According to this study in the British Medical Journal, prayer is capable of producing remote, retroactive effects. That is, in a double-blind study, they took thousands of people with a particular blood disorder and sepereated them into a control group and an intercessory group, and prayed for the intercessory group, 6-10 years after they were infected, treated, and released. The intercessory group had faster recoveries and shorter hospital stays. Because someone prayed for them years later. How about that?
Author: Teel
Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.
Futurama cancelled!
Somehow, FOX has got it in their heads that they should cancel Futurama. You should go sign the petition to keep it on the air.
My first complaint
I get the feeling that the last person I spoke to will be calling back later today, and that that call will result in the first “formal” complaint lodged against me. I suppose that management will say there is merit to his claim, because for the third time in the last three weeks I should have allowed him to verbally abuse me, to call me up and say he had a problem (a problem that he caused by doing the opposite of what we did on the last two calls, for the third time), and when I told him the solution, to allow him to tell me it was not the correct solution, to find some way to explain to him that despite his obviously failing memory that his reversed idea of what should be done is what has caused the problem in the first place without upsetting him somehow (not sure that’s possible, since it seems to have been me telling him that what be believes he did to “fix it” was what caused the problem in the first place that upset him). Management will see to it that this goes into my permanent record, and maybe find some way to prevent me to get bonuses and raises in the future. Because I had trouble letting someone who was wrong, in the same way he was wrong twice before, berate me and not believe what I had to say about something that I am THE EXPERT ON at this desk, in the same way he has twice before.
So many calls
For a variety of reasons, some of which having to do with my ability to handle calls faster than other technicians, but also with their avoiding calls (sometimes legitimately, I’ll admit, but often less-so) left and right, I consistently take more calls than anyone else here. I always have. I don’t try to. I used to make myself believe I wanted to, but now … I don’t want to. I don’t seem to like taking so many calls. So many more calls than anyone else. I’ve been working on taking more breaks and not hurrying when on with customers who don’t really need any more help, and I haven’ taken double anyone’s call volume in a while, but I’m still 10-30% ahead of the next guy in the pack. It’s overwhelming sometimes, because when it seems the worst, I’ll be taking call after call after call, faster and faster as I realize that each of the other technicians has been on the phone with the same customer for 15.. 20.. 40 minutes while I’ve been talking to every other person who decided to call in. Sure, I also get calls that last a long time, but not nearly as many as these guys. Sometimes I can’t even tell they’re on a call; they just sit quietly, playing online games, not saying a word – presumably they are listening or waiting for something to happen, but … it happens an awful lot. I just get frustrated sometimes.
Maybe I should sleep more on Sunday nights, so I don’t get so frustrated Monday mornings.
Overworked and underproductive
(Average annual vacation days: Italy 42; France 37; Germany 35; Brazil 34; Britain 28; Canada 26; South Korea 25; Japan 25; U.S. 13.)
If I count my personal days as vacation days, I have 13/year, which I guess is the national average. Still, it seems a little shoddy compared to the Japanese, who get twice that, or the Italians, who apparently only work 10 months out of the year. I’m having trouble finding the exact numbers online right now, but I’ve read a couple of times that worldwide, America has the longest workweek of any industrialized nation, averaging 48hrs/week. European nations are said to average 30 or 31hrs/week. They work fewer hours per week, they take more than an entire month off every year, and they are more productive per capita than America. We are doing it all wrong over here.