Tuesday

Little Tossers

First off, I want to thank all you people for posting about deaf ferrets and food-tossing. My monkeys, for a few years now, have managed not to toss their food out of the cage like they used to. But apparently my monkeys telepathically read the FML with me and decided that bringing back the tradition of food-tossing was long overdue. I want to thank you people very much for that. Thanks.

I get up a few mornings ago, about two days after the first post about the tossers, and what do you know - food all over the carpet everywhere. Now, it's not like I have great carpet that I care about or anything, but I do have neuropathy in my feet and they are sensitive. My feet have always been tender, but the neuropathy has made them worse. Half asleep, I stumbled my usual path from the bedroom to the coffee pot, but about eight steps out of bed I hit the patch of kibble. I stumbled that stumble you do when your feet say to your brain "get off me" and your knees buckle to oblige without even asking you. Wobbling, I must have looked as if I were walking over hot coals. After cussing a bit and making it to the coffee pot I regained my composure. I looked into the cage to spot the culprit(s), but all I could see were innocent tiny noses waiting to get out. Well so much for that.

It was odd, though. I remembered reading about deaf ferrets and food-tossing and thought to myself what a coincidence? I thought no more of it, however, and made my coffee. Scooter (named that because that's what he rode home on) was eating the kibble from the carpet, but the others were eating the food that we leave in the bowl on the floor by the coffee stand. I tell Scooter "good boy" and give the others an evil eye, and my words have the usual impact - nada. I look at the clock and realize that it's later than I think, and I have to get to work. Yay.

I work as a day manager at Dominos. I work with the general public, and the only thing I will say about the general public is that stupid people have to eat too. You would not believe some of the people who call the store. Of course, you have the kids who call to order pizzas for their neighbors - hee hee. Those calls are the easiest to spot, unbeknownst to them, but they are not the most annoying. I actually like threatening the little bostas and telling them that I got their number off our caller ID and I'm calling the cops. Of course I don't bother the police with these calls. There's enough stupidity in the world without making it official.

It's the braindead-edness, clueless, off in their own little world kind of people that annoy me the most. The ones who want me to deliver a pizza but don't know where they live. How come the person who doesn't live there is always the one who orders the pizza? I ask for an address and I get, "Hold on, hey... dude, what's your address?" This usually goes on for some time, and since I work mainly by myself in the mornings, it puts a damper on any kind of progress I might make. Then there are the people who want "everything" on their pizza. No, you don't. If I put all the toppings we have for pizzas *on* one, it would be gross and cost about 30 bucks for one pie. I have stopped correcting people and just hit the "Extravaganza" button. I get stuff done in a timely manner, my customers get what they want, and the world is a happy place. I could go on and on...

But today I get a relay call. For those of you who don't know what relay calls are, they are calls from deaf people who type their words to an operator who then talks to me and tells me what they are saying. It is supposed to work like the deaf person and I are having an actual conversation, except we aren't. The operator is not supposed to add any of her own commentary and just repeat verbatim what each party is saying to each other. But sometimes it doesn't quite work that way.

The operator asks me to repeat my greeting. "Thank you for choosing Dominos, how can I help you?" I wait. And I wait. The operator comes back on after 20 seconds and asks me to repeat my greeting again. Apparently she missed it again. I repeat it again and wait. Another 30 seconds go by. The operator tells me, "I would like to make an order." It's about three minutes into the call and all we have established is that the caller wants to make an order. It is a long and drawn-out, painful process. I ask the caller, er - the operator, if you're keeping score - what is your address? Another moment of silence on the line. The silence is so long that I eventually ask the operator, "Ma'am, is something wrong?" But the operator doesn't hear that as a question to *her* and types it to the caller. I realize what is happening after a few seconds, but it is too late. It takes the caller a while, but eventually the operator repeats back the caller's response. "Nothing is wrong." I should never have forgotten the golden rule and tried to talk to the operator. Now, I've probably offended my caller. I ask for the address again, now about eight minutes into the call. I hear something for the street name that sounds like "Bonanza" or "Fandango" or something. This is where it gets stupid.

I ask the operator to spell it for me, but even though the operator has just seen the street name on the screen and could just read it off, she types the spelling request to the caller. I understand the operator's loyalty to her primary objective, and I get the whole idea of the deaf being able to talk on the phone with dignity like anyone else, but there is no dignity in this for anyone involved. And to top it off, the caller, annoyed by the whole process, hangs up. Well great. That was a productive use of about twelve minutes. A few minutes later another operator calls back for the same caller. It takes a while, but the pizza gets ordered. All this for one medium thin crust olive pizza in the year 2009.

I am thinking about deafness and how frustrating it must be to be deaf. I think back to earlier this morning and the posts to the FML about deaf ferrets and food-tossing. Slowly it starts coming to me and I make the connections. Deaf ferrets tossing food, deaf callers ordering pizza... I think I get it. I can understand why deaf beings toss things - I wanted to toss some food, myself. My mind is numb, but I make it through yet another day at work. I head home.

I walk through the glass door that leads to my part of the house and see that my monkeys have had another food-tossing frenzy. I look through the bars to spot the culprit, and Stewie looks at me with guilty eyes. I don't think Stewie is deaf, but I wonder about it for a second. Naw, at least I don't think so. But Ed has me wondering, now - how do I find out for sure? Hmm...

I tell Stewie that if he and his buddies decide to toss out any more food for me to step on, well.... I will send them to a mad scientist who asks alot of questions and dissects ferret eardrums for a living - or a hobby or something, I don't know. It makes no impact, of course, thereby proving (make a note, Ed) that ferrets, or at least *this* ferret, is deafer than a doornail. When he wants to be.

And I will probably get to do all this again tomorrow. I can't wait.

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