McDonald’s Coffee Always Puts A Dent In My Morning

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Posted on 19th January 2010 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies

On the occasion where I swing through McDonald’s for a quick breakfast – come on, you know you love McDonald’s breakfast – I always have to remember to avoid their “new and improved’ premium coffee.  To me, it is so terrible that if I forget and just go with my default “coffee…” response at the drive through I end up driving away with a steaming hot cup of something that I will thoroughly not enjoy dumping down the drain.

Their old coffee was fine: simple, basic… hot coffee in a cup.  After Starbucks showed everyone that people would buy ultra-caffeinated, over-priced and truly horrendous coffee if you just made it sound and look cool, McDonald’s made the smart business decision to try to take some of that market share and claim it as their own. Only thing is, not all smart business decisions leave a pleasant taste in the mouths of everyone and often there are those on the outside looking for something else.  Apparently, this is where I am situated.

I’m not going to call McDonald’s new coffee the worst coffee I’ve ever had – it’s not.  I’ve had worse.  But this is easily the worst coffee that I have had which has had so much time, effort and marketing behind it.  It seriously makes me long for a can of Maxwell House or any of the other typical off-the-shelf brands.  It’s so bitter and leaves a horrible after-taste behind it, for me, almost like it’s been blackened.   Every time I make the mistake of getting a cup, I try to make it more palatable.  Add sugar – no.  Add more sugar – no.  Add sweetener – no.  Add water – no.  Poor it out and dilute it with another more favorable coffee – no.  Dare I add cream… ?  Why?  Coffee is not supposed to need cream, or vanilla, or chocolate or Frapp-a-shit-o or anything else along those lines… it’s supposed to be a morning cup of coffee; period!

This morning was one of those mornings where I made this mistake and I am still paying for it.  Even a piece of Extra Spearmint gum has not gotten rid of the disgusting taste in my mouth.  Thank god it’s almost lunch time; I can eat something and brush my teeth to change this awful taste into something fresher and cleaner.  Blech.

On a more serious note… I’m glad that this is the biggest problem of my morning.  No traffic accidents, no earthquake devastation , no joblessness, no asthma problems and no ice damming or roof leaking – I’m pretty thankful, today.

Waiting To Talk To Customer Service At Cleveland Division Of Water Is Fun

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Posted on 28th October 2009 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies

You know that feeling you get when you finally make it through the BS automated phone prompt system… it’s an odd combination of achievement and apprehension for what lies next. Today’s fun times were courtesy of the Cleveland Division of Water.

First off the reason for my call was confusion on our end due to the fact that we have been receiving 3 different water bills for over a year, now. We get Rural Lorain water bills, we get Northeast Regional Sewer bills and have been getting Cleveland City water bills, too. Now, unless someone has built a diverter into our line and is switching it back and forth at their discretion, there’s only one water connection and one sewer connection. It’s common for people to pay one source for all of the above, but in our case we apparently were paying three – and all different amounts. Clearly this isn’t what I pictured and needed to get someone on the horn to help me figure it out.

Now, I don’t pretend to know how many people work at the Cleveland Division of Water and, further, I don’t have any idea how many people they need to run smoothly. All I know is there is no need for a phone receptionist as the phone greeting is automated. And clearly there is a need for an additional person to work through the calls once customers make it through the prompt tree because the hold time during normal business hours is pretty obscene.

26 minutes was the stated hold time the techno computerized voice said I would have to wait to speak with someone after I confirmed that I (a) wanted to speak english, and (b) wanted to speak with someone about my account. In the end, 36 minutes was the actual hold time, and that was one frustrating 36 minute period of life – let me tell you.  The recorded music wasn’t too bad but the recorded message that broke up the music was pretty frustrating to listen to.  (“Water is important…”, “Did you know that even a small leak could mean over 800 gallons of lost water…?”, “To reduce your risk of receiving a large bill, look at your bill and call us with any questions you might have…”, etc.).  Also, some grammatical issues were present and, when you hear those repeated a hundred times or so, that gets old real fast.

Eventually I did get to speak with someone who informed me that Northeast Regional Sewer and the Cleveland Division of Water are really one in the same.  NEORSD is “rinky dink and so they don’t have the resources to do billing… we do their billing for them” and thus if you miss a payment or your payment doesn’t post in time for your NEORSD payment, the Cleveland Division of Water then sends you a statement of past due.  Wow, I can’t imagine that being confusing to anyone, can you CDV?  And why are they different billable amounts?  And why does the CDV bill come months later when the issue is supposedly a late payment from months before?

There are some lessons to be learned here.  On my end, the lesson is simple: Pay the bill a scoche early to make sure that it’s on time to stay out of all this mess.  On CDV’s end, the lesson is this: if you want to spend less on your customer service centers, rather than cutting staff and automating the workflow (which really automates only the basic entry level job anyway), try making your billing pattern understandable and keep your name use and your statements consistent to eliminate the confusion customers are calling you about in the first place.

I know I’ll keep up my end of the bargain from now on, if for no other reason that to keep that 36 minutes in my pocket.  I can’t say that I anticipate CDV keeping up their end.

Laughing At Grumpy Cleveland Browns Fans Is Easy.

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Posted on 12th October 2009 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies | Sports Commentary

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Before I go any farther, I just have to open and honest … I really can’t stand anything about the Browns. When we moved into Cleveland many moons ago I was without a pro football team. I had followed and cheered for the Lions as a kid but the lack of performance and the lack of any bonafide star players to connect with since Barry retired has made that an impossible option. I’ve also always been a college football fan much moreso than a fan of the NFL game. So, thinking it wouldn’t be bad to adopt an NFL team and having just moved to this supposed football Mecca of Cleveland, why not adopt the browns?

I’ve covered this before on many a blog post and forum thread so I don’t want to go into the lengthy topic that this can be, but let me just say that the Browns as a team, fanbase and organization have easily been as disappointing as any that I’ve heard of in a world that loves to bitch about any company at any time. Performance on the field can’t significantly outshine even the Lions, the organization can’t figure out how lead themselves let alone pick a leader for the team, and watching or following the browns is just flat out a miserable experience. The game environment is so boring and the stadium is just filled with anticipation … of failure. The uniforms are as dull and uninspiring as you can get and the color scheme is just awful – Jesus Christ is that really BROWN and white that dominates your uniform? But by far the worst part of the gig is the fans. By themselves they crush any possible hope of enjoying watching or following the team.

If you go to a game, Be prepared to sit by ‘fans’ dressed in gear from head to toe who show their love for their team by booing them at the top of their lungs when the opening possession for the Browns’ offense doesn’t prove successful. “Successful, by the way, can only mean scoring points according to those dressed like muddy pumpkins. These ‘fans’ will then proceed to try to predict when the coaches will call running plays, and they do this all game long. Because, you see, running the ball is dumb. No, it doesn’t matter that the situation at hand dictated that a running play be called upon… no no. “That’s dumb!”. Perhaps my two favorite Cleveland Brown fan features, though, are (1) the eternal inbred belief that, no matter what, the Browns are still better than you and (2) the incorrect assignment of blame upon any “unsuccessful” play attempt, game or team situation.

A very loudly spoken conversation I got the privilege of sitting next to during lunch today illustrates both of these faults perfectly. The opening statement, made before the two guys even sat down was, “Hey did you see that game yesterday… the 49ers game?” (the Atlanta Falcons played at the 49ers yesterday). “Oh my god … I thought the Browns were bad, the 49ers … oh they are worse!” You see, it’s not how bad the Browns are that matters to the fan it’s the ability to manufacture the opportunity to call out someone else as being worse.  It’s an endearing quality, really, especially when you consider that entering play on Sunday the Browns were 0-4 and still looking to understand what exactly it means to score touchdowns or to get more than 4 first downs in a quarter.  Nevermind that the 49ers were playing well and held a 3-1 record and heading into a really difficult stretch of their schedule.  The only point that matters is, to the Cleveland Brown’s fan, San Francisco played poorly on Sunday and that gave him just enough room to argue that the 49ers are worse than the Browns.  On a personal note, I think I’ll take the team averaging 22.4 points a game over the team averaging 11 points a game just about any day of the week.  Alas, this point is moot as the two teams don’t play this year.  I wonder if the Cleveland fan knew either of those points?

Now, if that were the only fault, I could live with “fan speak”.  Any fan has license to at least try to play the “My team’s better than yours!” card, but you simply have to know what you’re talking about when you emphatically put “facts” out there or give accounts of a game.  I’m not saying you have to be perfect or have some matching singular notion of what you believe happened during a period of time, but I am saying that facts are facts, left is left, and scores are scores.  For example, when you say things like, “They wore orange helmets again and they always seem to lose when they wear those orange helmets…” I can live with that.  The helmets, after all, are orange and when you qualify your statement with “they always seem to…” now we can agree there’s some wiggle room to the statement.  The problem is most Browns fans don’t qualify their statements like that, and this lunch time conversation was yet another classic example of this endless spew.  Today’s topics were oldies but goodies… how the Browns “always run up the middle” and “never pass”.

There was only one NFL game on TV in the Cleveland market, on Sunday, and so I had the misfortune of sitting and watching one of the worst played football games I can ever remember taking in.  In the game against the Buffalo Bills – easily an equal in the dredges of NFL quality teams this season, mostly because of a putrid offense – the Browns clearly felt the way to make hay against the Bills was to run the football.  This could possibly have been because they had just reorganized their passing attack by trading away Braylon Edwards and were now having to rely on a rookie, a new-this-week guy, and an undersized possession receiver, but it could also have something to do with the fact that the Buffalo Bills have one of the better pass defenses in the league.  Neither of those points were brought up by the fan as he bitched to his fellow fan, nor were those points brought up in response.  Instead, it was teamwork reinforcement of the belief that all the Browns did on Sunday was run up the middle and that they never threw the ball.  One look at the game stats would tell a different story AND, if they had actually watched the game and have been interested in absorbing what was happening, rather than just harvesting vitriol in their minds, they would have seen that there was a passing game present that was absolutely ineffective (Cleveland and Derrick Anderson were 2-17… that’s TWO of 17, for 23 yards.  23 yards passing.  In a game;  a full game.  Two completions.  On the flip side, that running game that “always goes up the middle” produced 171 yards.  And the amazing thing is it did so because it attacked the weak spots on the Buffalo defensive line – the ends. Yet, all of this somehow goes completely unnoticed because the fans don’t see what they want to see.

You see, what constitutes success is largely determined by the fans of any sports program;  I get that. But you are really asking for it when the uninformed, ignorant and depressed are the ones setting the standard.  When every run that doesn’t get 4 or more yards is seen as “running it up the middle” or when passing attempts that are not completed are not counted as passing plays, you’re talking about fans who just don’t understand the game.  If those that don’t understand are setting the standard, it makes for a nightmare.  And that’s exactly what Cleveland has on it’s hands in the Browns.  Where are the good fans?  If you’re out there, let your voices be heard!  Drown out these buffoons who make a trip to Cleveland Browns Stadium such a predictable and unsatisfying venture.

My last item, here:  Supposedly, only Braylon Edwards dropped passes while he was on the Browns’ roster.  And, to be clear, he supposedly dropped everything thrown to him and all of the footballs thrown at him were perfect passes.  Yet, on Sunday, different Browns receivers dropped at least 5 balls that I remember – interesting.  I also seem to remember all but 1 of those passes from Derrick Anderson being in a terrible position for the receiver to make a play on the ball – provacative.  Learn the game, Cleveland Browns fans.  Start with the rules of the game and the penalties/infractions that are often called during it (focus on the illegal contact and pass interference penalties, since they get you so upset all the time).  There’s enough research to get done there that it should keep you guys quiet for a few games.

CNN iPhone App $2.99 AND Loaded With Ads?

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Posted on 12th October 2009 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies

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What the heck is with CNN’s iPhone app not being free and actually costing upwards of $2.99? What’s worse is that, even though you’re paying for it, it’s still loaded with ads that get in the way of browsing the news headlines and watching videos, etc. There’s lots of apps that are free and then force the advertising upon you while you’re using it, but usually when you pay for an app you get the benefit of reduced advertising or even the complete absence of ads.

I was just about to download that when I read reviews and saw that lots of users are complaining about the same thing. No thanks, I’ll just stick with ABC, NY Times, MSNBC, and other free apps for my news updates. Really cookin’ my noodle though… Why is the CNNmoney app free but the regular CNN app not?

I call BS.

EzPass Needed – Not Waiting In Line To Pay Ohio Turnpike Tolls

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Posted on 9th October 2009 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies

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So, I decide to take the turnpike route on my way to work this morning. After cruising along for the normal amount of time I exit and look forward to quickly paying my $0.50 toll. Instead i come upon cars an trucks backed up all the way down the exit ramp a bit and ‘organized’ in two columns. Upon quick guesstimate I figure I am probably in for about 10 minutes of clutch-riding-never getting-out-of-first-gear fun, when the entire turnpike ride took only about the same amount if time.

For those that don’t already know, deciding to take the turnpike route to work, for me, is about the same as deciding to order food through a drive through window or via the phone rather than walking into the place to order from the counter. On the one hand things are supposed to work smoothly and more quickly as people are generally of the same ilk in drive through – all looking for speedy service and potentially placing quicker (smaller) orders. Yet, on the other hand, you know there could be a soccer mom in front of you ordering a car-load of happy meals – some no pickle, some no onion and some with a specific toy – or an employee of the establishment who just doesn’t have their act together who could brig your plans for “faster and easier” to a screaching halt. So, too, is my decision to take the turnpike to make things faster and easier a decision that can just as easily get me into a situation that actually takes longer or which makes the ride that much less enjoyable. And today was just one of those days.

There were three toll lanes open for those exiting the turnpike at the Lorain – Elyria exit where I jump off onto route 57 that takes me to I-90. Two lanes were marked for ticket payers (those without EzPass) and one for only EzPass users. Each of the ticket lanes had 30 or so cars backed up, but there sat the EzPass only lane – practically unused. Only an occaisional vehicle drove through the lane to pay while rolling through at about 15 mph. It was just begging all of us ticket payers to take notice of the obviousness of the situation. An if it wasn’t obvious enough, it sure became so when two tractor trailers hauling covered cargo rolled right through and disappeared into the distance while we all kept waiting to move the next 10 feet.

Nice surprise during a quick stop at Taco Bell

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Posted on 25th September 2009 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies

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So after dropping off some products at one of our customers’ warehouses and while on my way back to the office I decide to run into the Avon Lake Taco Bell to grab a quick, cheap bite to eat. Maybe for the first time in at least a while, I can say that I’m really glad I did that. I don’t often find too many NICE surprises during a fast food stop, yet that’s exactly what I got today.

After checking out the value menu I noticed the chicken soft tacos – an item I used to get with regularity a long time ago but one I had just about forgotten about – are on the $0.89 portion of the menu. Score! I’ll take two, please. Oh but wait! There’s more…

After paying, I walk to the soft drink fountains to fill my small drink cup. Now, let me tell you, I’m already feeling pretty good about not skipping lunch as i was thinking about doing not even a minute before turning left to head in the direction of the Taco Bell. Little did I know that I was about to stumble upon the real treat of the day. The first fountain to the left of one of the ice dispensers had been changed! I couldn’t tell you what was in that spot before – all I know is it was something I would never get (maybe a flavored ice tea?) – but there was no mistaking what was there for the taking today. Begging my attention was a clean sticker overlay showing that the fountain was going to dispense Pink Lemonade if I chose to push it’s trigger! Without hesitation I filled my cup to the brim (no ice required – takes up space!), slapped the top on it, stuck the straw in it and took down about 2/3 of the cup… … Aaaahhhhhhh! Wow! Pink Lemonade? Where did that come from? I haven’t seen that at any other Taco Bell so I’m hoping it was just this one who made the decision on their own – because that would be impressive.

Now, for those who haven’t seen me take down 6-10 glasses of pink lemonade during a dinner – enough to make servers giggle when we’re out and I have them running back and forth because I’m drinking the stuff so fast – you may not quite get the impact of today’s event. Let me assure you, however, this was a great little surprise that made a major impact on my day. So much so I went out of my way to tell the TB manager, “Hey, great call to whoever made the decision to get pink lemonade out there in the drink choices! Thanks a lot!”. He didn’t confirm who made the call but, whether it was Taco Bell, Pepsi, the owner of the franchise or the restaurant manager… THANK YOU! This made my day a significant amount better.

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