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One pet peeve I have these days is people that think the world owes them something. Personally I blame this on parents and Walt Disney. Parents using the Disney channel as a babysitter have exposed their little ones to many old Mickey Mouse/Goofy cartoons where one of Goofy's favorites songs to sing starts with "Oh the world owes me a living" and a seed is planted in innocent minds. If things don't work out or come off as expected the much put upon whiner believes compensation is their just and rightful due above and beyond reasonable measures. Bonus--they don't even have to be polite about it.

Very old time readers may recall my entries on the three Susans of which Susan C. is on the very top of the list of ladies I fervently wish I knew if she was well and happy. She had a major impact on my life and the kind of man I became (for better or worse and she would have been the first to kick my butt if I crossed lines). One thing (among so very many) that I remember her sharing was in the area of customer complaints. She had a firm rule of never requesting more then what was necessary when an appliance broke and needed to be returned or replaced. She had the mindset that business practices can be handled much more efficiently with politeness and a display of manners that convey that planned obsolescence was not an agenda the company favors. I have handled myself by that credo pretty much ever since. Susan--I hope to see you in eternity if not here.

What brought this on is a short AAA story which I'll preface with another by way of illumination.

At AAA some of the co-workers buy lottery tickets on a regular basis. About every three months or so Aaron will hand a co-worker $2 won last week and there is rejoicing and jubilation to be seen. Aaron takes care of the ticket purchase weekly and occasionally misses a day but it pretty much runs smoothly. I do not buy tickets partly for my Christian beliefs about gambling (my sins are firmly embedded in other areas) and partly no money and a healthy respect for the law of averages favoring the house. Some of my fellow call center personnel pay Aaron ahead, others weekly and some play catch-up and there is no formal record keeping. Seems to work well.

Move about 30 miles north of Dayton Ohio to Piqua Ohio and the story will be much more different. Apparently the city street department had about 12 workers win huge to the tune of $207 million dollars including an in-law and friend of a worker I believe. Much much rejoicing.

For about a week.

Two fellow employees had a day off or were not at work for one reason or another and the winning ticket did not have their stamp of smart number guessing applied to it. They are right now suing the other street department winners for about $41 million (and penalties) because they felt they should have been included. Their basis is of a verbal agreement that they are regular dippers in the pool so to speak and should have been covered.

I actually agree with this except--if they were THAT regular their ticket purchaser would have included them in the purchase as a matter of course without a second thought and collected their dollar next time they showed up at work. Point being they were paying when they could afford to or when convenient NOT religiously come day after day after year. Popular opinion is that a judge will simply laugh or sneer and say too bad or frivilous and darken not my courtroom again with your odious presence.

Regretably Aaron began to wonder aloud if his little pool of dreampayers should write up a contract or something. Hasn't come to that thankfully.

So the lottery players aren't being good sports and acting entitled. I have this fear they'll get a couple thousand just to get rid of them.

Now for the AAA story. On December 30th our computer crashed with about 36 calls on the board. Most of the calls were already dispatched. Except for a couple that were awaiting driver availability. Our estimated time of arrival was about 90 minutes that day.

In South Vienna an out of town club member (Columbus AAA) was visiting a friend and locked herself out of her car.

She called in while my driver was doing a jump start and I noted the town and thought 30 minutes should suffice to get to her and continued on my merry way until the crash and sudden rise in blood pressure.

The computer was down about 90 minutes. Calltakers kept bugging me about ETAs and the problem there was we cover so many station's areas for them that we simply weren't SURE who had what call. Remember we are suddenly blind with 36 calls out there. One calltaker Jenny loves to twist the knife and laughs at any growling the grizzley bear does. No one is afraid of me at AAA (though I I have heard that a time or two until they discovered management had defanged me). But Jenny isn't even scared of even partner Bob and she should be. Sigh. I want her backbone bad.

Anyhooooo the computer comes back and I get my driver headed to South Vienna. It's coming up on 1 hour 34 minutes when I call. The lady that answers apparently is the friend/home owner who I explain the situation to about the delay.

"So what are you going to do for my friend?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well you're late so what is she going to get out of this?"

Many many things came to mind mostly dealing with differing lengths of jail time when I sigh and go simple.

"She gets her car unlocked."

I know she hears the snideness and contempt in my tone as we both hang up on each other.