A First!

Ok, being a complete plonker, here is the link to my story that I posted below, give or take a few tweaks, as published today in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne - a potential total readership (including new born babies, non english speaking immigrants and non newspaper reading anyone) of 8 MILLION people. Who all right now could potentially be reading my story. Madness!!! Ok, reality check desperately required but humour me for a moment or two.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sidelined-by-a-phone-chat-20091129-jytm.html

Customer Service

Customer service is one of those things I demand absolute perfection in - in a previous life, one of my job titles was "Customer Experience Manager" so my standards are high. And funny enough in the last 7 days I have had 2 examples of extremely good and extremely poor customer service. Humour me for a moment.

I was in an underwear store attempting to buy a piece of underwear for a tricky top I have that doesn't seem to conform to normal underwear designs. Ok, I don't know about you but for me this is a stressful, embarrassing process and thanks to having breastfed 3 children and being in my 40's, there isn't that much to (ahem) arrange any more. So noting the young shop assistant was on a phone call (are they still called that or has this job title morphed into something else like the "air hostess" title), I browsed while waiting. The phone call continued. By now she had managed to serve another customer while still chatting on the telephone. And avoiding any sort of eye contact with me. I waited and I waited and I browsed. You could tell it was the kind of phone call that was not going to finish any time soon. I looked point blank at her. She turned away from me. Red, raw fury boiled over. Enough. I walked out of the shop thinking I'd take my custom and my $50 or whatever, somewhere else. And as I left I gave her one last look, it was a kind of Julia Roberts - "Pretty Women" look "Big mistake lady, big mistake". She held eye contact with me for a moment and then once again turned her back on me. And she hadn't missed a beat on her phone call.

I had a phonecall to make myself now.

Back at home I called the shop's Head Office advising I wanted to make a customer complaint. Suddenly I became "Most Valuable Customer" and was fast tracked straight to the CEO, who wasn't there but who had the most amazing staff who listened and advised the CEO would want to talk to me and that customer service was a priority for them. Impressed I left my details thinking, "well that was nice" but not expecting to hear from them. But I did. Two missed calls and messages to me FROM the CEO. And then a third attempt from the offsider, advising that the CEO had to go overseas but still wanted to hear my story. So this poor man listened to me ramble and spout on about service expectations, brand fit, little old ladies who may not have had the nerve to speak up so I was doing it on their behalf and basically provided him an identikit image of the "accused". I pulled out all the stops and let him have it. He agreed, sympathised, apologised and said it would be followed up. There wasn't much else he could do (how about a years supply of free undies huh?) so subject closed. And as my clever husband concluded "It's the putting right that counts".

Problem is though, I still need to buy underwear.

And funny enough I was at my local shops today and glanced in that underwear shop as I walked past. The same shop assistant was there, but she wasn't on the phone. This time she was reading a magazine.

It is the putting right that counts.

12.53am

...was about when the cool change came yesterday... Living in Sydney has brought so many new experiences from wildlife to wild storms - I love it all (hmm, maybe not the wildlife part). But the last couple of weeks has introduced me to something I have never and am unlikely to ever experience in New Zealand...The 40C Day. And yesterday was a doozy with a high of 41C that seemed to last until, well, 12.53am. I swear. For my kiwi friends, 40C makes your nostrils burn, the wind is hotter than you can imagine, the only relief is airconditioning or submerging yourself in the water regularly. It's not the kind of day where you think, "Great 40C, lets get together with friends for a bbq ..." because it's simply too unbearably hot to function, let alone cook, let alone eat. It's the kind of heat that puts you in a bit of a fugue, lethargic and borderline tetchy, where anything that needs effort or explaining brings you to the verge of dangerous tetchiness. For me, finding the cutlery drawer overrun with ants was almost the straw that broke the camels back. But somehow I got through. The ants didn't though. Day time for us yesterday was the morning at the beach then home to the pool where at around 7.30pm we got the boys out and put them into bed, temporarily cool. Amazingly they crashed instantly with the heat. We weren't so lucky, and like many around Sydney spent an unbearably uncomfortable evening. For us this is intensified by the fact we have a "water feature" outside our bedroom window, although we think of it more as a chinese-water- torture feature with its maddening trinkle driving us to despair and requiring us to sleep with our windows completely closed (I am one of those poor sods who need complete darkness and silence to sleep, and in fact I was one of those people who would knock on doors in my PJ's complaining when neighbours were having a loud party - there it's out). However last night was so bad (think sweat dribbling off our faces in bed at 11pm), that I gave in and had the windows open which meant not only were we having to listen to the water-torture feature but we had more hot air infiltrating our room. What to do? Then hallelujiah, the mad rush of cool wind that signalled the change. We were lying in bed angling ourselves to get the most of the cool breeze from our open windows, like we had discovered an oasis in the desert, drinking in the cool air and finally attempting to get to sleep. That was until the wild wind started making the gate bang outside the boys room, which woke them up and required a parent to attempt a creative solution to stop the gate from banging in the wind. Picture me in minimal bedware designed for a 40C night, out in the dark and the wind at 1am in the morning unsucessfully attempting to shore up a gate with bricks, rocks and a wheelie bin. Solution..."you're just going to have to suck it up buddy and try and ignore it", thinking to myself "if I can ignore a water-torture feature and a zillion degrees in my room, you can ignore a loudly banging gate. At least it was cool.
Get the picture NZ friends? We're talking hot. And, hmm, we're not even in summer yet.....

School Drop Off

Now I know that many of you are parents with school age kids and you totally get school drop offs. Everyone will have their own stresses and for me it's all about getting boys out of the house, finding a car park, and basically navigating your way through the arriving and departing cars (usually big 4WD - guilty) and the little people crossing roads. For us school pickups are worse than drop offs for car parks, however the school dropoffs are worse for an air of stress that seems to permeate. I've seen this at school and I've seen this at pre-schools. This is my summary of what happens. First of all you're in a frenzy to do all the before school stuff, which in our house is homework, lunches, jobs, uniform on, socks and shoes on, sunblock on, teeth cleaned...etc etc, as well as the normal house jobs I try to sneak in before we leave. Then it's the focused drive to school or kindy, and the manic rush in where you attempt a quick hi to the teachers while you are simulataneously putting bags in lockers, lunch stuff in fridges, watching the clock and mentally calculating if you're going to make it in time to school. I especially see this at Smith's kindy where for many parents this dropoff signals a "child free day" usually evidenced by gym gear. There is like a mad rush to get your child gone so you have as many child free minutes as possible. Right or wrong, and deny it as much as you want, this for most is the reality.
So one morning, having dropped 2 children in 2 different places, I was onto child number 3's dropoff, I pulled up and Rafe got out of the car and we were doing our normal sun block application outside the school. Suddenly a mother came rushing back to the car behind us, screaming at her toddler to "GET IN THE CAR", the little girl was playing around a bit inside the car and this brought on more frenzy for the mother who was trying to do up the car seat. She then leaped in, did a tight and dangerous 3 point turn in her big 4WD in our busy school street and accelerated off.
She had her gym gear on and my guess was her class was about to start.
Rafe and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows while I took just that extra minute longer to calmly and lovingly put his sun block on and give him a slow hug before he wandered to his class. Happily.
Sometimes you need to see what you look like to realise what changes you need to make.

Scarred

Some of you have followed my regular "Wildlife"posts, but this one is a doozy, and actually one that caused a "I wanna go back to NZ" plea, that once again fell on death ears.

I was about to be picked up to do a 10km run event and ran out to pop a rubbish bag in the wheely bin. But my rubbish bin was not empty. No sir. Inside the bin was the biggest freaking, most disgusting possum. Asleep. In my rubbish bin. It stirred a little as I screamed and dropped my rubbish bags and ran inside where once again I screamed at the husband ( in frenzied whispering coz if the boys had got wind of the visitor they would have been out like a shot to investigate and coming into any contact with it again would simply have been too much trauma for me for one day). The Husband was very disinterested. Or at least feigned disinterest at my pleading "can you do something about it please". I went to my run, and blame only an ok'ish run on the post stress disorder resulting with my brush with the possum. I came home. "Is the possum gone?" I asked, "Possum, what possum? Oh right, forgot all about it" came his nonchalant reply. Thinking hard about what would inspire him into action, I laid all my cards on the table and promised "pleasures of the flesh" for 7 days in a row. Nope, would need to go higher than that he said. By now my friend Zoe was involved via text, and she said her husband had offered to come and shift our possum for the same deal with her.

Men.

So putting my head back in the sand I went about my day until I saw the rubbish bag I'd discarded beside the rubbish bin, rather than in it, had been ravaged by crows or magpies. Australia, gad! Somehow seeing our rubbish spread around our yard was enough to catapult The Husband into action, and out he came. With his golf club. "I'm going to kill it" he said but I was aghast with the blimmin logistics of the situation I was worrying about mess and gore and ...remnants. He thought we had the perfect solution as the possum WAS ALREADY IN the rubbish bin. Hmm, 6 hot days later you can just imagine all the other wildlife that would be in our bin by rubbish day. He couldn't rouse the sleeping possum, so we agreed a plan when it was dark. And sure enough my brave Husband finally resolved our possum situation and we now have a large rock on top of the wheely bin to prevent any repeat incidents.

And now for my part of the deal....

Bugger!

I have been writing a story for the Sydney Herald which has a column asking for people to submit stories that gets "your blood boiling" - so for a couple of months I've been watching the column, looking at the types of stories, writing styles etc - I figure, yup, I'll give it a shot. Our writing tutor had suggested it as a good avenue to try and get work published as well as practice writing. So I wrote a bit of a story and then today, just as I was about to submit it thought I'd better do a search to see if there were any other stories about my topic. And goddamn it there was! Published the week we were in NZ in September! Now my topic is about magpies and how aggressive they are for a short period each year. there is no room for 2 of these stories each year. One magpie story a year please, is my guess. So I'm parking it. But watch out next September!

So I thought I'd through it on my blog for some light reading....

Eating Humble Mag-Pie


I’ve been living in Australia for three years and each year as the weather warms up, this brings a journey of discovery for what wildlife I will encounter. Whether it be giant cockroaches scurrying across my floor, an ant nest on the inside of my car, the ever present possum that lives ON (not in) my roof and which runs along nightly, or (shudder), the wheelie bin and all the maggot/ant/cockroach delights I’ve experienced putting my rubbish out. But the one wildlife encounter I anticipate and dread each September is the magpie mating and baby magpie season.

This is a time when magpies own the parks, the public walk ways, your back yard, your front yard, or actually any area where there are trees, the potential for worms or unsuspecting heads. Understandably they are simply being protective of their nests and their young families. Some would suggest a little over-protective perhaps.

I love to run and Sydney has some stunning walkways and running tracks. However this is when I seem to be at my most vulnerable, watching for magpie action with every centimetre of my peripheral vision. In fact just recently as I was rounding a bend on a scenic beachside track around Manly, an older BLEEDING man stopped me and warned ‘don’t go that way, there’s a magpie attacking”. “Did it get you?” I asked incredulously and probably rather stupidly as the blood was running down his face by now. His answer; “Three times!”. Of course. As I turned back I warned a little old lady with her poodle who was innocently walking in the same direction. That white poodle might as well have had a target on its back.

Research has shown that magpies can be discriminatory about who they attack, and there is in fact, some form of pre-selection criteria. The Injury Surveillance Information System (ISIS) which collects hospital emergency department records shows that the eye was the birds’ most common target, many of those attacked have been riding a bike at the time and there seemed to be more male victims than female. And of greater concern is that these birds remember their victims and wait for them to come and then attack them over and over again. Postal workers on their motor bikes are a favourite target. We have some very discerning magpies in Australia.

“Wear an ice cream container on your head”, someone once suggested to me in my first year in Australia when as a magpie novice I had only just realise the dangerous, aggressive alter ego of the humble magpie. Now I’m guessing that half of you are laughing and half are nodding in agreement at that suggestion. I haven’t had to resort to it yet.

What I do know is that I have an uneasy truce with the magpie family that has lived in a tree at the front of my house for the last 3 years. I respect their space and need for privacy and they respect my need to get my mail, pick up my newspaper and well, leave my house. We have had no incidents. We share a community, we have an understanding.

It’s just what happens when I leave my property that I worry about.

D'ouh

I got stuck in a dress in a fitting room today. I was attempting shopping and I'm in a fat mood at the moment. But still I wasn't being irrational or over optimistic, the dress was my size and on a non fat free day I wouldn't have had a second thought about trying it on. But alarm bells should have rung when there was about gizillion of this particular style on the SALE RACK. Lisa, listen...alarm bells!

And I should have listento those alarm bells again when I had trouble even getting it on. I reached that point of no return, after I'd squished my boobs into unnatural positions to pull the thing over my head. A nano second later with a resounding ..."nah.." I started rewinding the getting-the-dress-on process. But things went from bad to worse quickly. First off I'm very claustrophobic. It stems from my childhood when The Sister enjoyed holding me down usually with a blanket over me, trapped and I'd end up usually doing a little bit of wee in my pants through the ensuing hysteria and screaming. Sometimes she would add to her fun by tickling me as well which made the wee situation even worse. So I'm reversing the boob squashing technique but that's not working, I am well and truly wedged into this nasty dress with no hope or solution. I briefly thought about ripping the thing and then buying it, but that would involve using my arms, which unfortunately were also stuck. Yes, a bit of a predictament. And then of course, the cheery voice..."is everything ok..?...how's that size...?" from the hovering shop assistant. "I'm fine thanks" came my muffled reply. Bloody hell, I was anything but!

At this stage I'm on the verge of a clautrophic panic attack and they are anything but pretty or quiet. I'm sweating. My flesh andboobs are displayed is in all their glory in the many mirrors in the fitting room. But somehow with frantic shimmying and wrestling there is finally that sweet moment of release and relief.

And as I hand it back to the assistant, I casually say "I think I'll just leave it". Damn straight!