XYZ

So my goal to post everyday this month was foiled by an open out. I will explain what that is momentarily but I'd first like to talk about our night out at karaoke. It went perfectly well, thank you. Since Iowa banned smoking in bars almost a year ago, there are not many crowds in the bars anymore. What this means for The Adamnator and I is that he gets to sing a lot more often. We were there all of 3 minutes when he got up to sing his first song and he sang again about two songs later. He did awesome as always although I was a little nervous that the tiny bar might light up like a roman candle ala 'The Station night club' when he decided to sing "Once Bitten Twice Shy" but due to the lack of pyrotechnics, we were all saved.

I got a little excited when I heard that a chick was going to sing "Ballroom Blitz". This is one of my favorite songs and one I used to sing with my friend Audrey back in the day. We retired it at my wedding reception and I haven't sung it since. That's right, Interneters. I had karaoke at my wedding reception. Adam and I met at karaoke so it has sentimental value, ok? At least that's what we keep telling ourselves in order to make us feel less white-trashy. So, chicky gets up there to sing "Ballroom Blitz" and she sounds like a muppet. Dammit! I was so bummed. Nothing will take away your favorite-song-euphoria like hearing Fozzie the Bear sing it.

Karaoke is always filled with a lot of characters no matter how many people are there. If there's four people there and two of them are us, you can bet there's going to be at least one person to secretly make fun of for the rest of the night. I'm the queen of this. I could walk up in that bar with my hair in dreadlocks, a wedding dress and soccer shoes and think it's ok to make fun of the girl in the Ghostbusters t-shirt. That's just how I roll. I always give them names too like, "tight sleeve girl", "slicker girl", "Buddha belly" and "simon says". You know "simon says". She's the white girl that gets out on the dance floor with all of her black girlfriends and does exactly what they do. So last Friday night we had "Bonnie Tyler". Bonnie looked exactly like Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart"??? Gawd, I am so not calling on you for any 80's trivia!) She had a horrible fake tan, bleached blond hair, too much make-up and the voice of James Earl Jones. While she did sing very good, she had Cher Hand. You know Cher Hand. It's the hand that's not holding the microphone that dangles limply just above the waste and has long red nails. Cher Hand.

I didn't even get drunk. In fact I even drank two glasses of water. Yahoo for me. I just don't drink as much since blackberry Brandy made me spew red all over my bedroom carpet. Meddling blackberry Brandy. I hate her.

So the open out. I don't know if I've ever blogged about my previous job before the Adamnator and I moved back to the Quad Cities but I used to work for MCI. I started out working 3rd shift as an e-Customer Service representative, which meant I answered e-mails from customers all night long. I loved it and I excelled at it. I had awesome quality and was looked upon by supervisors to help new employees with their work and check it before it went out. I loved doing it and I loved almost everyone I worked with. After doing that for two years the company took on a new endeavor (this was pre-Bernie Ebbers goes to jail). The company had bought out a smaller company that supplied local services and they were going to create a local service called, "The Neighborhood Built By MCI." We were the first company to combine local and unlimited long distance service for one price. Ten of us were chosen to be the 3rd shift local repair team. Now obviously we weren't going out to houses to perform repairs, but we did take the repair calls, do line tests, dispatch technicians and set up times for techs to come repair service. I learned a lot of repair lingo and a lot more about how phone service works during my time on local repair.

Sunday morning Adam and I woke up and had no Internet service and no dial tone. When you called the home phone it was RNA. Geek talk for Ring No Answer. I called the phone company and guess what? The main number in the phone book was not a working number. Awesome. I called a billing number I had in my cell phone that I used last week. They were closed. Finally found a repair number and after going through automated phone hell I was put through to a lovely representative straight out of Bangalore, India named "Susan". Now I say "Susan" because I know that's not her real name. My time at MCI also gave me a huge education on outsourcing. Outsourcing is the reason I don't still work for MCI today. When MCI decided to outsource "just some" of the e-Customer Service work to India, we started seeing e-mails go out to customers with our names that we did not send. That was because our Indian co-workers were using our names so they didn't have to sign Noorjehan, Parameshwari, or Abjit--their real names. After a lot of complaining we finally got them to end their e-mails with who they really are.

I told "Susan" that our phones and Internet were not working. She asked me all the right questions--did I unplug the phones, did I try a different phone, do I pray to Allah. I knew how to perform the UPT (Unplug Test) so I was right with her on all of that. I was then expecting to be put on hold for a line test. Nope. "Susan" transferred me to the DSL repair team. Oh "Susan"! DSL repair told me that they couldn't fix my DSL until I had a dial tone, which I already knew but someone needs to school "Susan" on that, I think. They started getting into a bunch of questions I had a hard time understanding and I finally just hung up in frustration. I figured I would call back Monday morning and try to get someone maybe in Denver. Sunday night Adam decided it was time to try again so I called back and spoke to "Susan" Bangalore friend, "John". No kidding. He called himself "John". John immediately performed a line test and discovered we had an "open out". When he started to explain to me what that was I told him I already knew but hearing the phrase "open out" immediately brought back a lot of memories. One in particular.

The ten of us that were chosen for that third shift repair team were some of the funnest people in the center. One night a friend that was not on our team, Wes, came into the bay to talk to some of us during a break. After he left I turned to someone on my team and said, "Wes' zipper was down." He laughed and composed an email that went something like this:

Subject: XYZ

The local repair team has performed a test and found that you have an open out on your zipper. We could dispatch a technician but this is a job you may want to do yourself to save the cost.

I saved that email forever. I suppose to someone who wasn't there maybe it's not as funny but when you're forced to be a phone tech geek for a year of your life, that shit's funny, yo.