I haven't lived long enough to be considered a sage, but there are a few things I know. Like:
When a company is about to REALLY screw its employees, it announces loudly, "Our employees are our most valuable resource." When you hear that, drop your pants.
All women carry a change purse and will search relentlessly for all the pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters necessary to pay a bill with the exact correct change, no matter how many people are in line behind them.
If you want something done for which there is no budget or for which the government is responsible, claim it is a safety issue. That trumps everything else.
When you say, "Children are the future," that generally means you want other people to pay for the new school you want your own children to attend.
The best part about being retired, as former Elgin Police Sgt. Tom Olsen proved Friday, is that you can wear any shirt you like and there's nothing anyone can do about it. ☺
If you want to make people do something that you know they won't want to do, you can guilt them into it but calling it "Green" or "Sustainable."
A business which is about to find a new way to offer you even worse service than it already provides will start the new policy announcement by saying, "In order to serve you better..." At the end, they will apologize for any inconvenience.
Rabid attempts to protect your privacy are a joke. Log on to pipl.com or spokeo.com and search yourself. I found my Amazon.com profile open to anyone who knew my name. For $30, you can find out a person's entire life history.
Oh, and protecting your credit card information is futile. When you give your card to a waiter in a restaurant, he takes it somewhere for a while out of your sight and then brings it back. He had your name, card number and the double top secret three digit code on the back of the card that allows people to charge/withdraw whatever they want. Not that restaurants harbor thieves. It's the dichotomy of overwrought concern about protecting the information on your credit card and then handing it to a minimum wage employee.
I heard someone speak in deadly earnest about the suicide of Kurt Cobain being a turning point in American culture. At first I was amused that such a meaningless event would be viewed as significant. Then I reflected on what passes for American culture and realized that was even more amusing.
Since we are no longer an agrarian society and thus don't need children to serve as summer farm hands, why don't we have year around school? Maybe we wouldn't be 25th in the world in math if we took it as least as seriously as we do American Idol.
The fact that global warming may raise the planet's temperature a whole degree by the end of the century is not on my mind at the moment.
My wife and son had a minor mechanical issue with a rental car recently. My son used his telephone to download the owner's manual for that make and model, looked up the issue and resolved it thusly. I know I sound old, but this is mind-boggling.
Don't hate me, but I never thought Morris Bar B Que was nearly as good as the nostalgia about it would lead you to believe. Star hamburgers, Burns' malts and Lazzara's pizza deserve a place in the Elgin culinary Hall of Fame however.
Businesses whose recorded message includes the phrase, "Your call is very important to us," should be required to prove it by having a human being answer the telephone.
Lastly, my newest crusade is against what I call "annoying courtesy" which is the practice of inconveniencing several people in order to modestly assist one. Encouraging someone to cross the street against the light while traffic piles up behind you is an example.
When a company is about to REALLY screw its employees, it announces loudly, "Our employees are our most valuable resource." When you hear that, drop your pants.
All women carry a change purse and will search relentlessly for all the pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters necessary to pay a bill with the exact correct change, no matter how many people are in line behind them.
If you want something done for which there is no budget or for which the government is responsible, claim it is a safety issue. That trumps everything else.
When you say, "Children are the future," that generally means you want other people to pay for the new school you want your own children to attend.
The best part about being retired, as former Elgin Police Sgt. Tom Olsen proved Friday, is that you can wear any shirt you like and there's nothing anyone can do about it. ☺
If you want to make people do something that you know they won't want to do, you can guilt them into it but calling it "Green" or "Sustainable."
A business which is about to find a new way to offer you even worse service than it already provides will start the new policy announcement by saying, "In order to serve you better..." At the end, they will apologize for any inconvenience.
Rabid attempts to protect your privacy are a joke. Log on to pipl.com or spokeo.com and search yourself. I found my Amazon.com profile open to anyone who knew my name. For $30, you can find out a person's entire life history.
Oh, and protecting your credit card information is futile. When you give your card to a waiter in a restaurant, he takes it somewhere for a while out of your sight and then brings it back. He had your name, card number and the double top secret three digit code on the back of the card that allows people to charge/withdraw whatever they want. Not that restaurants harbor thieves. It's the dichotomy of overwrought concern about protecting the information on your credit card and then handing it to a minimum wage employee.
I heard someone speak in deadly earnest about the suicide of Kurt Cobain being a turning point in American culture. At first I was amused that such a meaningless event would be viewed as significant. Then I reflected on what passes for American culture and realized that was even more amusing.
Since we are no longer an agrarian society and thus don't need children to serve as summer farm hands, why don't we have year around school? Maybe we wouldn't be 25th in the world in math if we took it as least as seriously as we do American Idol.
The fact that global warming may raise the planet's temperature a whole degree by the end of the century is not on my mind at the moment.
My wife and son had a minor mechanical issue with a rental car recently. My son used his telephone to download the owner's manual for that make and model, looked up the issue and resolved it thusly. I know I sound old, but this is mind-boggling.
Don't hate me, but I never thought Morris Bar B Que was nearly as good as the nostalgia about it would lead you to believe. Star hamburgers, Burns' malts and Lazzara's pizza deserve a place in the Elgin culinary Hall of Fame however.
Businesses whose recorded message includes the phrase, "Your call is very important to us," should be required to prove it by having a human being answer the telephone.
Lastly, my newest crusade is against what I call "annoying courtesy" which is the practice of inconveniencing several people in order to modestly assist one. Encouraging someone to cross the street against the light while traffic piles up behind you is an example.
