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.

Roary
http://dookology.blogspot.com/
http://www.garageband.com/artist/hoomin
location: 35.246302 ~ -106.717857

[Posted in FML 6219]