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Comic and Rant for Saturday, June 14, 2003
Lame Excuse Day 2 |
Oh boy, another filler strip! At least it‘s in color, and has absolutely no references to my day job. Does the need to fininsh the Otakon video schedule count as a “Personal Crisis?” YES IT DOES! But first, some whining... I often get hung up on semantics. I hate it when someone starts a command/request with “You wanna” (it’s never “Do you want to,” is it? Just “You wanna.”), as in “You wanna get that Henshin belt off my bidet?” or “You wanna hand me that speculum? ” Whatever happened to “Could you,” “Would you,” “Would you mind,” or “Would/Could you please?” Could I? Sure, I could, and I guess I will. Would I? Yeah, okay. Would I mind? Not at all (the concept of “minding” is weird, isn’t it? To answer in the affirmative you must answer in the negative, although many have forgotten this, happily acquiescing with “Sure!”)! Of course I will/can - after all, you did say the magic word! But if I wanted to, I would have done so, so don’t ask me if I “wanna!” NO, I DON’T WANNA! In order to co-exist peacefully in society, we all do things we don’t really want to do, but that doesn’t mean we want to do them. If you need me to do something (like get off your foot), then please just ask me politely to do it, don’t act like the option is purely dependant upon my possessing a strong desire to do so. As you may have guessed, that expression is a particular major psychotic smegging hatred of mine, but I dislike any case when the literal meaning is changed, even if the figurative one is understood, such as the time my former employer (Joel “the cheapest man in the universe or at least sector 2814” Albert) asked me not to play with my Game Boy at work. Only thing was, instead of saying “Please don’t play with your Game Boy at work,” or even saying “Please don’t bring your Game Boy to work” (where I could have justified that leaving it in my car technically wasn’t bringing it to work, since when I’m in my car I’m off the clock, and thus no longer technically “at work”), he said saying “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the Game Boy at home.” As I already pointed out, why don’t I just leave it in my car? For that matter, what’s wrong with leaving it in my coat pocket, as long as I don’t take it out and play with it at work? Why do I have to leave it at home? What if I want to play with it after work, but am going in the opposite direction? Why should I either have to either do without or do a lot more driving than necessary? What right do you have to dictate what I do when I’m not at work? And what’s with the future tense? Why are you going to have to ask me? Why not ask me now? Am I too nit-picky? Perhaps, but there are cases where semantics are important (almost as important as overuse of italics). To use another example from my four spirit-crushing years at GeoDreck, one co-worker would often refer to the color magenta (to use the printers’ term) as “red” I eventually got tired of this, and was probably less diplomatic about than I should have been (another peeve of mine is when people who are paid more than I am are slower on the uptake than me), so later, when he referred to the color as “purple,” he then sarcastically (I think) corrected himself with “I’m sorry, violet!” Hello, Mr. Missed-the-point-entirely! I wasn’t upset at you for not using one particular name for the color (and it’s “Magenta,” BTW), I was upset because you used the name of another color entirely! (I got tired of italics). Though Crayola and Berol may disagree, purple, magenta and violet, as used here, are the same color. Red, however, is red. The same overpaid (at least if, like the aforementioned criminal miser claimed, I really wasn’t putting in enough effort for a raise) co-worker would also often refer to the midday meal as “Dinner.” Now this isn’t really wrong, any more than “Lunch” is right, but considering the fact that he routinely worked around people who only used that name for the evening meal, perhaps he should have adapted his speech to avoid confusion (the way I say “Zed” instead of “Zee” when calling Canada). I was recently reminded of this when I did some phone surveys in other states, and encountered the phrase “Call back around dinner time” on a few occasions. in this case, however, they, who normally just did business in their local area, were perfectly within their rights to refer to the midday meal as such (assuming that’s what they were doing - I didn’t ask), and it was up to me to verify what they meant (which, as I said, I didn’t - my bad, in this case). If, however, they routinely did business with people who say “Lunch,” they should bloody well know that they could be misunderstood for not reciprocating. A more recent personal example of confusion due to semantics is the experience I had at a local Ponderosa on Tuesday. Unlike most sit-down restaurants, you pay when you enter rather than when you leave (one reason I chose to eat there, since I wasn’t sure how much cash I had in the bank, and the nearest ATM that wouldn’t surcharge was out of order - better to have to cancel the order due to insufficient funds than to ... what happens if you don’t have enough money to pay your bill in a restaurant? I hope I never find out!), and when I handed the cashier my Check Card, instead of asking the usual question of “Would you like to leave a tip on your card?” he asked of “Would you like some cash back for a tip?” It seemed an odd question, but I reasoned that, since tips are basically based on service and you won’t know how good the service will be in advance, I would actually get cash back and then use some of it as a tip. I figured $3 would give me enough money for a tip (when combined with the change already in my wallet) plus a two liter caffeine fix during a break at work. After I was seated, it suddenly dawned on me that I couldn’t remember ever being handed my three bucks, and a quick look into my wallet confirmed it. I had tipped the waitress more than 40% (the bill was $7.83)! How was the service? Not worth a 40% tip, that’s for sure. Actually, it wasn’t even worth the 10% one is normally expected to give in a buffet restaurant (though I suppose an argument could be made that, since she also brought me an entrée - a rather juiceless cheeseburger with tasteless white American cheese - the traditional 15% would be more appropriate). She was friendly, but it took her forever to refill my drink and take my plates. To be fair, they did seem fairly full and somewhat understaffed (I saw no other servers), but she didn’t seem all that busy, and the bottom line is that I got rather sub par service. So why in the name of the sonic screwdriver didn’t he ask me “Would you like to leave a tip on y our card?” The only thing I can guess is that tips must be charged as “Cash Back,” although my bill (I refuse to call it a “check,” another case of semantics that could lead to confusion) listed it as “Service Charge,” so even that could be wrong. My point is this: straightforward language is best, especially when dealing with a wide spectrum of people whose thought processes may be different from yours. Says the guy who took nine paragraphs just to say this. In other news, I just found out (even though it was announced over a month ago) that Viz is no longer publishing manga in comic book form. It‘s about smegging time. I‘ve been saying for years that they should stick to the Tankoubon, rather than charging people a premium to get two weeks worth of a single manga every month. Their translations are, of course, another matter, but fortunately I‘ve sated my need to whine for the time being. |
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