[From Part 1: I had the weirdest dream recently. A lot like the Jimmy Stewart classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. In the film, Stewart’s character, George Bailey, questions whether the people in his life would have been better off had he never been born. Then a guardian angel named Clarence shows him how their lives would have turned out much worse had George never existed. Well, my dream was a bit like that. A bit….
To read Part 1 of this 2-part series, click here. We pick up with my guardian angel named Tyrone continuing to show me what life would have been like for others if I had never been born.]
Me: So where are you taking me to now, Tyrone?
Tyrone: To see someone who was your best friend as a young child.
Me: My childhood playmate Danny Scott?
Tyrone: That’s right. Look out there. What do you see?
Me: A baseball field – with a bunch of kids playing.
Tyrone: And notice who’s playing short stop?
Me: Is that Danny? It can’t be. He could barely walk for most of his childhood on account of a bad fall off a swing set.
Tyrone: No, he didn’t have a bad fall.
Me: Are we going to start this again, Tyrone? Yes, he did. I know. Because I was the kid who pushed him too hard from behind, and he flew 12 feet into the air before landing hard, breaking his leg. He never walked the same after that.
Tyrone: You didn’t push Danny off the swing. Because you were never born, remember?
Me: Oh right. That It’s a Wonderful Life thing. I almost forgot. So what happened to him?
Tyrone: Well, because Danny never had that terrible fall, he never injured his leg. He played little league and went on to play high school ball, then college ball. He got so good the Chicago Cubs recruited him as a pitcher in 1977. He became a Major League all-star. He went on to earn millions. Technically, hundreds of millions. All those Nike endorsement deals added up. (more…)
I had the weirdest dream the other night. Remember the Jimmy Stewart classic, It’s a Wonderful Life? In the film, Stewart’s character, George Bailey, questions whether the people in his life would have been better off had he never been born. Then a guardian angel named Clarence shows him how their lives would have turned out if he had never existed. Well, my dream was a bit like that. A bit….
Me(in my dream, thinking to myself): Today was a crappy day. Nothing went right. My boss chewed me out for botching an important deal. My wife is upset with me too, for – um, to be honest, I have no idea why. Something about my buying a pet yak without consulting her. Who knows? Even my kids were pissed at me again – although in fairness, that’s been their normal feeling about me since puberty. Gosh, I’m depressed. Sometimes I wonder if everybody in my life would have been better off if I’d never been born.
Angel Tyrone: Why do you say that, Tim?
Me: WHA??? WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!!!!???? AND HOW DID YOU GET IN MY BEDROOM!!!!????
Tyrone: Nice to meet you, Tim. I’m your guardian angel – Tyrone.
Me: The Hell you are. Who ARE you and how did you get in here!!?? I have a pistol under my pillow, and I’m not afraid to use it.
Tyrone: No, you don’t.
Me: Oh, yeah? Just try me. And how would you know anyway, TY-RELL, if that’s even your real name?
Tyrone: It’s Tyrone. As I said, I’m your guardian angel. So I know you don’t have a gun under there. I’ve known you your entire life, Tim. For example, I know where you stashed the Playboy magazines you stole from your brother when you were 11.
Me: Oh, you do, eh? Well, why don’t you just tell me, Tyson? (more…)
I hate going to the dentist – the sound of a dentist’s drill carving up my tooth and that painful Novocain needle. And that’s what I’m about to endure today. I am going to dread this…..
12:15pm: I am sitting in the lobby of the dentist office, reading an issue of Lady’s Home Journal from May 2007, because it’s either that or a 2009 issue of Field & Stream – anything to distract my brain from the fact that shortly I’m going to be in serious emotional distress, contemplating the dentist’s drill boring through my mouth like a construction worker chiseling a concrete sidewalk.
12:21: Uh oh. It’s time. They just called me in. The hygienist’s name is Maria. She seems nice. Kind of cute, actually. But I know what’s in store after I walk through that door. The dentist will start wielding his evil-looking torture device, and I’ll be clutching the armrests so tightly I’ll leave permanent indentations.
12:25: Time for the Novocain. Did I mention I have a phobic fear of needles? The dentist is pulling one out of his quiver roughly the length of a knitting needle. Is it only me or did he just flash a sinister sneer behind his mask? I’ll bet he loves this part. My stomach is a ball of knots. My heart is racing.
12:26: Maria sees me closing my eyes and grimacing. She asks me if I would like them to use nitrous oxide (laughing gas). “What’s does it do?” I ask her. She explains that it may help me relax and take my mind off of the procedure. “Sure, why not?” I tell her.
12:29: Maria puts a mask on my face and tells me to breathe in and out through my nose. Nice try, but there’s no way this is going to help me relax. Just look at that needle – it must be as long as my 9-iron.
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For several years, every November and December, I experienced three-day work weeks thanks to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Due to the shortened workweeks, I had to be extremely focused, making efficient use of my limited time those weeks. I cut way back the amount of time devoted to watching adorable cat videos on YouTube.
With only three days to get everything done, I dutifully avoided sending our my normal two dozen humor emails a day with links to things like hilarious parody music videos on the Twelve Days of Christmas. I discovered that I accomplished so much in these shortened work weeks that it got me to thinking: Imagine how much more efficient workers would all be if we all had a three-day work week.
There are many companies – and even a few cities (El Paso, TX, Melbourne, FL) and at least one state (Utah) that are currently experimenting with a four-day work week. Instead of five 8-hour days, their employees work four 10-hour days, and they really get a lot of things done in these ten-hour days…well, in the first 8 hours anyway. Polls of workers who have shifted to a four-day work schedule indicate that 85% prefer it to the previous five-day schedule and an overwhelming 99% prefer it to the seven-day 80-hour work week with no time off for Christmas.
The advantages of a four-day work week are obvious:
Reduced commuting time and reduced energy consumption by eliminating one day of commuting travel per week
Improved energy efficiencies from reduced use of electricity and heating in offices and factories which are closed one more day each week
You can get drunk on Thursday night and don’t have to make up transparent excuses for not showing up to work on Friday, like “I can’t make it into work today, boss because my four-year old Nate is sick with the measles again… Yeah, I know it’s the 7th time this year. He has a really crappy immune system…”
[Author’s note: I recently purchased a mattress from Sears. They were supposed to deliver it this past Thursday. But things did not quite go as planned. They sent me a customer feedback survey the following day. Below is the exact, unaltered response I sent back in my evaluation.]
Dear Sears Customer Service Team,
Thank you for your very prompt email survey asking about my recent purchase experience. I am pleased to report my online ordering experience went off without a hitch. No wait, there was actually one very minor hitch which I probably shouldn’t even bother mentioning, but since you were kind enough to ask, would you mind if I share it with you?
My fantastic customer experience started to go just slightly off track when it came to the DELIVERY of the mattress I purchased online. And for that, I take full responsibility. It was completely my fault to place my mattress order with Sears. Why I didn’t order it through Sleep Country USA is something I can’t explain.
You see, my delivery was scheduled for this past Thursday. The evening before, I received an automated call from Sears Customer Service informing me that my mattress would be delivered between 1:45 pm and 3:45 pm. And that presented a problem, as I had an important appointment which required me to leave by 2:00.
I immediately called your toll-free customer support number (1-800-PLZ-HOLD), and after waiting ten minutes, I reached a live person named Roger – at least I presume Roger was a live person. In retrospect, given that he kept spouting the same answer over and over, I’m wondering whether perhaps he was an automated phone bot with a highly developed user interface.
I told Roger / your phone bot that a delivery window of 1:45 pm to 3:45 pm would not work for me and asked if Sears could change the delivery to 7am to 10am, to which he kindly responded, “Please hold.” No more than eight minutes later, he came back on the line helpfully to inform me that a delivery window of 7 to 10 am was not available. “However, we can deliver your mattress tomorrow between 1:45 and 3:45”, he shared. That time sounded eerily familiar, in part because that was the precise time window I had called about to inform your team would not work for me.
I then asked whether it could be delivered between 10am and noon. This is when I suspected that Roger might be a highly advanced computer algorithm. Because after my second eight-minute wait on hold, he / it returned on the phone and repeated almost the identical message as before, informing me that a delivery window of 10 am to noon was not available, “However, we can deliver your mattress tomorrow between 1:45 and 3:45.”
[From Part 1: I had the weirdest dream recently. A lot like the Jimmy Stewart classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. In the film, Stewart’s character, George Bailey, questions whether the people in his life would have been better off had he never been born. Then a guardian angel named Clarence shows him how their lives would have turned out much worse had George never existed. Well, my dream was a bit like that. A bit…. 
