Dear Roger: Temper, Temper

My son says I have a temper.I don't think its so much of a temper as a lack of willingness to suffer fools and poor behavior. Case in point, I have been a customer of Sprint since May. I own 4 lines of service for which I pay a SUBSTANTIAL amount of money each month. My bill is paid up, I have been an excellent customer and I have rarely complained though I have had some ongoing issues with my phones. I have the LG Optimus S phone which as my research has found, has some gremlins. Its does fun stuff like freezes and shuts off for no reason and with no warning, so I have been walking around part of a day, thinking that my phone was on, while my daughters school was trying to get ahold of me because she was sick, when actually it had shut itself off in a weird fit. The media player stops in the middle of songs and the whole phone wont do anything until you shut it totally off and restart it. All kinds of cute stuff that I could go on and on about. My sons phone does the same thing and more. I had called SPrint and they had walked us through a hard reset which wiped all our stuff and supposedly fixed the problem, but all it did was cause us to have to go back through and reset up all our things. I called them back, they said,"We will replace the phones since they are under warranty and you have the insurance as well, just take this ticket number to the nearest store and they will take care of you." Sooo, I went out in the rain, ticket and screwy phones with, and went to the store I loathe because they always treat me like I am some goofy old woman, and they looked at me like I was a crackhead thief and said,"We aren't replacing your phones. We dont care what the people at corporate said, we are a sales store, we wont do it." Things deteriorated from there. I spent over 2hours on the phone being transferred around, hung up on ,condescended to, lied to and just treated like they had me by the short hairs. I finally got cut off again so I called AT&T. They have IPhones with more features, a better service plan,and its almost $100 cheaper a month. In less time than I spent on hold with Sprint, I had new service ordered from AT&T. I would rather pay the early termination fee than be treated like a punk by a company that doesn't appreciate me.

I was angry though. There have been companies that have pissed me off and I have never done business with them again. Restaurants, stores, what have yous, if I get treated with disrespect, I will walk past them and pay more to go someplace else. I am the same with people. Maybe I hold a grudge too long, maybe not, but being treated with respect is a huge thing with me. If I am giving you my money, I damn well expect to at least get common courtesy. When I am met with respect, and even someone who goes a little beyond and acknowledges that I am a person? Hell, I am loyal to the bone, but treat me with disdain and with disrespect? I employ a scorched earth policy. I pay waay to damn much for clothes for my son at the local Zumiez store, but you want to know why? Because every damn time I walk in there, the manager looks up, says, "Hey Jen! Hows it going? And he remembers what I have bought in the past, he actually offers decent suggestions for what my knuckleheaded son could use and he thanks me for giving him my hard earned money. That is why I shop there when I could buy him cheaper clothes elsewhere. Its the same with bands and music. When I went to see Flogging Molly, it was a huge ordeal. I had to save up to buy the $38 ticket. I got it months in advance and I felt guilty for buying it because at the time that was a lot of money for my little family. The trip down there and back on the Max took the last $2 I had. I didn't even have money for a t-shirt or anything, but I had the time of my life and I left that show feeling appreciated because Dave King stood on that stage and he acknowledged that he KNEW that many of us in that audience had spent money we couldn't afford to come see him, and he thanked us for it and he meant it. That someone acknowledged they knew the the true cost of devotion and love of music to some of us, was amazing and it cemented in my heart the love of that band. It ensured that when times got better that more Flogging Molly album and t-shirts joined my old ones.

Everyone already knows the reason for the whole Monkey loyalty thing. The ex has given up trying to dissuade her and when he finally sat down and listened to the whole story,he realized that playing second fiddle to a rangy little rock star was better that not being allowed around at all. He was looking around her room the other day and he commented that there were no pictures of him on the walls. She said,"There isn't any room. I have my art and my Jackson pictures and my Harry Potter pictures, so I don't have room for you." He didn't take that very well, but he knows he fucked up and for the majority of her life he hasn't been a positive thing for her, and the man who has been, takes up much of the important space. Shes not holding a grudge, but hes going to have to work hard to make up for all the bad karma that hes so worried about because sometimes one temper loss in the wrong way can cost you more than you think. I work on keeping my under control and contructivly managed, he needs to learn how to do that before he goes trying to usurp a monkey.