Thursday, January 19, 2012

Your New York State Tax Dollars at Work-Fun with The New York State Liquor Authority

Folks that live in NY State, I'd like to tell you about how some of your tax dollars are being spent.

Exhibit A-I give you Erica from The New York State Liquor Authority.

Let me give you a little background, earlier in the week I was working on renewing the liquor licences at the museum and contemplating adding and changing some of the current ones. This is no easy task. If you click that link above you can see the myriad of licencing options that you can choose from. None say "Licencing food establishments at museums." or "WHAT TO DO ABOUT licensing 750 acre pieces of land." Even renewing the same licence you already have is difficult because of couse, the forms have changed from last year. And as much as you feel yourself a literate individual, as soon as you start filling out one of those forms you scrunch up your nose and ask yourself, "What the heck does THAT mean." over one of the many many run on sentences on the form.

Which is why one might call the actual liquor authority to get some professional input.

The first time I called I got some guy who was completely exasperated at my utter ignorence on the subject of liquor licensing. He was ok excecpt for the fact that he couldn't keep his contempt for my stupidity out of his voice. His answers were short and if the answer to "Do I need this form?" was no, he never offered up what form it was that I needed. So then I'd ask. It was like tennis.  It was draining.... For both of us I imagine... This lead me to hang up without asking one last question.

So I called back. And after navigating layer upon layer upon layer of the phone system, I finally got a woman who said "NY State Liquor Authority." followed by absolute silence.

"hi, this is Christine from The museum, what's your name."
"Um, Erica."
"Ok, I have a few questions about xyz...."
"Awwright." You can't hear the completely bored and annoyed manner but trust me...
"Ok, Um Erica, can I speak with someone else."
"Whys that?" And now she's really pissed.
"Well because you aren't very nice."
 "I didn't know my job required me to be nice."
"Oh really? Ok then, Can I speak to your manager now?"

Seriously? You're a phone rep whose job it is to answer questions.... You don't think that your job requires you to be nice??? What the hell? What is wrong with you? Is it the government employee malaise we always hear about? Is this lack of training or upbringing?

WHAT IS IT?

You know, I admit I can be high maintence at times. I have high expectations. But having just waded through tedious legalease of the trying to sell beer I had one of those headaches borne only of government bureaucracy. I wasn't even in a fighting mood. I was defeated. I just wanted a nice friendly person to explain the information I needed to know. So when her manager got on the line I simply told her the story and asked her if she thought she could answer my questions in a friendly manner. 

Imagine that, I had to ask if there was someone there who thought they could be nice to me????? She was mildly miffed over the story of Erica and her job requirements but not so I thought that Erica might have a talk with her supervisor before lunch. It was more like "Oh...PAUSE....Ok".... And then she answered my question well enough to get me off the phone.

None of those people gave a damn. And their information was crucial to what I was trying to do, and it's not like I can go anywhere else for a liquor licence or for the information.

NY State Liquor Authority, basically, you suck.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Do Not Try This at Home. Home Haircolor Warning

This past fall I needed a highlight and my regular girl was busy-No big deal I thought, how hard can hair color be??? Apparently a little hard because the girl did highlights and low lights and put a big chunky dark piece right IN THE FRONT.... I'm not getting my hair colored for dark pieces near my face mind you... I need something that brightens me up a little.

But I had already gone and paid for it and I'm kinda cheap and I was already $100 into it. (you'd think at this point common sense might prevail and dawn on me that I should have spent a little more to protect the investment a little.) But instead I decided that since I had done box color in the past, how difficult would it be to just use an all over color ON TOP of the highlights, reasoning that everything would just get a little lighter.

WRONG.

It all turned BROWN.  Enter ANOTHER BOX of hair color (Seriously? you ask.... YES.) A lighter box. Which turned my hair a warm honey color....

Which may not sound all that bad but I'm really a cool blond (yes, Mrs Accongio...I AM FINALLY...)  and the color was awful and I couldn't figure out why. My makeup looked all wrong with it.  And my hair was very dry. It was at that point that I determined that I needed to BACK AWAY FROM THE HAIR COLOR for a while before my hair fell out. A few days into it, my husband turned and said "Your skin, you kind of look like you're glowing (Mercury perhaps???), but maybe it's just your hair color."

And then it dawned on me. MY HAIR WAS THE EXACT SAME COLOR AS MY SKIN. No kidding. My hair was a little honey colored and my skin is a little honey colored.....OMG. I looked kind of one dimensional. I didn't mention this to very many people because when I DID mention it, you could see that realization come over people. That it was, sadly, true....Before that they probably couldn't place what looked wrong on me. (Ok, I'm probably fooling myself with that line, it was fairly obvious that my hair was the wrong color....)

Finally, this weekend, I decided that I've given my hair enough time to grow out and relax a little (and besides, some gray hair was showing.) And she did a fine job. Since it was still mostly honey colored she did way more cool blond highlights than normal to counteract all that brassy color and now I look a little more Hollywood blond than I am used to, but at least there is some depth to my face now. You can see cheeks and a nose now. And my eye makeuplooks a little less like a 7th grader applied it.

The lesson here folks is DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Box hair color almost never works out. Can't you spot box hair color a mile away? I know I can. You might think you will be the exception to this rule when you stand in the supermarket with all of those enticing boxes of hair color with their pretty models who I really believe have NOT used the product.  You won't be.....