T.J. Flynn

Today’s topic has nothing to do with SERVICE in the sense that we usually discuss in this forum.
Or does it?

On February 20, 1864, Brigadier Generals Seymour for the North and Finnegan for the South faced each other in Olustee, Florida. Finnegan and the South won the battle, but he was derided because he did not pursue and finish off the survivors before they got back to the safety of Jacksonville, which was occupied by the northern aggressors at that time.

Two things come to mind when I think about that battle. The first is that a sports announcer whose name I refuse to write, once called Jacksonville “a remote southern outpost” during a fight broadcast. That comment, like many others from that announcer, had no basis in fact, and really pissed me off.

A. Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas is “a remote southern outpost”.
B. If I’ve done the math correctly, the remote northern outpost of Fort Amsterdam was built on Manhattan Island 60 years after the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States (St Augustine, which is 40 miles further south than Jacksonville) was thriving .
C. At the time the baseless comment was made, Jacksonville had the largest land area of any city in the contiguous United States.
D. My dad, and his dad, were born in Jacksonville.
E. Brooklyn numbskull.

The second thing that comes to mind is the similarities with that battle and my past relationships with the fairer sex. I’ve won some bloody battles, but did not capitalize. Like Joe Finnegan, I let them return to the safety of an enemy-occupied area instead of pressing to really gain an advantage. Then, with a few of them, found myself with my hat in my hand at a courthouse, like Robert E. Lee, asking for favorable terms. With the others, I pulled away. Or as we preferred when I was an active-duty Marine, I advanced toward the rear.

Over time, I’ve had a manifestation of clear thought. I realize that heart-to-heart combat is not as easy as it used to be. Therefore, I’m now looking to be and to engage with a pacifist. Isn’t it funny that ‘fist’ is a part of this word which opposes using them? The new “ism” for my obsession is pacifism.

So, back on the dating scene, looking for a pacifist with which to never fight about anything, I’m still finding warriors. Hello ladies. I’m looking for serene not a screaming siren.

I’m still gathering information with which to crystalize my formal list of proposed qualities for said pacifist. I hope to be able, within a decade or so, to post those here.

I can, however, because I’ve already experienced them with other females, post the following list of things that SHE would never do:

1. Live with more than 2 cats or 2 dogs or 1 cat and 1 dog.
2. Neglect to have cat pee cleaned out of her clothing.
3. Lie about her age or the age of her photos before we meet.
4. Squat to urinate in a public park on our first date.
5. Bring a flask and a back-up flask on the first date.
6. Order more than 3 cocktails, glasses of wine, or beers on the first date.
7. Talk about current ‘friends with benefits’.
8. Lie about having 7 children.
9. Come to a first date wearing a bullet-proof vest.
10. Not allow me, after a reasonable period, to see where she lives.
11. Full court press for sex on the first date.
12. Brag about anything except kids and grandkids
13. Insist on an expensive restaurant for the first meeting
14. Be overly sensitive about her weight
15. Bring a pet, friend, child, or illness to the first meeting.
16. Call herself an artist without having, at least been in a gallery or a museum, if not shown works.
17. Call herself a writer without having been published somewhere.
18. Come on a first date with a single mustache hair.
19. Come on a first date with any hygiene deficiencies.
20. Dress inappropriately for the venue.
21. Spend more time texting someone else than talking to me.
22. Dance with anyone else if she’s with me
23. Be jealous of my kids or grandkids.
24. Ask me what I’ve learned from my failed marriages.
25. Preach to me about her religion.

TO BE CONTINUED…

1. Publix employees must have read my former post about shopping at their competitors. My mom and I, on her 92nd birthday, were exiting a CVS drugstore and were almost run down by a line of approximately 6 carts being steered by rogue teenager in a Publix outfit. He should not have been going so fast. Nor should he have been right up against the wall. But most of all, he should not have told me that the carts don’t have brakes.

2. OnlineMetals.com and ZoroTools.com provided perfect service on orders of stuff for my sailboat in the $300 range. Prompt shipping and all the right parts…

3. Burger King employees became flustered with a 10-burger order in front of me and misplaced my ticket. After 3 or 4 people were served that came in after me, I inquired and got my order which was sitting there the whole time. The apologies from the server were genuine and provided a good recovery.

4. How about the hearing doctor that asked “how may I help you” while looking at the computer screen at his front desk and not at the customer who was there because she had lost her hearing aid? When he finally made eye contact, the customer and he were able to communicate.

5. Believe it or not, the VA Clinic in Viera has great service. They recently changed their lab from appointment only to a numbered ticket system. I have not had to wait over 10 minutes for blood and urine donations since. Primary Care provider, Dr. Henriquez, gets good marks for service, as do his nurses.

6. Sherwin Williams offers a line of paints called ‘Seaguard’ that is only available from a few outlets…not all Sherwin Williams stores. According to my local Sherwin Williams store: (a) I can’t order Seaguard from them, (b) they think a couple of stores on the coast handle that line, and (c) they can’t tell me anything about the line or provide a number for a store that does.
With some perseverance, I found a store in Tampa that sells the line. Specialty Coating, Industrial Coating…whatever. If it is a Sherwin Williams product, the local store should be able to tell me how to buy some.

7. I won’t dignify the program by naming it. But, don’t you hate to download a program that you need and want and get 5 other programs that you don’t want with the download? Worse, this particular program has a screen that asks if you want the add-on programs and even if you say no-you get them on the download.

8. Amazon Hose & Rubber in Orlando has great counter service.

It feels like I’ve been moving for years. Moving from one floor to another. One house to another. One state to another. I just moved again.

Through all of these moves, Goodwill has been my re-purpose facility of choice. If a particular item was a duplicate, or had the stigma (smell) of a former wife, or for some other reason did not make the cut of items packed-I found the nearest Goodwill to shelter it.

I believe the TV ads that say donating to Goodwill provides good things for people. I hope that a lot of my trash has been another man’s (or woman’s) treasure. To complete the cycle, when I’m not donating stuff to Goodwill, I’m scouring every one that I pass looking for antiques and bargains. It’s the ‘circle of junk’, similar to the circle of life except inanimate things don’t die, rot and provide nourishment for other inanimate things. It just seems as if they do when you go to Goodwill all the time.

Other than someone working for Goodwill, there may not be a person alive that has been in more of them than me. Let’s further qualify ‘being in’ them as dropping off or picking up stuff there. The 2nd Ex has probably been in as many as me, but in terms of sheer mass, has not moved the pounds that I have in and out of them. Dammit, there’s another useless distinction to add to my list.

Yea Goodwill. I know what to expect when I go there.

Okay, so I went to a Salvation Army store to drop off some stuff a few weeks ago and their business model is completely different. Instead of friendly people helping you to unload your crap and giving you a receipt, there is a gestapo-like sergeant (armed with Wyatt Earp’s 12″ barrel colt revolver I think) standing at the door. Once you proudly motion towards, scan and verbally list your valued possessions that need new homes, he yells out, “We’ll take the silver bars and the perfect furniture, get the rest of this useless crap off of my lot. You have 8 seconds. One…”

If you’re like me, you will still be in a mouth open, glazed eye state of shock when you think that you hear the unmistakeable snap of the leather strap holding the hog-leg in it’s holster being loosed and the reverberating staccato of the hammer being pulled back. I would not be far afield to say that my son-in-law soiled himself during this interaction, to which he was only peripherally involved.

Friends, frogs and knuckleheads, I won’t go back to a Salvation Army…ever…for any reason.

The person that your customers interact with is the face of your business.

It is not good blog protocol (I suspect) to write stories about the same thing so close together. However, I have another automobile experience to share.

Those few readers who know me really well know that I’m…uh, frugal when it comes to cars and trucks. Having wasted untold dollars trading cars every couple of years, I now tend to run the wheels off of everything that I purchase. Many years ago, my friend John Weeks, shared a story about the principal at his high school saying that a Caddy is really a poor man’s car because they were so well built that the cost of ownership-over time was extremely low. I’ve proved this concept to be true with several Ford trucks and vans as well.

Please don’t tell Carl Edwards or any other of my Fanatic Ford Friends, but my current work van is a Chevy. She’s 23 and has almost 230,000 miles on her. But, bless her heart,still gets up every day and goes where ever I go. She has a little rust and her paint is fading. But, she still goes with me. She needs touching in difficult places to reach sometimes. Most recently inside her gas tank. But, she still goes with me. She loves gas stations and craves oil and water sometimes. But she still goes with me. Her middle seats are in another state. She is burdened with tools of my trade and beach essentials. I often forget to unload things that she should not be carrying. I used to let her sit in my parking lot in Kentucky, covered in snow and ice, for weeks at a time. Then jump in to drive a thousand miles to work. She happily went.

Over time, her power windows stopped working and stayed that way until it became too inconvenient (translated HOT) for me to bear. As things happen, I was lamenting the heat and wishing that the windows worked when I passed one of those orange cars on US 1 that advertise window repairs. I called. Agreed to $175 each window for new motors and the labor to install. He came the same day and did the work.

Fast forward to less than a week later and the passenger window rolls down and not back up. I was busy that week. It rained much that week. My old girl was very embarassed honkin’ down the road with a plastic trash bag on one of her wings like she belonged to Jethro Bodeen or the Joad family. It rained the next week and the next.

The repairman had warned me of some rusty pieces that could cause the window to stop working. Thinking that this was the issue and he had done what he promised, I operated on my girl and, to my surprise found a well-worn and old window motor still in her wing. It was at this point that I knew that I had wasted some or all of the $360 I’d spent and that I’d been taken advantage of.

Angry and frustrated, I fixed her window in the up position and put her back together. During this process, I lost the clip that holds the door handle on. So, each time the door is shut, the handle falls off. I also broke the electric thingie that operates the window. So, the hole where it was is covered with tape. Dammit!

Not one to walk away from a fight, I called the repairman. His response was to call me “bone lip” and hang up. I must admit that I’ve been called many things worse than “bone lip”, and that “bone lip” was funny until I thought it must be a reference to being gay-which I ain’t.

Giving the devil his due, the repairman did call back, apologize and ask to make a repair. Unfortunately, at that point I was in a prudent business be damned, this guy has taken advantage of me and disparaged me (I think) with the bone lip thing, hung up the phone on me, and I don’t want him anywhere near my sweetie mode and told him to go you-know-what himself.

Over time, I’ll fix the handle and get a new switch cover. I can live with just one window rolling up and down. Meanwhile, my unnamed sweetie will still get up and go with me where ever I go.

Over time, the repairman will still take advantage of people, call them bad names, and live with the bad karma he’s putting out into the world.

I sorta wish that my make up was such that would have allowed me to let the guy fix his mistake. But, then again, that person would be someone else…not me!

The lesson in service? Don’t trust a guy that comes to your house to work on your vehicle and asks you to drive up on the sidewalk under the shade of a tree. I guess.