Movie Review: Sharktopus (2010) – Why?

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Ok, so as you read this review you’re not allowed to ask ANY questions. None. Ok?

So, last night I watched Sharktopus.

Nope. No questions. That was the rule.

I think Eric Roberts just wanted a Mexican vacation. That’s the only reason he would have made this movie, right?

Let’s remember that this is a Roger Corman movie. Yes. Roger Freakin’ Corman. King of the horrible movie.

This thing was horrible from the start. Corman seems to think that it takes 5 minutes of postcard video to establish a location, which is bad enough.

His beaches are full of women. No men. Just women, as if he shot the whole thing on the Island of Lesbos.

The writing was terrible. Or perhaps that was the fault of the “actors” who spoke them. They were just as terrible. The whole thing reminds me of a student film with an FX budget.

The effects reminded me of SeaQuest DSV in the beginning. Which was forgivable in 1993, less so in 2010.

The story was weak, the editing and photography would make the Razzy Awards cringe & look away. The director’s credits for directing and writing read like a what’s what of bad movies for the SyFy channel.

Actually now that I’m 25 minutes in, the FX aren’t too bad at times. Sharktopus just jumped out of the ocean and ate a bungie jumper! Nicely done.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and RUN if anyone suggests this movie.

It’s been how long?

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So, back to the dog for a minute.

This past Saturday, October 1, marked the 5 year anniversary of Rumble coming into our lives. Most days it feels like he’s been around forever!

Chris and I had talked about wanting a dog for a LONG time before we got Rumble. Like 6 months or more. We both agreed that keeping a dog of any size locked up in an apartment/condo for 8 hours was a bad idea. Borderline evil.

Luckily, I work in a dog friendly office so that wasn’t an issue (at least in theory) so I would be able to bring a dog to work.

Another issue was “What kind of dog?” and boy was that an issue.

First, it had to be an apartment dog, which at the time meant under 20lbs full grown as we were renting

Second, it had to be hypo-allergenic because owning a dog isn’t fun if you’re dead. I am allergic.

Third, it couldn’t be a purse dog! (We’re gay, but not that gay.)

Fourth, it had to be a boy. (We’re that gay.)

So we set out to find the most butch tiny hypo-allergenic dog possible. And that’s not easy. Hence, the Miniature Schnauzer was on the list, and based on their temperament and other factors, they became the shortlist.

We identified a few breeders, made a bunch of phone calls and found DreamMaker Kennels, then of Surr Langley and made contact. Before they’d see us, we had to fill out some paperwork. It was 8 pages of question on why we would make good dog owners and they should let us give them money for a puppy. It was extremely thorough and asked all the questions we’d asked ourselves.

Where will it sleep? What will it eat? What will happen during the work day? etc, etc.

Rumble is afraid of us.It took us like 3 hours to fill it out. They liked our answers and granted us a visit the next day. At which point Chris met Rumble and that was that.

We looked at about 4 puppies they had, but at some point Chris picked up this one and fell in love. I didn’t get to meet the pup at that point I don’t think.

So, we finished all the paperwork and adopted our championship stock puppy, but swore to never show him. Or breed him. Probably other stuff too, but we were buying a pet, not a trophy.

We made the long trek home by SkyTrain, scared of what was happening the entire way. Then Rumble spent about 3 hours in his little carrier refusing to come out.

We ended up coaxing him out with food (which would set a tone for the future).

Ever since then, Rumble Rose has been a constant fixture in our lives. Most of the time everything revolves around him and his schedule. Feeding (and the inverse), sleeping and playing all have to be accommodated, not to mention vacations, travel, movies, food, sex, shopping, work, television and more.

Yep. He has us pretty tightly wrapped around one or more of this tiny furry paws and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

TV 2012 – Better? Or Worse?

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So, the fall TV Season is starting. And you know how we are about our TV shows.

Now that we’ve had the premiere’s, what’s the score on what we watched?

Now Showing:

Person of Interest (Jim Caviezel & Michael Emmerson) – Interesting premise, great characters, JJ Abrams involved, hard to go wrong.

Unforgettable (Poppy Montgomery & Dylan Walsh) – Interesting premise, hate Poppy’s accent. Overall, forgettable.

Glee (Ensemble) – I’ll keep watching, but they need to do something interesting & original.

Castle (Nathan Fillion & Stana Katic) – Continuously worth watching. Engaging characters etc. The tension helps diffuse the humor.

The Mentalist (Simon Baker & Robin Tunney) – They kinda blew up all the characters at the end of the season, and yet nothing stuck. Baker’s a delight to watch, but the Red John storyline needs to either end or get demoted.

Fringe (Joshua Jackson & Anna Torv) – This season will be subtitled “Where’s Peter?” and only astute viewers will spot him behind Walter at various moments. And what’s up with the Observers?

The Big Bang Theory (Jim Parsons & Johnny Galecki) – After sleeping with Penny, Raj comes out of the closet. Sheldon & Amy have a baby and Leonard moves to India. Bazinga. Just watch the show.

How I Met Your Mother (Ensemble) – the story drags on, and on, and on. But it’s funny enough to keep watching. Still no answer to the “Why does Ted grow up to be Bob Saget?” mystery.

Coming Soon:

Happy Endings (Ensemble) – Best new comedy of last season is back this week. Watch this show if you thought Friends was cool at one point, but sucked later. Or if you hated Friends (like me).

Terra Nova (Jason O’Mara) – Earth 2, with more dinos, less aliens, and no Clancy Brown. Sounds good.

House (Hugh Laurie & ?) – Cuddy’s gone, House is in jail. Now what?

Chris made a list of things we watch, but I can’t find it. For now this will do.

Overall, the 2012 season is starting with a lot of promise. Let’s hope it can sustain that.

Glee – Season 3

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So, Glee’s third season started this past Tuesday and we finally watched it this morning.

We’re good gays. We celebrated Sunday with home-made brunch and Glee. It was fab!

Ok, I won’t do that again.

But seriously, Glee was – meh.

So here’s what you missed on Glee.

Sam’s dad got a job offer and they’ve moved out of state, which affected Mercedes so much she want from dating the puny white boy to dating a giant black guy.

Sue is running for Congress on a platform of banning all arts education in the district, just to get back at Will.

Santana is co-captaining the Cheerios with Becky and they hate each other. Sue made them light a piano on fire and Santana was dismissed from New Directions.

Will is living with Emma, who packs his lunch into a Superman lunchbox every morning. He packs hers too but I missed the logo. They haven’t had sex yet, and Will is horny. There, I said it.

Quinn has gone all Madonna in VisionQuest or something and is hanging out with The Skanks. A group of girls who’s self-image is as bad as their hygiene apparently. “Quinn, your friend smells like soap, make her go away.”

Blaine has moved to McKinley to be with Kurt, who recently had his and Rachel’s dream of moving to New York dashed twice in one week. Once when they found out Julliard didn’t have a musical theatre program, and next when they went to a meeting for a local college and found out they suck in comparison. Oops.

And that’s what you missed on Glee.

Yawn.

Oh – the highlight was Blaine doing “It’s not unusual” – he was great, despite the clothes.

http://vimeo.com/29445709

The wrong way to provide good customer service – part 2

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So, as you’ll recall, last time we left off having sent an email to our flooring company with a list of issues we had with their installation. I also listed 2 simple things that could have prevented this from being a problem.

I also promised to show you the response to my email. Well, here it is:

Hi Jeff how are you? Sorry for the inconvience. Thank you for letting us know.
For the dust there is nothing that we can do about that because we cannot control it.   I can have someone and come out and clean up the glue.  As for the baseboards we can have a painter come out and paint, fill and caulk them  and take carre of the drywall for $350.00. The reason why there is a cost for that is because the estimate does not include painting,filling and caulking. One the painter goes there  I will ask him to take care of the drywal. Let me know when you want me to have someone come out and  clean up the glue.
Thank you, have a great day

First, let me give them credit for replying quickly. They have my money, the job is done, and this is certainly not a big deal to them, but they took the time to send a reply. Regardless of my reaction to receiving it, they did reply.

In my opinion, the person who wrote this email entirely missed my point but more about that in a minute.

What really annoys me about this reply isn’t just that he missed my point, it’s that they tried to sell me something more! If a customer is annoyed with your business, don’t quote them prices on more services, because they WILL NOT BUY. Now, I’m not saying that clarifying that I didn’t order the baseboard package and thus there would be an extra charge is wrong. It’s not and should be done tactfully. I’m saying that NOW is the wrong time to quote me dollar figures.

So, back to the point. Or the missing of the point.

What the author of this email really screws up is that they don’t take responsibility, acknowledge the problems or offer any kind of sign that they truly get what’s wrong here. It’s not the dust. It’s not the damage to the baseboards, hell it’s not even the bag of garbage left behind.

It’s the feeling. I don’t feel that I was heard and I don’t feel that the installer cared about my home while it was entrusted to him. “Thanks for letting us know.” is a useless sentence right up there with “how are you” and “have a great day.” After that, he blows me off and tries to sell me $350 worth of services. I wonder how often that works.

Jeff, how would you have handled this?

Glad you asked, Jeff, because I have an answer for you.

First, this goes WAY back, IMHO. Like I said in the other post, Educate Your Customers and Hire Good Staff. You’d be amazed what those 2 things will do. We wouldn’t be here if those 2 things were done.

I imagine I’m sitting at my desk, my computer goes DING! and I see I have a new email. The subject starts with “Unhappy with job completion…” which, to a customer focused company is code for “We can learn something now.”

I read the email carefully, trying not to get personal or emotional, probably 2 or 3 times to suss out what the real problem is.

  • Is the customer upset about the price? Nope. No mention of money anywhere.
  • Do they want something for free? Nope. Not asking for anything specific.
  • Are they unhappy with their floors? Nope, in fact they are quite happy.
  • Did the installer do something wrong? Yep. That’s mentioned several times.

Ok, so the installer made the customer upset somehow. How did they do it? Well, that’s easy – there’s a list. Read it over, consider what normally happens after a job is complete and decide if the customer is bat-shit crazy or not. It happens.

At this point, I decide these are low-level problems just the kind I’m supposed to take care of, so I do. I send back an email to the customer listing what I can do for them (remove glue & putty, hey that’s easy) and have an estimator or supervisor go and take a look at the baseboard problem. Did the installer really do more damage than was necessary?

Those 2 actions solve ALL of the actual problems listed. That was easy, too easy. Now what? Did I miss something?

Nope, the rest is stuff the home-owner has taken care of by now. I doubt they waited 4 days to clean the sawdust in the bathroom. But it shouldn’t have happened and it’s left our customer with a bad taste in their mouth. So I add some TRUTHFUL things to the email about how it’s not supposed to happen and our installer has a good record etc. and acknowledge that it was our fault. Then hit send.

20 – 30 minutes later, I call the customer on the phone and repeat everything I said in the email. I do not leave it in a voice-mail. If I have to leave voice-mail, it’s a sincere apology that I’ve missed them, and that I want to speak to them about their complaints to address them.

When I speak to the customer, I’m genuine in my concern and attempts to fix things. I nail down a time for the cleanup and/or inspection and make sure the person I dispatch is THE BEST possible person, even if it means sending the boss.

Since I can’t do anything about the mess the customer has already had to clean up, I use petty cash or whatever to purchase a gift card for a restaurant or something I think the customer would like, and send it with the service call. $25 should cover it depending on the situation, but here it’s plenty.

Summary

Let’s see how hard this was to prevent.

  • Educate the customer
  • Hire good staff.

Let’s see how hard it was to deal with after.

  • Find the real problems (dirty mess, damage, residue)
  • Fix the ones you can (remove residue, check for excessive damage)
  • Patch the wound (personal call, gift card)

This presumes an atmosphere and culture of customer-centric thinking. This isn’t about scrambling to safe face for the company or kissing ass for the sake of it. It’s about addressing a problem within the organization (prevention) and satisfying a customer when it’s possible.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this. I’m not a pro, but I’ve been providing customer service in every job since my first paper-route over 30 years ago. I’ve made my share of mistakes in this time but like to think I’ve learned something too.