My pique has peaked...

Emotional messages whether on email, voicemail, or blogs always look a little overwrought the next day once you've had some food, sleep, and pleasant conversation. Companies or people don't seem quite as incompetent, they are less annoying, almost bearable. It's hard to mentally put yourself back into that frustrated frame of mind you were in just 24 hours ago.

Emotions are mysterious things. When they come upon you or arise within you, they just consume you, body and mind. It is not that you are "irrational", it's just that you are completely focused on one particular thing...the person you're in love with, that jerk that cut you off on the highway, the delicious food you are eating, or the inability to take advantage of an advertised service that you expected to be able to use.

Strong emotions are not bad or good, they are just unbalanced and that can lead to powerful action--Kiss me! Or, give us justice! Or, pay attention to me!--but you lose all sense of perspective. Small annoyances can make you feel like you're beating your head against a wall. Someone not returning a phone call when expected can make you feel alone and unloved. A lover's arm brushing against yours can make you feel ecstatic. Ones reaction is out of proportion to the action or object that elicited it.

I tend to be embarrassed by my emotions, they seem messy and over-the-top, they make me feel out of control. But I'm going to leave my Starbucks/AT&T diatribe partially because they never got back to me and partially because I don't think we should walk backwards with brooms to erase every trace of where we have walked. I went ballistic, expressed my frustration, and now I'm over it. New topic tomorrow!

Lost in the AT&T desert at Starbucks...

I don't like blog rants against companies. Each person's experience with a company is uniquely theirs...potential readers have had their own encounters with businesses, both positive or negative. Ranting doesn't solve the problem because this is just a personal blog not one of influence or a large readership.

And yet...and yet...I must write because I can't get past the experience. Because I am stuck here in the Internet netherworld at Starbucks. I am stuck in limbo.

As you might have heard, Starbucks is now offering free wi-fi in its stores. Or at least that is the hook that gets people who used to come more often to Starbucks to come back. Free wi-fi is great, as soon as my computer booted up, I was instantly connected to the AT&T network. Starbucks.com recognized me and that I was logged on. Unfortunately, AT&T didn't recognize me by any username or password combination that I have ever used online. Yes, I was online via free wi-fi but I was trapped in the desert of an AT&T log in page, a bitterly harsh, empty plane of existence with nary an oasis in site.

I tried, Lord, I tried and tried every way I could to get online for over an hour and a half. I tried going through the Starbucks.com but, as I mentioned, the website said I was already online. My username was "already in use". Well, that is partially true I was logged on but I was stuck in an online purgatory.

I tried recreating my account. Starbucks wouldn't let me use any username I tried (I can't have created multiple accounts, could I?) and when I tried to create a new account under the username "Starbuckssucks", they accepted the name but wouldn't let me register with my Starbucks card because it was registered to my original account. You can't have a card registered to two different users.

Why didn't I talk to a barista about the problem? Well, the one time I tried to do that on a previous futile effort to use the free wi-fi, the person at the cash register said, "Really, we have free wireless here? I didn't know that. When did that start?"

So, let's try the AT&T log in page, there MUST be some link there to help the poor user. But, alas, no. Clicking on "Forget your password?" or "Manage account" just leads to an empty error page. And when I tried to find a link to contact the company, I got a T-Mobile page (say what?!) offering a list of phone numbers that I where I could call the company. This is crazy! Like I, a free wi-fi user, would try to navigate through the voicemail wilderness of AT&T in order to fix a problem with the Starbucks/AT&T recognition system. That would involve more hours of my life and I doubt they would even be any help at all. How can a Starbucks customer using free wi-fi have any influence over a corporate giant that has the iPhone to worry about?

The funny thing is is that I'm a devoted Starbucks customer and have been since the late 1980s when I first visited a store in Oregon. I defended their predatory business practices and argued for the quality of their coffee over similar coffeehouses. But once they raised my expectations and I came into the store with my computer, ready to get some work done, it was maddening to spend all of this time trying one way or another to get online and end up accomplishing nothing.

So, because Starbucks promised the customer (me) something which it could not deliver, they turned an embarrassingly loyal customer into one that wants to go just about anywhere else for coffee.

I should mention that in 6 or 7 attempts, I was once (1 time) able to get on to the AT&T wireless network. Once, and never ever again. And here ends my tirade against a company offering a service which is not really available and, what is worse, having no back-up plan (trained baristas? some help on the AT&T page? troubleshooting information?) to help when things go wrong.

P.S. Posted after I got home and went online thanks to another corporate giant, Cablevision

I hate cell phones!

AGGRAVATION: A condition of agitated annoyance, usually in response to negative stimuli.

Example of a situation provoking aggravation: Idiots who come into Starbucks and use it as an office without ever buying anything. They talk loud, oblivious to their surroundings, and are obnoxious and cheap. Their insensitivity has been known to lead to fellow patrons grabbing their cell phone out of their hand and throwing it into a frappacino blender, laughing maniacally while it is ground into small bits.

Situational conditions: Unfortunately, the Starbucks employees have been trained to ignore the behavior of people who come into their facility and disrupt the atmosphere even when they do not purchase any items sold in said business. They are not consumers or customers, they just exist to suck out all of the serenity that can exist in a coffeehouse and charge the environment with all of the negative stress of their workplace without actually spending any money or compensating fellow customers for having to put up with their insensitivity.

Toll: Minutes of my life I'll never get back, elevation of blood pressure, loss of concentration, and increasingly pessimistic view of the human condition.

Short-term solution: It is difficult to combat an obnoxiously loud talker. Cold stares do not work. Asking directly for someone to pipe down rarely succeeds in a satisfactory response. A nonviolent solution is made more difficult but the accommodating staff who shrug their shoulders and smile when you point out the obnoxious people who frequent such place, again, without every purchasing an item. Short of leaving the facility, I have found the only solution is to ask that the music volume be increased, use earplugs, and move to the table that is the farthest from the offensive person.

Long-term solution: Work on channeling aggressive impulses into work.