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Communications Roundup

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

First off, I got a phone call from the Auburn superintendent of schools. She wanted to make sure I knew she wasn’t trying to be sarcastic in her email. I assured her I didn’t think she was. She assured me that they really are trying to reduce the amount of paper communications sent home with the kids.

I still think reducing her communications to junk mail makes it far less likely I’ll see a message that actually matters. But I’ll guess we’ll have to agree to disagree that she’s a menace. When they finally set up two distribution lists, ‘public safety notices’ and ‘other’, I’ll rethink that position.

Next up, a follow-up from CVS…

Good Afternoon Mr. Keis,
I am the pharmacy supervisor for the Auburn CVS. I apologize for the terrible customer service that your family had to endure. As a result of your communication I have set in place that all pharmacy staff will be retrained in pick up policy and procedures. We did have some staffing changes at this location and I deeply appreciate you bringing this issue to my attention.
Respectfully,
Anthony Szoka

I appreciate the email back. Honestly, I do. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that I created a typo of my last name when I initially wrote to them; tired fingers can do that.

Tags: CVS, Dr. Maryellen Brunelle
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CVS part 2

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Here’s the CVS situation from my wife’s POV:

Dear CVS,

I have been using your pharmacy for years, first because a store was within walking distance from my apartment, and then because your pharmacies are linked so I didn’t have to transfer my prescriptions when I moved. It has been convenience of location rather than satisfaction with the customer experience that has kept me as your customer for so many years. In the last several months, I have been frequenting two stores – store #708 at 676 Southbridge Street in Auburn, MA and store #166 at 115 Stafford Street in Worcester, MA. Nearly 75% of the time I leave the pharmacy counter or drive-thru window feeling that CVS has yet again failed to meet my ever-lowering expectations. This evening was the final straw.

My 2-year-old son visited the doctor today, and his prescription for antibiotics was sent electronically to the pharmacy at store #708 at approximately 3:15 PM. I arrived at the pharmacy a few minutes after 5PM and was informed that my son’s prescription hadn’t yet been printed and that it would take about 10 minutes to fill. I elected to wait. I shopped a little, and returned to the waiting area after about 10 minutes, but my order had not yet been filled. I took a seat and waited some more. Other people came and were told to wait as well. Those same people were called in short order and left; I was still waiting.

For an hour and fifteen minutes, I waited. Every time there was a lull in customers, the counter staff would disappear before I could ask about my order. It wasn’t until another customer mentioned how visibly upset I was as she was being rung up that anyone behind the counter made any eye contact with me. They checked their system again and finally, at 6:30 PM, my prescription was ready. When I asked for an explanation as to why I had been made to wait for 90 minutes for something that had been submitted well in advance of my arrival, the answer from Adam, the Shift Supervisor, was that he just didn’t know. I had seen him speaking with someone in charge of filling and checking the prescriptions, so if Adam didn’t know what was going on, it’s pretty clear that neither did the other people who worked there.

I was already extremely unhappy with having to wait 90 minutes for a prescription that I had initially been told would be ready in 10 minutes. The fact that no one seemed to claim any responsibility for allowing the prescription to fall through the cracks is even more insulting and infuriating. I didn’t bother to speak to a manager at the store because a) I had already been there for an hour and half and didn’t want to stay longer, and b) if the Shift Supervisor could do no more than say “I don’t know” and offer an insincere apology, I doubted anyone else in the store could do more. I hope an e-mail to Corporate will at least reach the Regional Manager, or some other competent person in a position to do something other than tell me they’re sorry.

Thank you for your time,
[removed]

Tags: CVS, kids, shame, WTF
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Seriously? Over 2 hours for antibiotics?

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

My youngest was diagnosed with a simple ear infection today. I feel bad for him, but it’s something kids get at some point, no problem. So around 3:30 when I left they called in a prescription for him, and I took the kids home so CVS had some time to fill it, asking my wife to pick it up on her way home from the office. At 5:30 I got a call from her letting me know it still wasn’t ready, so I sent this to CVS. Pleas to enjoy:

I was wondering if you’ve undergone some sort of substantial personnel issues in your Auburn pharmacy recently. Today my child’s doctor called in a prescription after his 3 pm appointment for antibiotics, and today at 5:30 when my wife showed up to get it on her way home, she’s still standing there 40 minutes after being told the prescription would take 10 minutes to fill. Given it was over an hour old, it should have been filed and ready for pickup already; this was one of the reasons I didn’t take the kids over to get it on the way back from the Dr.; to give you folks some extra time to get it ready.

Yours is one of the more convenient pharmacies in the area, but honestly I’m about ready to start looking at Walgreens or even Wal-mart instead if CVS is straining so hard to fill a fairly simple scrip.

I was wondering if you’ve undergone some sort of substantial personnel issues in your Auburn pharmacy recently. Today my child’s doctor called in a prescription after his 3 pm appointment for antibiotics, and today at 5:30 when my wife showed up to get it on her way home, she’s still standing there 40 minutes after being told the prescription would take 10 minutes to fill. Given it was over an hour old, it should have been filed and ready for pickup already; this was one of the reasons I didn’t take the kids over to get it on the way back from the Dr.; to give you folks some extra time to get it ready.
Yours is one of the more convenient pharmacies in the area, but honestly I’m about ready to start looking at Walgreens or even Wal-mart instead if CVS is straining so hard to fill a fairly simple scrip.

Tags: CVS, kids, shame, WTH
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Health care professionals just don’t get it

Monday, March 8th, 2010

I’m going to start this off by going against that statement above and say that yes, I understand that the health care providers are overworked and often borderline robbed by the insurance agencies via negotiated discounts.

But that doesn’t mean that they have to be asses.

I took my oldest in for a dental cleaning this morning, it went well as a 4 year old’s dental cleaning can be expected and the I booked him another appointment.

Given he’s in pre-school in the mornings now and I a) find that vastly more important than his dental visit and b) am paying actual money to have him in those pre-school classes, I’m hesitant to pull him out of them early for other activities. The school’s dedicated time to teach him, we committed to time for him to be there, screw you third party.

So I was a bit taken aback when the pinched face blonde behind the counter gave me “well they usually prefer to do the younger patients in the morning” line and pushed me into an early morning appointment instead of the afternoon one I requested.

Irritated, several hours later I called back and instead asked for an afternoon appointment. Worse comes to worse I could get him a morning appointment on a morning he doesn’t have school, but he’ll be 4 day in the fall, so I’d rather just get it in the afternoon.

Again, I get “well Dr. ____ usually prefers to do the younger patients in the morning but…” and I got an early afternoon appointment.

Let me share a secret with you, Mr. Dentist man.

Ready? Move closer….

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.

See that right there? Simple truth. You’re treating a human being, I’m sorry if I’m impeding your tee time or your drug rep time. But my son’s a human being, and as his father I’m charged with setting priorities that help HIM, not you.

I put his education before other things, and if you don’t like it, there’s a whole phone book full of other dentists trying to pay off their student loans.

OK, off my soap box for a little while.

Tags: Dentists, idiots, kids, useless
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Pleasant daddy son time

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Due to some technical issues, my latest chess set *cough*glowing pieces*cough* won’t be ready in time for tomorrow’s home show. It’s a shame because I think it would have made an awesome showcase piece, but hey, schtuff happens.

Given my wife’s out on a girl’s night out this evening, after I got our youngest to bed I took a giant chance and let my 4 year old help me stain the chess board blank and the chest for the chess pieces. Let me assure you, if you think letting your little boy use poster paint is terrifying, you’ve not felt the adrenaline until you let him attack the far more aggressive wood stain.

But, he was really well behaved tonight and listening well (otherwise I would have put it off), so I put down plenty of newspaper and he and I went to work. Given it was less expensive to replace should I have to, I let him work on the wood blank for the board. I’m pleased to say he did a great job, and there was a minimum of mess.

For those interested, Formula 409 will take off small spots of wood stain from kitchen tile.

My big guy was SO well behaved, in fact, that I let him stay up a little longer and let him watch an episode of Dirty Jobs. Then he went to bed without any fuss.

Now it’s glass of wine time for daddy.

Tags: kids, parenting, projects
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So what do I do here?

Friday, January 8th, 2010

I have a little one in my town’s school system and as part of him being in school, we signed up pretty much every method of contact we have with the school’s “One Call Now” system. This is, in theory, a system that would be used to provide emergency and crucial information to parents. For example, once they sent out a message about a sex offender seen in the vicinity of one of the schools. That went to our house phone, both cell phones, and a couple of email adddresses. Another time I think it was used to wake us up at quarter to 6 or so via phones (plural) to let us know about inclement weather closings. This is fine, and a perfectly reasonable use of an emergency type system. I was annoyed to be woken up ahead of the alarm, but it wasn’t an unreasonable call.

But the superintendent of schools seems to also like to use the system for other things, albeit not always using both phone and email. For example, before Christmas we got a phone call on the house phone and both cells wishing us a happy holiday and letting us know there are seats open on the school buildings committee. Today I received an email letting me know that the high school team is playing some hockey game at the local stadium. This, to me, isn’t an appropriate use.

I called the education office and I asked if there was a way to get on an emergency message only list vs. the emergency and oh all this other junk list. There’s one list, you’re either on or off it, but I get the feeling the poor woman I talked to has fielded these calls before.

So what do I do here? Do I remove my contact information from the list and miss out on the “there’s a knife wielding crazy in your son’s pre-school classroom” messages, or just leave it be and create a special filter for the superintendent’s drivel?

I’m thinking it might be worth taking up with the town selectmen at some point because it’s pretty obviously a misuse of a valuable system. Or am I being too sensitive?

Tags: Dr. Maryellen Brunelle, kids, MA, One Call Now, spam, superintendent of schools, Town of Auburn
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The experiment and crabs

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Last weekend I tried a little experiment. Sales have been horrid this season despite plenty of “very pretty”, “how creative”, “wow, what an art” type comments and plenty of people looking. But I’ve seen people debate a fairly low $10.00 sale too. So, to find out if it’s ME driving down sales, I had my wife run the table for a day.

I’m reporting back mixed results. I’m bummed sales weren’t better, but I’m relieved to see that she had as bad a day as I have. My wife is much more of a people person than I am and as such a nicer face to put on the product. But, sales weren’t that great for the day, in fact they were flat out bad. I need to double check, but I think I at least broke even on the table for the day.

Very few people in the room were doing any business, except for one who I’m guessing did quite well. He was selling hermit crabs. How he did it is questionably ethical, but undeniably brilliant. The sign on his table said “Hermit Crabs, $6.00″. Six dollars. How can you say no to your kid? The crabs are there, he’s got little plastic habitats to take them home in, so of course parents say yes. My wife said yes to our oldest.

The brilliant bit is this. The crab is $6.00. The habitat, however, is much more. All told between the crab, habitat, and food bought later in the day, we were in for $24.00. But the thing is, you say yes to your kid and then what? You suddenly say no, you can’t have the pet I just told you you can have? No, you’re stuck. Brilliant. For the record, on the first pass I rebuffed my oldest’s request for a crab.

Flash forward to yesterday, we bought a larger habitat for the first crab and a friend as well. We’re up to $75.00. Darn kids.

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It’s the little things

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Tonight I had a short, 2.5 hour show. It’s one I’ve done the past couple of years and it’s actually one of my favorites. See, this one’s in an elementary school and it’s mostly for the kids to do some holiday shopping for their parents. That means the parents go roam, mingle and enjoy some baked goods while the kids mostly do their thing on their own. It also means that there aren’t parents looming behind them, arms gripping them backwards, saying “Glass, don’t touch! Look with your eyes! Very fragile!”

One of my favorite things about glass is that it’s such a tactile material. It warms to your touch, it cools to the air around it. It can be smooth, it can be rough, it can be sharp, it’s a lot of things all in one depending on what the artist decided to do with it. Of course I want people to touch the merchandise! 99% of the kids that wander through are perfectly OK touching the glass, and the other 1% usually are messing with it just to drive their parents mad. I break more things than my customers (or their kids) do.

So it’s nice, the kids come by, ooh and ahh, pick stuff up, ask questions, call their friends over. It’s just overall, a very pleasant experience.

Don’t get me wrong, the parents are nice too, but it’s just a much more relaxed experience with the parents not stressing the kids, and by doing so, sucking them away from my table (and potential sales!).

So I had this show, and incidentally I think I did better at this one than I did last year, so that’s a plus. But my guilty pleasure was on the way out, several other vendors commenting they were jealous of my packing “system”. The way I have it set up, barring my nemesis, the stairs, I can move my tables and all 7 boxes in and out of the building in one trip. Ah, the little things.

Tags: glass, gloating, jealousy, kids, packing, shows
Posted in business, glass, kids | Comments Off

A taxing new trend

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I don’t know how I missed this, but there’s a new bit of taxation going on here in Taxachusetts, local based restaurant and hotel taxes.

Over the summer the state raised the sales tax to 6.25%. This is kind of an odd amount really. Let’s face it, if I spend 1.00, I can’t pay 6.25 cents on that, so does it round up and cheat the consumer (where’s the extra go?) or do you round down and have the business owner risk under reporting taxes? Well, it looks like they may have had a reason.

The state offered towns the opportunity to implement a local .75% hotel and restaurant tax of their own, rounding it out to 7%.

Annoying for sure, but it gets worse. Not all the towns took the state up on the offer.

This means if I eat in my own town of Auburn, or the next town over, Worcester, I get hit with the extra tax. However if I go over to Millbury (the other side of Auburn), there’s no extra tax. This is slightly unfortunate really; often we go to the Applebees here in town because it’s rarely busy. Honestly I think it’s a front for something worse because this place is dead most of the time. But, with two kids in tow, you deal with the questionable food on those nights you just can’t cook dinner. The service is fine, by the way. However, given the economy, we may be more likely to go to the Applebees in Millbury now because it saves us a few cents. Distance wise it’s about the same either way, so there’s really no gas savings.

Perhaps some of the Millbury restaurant owners should send the town selectmen in Auburn and the mayor in Worcester a thank you note and a coupon to say thanks for the extra business.

Just as a random musing, I looked it up and it looks like the state actually took into account the odd quarter point figures. Have a look.

Here’s the list of municipalities that have adopted the higher meals tax, or as I like to think of it, the list of towns to eat in instead. Interestingly only 32 greedy communities out of 351 listed took the state up on it’s offer.

Tags: City of Worcester, Millbury, state, taxes, Town of Auburn
Posted in business, kids, random | Comments Off

Anniversary weekend

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Sorry, folks but this is a long post. Grab a cup of coffee and cozy up to the fire for story time.

It was certainly a lovely weekend. G and I were able to leave the kids at grandma’s house and go off to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary together. I missed the kids, but it was also pretty nice to have a little break. If you don’t have kids, you may not understand that. If you do have kids, you probably gave me a smirk and a nod of approval just now.

Regardless, we had a blast. We stayed at the Admiral Dewey Inn, a B&B in South Kingston, RI. It’s a pretty nifty old place that’s on the national historic register. We had a very nice room without a television or a telephone. In this day and age, that’s a bit odd sounding, but it was also quite nice. The phone situation isn’t a problem really since we both carry cell phones. As for the television, we found plenty of other ways to amuse ourselves including getting a little reading done. I finally made some headway in the latest issue of Glass Line, all about American borosilicate artists. The room was comfortable with a large bed, private bath, and tasteful decor.

When we arrived, Joan, the owner was out on an errand (or so the note said) and we found our key and a note on the front table waiting for us so we checked out the room then headed out to Aunt Carrie’s for chowdah and fritters. Upon returning we found the owner and one of the couples staying at the inn out on the large front porch. They invited us to join them, so we brought down a bottle of sparkling red wine we had brought with us, and traded tales of the kids in our lives. The owner shared tales from both her past and past years of the inn. All in all, it was a lovely evening.

The next morning we went down for breakfast and met the family occupying most of the rest of the inn, in town for a wedding. It was nice to see another marriage starting out, particularly on our anniversary. Of course it was also nice to have the strawberry rhubarb coffee cake Joan made; she’s an awesome baker.

We didn’t spend the entire time in our room of course, we did venture out and about. Saturday morning we wandered down to the town beach to have a gander. There was a nasty storm off the coast, and it was creating quite a bit of surf. Plus, it’s after the summer season, so it was lovely quiet.

There's water behind us, really!

Both of us have seen the beach before though, so afte a brief walk to find some interesting bits for the kids, we hopped in the car and headed off to Newport for the morning.

One thing about Newport, it’s a lovely town to walk in. But when it comes to many of the stores, you really don’t want to have kids in tow. At least not young, curious ones. Since we were alone, we took advantage of the chance to poke around some of the more fragile shops including a lovely, large antiques store that’s always fun to poke around in. After our shopping excursion, we hopped in the car and headed out to Newport Vineyards. We’re case club members there since we like the wine quite a bit. Usually when we visit the kids are with us, but since they weren’t…we took advantage of one of the case club member perks, free wine tasting. G never gets to partake of such goodies, so the two of us got our number looked up in the system (card’s long since missplaced) and went over to sample a few that we don’t usually buy. It wasn’t all liquid amusement, I actually did get a chance to try some new ones I hadn’t tried before including the Vidal Blanc, which is quite tasty. I don’t know why, but I’ve been leaning towards whites lately over reds. Normally I don’t because they require a little more planning as opposed to just uncorking a bottle, but hey, whatever. I wound up with a mixed case, including the hard cider which is quite tasty.

Two doors down from the Vineyard’s store is a fantastic deli named Fatuli’s. They have a fantastic item on their menu in their box lunches. You can get a sandwich, chips, a drink, and a cookie for about $9.00 a person, and they’re gourmet sandwiches. I had the Thanksgiving sandwich; turkey, cranbery, cheese, a little mayo (optional), and this fantastic sausage stuffing on a croissant. We took the lunches out to Breton Point to watch the surf pound the shore. I love free entertainment and Breton Point rarely disappoints.

We decided to drive out to Wickford to poke around. It’s a town who’s main draw seems to be their shops downtown. I have to say, though, I was a little disappointed. There were a few standout shops, Green Ink comes to mind. Another few standouts were JW Graham/Yes! Gallery, The World Store, and Peafunk Designs. A Bit of the West gets an honorable mention for having glass tobacco pipes. But the many of the rest of the stores I visited made me feel like a Hallmark store had thrown up on their town. Strangely, from there we haded out to Newport and a Michaels to get some jewelry making supplies.

We returned to the hotel and found the same couple from before and Joan on the porch and sat down to talk. Strangely, the conversation got around to my glass, my travel case came out, and three marbles and two barrettes vanished from my case. Not bad considering I had no intention of selling this weekend. At any rate, we finally got around to asking for a recommedation of a local restaurant to try for dinner. Joan suggested a perfectly lovely sounding Italian restaurant, but I was in the mood for a more meat and potatoes sort of venue. We wound up at Red Stripe, a restaurant I had thought was going to be similar to a TGIFridays or Applebees, but it wound up being so much better. I’m not going to go on and on about the restaurant, but if you get a chance, check it out. Their own link seems broken, but they’re up on yelp.com. For the price, the food and portions were fantastic.

Sunday, it was time to check out and head on up to get the kids, but honestly, we were ready. We had a lovely breakfast downstairs (fresh peach turnovers!) and settled our bill. I’m a bit torn here. Joan did something really nice in relation to our bill, but I don’t want to go into details because I don’t want to cause her problems with other guests who might read this. But what I will tell you is that my glass figured into part of the bargain, so it worked out nicely for everyone. Thanks again Joan!

We loaded up the car and trucked up to Mystic to get into town a little before we had to go pick up the kids. Again, there are a few shops that aren’t small child friendly, per se, so we took some time to poke in them while we didn’t have them in tow. It was quite nice, but then we were on to see the kids, and it was a lovely, lovely reunion. The hugs from your kids certainly make up for all the headaches.

Today my father and his wife were up from North Carolina, partly to see friends in CT, partly to see the kids. So we had them meet us at Pizzetta for lunch. After some lovely chicken pesto pizza and chit cat, the good stuff came; we took the kids and grandparents to the park.

The park over in Groton is one of the kid’s favorite places to play when visiting grandma. We got lots of photos. G’s mother and brother joined us for lunch and the outing and we got plenty of photos. I’m including them here as well as on my facebook page since not everyone is on my list, and not everyone reads my blog. So if you get them twice, sorry, but thanks for being a super fan.

The narrative ends here, enjoy the pictures.