As an established curmudgeon, I have to come up with new pet peeves all the time. My latest is something I call The “Farve” Syndrome.
Many Americans have NO knowledge of any language other than English. (Many of us don’t even know English – but that’s another peeve.) There’s a tendency to see other languages as weird, irrelevant, and not worth knowing. Even the European languages which were spoken by our forefathers – well, mine anyway – are included in this scorn.
There is, or was, a football player named Brett Favre. “Favre” (pronounced FAH-vruh) is a French name originally describing a person who grows beans. FAH-vruh is NOT all that hard to say. Try it! Try it again!
But a lot of people, including sports announcers, pronounce it “Farve.” Like Harve.
Let’s carry this a bit farther, why don’t we? Let’s start calling the Louvre the Louver.
Oh, you were calling it that already, were you?
Let’s just say that it isn’t making you look smart to do that.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Don't Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs!
In case anyone doesn't know the old fable: A fellow found that his goose was laying golden eggs. He became wealthy by selling the gold; every day or so there was another egg! But after a while he got greedy and wanted to find the source of the gold, which he figured was somewhere inside the goose. He killed the goose, and that was the end of it; there was no gold inside, and the goose naturally laid no more eggs. (I think he had to sell off his mansion and lands after that!)
There's lots of arguing and posturing going on in America about taxes, unemployment, recession, etc. Somehow most of it seems to fail in getting to the point or doing any good.
In brief, here's the golden egg analogy: when corporations try to minimize payrolls by automating and outsourcing as many jobs as possible, people are put out of work. And people who are out of work don't have the money to buy the widgets the corporations are selling! Yes, the worker is the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Take the City of Milwaukee, for example. When it was a hotbed of factories and manufacturing companies -- the Heil Company; Pabst Brewery; Ambrosia Chocolate; Allen-Bradley, to name a few -- it may not have been the coolest or most trendy city in America. Okay, it wasn't; the preponderance of blue-collar workers didn't make it a San Francisco, a New York City, or even a Chicago. But back in the 1950s and 1960s Milwaukee did have great schools; clean, attractive streets; and overall, a wholesome and thriving feel. Now it's a kind of sad testament to the past, with an amazing number of buildings that haven't changed for forty or fifty years except by getting older.
What changed? Well, all the companies I've listed above are gone. There were probably many more - some of them smaller, like Kearney & Trecker; some larger. Where'd they go? I heard that Allen-Bradley moved a lot of its operations to Texas, where wages are lower and unions weaker -- someone can write and correct me if that's wrong; I know that A-B was bought by Rockwell. The huge wide monolith of a factory building that stands in the near South Side of Milwaukee, with "Big Stash" (pronounce that 'stosh', please), the largest four-sided clock in the world at its top, is largely inactive; the marble bus-stop inserts at its corners are little-used now.
So some would say that the unions killed Milwaukee (some would say it was the welfare system, designed for out-of-work factory workers but mainly used by others, some of whom traveled to Milwaukee for that purpose), but I think this is a clear case of Golden Goose Death.
When the workers were well-paid, they bought all sorts of things -- houses, lawn mowers, beer (I guess they still buy beer, no matter what), baseball tickets, televisions, all of it. When the workers are out of a job, they buy almost nothing. Some move away, but a lot of them stick around, since their relatives are in the area -- the tendency of people to think they should be able to thrive anywhere is an interesting topic.
What do corporate leaders want or expect these workers to do? Work for lower wages? Not work at all? Live in "group houses" if they can't afford their own homes? Not have children if they can't afford them? Move to (where??)?
Corporations are not charities. I get that. But they could take a view of workers as partners and raisons-d'etre, instead of as enemies. Corporate leaders could remind themselves that money can't be made when nobody has any, because they've taken it all. Nobody in America will buy your widgets if all your widget-makers are machines and all your office workers are in India.
Because, duh, American workers won't have any money.
There's lots of arguing and posturing going on in America about taxes, unemployment, recession, etc. Somehow most of it seems to fail in getting to the point or doing any good.
In brief, here's the golden egg analogy: when corporations try to minimize payrolls by automating and outsourcing as many jobs as possible, people are put out of work. And people who are out of work don't have the money to buy the widgets the corporations are selling! Yes, the worker is the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Take the City of Milwaukee, for example. When it was a hotbed of factories and manufacturing companies -- the Heil Company; Pabst Brewery; Ambrosia Chocolate; Allen-Bradley, to name a few -- it may not have been the coolest or most trendy city in America. Okay, it wasn't; the preponderance of blue-collar workers didn't make it a San Francisco, a New York City, or even a Chicago. But back in the 1950s and 1960s Milwaukee did have great schools; clean, attractive streets; and overall, a wholesome and thriving feel. Now it's a kind of sad testament to the past, with an amazing number of buildings that haven't changed for forty or fifty years except by getting older.
What changed? Well, all the companies I've listed above are gone. There were probably many more - some of them smaller, like Kearney & Trecker; some larger. Where'd they go? I heard that Allen-Bradley moved a lot of its operations to Texas, where wages are lower and unions weaker -- someone can write and correct me if that's wrong; I know that A-B was bought by Rockwell. The huge wide monolith of a factory building that stands in the near South Side of Milwaukee, with "Big Stash" (pronounce that 'stosh', please), the largest four-sided clock in the world at its top, is largely inactive; the marble bus-stop inserts at its corners are little-used now.
So some would say that the unions killed Milwaukee (some would say it was the welfare system, designed for out-of-work factory workers but mainly used by others, some of whom traveled to Milwaukee for that purpose), but I think this is a clear case of Golden Goose Death.
When the workers were well-paid, they bought all sorts of things -- houses, lawn mowers, beer (I guess they still buy beer, no matter what), baseball tickets, televisions, all of it. When the workers are out of a job, they buy almost nothing. Some move away, but a lot of them stick around, since their relatives are in the area -- the tendency of people to think they should be able to thrive anywhere is an interesting topic.
What do corporate leaders want or expect these workers to do? Work for lower wages? Not work at all? Live in "group houses" if they can't afford their own homes? Not have children if they can't afford them? Move to (where??)?
Corporations are not charities. I get that. But they could take a view of workers as partners and raisons-d'etre, instead of as enemies. Corporate leaders could remind themselves that money can't be made when nobody has any, because they've taken it all. Nobody in America will buy your widgets if all your widget-makers are machines and all your office workers are in India.
Because, duh, American workers won't have any money.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Proud To Be Of Service?
I can see the direction that American society’s “manners” are taking. Nobody wants to call people “Ma’am” or “Sir” - (especially not Ma’am; that topic deserves its own separate discussion). Instead service personnel, who should be saying “Good morning, Ma’am, may I help you?” say “Hi, how are you?” and even expect an answer.
I suppose if you live in a small enough town, you might know the store clerk who asks how you are, and the clerk might even care how you are. In the city, however, normally these people are strangers. “How are you?” is actually a can of worms which neither party wants to open. In that How Are You area could be dead or dying relatives, cancer diagnoses, painful joints, autistic children, lost jobs, cracked-up cars, alcoholism or drug problems, money problems, and more. Does the 7-11 clerk really want to hear about all that? NO! And s/he shouldn’t want to. That’s why s/he should just say “Good morning (afternoon/evening), Ma’am, may I help you?”
Clerks also need to say, at the end of each transaction, “Thank you” – and they should mean it.
There is a growing trend for clerks to try to manipulate the conversation so that the customer thinks s/he is supposed to say Thank You instead of the clerk’s saying it. This trend apparently comes from resentment of the service status. The clerk thinks s/he is waiting on you (which is different from waiting FOR you - topic for another discussion) and thinks s/he should be thanked for making change, or whatever it was s/he did. The clerk is missing the point! That customer is a patron of the business which employs the clerk/waiter/whatever, and without customers there would be no business and no job. The clerk/waiter/whatever should see herself as an extension of the business and the business owners, and should thank the patron (Remember this by thinking pay-tron! The one who PAYS is the Pay-tron, NOT a client. Learn your history!). If personal thanks are impossible due to a mean-spirited attitude on the part of the service person (obviously I suspect that), s/he should say “Thank you for shopping at (Seven-Eleven, CVS, Giant, whatever).”
I suspect these bad-manners problems are exacerbated by customer-service training which focuses mainly on loss-control (read: THEFT). Certainly, there is theft from shops and stores. That is not an excuse for being routinely rude to customers. I suspect that a lot of these clerks see themselves as cops, not cashiers, and the customers as Ones That Stole and Got Caught, Ones that Probably Stole and Didn’t Get Caught, and Ones That Probably Didn’t Steal – This Time – So I Won’t Assert My Authority – This Time. Note that this kind of training and attitude places the clerks above the customers instead of as service workers for them!
I further suspect that some workers – in restaurants especially – are carefully trained in BAD MANNERS. They are told to be FRIENDLY and are not taught to be respectful. “Hi, I’m Curtis and I’ll be taking care of you today.” (What are you, Curtis, a nurse? Am I hallucinating - is this a hospital?) The restaurants are probably walking a fine line and are somewhat aware of it. They don’t want the waiters to get disgruntled from realizing that they are in a service occupation; they want them to feel important and empowered (sort of) and enthusiastic about their jobs. They also want them to get tips so the restaurant won’t have to pay them a living wage. They also don’t want to alienate customers who have no manners by demonstrating too much high-quality behavior!
All this is complicated in large cities nowadays by the presence of varied cultures. I had one clerk ask me to PLEASE PLEASE explain the difference between Ma’am and Mom. Another clerk caused me to jump by saying loudly, “Hi, Mom!” (I do have two adult children, but . . . . she wasn’t one of them.) I am afraid that some service workers fiercely hate their jobs and especially hate waiting on women, whom they consider to be slime-bag animals. These men will call a male customer “Sir” over and over again in an obsequious manner (“Can I help you, Sir? Here you are, Sir! Thank you, Sir!”) and then turn to a female and say “Uh!” They do this with an air that sends a clear message: Women are nothing. (Can’t we give those guys jobs in the back room somewhere?!) The clerks who behave in this way make their views clear by using the multi-Sir approach even for workmen in soiled, busted-out work outfits and then using the Uh! approach as a woman steps up to the counter in a natty black business suit. (No! No! No! I am not saying that clerks should discriminate among various social classes of customers. I am saying that to some people, all women are automatically trash, especially compared to all men.)
All these problems almost - but not quite - make me like automatic checkout machines.
I suppose if you live in a small enough town, you might know the store clerk who asks how you are, and the clerk might even care how you are. In the city, however, normally these people are strangers. “How are you?” is actually a can of worms which neither party wants to open. In that How Are You area could be dead or dying relatives, cancer diagnoses, painful joints, autistic children, lost jobs, cracked-up cars, alcoholism or drug problems, money problems, and more. Does the 7-11 clerk really want to hear about all that? NO! And s/he shouldn’t want to. That’s why s/he should just say “Good morning (afternoon/evening), Ma’am, may I help you?”
Clerks also need to say, at the end of each transaction, “Thank you” – and they should mean it.
There is a growing trend for clerks to try to manipulate the conversation so that the customer thinks s/he is supposed to say Thank You instead of the clerk’s saying it. This trend apparently comes from resentment of the service status. The clerk thinks s/he is waiting on you (which is different from waiting FOR you - topic for another discussion) and thinks s/he should be thanked for making change, or whatever it was s/he did. The clerk is missing the point! That customer is a patron of the business which employs the clerk/waiter/whatever, and without customers there would be no business and no job. The clerk/waiter/whatever should see herself as an extension of the business and the business owners, and should thank the patron (Remember this by thinking pay-tron! The one who PAYS is the Pay-tron, NOT a client. Learn your history!). If personal thanks are impossible due to a mean-spirited attitude on the part of the service person (obviously I suspect that), s/he should say “Thank you for shopping at (Seven-Eleven, CVS, Giant, whatever).”
I suspect these bad-manners problems are exacerbated by customer-service training which focuses mainly on loss-control (read: THEFT). Certainly, there is theft from shops and stores. That is not an excuse for being routinely rude to customers. I suspect that a lot of these clerks see themselves as cops, not cashiers, and the customers as Ones That Stole and Got Caught, Ones that Probably Stole and Didn’t Get Caught, and Ones That Probably Didn’t Steal – This Time – So I Won’t Assert My Authority – This Time. Note that this kind of training and attitude places the clerks above the customers instead of as service workers for them!
I further suspect that some workers – in restaurants especially – are carefully trained in BAD MANNERS. They are told to be FRIENDLY and are not taught to be respectful. “Hi, I’m Curtis and I’ll be taking care of you today.” (What are you, Curtis, a nurse? Am I hallucinating - is this a hospital?) The restaurants are probably walking a fine line and are somewhat aware of it. They don’t want the waiters to get disgruntled from realizing that they are in a service occupation; they want them to feel important and empowered (sort of) and enthusiastic about their jobs. They also want them to get tips so the restaurant won’t have to pay them a living wage. They also don’t want to alienate customers who have no manners by demonstrating too much high-quality behavior!
All this is complicated in large cities nowadays by the presence of varied cultures. I had one clerk ask me to PLEASE PLEASE explain the difference between Ma’am and Mom. Another clerk caused me to jump by saying loudly, “Hi, Mom!” (I do have two adult children, but . . . . she wasn’t one of them.) I am afraid that some service workers fiercely hate their jobs and especially hate waiting on women, whom they consider to be slime-bag animals. These men will call a male customer “Sir” over and over again in an obsequious manner (“Can I help you, Sir? Here you are, Sir! Thank you, Sir!”) and then turn to a female and say “Uh!” They do this with an air that sends a clear message: Women are nothing. (Can’t we give those guys jobs in the back room somewhere?!) The clerks who behave in this way make their views clear by using the multi-Sir approach even for workmen in soiled, busted-out work outfits and then using the Uh! approach as a woman steps up to the counter in a natty black business suit. (No! No! No! I am not saying that clerks should discriminate among various social classes of customers. I am saying that to some people, all women are automatically trash, especially compared to all men.)
All these problems almost - but not quite - make me like automatic checkout machines.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
On Wisconsin
February, 2011 - Have you noticed what's going on in Wisconsin?
Have you really thought about it?
Consider this mess in the light of How You Would Like the World To Be. What kind of America do these conservatives want, anyway?
And: why are the police and fire unions staying out of this mess/immune to the current attacks on unions?
Could there be a link here?
YES!
Police and fire workers are mostly men. Teachers are mostly women. This whole hoo-ha is partly a gender-based attack on women's work and pay. Some conservatives would like to stuff women back into the kitchen (and bedroom) and get us out of workplaces.
This is nothing new. Many years ago a young male student of mine (I was giving him technical training in the workplace) told me that the Big Boss had told him "We're going to have all the women where they should be - putting things on the shelves for YOU and the other guys." In other words, Big Boss did NOT like having women in responsible jobs! Never mind our training and education, our intelligence, our commitment, never mind any of that! Then as soon as this student graduated (he was overbearing and obnoxious, BTW), Big Boss gave him a nice job. (I wouldn't have hired him at all.) Big Boss was also a sexual harasser - any surprise there? (Oddly, his wife was a very highly educated specialist in a fairly elite field.)
Yes, this happened in Wisconsin. That is a rather backward place in some ways, SORRY! I lived there for a long time and I know.
So back to the current mess. The governor of Wisconsin wants to throw the women and children overboard first. MEN should have jobs! MEN who work only for private corporations! I suppose the women are supposed to be dependent on the men. The ones who don't get married can live in little lean-tos attached to the houses of their married sisters, and do ironing and sewing for their meal scraps.
Pfui!
Go check out Rachel Maddow's rant on the Wisconsin mess at:
Have you really thought about it?
Consider this mess in the light of How You Would Like the World To Be. What kind of America do these conservatives want, anyway?
And: why are the police and fire unions staying out of this mess/immune to the current attacks on unions?
Could there be a link here?
YES!
Police and fire workers are mostly men. Teachers are mostly women. This whole hoo-ha is partly a gender-based attack on women's work and pay. Some conservatives would like to stuff women back into the kitchen (and bedroom) and get us out of workplaces.
This is nothing new. Many years ago a young male student of mine (I was giving him technical training in the workplace) told me that the Big Boss had told him "We're going to have all the women where they should be - putting things on the shelves for YOU and the other guys." In other words, Big Boss did NOT like having women in responsible jobs! Never mind our training and education, our intelligence, our commitment, never mind any of that! Then as soon as this student graduated (he was overbearing and obnoxious, BTW), Big Boss gave him a nice job. (I wouldn't have hired him at all.) Big Boss was also a sexual harasser - any surprise there? (Oddly, his wife was a very highly educated specialist in a fairly elite field.)
Yes, this happened in Wisconsin. That is a rather backward place in some ways, SORRY! I lived there for a long time and I know.
So back to the current mess. The governor of Wisconsin wants to throw the women and children overboard first. MEN should have jobs! MEN who work only for private corporations! I suppose the women are supposed to be dependent on the men. The ones who don't get married can live in little lean-tos attached to the houses of their married sisters, and do ironing and sewing for their meal scraps.
Pfui!
Go check out Rachel Maddow's rant on the Wisconsin mess at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7e4bj5rrd8
Though she has a powerful message, she omitted the gender-attack aspect of the problem.
So I'm pointing it out.
Though she has a powerful message, she omitted the gender-attack aspect of the problem.
So I'm pointing it out.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
What You Need To Know About Bank of America
Bank of America bought our local bank some time ago. It's inconvenient to change banks when a paycheck is automatically deposited, so we hang on at B of A, but consider the bank to be "on probation" with us.
The worst episode occurred when I was balancing our checkbook with the statement and found three checks from a month or two earlier that seemed as though they should have passed through the account earlier, and/or actually HAD done so. (I once worked in the banking industry when I was young and used to balance OTHER PEOPLE'S checkbooks for them when they were horribly snarled. Point being: I'm good at this.) I got out the older statements (I save them all! You should too!) and lo, these checks had been debited from our account TWICE! So I took the statements and the checks to the branch (they like to call it a "banking center" - pfui!) and waited for one of the customer service reps who sit at desks.
The one I got was an elderly woman (and I'm not a kid myself by any measure, believe me) and seemed intelligent, but also "loaded for bear". She was eager to blame ME for this problem. She asked a lot of insulting questions like "What did you DO with the checks after they came back the FIRST time?" (they never came back in the statement the first time) "Why didn't you NOTICE that?" (we are people who actually have some money - our bank statements ran to four pages back then). Finally, to make it clear who and what we were dealing with here, I invoked our 20 years' history with the bank (most of it before B of A bought it), the professional status of my husband and myself, a few similar ideas related to our status in the community, and what I thought had happened: someone in the check processing area had embezzled the money by running the checks through our account twice and diverting the funds to some private account, and B of A had better fix this problem STAT.
Ms. Oldster NEVER apologized to me at any point, but when the light dawned in her head she got a freaked-out look on her face, rose from her chair, and said "I have to call the hotline! We have a hotline for things like this!"
After that I left with lukewarm assurances from Ms. Oldster that the matter would be investigated.
A couple of days later I received a phone call from a male bank "officer" who assured me, in a tone as if he were telling me I had won the lottery, that the funds had been replaced in our account. "Well, I should hope so," I told him, "they were only removed due to a bank error or embezzlement. What do you think happened?" This loser would only say repeatedly that he couldn't discuss that (which made me more completely convinced that it was a problem with criminal activity within B of A). I found his attitude nearly as irritating and disrespectful as that of Ms. Oldster, though I know that many corporations disclose nothing when they are at fault, not just B of A.
So that was a very, very big Strike One.
Next came the issue of foreign currency. I needed quite a few Euros for a trip, so B of A was a source I called to inquire about exchanging currency. I was told that the Euros had to be "ordered" and our "banking center" didn't have any normally, and the rate I was quoted was VERY unfavorable and had a large extra surcharge. Forget that! (I got my Euros at American Express, where the charges were only semi-astronomical.)
Strike Two.
The most recent glitch came when I ran out of checks (yes, yes, that was my own fault). I went to the "banking center" to get some temporary checks and was told that that service was not offered! The teller was not very respectful about this, either. Later I visited another, larger "banking center" and was told the same thing. I made phone calls to a mysterious B of A entity also. When I asked the reason for this policy, I was told it was for security reasons. "But other banks provide them!" I protested. The unspoken attitude was "so what?". Also, several of the B of A workers offered me the unattractive option of a "rush order" of checks, and it was notable that all of them sounded brisk and excited about this idea. Good grief, are they on commission?! Do you know what a "rush order" of checks from B of A costs? Over $30! Now call me an old fogey, but one of the first principles of managing your money is to keep service charges low.
Just for reference, I checked with Wachovia/Wells Fargo, where we have other accounts, and asked whether they issue temporary checks. Not only do they offer this service, the customer service reps. at Wachovia were astounded to learn that B of A does not!
So that is Strike Three - it's just that the umpire hasn't yelled "OUT!" yet.
By the way, if you Google on Bank of America, you can find many, many complaints and even remarks by B of A workers that they themselves bank elsewhere.
The worst episode occurred when I was balancing our checkbook with the statement and found three checks from a month or two earlier that seemed as though they should have passed through the account earlier, and/or actually HAD done so. (I once worked in the banking industry when I was young and used to balance OTHER PEOPLE'S checkbooks for them when they were horribly snarled. Point being: I'm good at this.) I got out the older statements (I save them all! You should too!) and lo, these checks had been debited from our account TWICE! So I took the statements and the checks to the branch (they like to call it a "banking center" - pfui!) and waited for one of the customer service reps who sit at desks.
The one I got was an elderly woman (and I'm not a kid myself by any measure, believe me) and seemed intelligent, but also "loaded for bear". She was eager to blame ME for this problem. She asked a lot of insulting questions like "What did you DO with the checks after they came back the FIRST time?" (they never came back in the statement the first time) "Why didn't you NOTICE that?" (we are people who actually have some money - our bank statements ran to four pages back then). Finally, to make it clear who and what we were dealing with here, I invoked our 20 years' history with the bank (most of it before B of A bought it), the professional status of my husband and myself, a few similar ideas related to our status in the community, and what I thought had happened: someone in the check processing area had embezzled the money by running the checks through our account twice and diverting the funds to some private account, and B of A had better fix this problem STAT.
Ms. Oldster NEVER apologized to me at any point, but when the light dawned in her head she got a freaked-out look on her face, rose from her chair, and said "I have to call the hotline! We have a hotline for things like this!"
After that I left with lukewarm assurances from Ms. Oldster that the matter would be investigated.
A couple of days later I received a phone call from a male bank "officer" who assured me, in a tone as if he were telling me I had won the lottery, that the funds had been replaced in our account. "Well, I should hope so," I told him, "they were only removed due to a bank error or embezzlement. What do you think happened?" This loser would only say repeatedly that he couldn't discuss that (which made me more completely convinced that it was a problem with criminal activity within B of A). I found his attitude nearly as irritating and disrespectful as that of Ms. Oldster, though I know that many corporations disclose nothing when they are at fault, not just B of A.
So that was a very, very big Strike One.
Next came the issue of foreign currency. I needed quite a few Euros for a trip, so B of A was a source I called to inquire about exchanging currency. I was told that the Euros had to be "ordered" and our "banking center" didn't have any normally, and the rate I was quoted was VERY unfavorable and had a large extra surcharge. Forget that! (I got my Euros at American Express, where the charges were only semi-astronomical.)
Strike Two.
The most recent glitch came when I ran out of checks (yes, yes, that was my own fault). I went to the "banking center" to get some temporary checks and was told that that service was not offered! The teller was not very respectful about this, either. Later I visited another, larger "banking center" and was told the same thing. I made phone calls to a mysterious B of A entity also. When I asked the reason for this policy, I was told it was for security reasons. "But other banks provide them!" I protested. The unspoken attitude was "so what?". Also, several of the B of A workers offered me the unattractive option of a "rush order" of checks, and it was notable that all of them sounded brisk and excited about this idea. Good grief, are they on commission?! Do you know what a "rush order" of checks from B of A costs? Over $30! Now call me an old fogey, but one of the first principles of managing your money is to keep service charges low.
Just for reference, I checked with Wachovia/Wells Fargo, where we have other accounts, and asked whether they issue temporary checks. Not only do they offer this service, the customer service reps. at Wachovia were astounded to learn that B of A does not!
So that is Strike Three - it's just that the umpire hasn't yelled "OUT!" yet.
By the way, if you Google on Bank of America, you can find many, many complaints and even remarks by B of A workers that they themselves bank elsewhere.
Bad Business List
In alphabetical order:
1. Bank of America
2. Capital One Credit Card
3. Colorful Images
4. Comcast
5. Herrschner's
6. Verizon
What gets a company onto my list? My own experience with bad (sometimes incredibly bad) customer service, mainly. It's interesting that it's so easy to find other people complaining about the same companies that drive me crazy!
I will post detailed information on these companies in separate entries.
1. Bank of America
2. Capital One Credit Card
3. Colorful Images
4. Comcast
5. Herrschner's
6. Verizon
What gets a company onto my list? My own experience with bad (sometimes incredibly bad) customer service, mainly. It's interesting that it's so easy to find other people complaining about the same companies that drive me crazy!
I will post detailed information on these companies in separate entries.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
Here comes an exhaustive, perhaps excessive analysis of one of the best pop songs in existence: “Hallelujah”, by Leonard Cohen.
The words and the music are both necessary for the song to produce its effect, as is true of any powerful song. Complicating this discussion is the fact that there are more than one version of this song in existence, including at least two by Cohen himself, as well as variations developed by others who have “covered” the song. I therefore will take the liberty of messing around with the verses myself, as everyone else has.
I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord.
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this: The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift –
The baffled king composing Hallelujah!
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
This business about the “secret chord” is related to a section of 1 Samuel (Old Testament) in which David played the harp for Saul and it soothed him. I don’t believe the business about a “secret chord” is directly from the Bible at all – it’s one of those legends that comes down through time alongside the Bible, in folklore. It is widely supposed that David wrote most of the Psalms, though it’s hard to be sure about that.
So the song starts out being a tale about the Bible and David, and in the third person, and pretty non-confrontational, but all of a sudden and very early in the song we have “you don’t really care for music, do ya?” Now that is HUGE! This song is sung to an ex-lover, as will become more evident later on. The singer still loves the person (woman, usually, though the song can be adapted for a woman to sing) but is also very angry at her. After all, if the lover doesn’t really care for music, and the one who loves her is a musician, isn’t that a cause for anger right there?! Furthermore, despite (or because of) knowing that this ex-lover doesn’t care for music, Cohen forges right ahead, with musical/technical information about the song! Why do what the lover might like? Nothing works with her!
And then we’re back to David, “the baffled king”.
Next verse:
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
It would be difficult to know who is referred to with “your faith was strong but you needed proof”, but as soon as we hear “you saw her bathing on the roof” it is clear that now we’ve moved on to the story of David and Bathsheba, which begins, “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”
David was the king by then, so he had his people find out who she was, and furthermore, he became intimate with her, and also had her husband sent out into the worst part of the battles that were currently being fought, so he would be killed – and he was, and David married Bathsheba and had a son by her (though he had not waited for her husband to be killed to start the celebration). The son’s later death in infancy is generally considered to have been a divine punishment against David, but also, everybody knew about what David had done, including a local prophet, and we know too. He didn’t get away with it!
I don’t think they had kitchen chairs in ancient Israel, did they? And it was Delilah who cut Samson’s hair, not Bathsheba who cut David’s (though it’s a great add-on to this tale). I am sure that all these controlling, destructive things Bathsheba was supposed to have done to David in this song (which are NOT in the Bible) are just depictions of the control over men that women are imagined to have, once the men fall in love with them. (Imagined by men, anyway! Why do you think women have to wear bags over their bodies in some countries?!) And David really was in love with Bathsheba, and it’s pretty clear what was going on when “from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”
By the way, one might ask why the song begins with David in the third person and then suddenly switches to addressing him in the second person (you) in the second verse. I think the answer is simple. It’s for the rhyme, “overthrew ya”.
Baby I've been here before,
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah
This verse is a little obscure, but apparently the scene has suddenly shifted from ancient Israel to here and now. I think the “here” mentioned is the state of being lonely, not a specific place. Yet, these simple words convey a great desolation. It’s as though the poet pulls us from the problems of King David to a bleak, poorly-lit, lonely modern apartment, at light-speed no less. I don’t really know what the “flag on the Marble Arch” is, but it feels to me as though his former girlfriend is very active and happy, perhaps participating in demonstrations in Washington Square, but the poet points out that “love is not a victory march”, so he’s not having a great time, even though she is. Here, I think, we are into existential anxiety. Love ends, we die, all that. We love somebody and then they dump us, and it’s torture. Not too obscure when you look at it that way. . . love and its loss are eternal/universal human experiences, and that’s why you get the miserable Hallelujahs....we are glad to be alive, but it’s damn painful sometimes. Thanks, God, for this awful painful life. Thanks a lot!
This gets us to the meaning of ‘Hallelujah”. Officially, it’s supposed to mean “praise Yahweh” (the ancient Hebrews’ name for God). It is said that hallelujah/alleluia is a mantra, though not necessarily from the traditions of India as most mantras are; certainly it has a lulling, yet uplifting verbal quality to it. (‘Amen’ also, but that’s another story.) ‘El’ or ‘Eli’ is also a Hebrew word for God, which shows up everywhere. Beth-El = House of God; El-ijah = Yahweh is God, which I think is also the meaning of Alleluia. (Elijah, Allelujah, not much difference!) This use of El for God is also related to the Arabic ‘Allah’, which as far as I can determine means ‘the (one) God’, and to the Tibetan lha, which means god also, as in Lhasa and ‘Lha ha gyalo’ (the gods have conquered - you’re supposed to say this when you surmount a mountain pass). I wish I’d been able to study a zillion languages. But I digress –
There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
hallelujah, hallelujah.
Ooooh! He’s really mad because she gives him no access to you-know-what any more! Poor poet! And he is hinting that he was a good lover indeed, since the “holy dove was moving too” – he had spiritual experiences with the lovemaking (or thought he did), and the line “every breath we drew was Hallelujah” may be the most beautiful one in the whole song. But if it was all that great, why did she dump him? Hmmm. Men tend to think it’s good for the woman whenever it’s good for them. It’s the way of the world. Hallelujah.
Maybe there's a God above, but all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who out drew ya.
And it's not a cry you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
I confess to finding this verse a little hard to follow, with the “shoot at someone who outdrew ya.” Huh? But – I guess if his lover “outdrew” him by dumping him, he is shooting at her with this song and its little digs. And we are back to the existential problems with our cold and broken Hallelujah, just as in the song composed for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet movie back in the 60s:
A rose will bloom, it then will fade;
So does a youth, so does the fairest maid.
(Nino Rota/Eugene Walter)
One of the many nuances expressed in “Hallelujah” is the hopelessness of addressing a lover who has dumped you - nothing you say or do ever works. You can’t get ‘em back, and the person singing this song knows it.
I especially like the handling of the melody in the Hallelujahs. In the verse, the highest note of all is the ‘Ha’ in the final Hallelujah, which always gives rise to an excited feeling; then come the four repetitions: the first one rising in a mildly hopeful manner; second one sinking in a softly sad, yet unresolved way; third one comes back with the same rise as the first; but finally, instead of a symmetrical repeat of Hallelujah #2, we get the elongated melisma and a resigned return to the keynote.
So the Hallelujahs seem to say, Ya win some; ya lose some, ya win some; it all comes to the same thing in the end.
(Only they say it better.)
The words and the music are both necessary for the song to produce its effect, as is true of any powerful song. Complicating this discussion is the fact that there are more than one version of this song in existence, including at least two by Cohen himself, as well as variations developed by others who have “covered” the song. I therefore will take the liberty of messing around with the verses myself, as everyone else has.
I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord.
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this: The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift –
The baffled king composing Hallelujah!
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
This business about the “secret chord” is related to a section of 1 Samuel (Old Testament) in which David played the harp for Saul and it soothed him. I don’t believe the business about a “secret chord” is directly from the Bible at all – it’s one of those legends that comes down through time alongside the Bible, in folklore. It is widely supposed that David wrote most of the Psalms, though it’s hard to be sure about that.
So the song starts out being a tale about the Bible and David, and in the third person, and pretty non-confrontational, but all of a sudden and very early in the song we have “you don’t really care for music, do ya?” Now that is HUGE! This song is sung to an ex-lover, as will become more evident later on. The singer still loves the person (woman, usually, though the song can be adapted for a woman to sing) but is also very angry at her. After all, if the lover doesn’t really care for music, and the one who loves her is a musician, isn’t that a cause for anger right there?! Furthermore, despite (or because of) knowing that this ex-lover doesn’t care for music, Cohen forges right ahead, with musical/technical information about the song! Why do what the lover might like? Nothing works with her!
And then we’re back to David, “the baffled king”.
Next verse:
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
It would be difficult to know who is referred to with “your faith was strong but you needed proof”, but as soon as we hear “you saw her bathing on the roof” it is clear that now we’ve moved on to the story of David and Bathsheba, which begins, “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”
David was the king by then, so he had his people find out who she was, and furthermore, he became intimate with her, and also had her husband sent out into the worst part of the battles that were currently being fought, so he would be killed – and he was, and David married Bathsheba and had a son by her (though he had not waited for her husband to be killed to start the celebration). The son’s later death in infancy is generally considered to have been a divine punishment against David, but also, everybody knew about what David had done, including a local prophet, and we know too. He didn’t get away with it!
I don’t think they had kitchen chairs in ancient Israel, did they? And it was Delilah who cut Samson’s hair, not Bathsheba who cut David’s (though it’s a great add-on to this tale). I am sure that all these controlling, destructive things Bathsheba was supposed to have done to David in this song (which are NOT in the Bible) are just depictions of the control over men that women are imagined to have, once the men fall in love with them. (Imagined by men, anyway! Why do you think women have to wear bags over their bodies in some countries?!) And David really was in love with Bathsheba, and it’s pretty clear what was going on when “from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”
By the way, one might ask why the song begins with David in the third person and then suddenly switches to addressing him in the second person (you) in the second verse. I think the answer is simple. It’s for the rhyme, “overthrew ya”.
Baby I've been here before,
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah
This verse is a little obscure, but apparently the scene has suddenly shifted from ancient Israel to here and now. I think the “here” mentioned is the state of being lonely, not a specific place. Yet, these simple words convey a great desolation. It’s as though the poet pulls us from the problems of King David to a bleak, poorly-lit, lonely modern apartment, at light-speed no less. I don’t really know what the “flag on the Marble Arch” is, but it feels to me as though his former girlfriend is very active and happy, perhaps participating in demonstrations in Washington Square, but the poet points out that “love is not a victory march”, so he’s not having a great time, even though she is. Here, I think, we are into existential anxiety. Love ends, we die, all that. We love somebody and then they dump us, and it’s torture. Not too obscure when you look at it that way. . . love and its loss are eternal/universal human experiences, and that’s why you get the miserable Hallelujahs....we are glad to be alive, but it’s damn painful sometimes. Thanks, God, for this awful painful life. Thanks a lot!
This gets us to the meaning of ‘Hallelujah”. Officially, it’s supposed to mean “praise Yahweh” (the ancient Hebrews’ name for God). It is said that hallelujah/alleluia is a mantra, though not necessarily from the traditions of India as most mantras are; certainly it has a lulling, yet uplifting verbal quality to it. (‘Amen’ also, but that’s another story.) ‘El’ or ‘Eli’ is also a Hebrew word for God, which shows up everywhere. Beth-El = House of God; El-ijah = Yahweh is God, which I think is also the meaning of Alleluia. (Elijah, Allelujah, not much difference!) This use of El for God is also related to the Arabic ‘Allah’, which as far as I can determine means ‘the (one) God’, and to the Tibetan lha, which means god also, as in Lhasa and ‘Lha ha gyalo’ (the gods have conquered - you’re supposed to say this when you surmount a mountain pass). I wish I’d been able to study a zillion languages. But I digress –
There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
hallelujah, hallelujah.
Ooooh! He’s really mad because she gives him no access to you-know-what any more! Poor poet! And he is hinting that he was a good lover indeed, since the “holy dove was moving too” – he had spiritual experiences with the lovemaking (or thought he did), and the line “every breath we drew was Hallelujah” may be the most beautiful one in the whole song. But if it was all that great, why did she dump him? Hmmm. Men tend to think it’s good for the woman whenever it’s good for them. It’s the way of the world. Hallelujah.
Maybe there's a God above, but all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who out drew ya.
And it's not a cry you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
I confess to finding this verse a little hard to follow, with the “shoot at someone who outdrew ya.” Huh? But – I guess if his lover “outdrew” him by dumping him, he is shooting at her with this song and its little digs. And we are back to the existential problems with our cold and broken Hallelujah, just as in the song composed for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet movie back in the 60s:
A rose will bloom, it then will fade;
So does a youth, so does the fairest maid.
(Nino Rota/Eugene Walter)
One of the many nuances expressed in “Hallelujah” is the hopelessness of addressing a lover who has dumped you - nothing you say or do ever works. You can’t get ‘em back, and the person singing this song knows it.
I especially like the handling of the melody in the Hallelujahs. In the verse, the highest note of all is the ‘Ha’ in the final Hallelujah, which always gives rise to an excited feeling; then come the four repetitions: the first one rising in a mildly hopeful manner; second one sinking in a softly sad, yet unresolved way; third one comes back with the same rise as the first; but finally, instead of a symmetrical repeat of Hallelujah #2, we get the elongated melisma and a resigned return to the keynote.
So the Hallelujahs seem to say, Ya win some; ya lose some, ya win some; it all comes to the same thing in the end.
(Only they say it better.)
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