Mulled mullings.

I have not felt compelled to write lately.  Recent events left me uninspired, but hey!  Here I am writing anyway.  Do you feel that sense of foreboding?

Laundry
Last week, I was introduced to Pediatric Projectile Puking.  Normally, my kids have iron stomachs, this is the first time Arun and Anjali have each done a proper puke. And they went all out for the occasion.  ALL OUT.  It was as horrifying as I had always imagined.  I was then left to plow through a good 7 loads of laundry.  7!  In a normal week, I do 3-4 loads (high-capacity washers rock) and as I HATE doing laundry, that simply added yet another hellish tinge to the week.  Speaking of 3-4 loads a week, I have never understood why folks do so much laundry.  My stuff is a  load, Manoj's stuff is a load.  I buy 2 weeks worth of clothes for the kids (each kid gets about 15 outfits per season) and two weeks' worth of their clothes is a load.  The extra loads are towels, sheets, whatever.  I hate laundry SO MUCH that I am faithful about doing it every Sunday.  Hating laundry is bad enough, but piled up laundry?  Is even worse and physically makes me want to puke.

Hey, wait a goddamned second.

Frauditor, At Your Service.
And the fraud.  Ah, the fraud.  In past lives, I have done such things as data security and auditing.  With those activities comes "on-the-job" training in fraud.  Knowledge that I am now using again.  Except this time, the fraud comes from my own damned pocketbook if it is allowed through. 

If your credit card is stolen, do you think your card company just graciously erases the charges and eats the cost?  Hell, no.  They pass the buck to the merchant.  For example, Snapgifts (*cough*SHILL*cough*) Listen, I understand that to a certain extent, it is completely fair.  Absolutely! As a merchant, we should hold some responsibility for preventing fraud.  Definitely! We are the first line of defense.  Literally!

However.  When I call a credit card company, navigate a veritable jungle of  voice recognition commands,  speak to not 1, not 2, but 3! different people to report possible fraud for one of their clients and I am told the fraud is OUR responsibility and that NO, they would not be contacting their client?  I see credit card companies in a very different light. 

I am not impressed.

We did NOT ship the order out, but there is a person out there with a stolen credit card who has NO idea and his credit card company did not even want to bother to CALL HIS ASS.  What really boggles my mind is that American Express has all these fancy celebrity-laden commercials claiming they care about their customers.  I am here to tell you they really do not.

The best part of these tales of fraud, is how the fraudsters must think we are stupid.  In this most recent case, we received a nonsensical set of emails where the fraudster did not even play the proper character role in his little scheme.  He pretended to be the purchaser of the gift, when he should have pretended to be the recipient (i.e. Uncle Joe gives Nephew Bob a gift card.  Therefore, UNCLE JOE would be the one contacting us to see about the card.  We only have Uncle Joe's "email" on record, after all.  However, all of our communications were from the "voice/standpoint" of Nephew Bob.  It made absolutely NO SENSE in the context of the order.) 

And we are supposed to ship out over $500 based on a set of instructions that made no sense??  I was not born yesterday (or the day before) (actually, it was 1971.)  (which was a great year, come to think of it.)


That's So FLY
You know the story about the little boy whose daddy was a big bad air traffic controller?  And the little boy got to go work with daddy and the daddy let the little boy talk to pilots? Yes, that story.  What is killing me about the story is the outrage from folks that the FAA might be a tad upset over the incident. What's the harm!  He's just kid! The dad was there! The pilots knew!

You think?  Really?

I don't care if it is "take your child to work" day or not.  You still need to act like a goddamned professional.  My dad is a respiratory therapist and you did not see him dragging my ass to the hospital to teach me how to intubate patients.  But he would been there right by my side!  He could have told me exactly how to do it!  And the patients would have obviously KNOWN I was a kid!  Duh! What's the harm??

Listen, when my ass is in a big metal tube, hurtling through space at a squillion miles an hour, a squillion miles above the fucking ground, I damned well expect the air traffic controllers to act all professional-like when they are pushing tin.

I'm a bitch like that.