What happened to customer service?

The other day I went into a discount store and purchased something small. This was the discussion I had with the small oddly-tattooed man behind the register.

X:Hey how you doin'?
M:(annoyed) I'm here.
X: Well it could be worse. (This was meant to say, "hey look at least you've got a job, and even though it's most likely a pittance, at least it's income)
M: Yeah I could be in the back of a squad car again after punching somebody out.
X:Oookay
M: And being tased a couple of times...
X: Uh-huh
M: Jeezus I would have been better off if I stayed home today, it'd be safer for me and the general population.
X:(after quickly stuffing my change in my pocket, and grabbing my merchandise) Okay, well take it easy.
M: Sure.

Such is life for me I guess, here I was trying to make polite conversation, and then here's this guy, who's just aching to get into another fight (Body language screams volumes). I mean yes, I'll admit that my shaved melon makes me look a little like a homicidal maniac, but my teddy bear-like demeanor most times diffuses this. Did I come across as angry? I don't think so.

The other thing: Why in the hell would anyone tell you they spent the better part of the previous evening being repeatedly electrocuted by the local constabulary for attempting to pummel the living excrement out of someone who may or may not deserve it (who am I to judge?). Isn't this something that any sane person would keep to themselves? Or, you know, anybody that may want to stay employed?

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but perhaps this is an issue of the media, we've come to a place in history where we have instant access to information about just about anyone, or anything from the moment it happens. It used to be that reporters followed around celebrities in order to get the most recent scoop. Now the celebrities do it themselves via Facebook and Twitter. The question is, do we still have any expectation of privacy anymore, or have we abandoned it in order to make ourselves more accessible to other people, to make ourselves "more popular," as though somehow by having people connect to you on Facebook, or having people "follow" you on twitter somehow means that you are actually a part of this social circle of people that you wouldn't necessarily give the time of day to in real life. We've all had that friend who claims that they have "like 5000 friends" on MySpace. How many of them are really their friends? We've somehow managed to turn the internet into an extention of high school...a giant popularity contest to see who can get the most people to attach themselves to them.

I admit though, I'm no different, after all..Mr. X is blogging after all, and that's no more than creating an online editorial page, and I'm also on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, and LinkedIn so I can keep track of various former classmates and business associates, not to mention keep abreast of the trends, so I'm as guilty as anyone else. But where do we draw the line as to what we broadcast about ourselves? Think about it..I'll get back to this later...

Events

I like being on-hand for events, particularly when people are doing things that most people would consider insane. The guy in the red is Nik Wallenda. His entire freaking family does this for a living, and they have for seven generations. How rough do you think it would have been for the "black sheep" of the family to tell his parents that he wanted to go to school for accounting?

Anyway, he broke a record at Kings Island today with a tightrope walk at 262 feet above the ground, for a distance of 801 feet (that's the distance from just outside the Main Entrance to the observation deck on the Eiffel Tower).The rope he's walking on is just slightly thicker than the diameter of a nickel.

In a few weeks he's going to attempt a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon.

I like records. It gives people something to aspire to. We've hit a time where we're actually lowering our standards in order to make everyone feel equal. All this really does is hold back people with exceptional abilities, in order to give the people that lack exceptional abilities a confidence boost. Overall, I'd say that's a bad idea, because it means that the absolute best you strive for is mediocrity. The worst thing about that? Nobody ever excelled at anything while attempting to be mediocre. You don't make amazing discoveries while "just hanging out." You have to work for it!

What have you done lately to excel?