Wake up, Little Susie!

I read in the Sun-Times today that the Gary city clerk Suzette Raggs just had to run into the mall for a minute. Just a minute, for cryin' out loud. No big deal.

And do please note that she did NOT park in any handicapped spots. She certainly wouldn't do anything of THAT sort---we all know that's not legal. No, she parked in the "stripy bits" between handicapped spots....in her official car with the official (police) plates.....

Handicapped van owner (and the local cop he called) only had to wait an hour for her to come out, so that the van's doors could be opened and the ramp extended. How is that an inconvenience to anybody?

You know, there are few things that will concentrate your attention on how folks park in handicapped areas quite as much as having handicapped plates or placard yourself. And I've noticed a great upsurge in this lately---the idea that it doesn't count as parking in a handicapped spot if you stay out of the marked spaces and only park in the "stripy bits".

Am I the only person in this country who vaguely remembers that at some point in her upbringing, she was taught "if asphalt is painted with parallel diagonal yellow stripes, it means NO PARKING"? It's beginning to seem that way.

This event happened at Westfield's Southlake Mall on route 30, over on the edge between Merrillville and Hobart. For those of you who have never been there, I have to say I'm really surprised that she managed to do this.

Surprised because Southlake seems to have had a policy for the last three or four years of "repurposing" many of their handicapped parking spaces. Going there for a quick run into Build-A-Bear, I scope the parking lot---the area where handicapped parking usually is near a mall entrance.

You can see by the lot paint that they USED to have handicapped parking here. Apparently, however, it attracted handicapped people, and I'm guessing that might not be the heaviest shopping/biggest spending demographic out there.

It's been "fixed." Half of it is "Kid's Club Parking" (Yes, we're a nation with an obese child problem. Best way to fix it? Under no circumstances make a kid walk further than 20 yards from their car into a mall!), the other half is "Pregnant Women Only Parking" (marked as "brought to you" by a maternity shop in the mall.)

If you're handicapped and need to run into Build-A-Bear, the Correct Solution is to park somewhere else, by some other entrance, and walk the length of the mall to get to your store---that the reason you have a handicapped card is that you have a demonstrated *need* not to walk long distances only applies to car-to-mall, apparently. Intra-mall mileage on your tootsies doesn't count.

That's the Correct Solution by way of Mall Management Think. It's not the Piggie Solution.

There is no official status to "Pregnant Women Only Parking."

There is no Gummint Agency in charge of handing out nice pink Pregnant Placards.

Piggie parks in the preggers spaces. Piggie is, after all Demonstrably Female.......if visibly presumably post-menopausal. But look at all those news stories of older women and babies........how can you know for sure?

If questioned by mall personnel, they get only my name, rank and serial number. I ain't peeing in the cup. That said, exactly how are they going to prove I'm *not* pregnant? :)

Leaving my mind on idle, unsupervised......

Scenario: Tom Sawyer and his friends, in their later years, go to visit a radio studio. They look around at all that is new and different since the pre-Civil War days of their childhood.

Finn is particularly fascinated with the table of various gadgets, boxes and machines used to make live sound effects. He turns to his friend, who has spent far more years in the big city than he.

"Tom, what do they call that?"
"Foley, Huck!"

Counter INTUITive?

Last week I did time in the hospital having my left knee replaced, which doesn't have anything to do with this story, except to explain why I would do something as bizarre as actually shutting down my iMac. And for the second time in the hair over two years I've owned the iMac, shutting it down has caused it to fail---it's going to have to go into the shop and get a new power supply before it boots, and that won't be any time real soon, because of the aforementioned surgery: can't drive quite yet.

Not a big deal; I can function for quite a while on the laptop. Probably the biggest issue is financial---Quicken resides on the iMac and not on the iBook, having come with the G5. The actual files are backed up nicely on an external hard drive, but I can't read them without having Quicken installed.

The obvious solution is the one I choose: go to Intuit's website, order the 2007 edition of Quicken as a CD, snail mail, $10 extra for second day air. Maybe it's a manifestation of my dinosaur status, but I prefer the CD in hand to the licensed download as a software purchase method.

Today the package arrives. I open it and inspect the invoice: Quicken 2007 Mac CD Direct. Yep, that sounds right to me---just what I ordered. Pick up the disk, prepare to insert it in the disk tray of the iBook to install it, reading it in passing: Quicken, 2007 Basic, Windows XP/2000.

Argh.

Inspect the various instructions on the label. Sure enough, "Wrong Shipment - incorrect material received" is one of the categories listed. I check more closely to see what I'm expected to do: pack it up, ship it back, pay the postage myself.

That doesn't quite cut it. Let's try a bit of telephone contact before we go down that road.

Several telephone menus later, I'm connected with a customer service guy somewhere in the Middle East - to - India sector. To protect his identity, we'll call him Abu Dhabi.

I explain that my invoice says "Quicken/Mac" while the disk says "Quicken/Windows." Mr. Dhabi begs my patience while he looks up my order. "Yes," he agrees. "You ordered the Mac version. Is there anything else I can do to help you?"

I explain that yes, I meant to order the Mac version. However, that isn't what they shipped. What I have in my hand, accompanying that invoice, is a Windows disk, and that is a problem.

"Well," asks Abu, "Did you install it?" A deep breath later, I explain that one CANNOT install Windows software in a Mac OS environment.

"Oh," he says. "Please hold for two minutes while I find out what the best offer I can make is."

Best offer? I wait, wondering exactly when Mr. Dhabi confused himself with Howie Mandel. Two minutes later, he returns.

"I have my best offer here," he advised me cheerfully. "We can send you the disk you ordered."

I'm still contemplating that "best offer" concept, but the solution seems acceptable---it appears it will get what I've already paid for into my hands without my being expected to hobble to the post office with my walker to return at my expense their mistaken order. 'Twill do. But Abu is not done.

"Would you say that my customer service was okay?" he asked me.

"Sure, I suppose so," I responded, wondering where he's going with this.

"I need for you to stay on the line for a few minutes, then, to take a survey and confirm that my service has been Above and Beyond Expectation, please."

Above and beyond expectation, indeed.

My original expectation, of course, involved Intuit managing to ship to me what I ordered on the first try. That is already beyond help---and I freely admit, through no fault of Mr. Dhabi's. But having Intuit manage to send what I actually ordered on the second try isn't capable of being Above And Beyond Expectation. At best, it meets Minimal Expectation.

Above and Beyond Expectation? That would have required, I think, tossing in a free copy of QuickBooks. Or solving the problem the other way---by sending me a Windows computer for the software to be installed on.