I have a close friend who described to me, at length, the annoying habits of the person who sits closest to him at work. He went on in such detail that I felt like I was there...
The first and most notable annoying habit is the "violent nasal exhalation". Basically, we all have an opening that connects our nasal cavity to our mouth. Apparently, the annoying guy closes that off, builds up pressure in his mouth, then opens the nasal passage. The result is similar to the sound he would make if he was blowing his nose, but immediately preceded by a kind of "thunk" from the explosive opening of the mouth-to-nose cavity.
I've never heard a whale expel air through its blowhole, but I can only imagine it's very similar to what this guy does.
Of course, such a habit could easily be ignored if it occurred infrequently. My friend---who is never prone to exaggeration---says the guy makes the noise at least once every minute. Every minute!
The guy's next habit is less frequent, but louder and much more prominent: the "mouth vacuum". This involves opening the corner of his mouth and forcefully sucking in air. I've heard people (and probably done it myself) do this when their mouth is full of saliva. Of course, the silent alternative is just to close your mouth and swallow.
That he does it out of the corner of his mouth is important: the side he does this with is the same side on which my friend sits. It's as though the sound is directed squarely at him. It's quite loud too: loud enough that it can be heard in the whole office. But of course, my friend is at ground zero, where it's loudest and impossible to ignore. Frequency is lower than the nose thing, but still at least every five minutes.
Hacking and spitting. One to four times an hour, he'll hack up what ever drainage or phlegm he has in his sinuses, and spit it into his garbage can. As an added bonus, sometimes he'll skip the garbage can and use the sink in the office's kitchenette. My friend said that the other day, he heard the annoying guy hack and spit into the sink. That in and of itself was unremarkable, nothing new. But then my friend went over to the sink to rinse out a mug... and there it was, in all its phlegmy glory: a giant, yellowish ball of mucous, sitting innocently in the sink, half-way between the drain and the edge. He hadn't even bothered to rinse it down the drain! A public office sink turned spittoon.
He occasionally gets into throat-clearing fits, which becomes the culmination of all his foul habits. He'll sit there and continuously clear his throat for a solid minute or two, punctuating his clearings with violent nasal exhalations. Often a mouth vacuum or two is thrown in for good measure, and the spectacle's grand finale is hacking a big loogie into his garbage can. Fortunately, this only happens, on average, a couple times per day.
On days when my friend is really lucky (sarcasm), the guy will accompany every violent nasal exhalation with a throat-clearing. Like a lone barking dog, the sounds are too frequent to ignore, but not frequent enough to fade into the background.
My friend's office is small and generally quiet---whisper quiet, in fact, with an open seating plan (i.e. no cubes or anything dividing up one person's workspace from the next). This means that even the slightest of sounds can be heard.
The annoying guy uses this library-like silence to achieve his full annoyance potential: lip-smacking. Generally, such behavior is reserved for animals and sloppy-eating cartoon characters. But during, and for several minutes following any eating, the annoying guy manages to continuously slurp and smack his lips. If he only ate once or twice a day, perhaps these noises could be ignored. But most days, he eats at least six times: breakfast, lunch, two to four yogurt snacks, two to four nut snacks. And then there's the cookies: between all the other meals and snacks, he'll toss a whole cookie in his mouth, and just suck on it, presumably until it disintegrates. The sucking is of course open-mouthed, and practically at broadcast volume for my friend.
Also rising above the silence are random whisperings are finger snaps. Throughout the day, the annoying guy randomly whispers and snickers to himself. My friend doesn't know what causes the guy to talk to himself; presumably, he's thinking through something. But the giggling comes about when he's reading online forums and/or email. Once, the guy was so moved to laughter, that in an attempt to muffle the outburst, he actually produced the most awkward, hyena-like noise my friend has ever heard a human make. And if the random whisperings weren't distracting enough, they are often peppered by finger snaps. Yes, the guy snaps his fingers off and on throughout the day. It's not a constant snapping, just two or three snaps---as though he is trying to get someone's attention.
The solution to my friend's problems? McMaster-Carr part number 6207T53: taper end foam earplugs with a noise reduction rating (NRR) of 33 dB.
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Comcast Rant
Apparently, Comcast owns the equipment in the multi-unit building in which I live, meaning, they are my only option when it comes to cable TV. To be sure, I tried calling the other local providers, and they cannot provide service to my building. My wife and I both have cell phones, so we don't need a land line. But our building has one of those pager/buzzer units that allows visitors to call us from the front door, and allows us to unlock the door via the phone. My wife and I kept our cellphone numbers when we moved to Chicago, meaning that the pager/buzzer unit actually has to make a long distance call to reach our cell phones. And I found out the hard way that this pager/buzzer system has the most expensive long distance plan known to man. Because of this reason, we need some kind of local number.
Initially, we went with Comcast's "Triple Play" plan, which gives us high-speed Internet, cable TV, and phone service. The promotional rate is $99/month, which, sadly, is pretty reasonable for all those services in the Chicago area. However, the advertised price is a bit of a teaser, since it doesn't include equipment rental ($3/month for the modem) and all the various taxes.
After a while, we noticed something about their phone service: despite the fact that we rarely used it, it was often not working correctly: either there would be no dial tone, or we would be unable to receive calls. We don't have too many visitors, but we missed a lot of package deliveries (visitors are actually a simpler case---they know to call our cellphones if the buzzer isn't working; the delivery folks aren't that patient). A lot of the convenience of ordering food for home delivery was removed when we had to use our cellphones instead of Comcast's unreliable phone line: first by explaining our non-local area code (of which many restaurants are suspicious), then having to give special instructions regarding the effectively broken buzzer.
Feeling a general resentment towards Comcast, I embarked on a mission of reducing the amount of money I pay to them every month. My first step was to get rid of the $3/month modem rental fee. Since I had Internet and voice service through them, this required a special kind of modem---not just a "vanilla" cablemodem, but one that is also an EMTA (i.e. supports VOIP voice-over-IP). The Comcast-supplied modem was an Arris TM402P. After a bit of research, I came to believe that they would support the Motorola SBV5220, so I bought one on eBay.
When I received the modem, I spent about three hours on the phone with Comcast, trying to get it to work. At one point, the Internet was working; then the technician to whom I was speaking swapped two configuration parameters, and it stopped working. At this point, he decided he needed more information on the modem: where did I get it? He had to go to his supervisor who said that they needed to perform an "equipment research" on the modem. I had to fax them my proof of purchase (eBay invoice). A few days later, they got back to me and said that the modem isn't one of theirs, so I can't use it! To this day, I am convinced that if the person I was working with hadn't misconfigured their system, the modem would have worked fine. I have no way to prove this, but I truly believe they were simply refusing to let me use my own modem on a bogus reason. (Note: I abbreviated this story somewhat; see here for some forum posts where I go into more detail. What's also curious is that they'll let you use your own modem for Internet service, but not for voice.)
So I was stuck with Comcast's modem and its $3/month rental fee, and their under-performing voice service. Then I had an epiphany: VOIP, which allows one to have traditional phone service over the Internet. Skype and Vonage are two of the more popular VOIP providers; however, they are relatively expensive if you want to have an actual phone number that allows incoming calls from "normal" phones (i.e. non-VOIP phones, such as landlines and cellphones). This is our basic requirement: that pager/buzzer box in our building just dials a phone number whenever someone pages us.
After a bit more research, I found out that there are a lot of other VOIP providers; enough that it's easy to find one that has plans or a la carte services to meet specific needs. I went with CallWithUs. I basically pre-pay for outgoing minutes (I think the rate is 1.5 cents/minute), and pay $4/month for a local phone number with 3000 incoming minutes.
Back to Comcast: with them out of the equation for phone service, I can lower my bill in two ways: use my own modem, and drop Comcast's clearly over-priced, under-performing phone service. My wife called to have the phone service removed; I wasn't there for the call, but she said she was on the phone for over an hour! Actually, Comcast hung up on her on the first call; the second call required the hour of phone tree navigation, being transferred several times, asking to talk to the supervisor, etc... My wife was not working at the time, so she could afford to spend her time trying to get a better rate with Comcast. But what about people who have jobs and/or families?
Anyway, the phone service cancellation was approved. However, it takes 48 hours to process. I called within that 48 hour window, and tried to get my (Internet-only) cable modem (Motorola SURFboard SB5101) set up. We started down the process: I was gave the Comcast representative information about my modem, we did tests, but it wouldn't work. After discussing the issue with the supervisor, the problem was determined to be the outstanding work order on the voice shutoff. Okay, so I just have to wait out the full 48 hours, no problem...
On the second call (after the 48 hours), the representative I spoke to said he needed to talk to his supervisor before he could authorise use of my own modem. He came back and said that I had to return Comcast's modem before they could set up mine! I patiently argued with the guy for a while, then asked to speak to the supervisor directly. The supervisor repeated what the first guy said: they cannot set up my modem until I return the rented one. I couldn't believe it! I spent over 45 minutes arguing with him:
I ended that conversation, then immediately called back. But this time I used different options on the phone tree. I got through to a girl who was very nice, and literally had me up and running on the new modem in less than 15 minutes! She didn't have to speak with her supervisor, she didn't mention anything about returning Comcast's modem... just asked for the information she needed, did whatever it is she does, had me do a few tests, and it was done. The call with her was the kind I expect when dealing with any company's customer service: polite, friendly, knowledgeable, competent, honest.
Based on my experience with Comcast, my theory is that a fairly large majority of their customer service employees are either grossly incompetent, or shady used car salesman types. My wife offered up an equally believable theory: that all their employees are instructed to flat out deny some high percentage of requests that would result in the customer paying less money to Comcast.
Sadly, my experience with Comcast is on par with the service and policies of the land-line provider I had back home (Ameritech, probably AT&T now). In my life, I have yet to have a positive experience with a big telecommunications company. Likewise, I've never heard anyone else relate a positive experience with big telcom. There are stories of above-mediocre service with smaller and/or independent providers. But these aren't available everywhere, and are facing increasingly monopoly-like pressure from the big players. My wife actually used to work for a small, family-owned telcom company: she said it is unlikely that they will be able to stay in business due to companies like AT&T overcharging for the leasing of their lines; companies like Verizon underselling them; and having no political clout with the FCC and local governments.
Initially, we went with Comcast's "Triple Play" plan, which gives us high-speed Internet, cable TV, and phone service. The promotional rate is $99/month, which, sadly, is pretty reasonable for all those services in the Chicago area. However, the advertised price is a bit of a teaser, since it doesn't include equipment rental ($3/month for the modem) and all the various taxes.
After a while, we noticed something about their phone service: despite the fact that we rarely used it, it was often not working correctly: either there would be no dial tone, or we would be unable to receive calls. We don't have too many visitors, but we missed a lot of package deliveries (visitors are actually a simpler case---they know to call our cellphones if the buzzer isn't working; the delivery folks aren't that patient). A lot of the convenience of ordering food for home delivery was removed when we had to use our cellphones instead of Comcast's unreliable phone line: first by explaining our non-local area code (of which many restaurants are suspicious), then having to give special instructions regarding the effectively broken buzzer.
Feeling a general resentment towards Comcast, I embarked on a mission of reducing the amount of money I pay to them every month. My first step was to get rid of the $3/month modem rental fee. Since I had Internet and voice service through them, this required a special kind of modem---not just a "vanilla" cablemodem, but one that is also an EMTA (i.e. supports VOIP voice-over-IP). The Comcast-supplied modem was an Arris TM402P. After a bit of research, I came to believe that they would support the Motorola SBV5220, so I bought one on eBay.
When I received the modem, I spent about three hours on the phone with Comcast, trying to get it to work. At one point, the Internet was working; then the technician to whom I was speaking swapped two configuration parameters, and it stopped working. At this point, he decided he needed more information on the modem: where did I get it? He had to go to his supervisor who said that they needed to perform an "equipment research" on the modem. I had to fax them my proof of purchase (eBay invoice). A few days later, they got back to me and said that the modem isn't one of theirs, so I can't use it! To this day, I am convinced that if the person I was working with hadn't misconfigured their system, the modem would have worked fine. I have no way to prove this, but I truly believe they were simply refusing to let me use my own modem on a bogus reason. (Note: I abbreviated this story somewhat; see here for some forum posts where I go into more detail. What's also curious is that they'll let you use your own modem for Internet service, but not for voice.)
So I was stuck with Comcast's modem and its $3/month rental fee, and their under-performing voice service. Then I had an epiphany: VOIP, which allows one to have traditional phone service over the Internet. Skype and Vonage are two of the more popular VOIP providers; however, they are relatively expensive if you want to have an actual phone number that allows incoming calls from "normal" phones (i.e. non-VOIP phones, such as landlines and cellphones). This is our basic requirement: that pager/buzzer box in our building just dials a phone number whenever someone pages us.
After a bit more research, I found out that there are a lot of other VOIP providers; enough that it's easy to find one that has plans or a la carte services to meet specific needs. I went with CallWithUs. I basically pre-pay for outgoing minutes (I think the rate is 1.5 cents/minute), and pay $4/month for a local phone number with 3000 incoming minutes.
Back to Comcast: with them out of the equation for phone service, I can lower my bill in two ways: use my own modem, and drop Comcast's clearly over-priced, under-performing phone service. My wife called to have the phone service removed; I wasn't there for the call, but she said she was on the phone for over an hour! Actually, Comcast hung up on her on the first call; the second call required the hour of phone tree navigation, being transferred several times, asking to talk to the supervisor, etc... My wife was not working at the time, so she could afford to spend her time trying to get a better rate with Comcast. But what about people who have jobs and/or families?
Anyway, the phone service cancellation was approved. However, it takes 48 hours to process. I called within that 48 hour window, and tried to get my (Internet-only) cable modem (Motorola SURFboard SB5101) set up. We started down the process: I was gave the Comcast representative information about my modem, we did tests, but it wouldn't work. After discussing the issue with the supervisor, the problem was determined to be the outstanding work order on the voice shutoff. Okay, so I just have to wait out the full 48 hours, no problem...
On the second call (after the 48 hours), the representative I spoke to said he needed to talk to his supervisor before he could authorise use of my own modem. He came back and said that I had to return Comcast's modem before they could set up mine! I patiently argued with the guy for a while, then asked to speak to the supervisor directly. The supervisor repeated what the first guy said: they cannot set up my modem until I return the rented one. I couldn't believe it! I spent over 45 minutes arguing with him:
- I said I've been through this process twice now, once with the VOIP+Internet modem, and again the previous night (when I was told I had to wait 48 hours). On neither occasion was I told that I had to first return the rented modem. I asked if this was a new policy, and he said no.
- I also said, what if I return the modem, and come home and find out the new one does not work for some reason? Then I have to drive back to the office and re-claim it.
- What if the office doesn't do the paperwork correctly, and says I didn't actually return it?
I ended that conversation, then immediately called back. But this time I used different options on the phone tree. I got through to a girl who was very nice, and literally had me up and running on the new modem in less than 15 minutes! She didn't have to speak with her supervisor, she didn't mention anything about returning Comcast's modem... just asked for the information she needed, did whatever it is she does, had me do a few tests, and it was done. The call with her was the kind I expect when dealing with any company's customer service: polite, friendly, knowledgeable, competent, honest.
Based on my experience with Comcast, my theory is that a fairly large majority of their customer service employees are either grossly incompetent, or shady used car salesman types. My wife offered up an equally believable theory: that all their employees are instructed to flat out deny some high percentage of requests that would result in the customer paying less money to Comcast.
Sadly, my experience with Comcast is on par with the service and policies of the land-line provider I had back home (Ameritech, probably AT&T now). In my life, I have yet to have a positive experience with a big telecommunications company. Likewise, I've never heard anyone else relate a positive experience with big telcom. There are stories of above-mediocre service with smaller and/or independent providers. But these aren't available everywhere, and are facing increasingly monopoly-like pressure from the big players. My wife actually used to work for a small, family-owned telcom company: she said it is unlikely that they will be able to stay in business due to companies like AT&T overcharging for the leasing of their lines; companies like Verizon underselling them; and having no political clout with the FCC and local governments.
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