Happy New Year!!

Well, it’s that time of year again when people make resolutions. It’s January 1, 2010. I used to think that New Year’s resolutions were stupid and flaky, but I’ve changed my mind. I think that anything that causes people to stop and reflect, evaluate their life, and/or aspire to be better, cannot be bad. No one picks resolutions like “I want to be meaner”, or “I want to drink more heavily” or “I want to spend less time with my kids/friends/loved ones”. Even if the resolutions are broken by the end of the first week, it is still a healthy process to reflect on your life and think about where you want to make improvements.

Gift Ideas

Pentti, my husband, is always complaining about the difficulties of buying gifts. In fact, I think this is a common refrain among men. I have decided that it boils down to two reasons. First, they don't listen. Yes, I am generalizing, but it's still true. If you have no idea what to buy the person you love most and spend copious amounts of time with, then you aren't listening to them.
I explicitly tell Pentti things during the year which he could use to compile a list of possible gifts. He knows where I shop the most and what kinds of things I buy for myself. Just in case he reads this blog, here are a few of my favourite shops:
Chapters, Gap, Old Navy, Starbucks, Winners, Home Sense, Superstore, Saje
A gift card to any of these stores would get used. Trust me.
A few of my favourite things:
pajamas, picture frames, candles, chocolate, books, purses, shoes (esp. black ones), mugs (esp. from Starbucks), scarves, wine, jewelry, flowers
I can't stop buying the above; I don't even want to know how many pjs or scarves I have. Every time I see a cute pajama I want to buy it. Pentti knows this. And yet, he has no idea what to buy me. This leads us to reason number two why men can't find gifts. They are too logical. Take Pentti for example. He knows I love pjs. But then he remembers the pjs that I already own and thinks I don't NEED any more. So, he decides he is definitely not buying pjs. This leads directly to panic because he has no idea what I do need. Hmmm, maybe I should tell him what women everywhere know-that gifts are not about need. They are about what you think the other person would LIKE.

Burdens

"It came to be the natural rule of life with him, that no one should add to the burden of the world but that each should try to lighten it."
Do you lighten the burden of the world, or do you add to it? I have been thinking about this a lot because I think that I sometimes add to people's burdens when I am right about something and feel like I should share my "rightness" with others. Surely it's my responsibility to help others to see the error of their ways? Or is it? As a teacher, my job is to teach, assess, correct, and reteach. But teaching is fairly straightforward in that I have to math textbook with the answers. You either understood, did it right and got the correct answer, or you didn't. Life is not so simple. People have stress, and illness, and accidents, and relationship problems and financial difficulties etc etc. So, even if you're "right", telling the widow of a smoker that it was his own fault that he died is not helping to lighten the widow's burden (this happened to a friend of mine this past summer).
Therefore, even if I am right. And indignant about someone's actions. And think they did it to themselves. I am NOT going to add to their burdens by forcing my rightness down their throat. I want to lighten the burdens of those around me. I want to be like my current principal. When I was away due to illness, he didn't give me a hard time. He just sent me an email saying that I was awesome, and thanks for planning so well for the substitute. He could have told me that it was a bad time to be away, that it was unfortunate timing, that it would create unnecessary hassle for him. He would have been right. But it would not have changed my absence, so why bother. Instead, he phoned every student's family to cancel my student-led conferences and encouraged me to take care of myself and come back when I felt better. His words alone made me feel better. And lightened my load.

These are two of the Santa letters my students wrote. We have been discussing persuasive writing, how to convince someone and how a compliment never hurts. I totally laughed when I read the letters because they had so obviously taken these lessons to heart. Both of the letters are unedited and were written by grade 2s.

Eaton's

I mentioned in my last post that I used to work at Eaton's. I hated it. I am just not made for customer service. However, despite my deep dislike for retail, I loved my coworkers. We would gather in the lunchroom upstairs to gossip and drink coffee. There were no assigned tables, or little cliques (except the cosmetics girls, but they don't count). When we had to take inventory on a Saturday night, it became a big party with food. The Christmas parties were well attended. People socialized outside of work. As corny as it sounds, we were really one big family; a true community. That was reinforced a few weeks ago... It has been ten years since Eaton's closed their doors for the last time. Some of the women decided that it was time for a reunion dinner and went about trying to round people up. Although there are some of us who have kept in close contact, most people have lost touch over the years. But we came together to catch up and reminisce. It was great! I didn't realize how special the Eaton's community really was until I discovered later how rare it was. The fact that 40 people can come together after 10 years to talk, or that they would even want to is a real testament to the company and the atmosphere therein.

The Horrors of Retail

I continue to be stunned at the ineptitude and ignorance of sales people. Am I just “blessed” with bad luck which always leads me to direct my questions to the salesperson who has just started working at that particular store five minutes ago? Or are people (as I suspect) actually getting dumber?

I used to work at Eaton’s for seven years, so I have a lot of sympathy for salespeople. I know that customers can be really awful and demanding and that the pay is not very good. I’ve had customers expect me to undress them (I didn’t do it), strip in front of me (in the middle of the store), pay their account in small change causing my till to overflow, call me a “fat, little thing”, and a bunch of other treasured moments. Still, I can’t believe the lack of service and knowledge I encounter in stores today.

We recently renovated our kitchen and in doing so, had to do a lot of shopping and ask a lot of questions. In Home Depot, which I would have thought would be a fairly good place for service, the staff was completely ignorant. Every time I asked about painting my kitchen table, I got a completely different answer. One salesperson, when I dared to interrupt with a question, glared at me and said, “can I finish what I am saying first”. When I went looking for undermount sinks, a salesperson told me that they don’t sell undermount sinks at all. He then directed me to the appropriate aisle, which was FULL of undermount sinks. He came to check that I had found the right aisle and when I said that there were in fact undermount sinks, he answered, “oh yeah, we sell lots of undermount sinks”.

At Ikea, the old lady who processed our order, ordered so many extra items that we returned $500 worth of stuff. How she could order extra parts when we had made a detailed drawing/diagram and list of everything we wanted on Ikea’s own software, I have no idea. When the measurements for our countertop were made, we ended up owing Ikea money. When I called Ikea, the woman on the phone had no idea what I was supposed to do. When we drove there to straighten it out, the salesperson went to look up our file. This entailed her opening up a cupboard full of wire baskets that were overflowing with papers. She proceeded to pull out a pile and ask one by one “are you Jane”, “are you Susan”….When I didn’t match anyone in her pile, she went to the back room to look further. We sorted it out finally and paid up. A week later someone from Ikea phoned to say that we owed them money…

When we wanted to buy infloor heating, Pentti shopped around for the best technology at the best price. He decided on Rona (I think it was) and called there, asked about pricing and stock availability. It was all good, so he went in to buy it. When he got there, the salesperson informed him that the particular flooring he was looking for was not only NOT in stock, but that they in fact had not carried it for THREE YEARS!

The countertop people took the cake, They kept calling to reschedule. Or actually, we had to call them when no one showed up for scheduled appointments. The day of the installation they kept calling, until 4pm when they called to say they weren’t coming at all. They rescheduled for 11am the next day, and showed up at 3pm. Then, they proceeded to wait in our driveway for at least an HOUR for some third dude to show up. From Coquitlam. In rush hour. No, I didn’t offer them coffee while they waited.

This past weekend, I went to Seattle for a little retail therapy. I stopped in Gap Kids to look at clothes for the boys. It’s a big store, so I asked the sales guy where the clothes for toddler boys were. He gave me the all-too-familiar deer in headlights look. Then, he very nicely told me that it was his first day (the store had been open for about 30 minutes) and that he would find out. I nearly died laughing.

I Only Like Crunchy If We're Talkin' Peanut Butter

I’ve decided that I live in the wrong city. Not because I don’t like Vancouver, because I do. I don’t even mind the rain, and that’s saying something! The reason I live in the wrong city is that I am not a nature girl. I love the mountains and the parks and the lakes and rivers. To look at, and admire. That does not mean that I want to necessarily experience them first hand through hiking them, or swimming them, or camping in them. I am not interested in what kinds of bugs live in them. I have no desire to wake up in a tent and smell the clean mountain air. I would rather wake up to the sound of my espresso machine warming up. I have no desire to “rough it”. I like my down comforter and my big fluffy pillow. I like to shower, every day. I like electricity. I hate bugs. And insects. And slimy animals. Basically I dislike everything outdoorsy, besides the tranquility and the beauty. And I have to admit that campfires are pretty cool.

Anyway, living on the west coast with all the hippy, crunchy, granola, tree-hugging people makes me feel like I should try. Like maybe I would like camping if I went with the right people or something. BUT. I am done apologizing and pretending. I am a high maintenance indoor girl and that’s just the way it is.