how every time he had talked to me before this he had told me that — "YOU HAVE NEVER TALKED TO ME IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NEVER CALLED ME BACK!"

He insisted we’d had more than a few conversations in the past. He also accused me of being a scam artist, at which point, I do have to admit, I said, "You are an IDIOT." But I don’t think he heard me. Even if he did….

It didn’t end well. He never, ever saw my point that had he just been polite, the first time I called, I would have let it drop, months ago. But somehow, I feel better, just knowing that he’s an asshole. You know? The world is full of them, and I wasn’t being ignored anymore. Oh, he wasn’t ignoring me, boy howdy. I did threaten that I would publish his unlisted phone number on my site and have YOU all call him, but I think that would reach right over into meanness, and I’m trying to stay on this side of nice. Trying.

But. In the post below, I give my review of his service and company. I’ve researched libel and slander, and he can’t sue me for the things I wrote. (Aside – I was interested to read here that I can freely call him an asshole, because name-calling cannot be proved true or false. Heh.)

And I can’t wait to be the first hit when google-searched for info on carpet cleaning in this area. And I’m happy to share my review.

Consumer Review of Carpet Master Chem-Dry, Oakland
Rated: Worst service I’ve ever received.

I found this company when searching for carpet cleaners in Oakland. On November 2nd, 2004, I had them come out and clean my carpets. The job was adequately done. The employee, Courtney, left his billing folder with my signed charge slip inside my home when we left. He called me and told me he had left it inside, and asked when he could come pick it up. I told him I’d go home after work at 5am and leave it outside for him for him to pick up at his convenience.

When I returned home, my house had been burgled by an unknown suspect, the bathroom screen pried off, the sliding door standing open, the back gate broken. The only thing missing in a house full of things being packed and money left lying on the counter? The folder.

After making a police report, I called to complain. Instead of the owner, Michael Lane, returning my call, the employee Courtney called, telling me he would never break into my home, and that I was only trying to ruin him.

I called the business repeatedly over the course of several weeks. The office help, Susan, was unhelpful and rude. She said on a daily basis that Mr. Lane would call me back, but he never did.

I sent a letter to Mr. Lane, now forwarded on to his franchise board and the Better Business Bureau, and in response, Susan called, saying that Mr. Lane would write me a letter taking care of it. Instead, I got a form response letter, "How did we do? On a scale of one to ten, rank our service." I was too insulted to even bother mailing it in.

On January 27, 2005, I finally reached the owner, only by finding his personal cell phone and email in a job advertisement he posted on Craigslist. He said that I could pay for a polygraph test to prove that his employee was innocent of my charges. He was rude, uncourteous, and disrespectful. He insisted that I was a scam artist, maintaining this even when I removed my request for reimbursement, telling him all I wanted was an apology and certain level of professional courtesy.

I have given up hoping for this. But hopefully this post will help someone deciding whom to hire. Should you need help dealing with this company, please contact me at writerach406 at yahoo dot com. Carpet Master Chem-Dry is the worst, not the best, carpet cleaner in Oakland.

* This is a personal review only. This is not libel, as a statement alleged to be defamatory must also be a false statement of fact. And yo. I couldn’t make this shit up.

Owwwwl.

My phone’s on the fritz at home, which means I have no internet, either. I’m not really sure how the TiVo’s working, since I thought the capturing of programs worked over the phone, but I’m getting shows, thank goodness.

Called PacBell — they said they’d be out between 1pm and 5pm yesterday, which meant I got up with little sleep, not enjoying the prospect of greeting the guy at the door wearing nothing but a robe. Of course, at 5:30 I called and they said, "Oh, he came by at 4:30! He noted that you weren’t home and that your phone line is fine."

I was home, I was watching the front porch, and my phone line wasn’t fine. Bah. "Can he come back out?"

A chipper, "Nope!"

"Tomorrow?"

"Sure, with a 1pm to 5pm window."

Cool. I always enjoy that when I go to bed at 8am.

This little, minor glitch got me all worked up and thinking about the carpet guy. Not even that much about the carpet guy, but about the fact that the owner never called me back, not once. I didn’t want the guy prosecuted or fired, I just wanted an apology from the owner. Dude. So then I was lying in the bath getting ALL pissed off, wanting to take a deep breath and just let it GO, already, but I couldn’t.

Do you ever have those fights in your mind? They’re way worse when you’re fighting in your head with a loved one — I always fight the battle from every possible angle, finding the winning stance, and then getting more irate as I try to file what they could say next to what I will say when the moment arises. So that wasn’t like this.

But I lay there, thinking of how I could get an audience with the owner. I could fake a delivery of balloons. I could call, saying I was the media. I could say I was the mayor giving him a commendation. Anything to get him on the phone, since he neither takes nor receives calls. Lying, however, I usually find is a bad idea, so I let go of those.

Lala told me simply to write yet another letter. She’s right. I’m going to do that. Again. An apology for extremely unprofessional behavior is all I want. Or even a fight would be acceptable! I just hate being ignored.

But it ain’t enough to get all (literally) hot under the collar like I did. I’m going to write another letter to the owner and hope he has some decency in him. Somewhere. And then I’ll let it go again. If I don’t do something, I’ll end up lying in bed, unable to sleep, fantasizing about showing up at his work, with a couple of big ole mean ugly-looking cops (and I do know a bunch of them, believe you me) and see what he has to say THEN, huh? That’s the part of me I don’t like. So I’ll write a note and let it go for another couple of months.

So if I’m offline for a while longer, please forgive me. I’m probably fighting with the phone company.

**Added later – While it would be nice to use police resources to track the owner down, it would also be illegal and I would never jeopardize my job like that. Really. But the internet? Now there’s a tool I can use. I just found a two-week old craigslist want-ad with his personal email listed, along with his cell phone. Letter has been sent. Phone call to follow. Oh, that was a satisfying find.