I left my house for work at about 8:15.
I took the Wade Avenue exit off the beltline, and after turning left onto Wade Avenue heading toward I-40, spent 30 minutes crawling from there to just after the merge of Wade Avenue onto I-40.
After about 5 minutes and about 500 feet later, I pulled into the Harrison Avenue exit lane, zipped up to the exit, and turned around – going back home to work from there. Ridiculous.
My 11:00 meeting was well-attended, and went well. Yay!
Book club was canceled again today.
I met Joe at Legends to watch a screening of “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Pricing.”
Though, I’d like to hear Wal-Mart’s response to this documentary, I will have a hard time shopping at Wal-mart until I do.
A blog has been created to follow the grassroots movement of about 7000 screenings of the film this week. I’ve added its feed to my feed reader.
We got to Helios at just after 9:00, and were, as what’s become usual, not at all pleased with the attitude of the staff in the place.
I want to ask these people, “Is it your intention to make your customers feel like they are bothering you when they come in anywhere within an hour of closing?” Because if it is, you are succeeding wildly at it.
I mean, you get “the look” when ordering coffee any time after 9:00, when they’re closing at 10:00. The first thing they do when you order is look at the clock to see if they’re going to give you a paper cup as opposed to a coffee mug.
I wouldn’t dare order any food there after 9:00, for the looks alone would preclude any chance of enjoying it.
And then, as it gets at all close to 10:00, like at 10 ’til, they turn the lights up real bright, and start blasting the music in there. A simple, “We’ll be closing in 10 minutes,” would be so appreciated, as opposed to the current approach, which comes across as “let’s make them so miserable here that they’ll want to leave.”
The whole attitude there, at least at night, just comes across as it’s-all-about-the-employees. In line with that is the seemingly random, “We’ll be closing at 8:00 tonight for an employee meeting,” sign that you unexpectedly find as you innocently approach the door well before the scheduled closing time.
We are marking this spot as a “last resort only” spot to get coffee from now on. It’s a shame, because it’s so convenient to the places we go downtown, and we really enjoy the free wi-fi service at times.
We went to Flex after that, where we played some pool, and listened to scaryoke.