Salad Eating Challenge

Being a parent can suck.

Here’s a smattering of reasons why being a parent can sometimes feel like an existence somewhere between a colonoscopy and a root canal:

• According to babycenter.com, a site that apparently draws their data from the USDA, it costs $480,000 to raise a child from birth to the age of 18 and to also pay for his/her public college tuition and expenses.  (Fortunately, I did some more research and found out that babycenter.com grossly over exaggerated the price tag and it is more likely only around $250,000 per child.  Phew, for a second there that felt really expensive) So, Nayezca + Adayah = half a million dollars.  Swell.
• Kids wake up really early.  And they’re incapable of being awake by themselves; they need an adult around them.  There’s nothing I like more than to wake up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning and play dolls in a creepy, high-pitched voice.
• They’re brutally honest.  There’s the time Adayah wondered if I was pregnant.  There’s also the time Nayezca told me my nose looked like a bird’s beak.  Or the time Nayezca asked why I didn’t have any hair.  Basically, if you have any physical shortcomings, you can count on your children to point it out to you and matter-of-factly ask why you look like a freak.
• Did I mention they cost a quarter of a million dollars each?

Before you block this site from ever appearing in your web browser again because you think I hate kids, please know that this isn’t a piece on why you should have a vasectomy at the age of 15.  The thing is, it’s really easy to get bogged down in the daily grind of making lunches, wiping asses, and putting ice packs on injured digits.  It’s too easy to forget to have fun with you kids when there are a million little yet important things that need to get done just to ensure you appropriately spend every cent of that 250K.  Lord knows I run into that problem all the time.

That should cover summer camp AND a week's worth of groceries!

Fortunately, I stumbled into a wonderful dinnertime experience that gives me a chance to let my guard down, have fun with my children, and even sneak some vegetables into them at the same time.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Salad Eating Challenge.  What started as a way to trick Nayezca into eating her salad has beautifully morphed into my favorite family tradition this side of latkes and gun shows.  Salad Eating Challenge lets me reach into the creative recesses of my over-structured, semi-neurotic brain and share my boyhood dreams of being a professional athlete with my girls (or so I like to believe).  The premise is simple: Be the first person to finish an oversized bowl of salad.  It’s where competitive eating meets pooping regularly.

Like I said, Salad Eating Challenge started simple.  It was a ploy to avoid the nightly battles of threatening Nayezca with water boarding in order to get her to eat her salad.  It quickly evolved into a poor yet hilarious impersonation of a pay-per-view boxing.  And then it quickly evolved again into theater.  Later, there developed subplots, including the Coyote and Roadrunner dynamic where I throw every Challenge to keep Nayezca undefeated.

Would you like to see Salad Eating Challenge in action with poor lighting and suspect camera work?  Well of course I can show it you!  So glad you asked.

It starts with the pre-Challenge interviews.  (Forgive the crappy camera work, apparently having soft hands as a midwife doesn’t exactly qualify one to do things like work a video camera and press the zoom button effectively)

and

We then proceed to introductions and entrance music.

First Adayah enters…

And then Nayezca…

And then I do…

Then we begin the debacle that is Salad Eating Challenge:

There are actually post-Challenge interviews too, replete with your run of the mill sports clichés.  There is no footage of those, fortunately.

Salad Eating Challenge, while potentially dangerous and surely encouraging of barbaric behavior at the dinner table, is possibly the most good-natured, organic thing I’ve ever done with my children (Too $hort entrance music and all).  We laugh, we smile, we act, and, obviously, we have fun.  And they’re totally bought in.  The other day, Adayah asked for entrance music.  It made my heart melt.  As the school year starts up again and my days are consumed with acting like a homework warden, sorting through half-eaten lunches, and tricking on the corner to pay for soccer practice, I imagine I’ll have my fair share of days where I’m too consumed in Daddy bullshit to relax.  If you see me in this sad state, do me a favor: buy me some lettuce.

“We’re” Pregnant!

At the risk of offending my linguistically progressive readers, I must confess.  I hate the phrase “We’re pregnant”.  It’s stupid.

The last time I checked, the only time a man has ever been pregnant was when the governator-emeritus raised someone else’s ovum in some unknown organ is his body in the critically acclaimed film “Junior”.  So, setting aside this Oscar-robbed masterpiece for a moment, men don’t get pregnant.  Which is fine (in fact, if you ask me, I think it’s wonderful).  It just doesn’t make sense to use the plural (“we”) when talking about a singular person.  It’s silly and every time I hear a man profess, “We’re pregnant!” I can see tiny pieces of his manhood flying away forever into the ether that is partner-support.

I digress.  We’re pregnant!

Let me explain to you how this whole pregnancy thing works, in case you don’t know.  When two people love each other very much, they move in together.  Then they get married.  Then, because they’re married and love each other so much and have so much love to share, they want to do something about it.  They want to express that love in a magical way.  Sometimes these people who love each other so much and have so much love to share and want to express that love in a magical way move to Arizona and hole themselves and their family up in an air-conditioned house because they don’t know anyone and it’s too damn hot to go outside anyway.  Finally, these two people take all that love they have to share and put it in their belly.  Well, my belly.

This is where babies come from.

At about the same time Adayah professed her lack of love for me, she also made an astute observation.  She came up to me when I had my shirt off, started hitting my belly, and asked, “Daddy, you have a baby in there?”  Like I said, we’re pregnant.  (Please don’t judge my child for hitting a belly she thought had a fetus in it)

The problem, obviously, is that I’m not pregnant.  Just fat.  It’s been a problem for a while.  It doesn’t help that I plead with Sonya to make fried chicken all the time and I only exercise when Venus, Saturn, and the Horseshoe Nebula cosmically align.  I feel like a teenage girl.  I hate my body and I cringe that every time I walk down the hall and look in the mirror, I can see my growing breasts.  I ask myself, “What are those things?”  And when I get upset about my body, I go eat ice cream and watch television and rationalize it because “it’s important to be happy, too”.  Oh lord, where is Kim Kardashian to make me feel even worse about myself?

Ladies and Gentlemen, your unofficial sponsor of adolescent eating disorders!

Being a 30 year-old pregnant man sucks.  It’s embarrassing.  It’s horrible to play basketball and to be the one sucking wind and getting schooled by guys anywhere from 5 to 20 years older than you.  It’s embarrassing to go to the pool and be the guy who looks like a one-man armada.  It’s embarrassing to put on a pair of shorts that were loose two years ago but now give you a hernia.  But what’s most embarrassing, however, is when your child comes up to you and genuinely asks if you have another life inside your stomach.

I’d like to blame Sonya for knocking me up.  After all, she’s the one who cooked cinnamon rolls with extra gooey sugary goodness yesterday for no good reason.  I’d also like to my blame my children.  After all, they’re the ones who take up vast amounts of my life and restrict me from exercising.  I could also blame sports (watching, that is) for the same reason I’d blame my children.  But really, it’s my fault.  I held onto this idea that I had some miraculous metabolism that would save me from what afflicts other dads.  I tricked myself into believing that I could be different; that I could exercise rarely and eat whatever I wanted without any consequence.

If I don’t do something about this unwanted pregnancy, I’m going to have some real problems.  So, it’s time to do something.  It’s time for action.

I’ll let you know when I figure out what that is.  In the meantime, if you could bring me some fried chicken, that’d be lovely.  And, sorry for the misleading title.  I’m sure it threw some of you off.  Clearly, “we’re” not pregnant.

Wait, you didn't think THAT, did you?!?

No More “I Love You”s

“Daddy, I don’t love you anymore.”

The above quote came out of Adayah’s mouth after which of the following occurrences?

1. In 2014, I left Adayah playing alone with a table saw and a bottle of Clorox because there was a meaningless football game on that had fantasy football implications.
2. In 2022, I punched Adayah’s boyfriend out when I met him because he incorrectly conjugated the verb “to be”.
3. In 2011, I helped Adayah wipe her own butt because she can’t do it yet.

Congratulations if you picked “3”, you’re right!  What better way to say thanks to the guy who provided her with half of her DNA than by expressing her lack of love?  Thanks sweetie, you make me want to cry.

"Daddy, thanks for the lollipop. I loved you for six seconds. Now I'm back to not loving you again. Chump."

Perhaps there’s some back-story that you should know.  A few days before a three year-old ruined my life, Sonya and I left the girls with her parents for two nights so we could go to the Matt Siegel Challenge’s namesake’s wedding.  We figured it would be better if we got a couple nights to each other and if the girls got a couple nights to hang with the grandparents.  It was the first time both of us were away from Adayah at the same time.  We worried and worried.  What if she misses us and is crying?  What if she’s scared?  What if she snuck off and is making a gravity bong out of the bathtub?  And, like most parents’ fears, we were being irrational.  Adayah was fine.

When we returned from the wedding, Adayah greeted us both with a big hug.  I got greedy and went in for seconds, upon which she promptly gave me a forearm shiver and said, “No, Daddy!”  I’ve spent the past week like a spurned lover, searching for moments of snuggling or affection but mostly receiving punches to the face and statements like, “No kisses, Daddy!” or “Daddy go away!” or even “Daddy fuck off you shitbag!” (just kidding).  To make matters worse, I’ve had to watch Adayah get extra affectionate with Sonya.  I get punched in the face, Sonya gets a kiss.  I get told off, Sonya gets a hug.  My theory is that Adayah is punishing me for us going away (though I’m not sure why she isn’t punishing Sonya).  That, or she really doesn’t love me anymore.

This loving moment brought to you by children who stopped loving their parents.

What’s really sad is that I’ve found myself playing mind games with a person who can’t even make the “th” sound.  I go for a hug, get rejected, and then spend the next two hours plotting ways to make Adayah want a hug.  I’ve tried pity (“Oh, Daddy is sad, he needs a hug.”), guilt (“Now you made Daddy feel sad and he needs a hug, that’s terrible.”), pleading (“Oh, come on, please just give me a hug.  Please.”), and even reverse psychology (“That’s ok, I didn’t want a hug anyways.  I can fulfill my parenting affection desires from the internet just fine without you.”).  None of it has worked.  Sometimes I’ll bribe Adayah with food (“You want your gummy vitamins?  It’ll cost you a hug.”), though this even makes me, a person with relatively low moral standards, uncomfortable.  After all, I don’t want Adayah putting out when she’s 15 because she just wants a cheeseburger.

The official sponsor of three year-olds who hurt their dad's feelings.

There’s something terribly pathetic about a thirty year-old playing mind games with a three year-old and losing.  It’s frustrating losing, so sometimes I’ll just abort the psychology tack and pin Adayah down and hug her.  That usually ends with Adayah screaming and trying to punch me.  Also a losing endeavor.  The question, then, is what is the winning endeavor?  How do I convince Adayah to love me again?  How can I coax the sweet kid statements like, “Daddy, I love you so much” out of her instead of the hurtful ones I already mentioned?  How do I explain to a kid who still can’t really brush her own teeth that even though we abandoned her for two nights to drink Grey Goose in the woods with our friends that we do, in fact, still really love her and it’s not necessary to punish me anymore?

Since returning from the wedding, there has been a very slow détente between Adayah and I.   In all fairness to my little sociopath, she only told me she stopped loving me once.  And she has been generous enough to throw me a hug or kiss once in a while.  Perhaps Sonya’s right that she’s “just going through a phase” or “needs a little space” (which, if you’ve ever been a teenage boy, really means that somebody stopped liking you and you’re about to get dumped, so that doesn’t exactly make me feel much better).  Regardless, three feels just a tad too young to be going through this with my kid, even if it’s just a phase or even if Adayah is incapable of understanding the impact of her words.

Unfortunately, Sonya and I are leaving Adayah in a few weeks to go to another wedding.  I’m bracing myself for the emotional fallout.  And if you’re one of the people whose wedding I went to/am going to, your gift is that I sacrificed the love of my child for you.  You’re welcome.

Some clarification

I’d like to take a moment and clarify some things that I’ve written because it has come to my attention that through my writing I’ve unintentionally offended some people.  Please take the time to read…

 

I’ve written two posts criticizing Creative Dance Arts in Tucson and I did so unfairly.  I had two qualms: the high cost of my daughters performing in the culminating performance and what I perceived was the sexualization of little girls in some of the dances.  And while it is true that I still have these qualms, the way in which I went about discussing them was inappropriate and unfair.

 

Some clarification:  I don’t believe and I’ve never believed that Creative Dance Arts intentionally sexualizes anyone.  Rather, my point is that I think the sexualizaiton of kids actually happens all over the place in our society and I used one example to make my point.  I stand by my larger point but I’d like to make clear that my real issue is NOT with Creative Dance Arts or anything associated with them, but rather with what I view as a much, much bigger societal problem.

 

My issues with what I felt were unfair performance costs, again, was not intended to be an attack on Creative Dance Arts but rather a larger commentary on what I feel are added costs to children’s activities.  We see this at sports’ picture day.  We see this at school picture day.  We see it everywhere.  Again, I was not trying to individually attack Creative Dance Arts but rather point out a larger issue I see all over the place.  Clearly I failed in my delivery of this point.

 

I’d like folks to know that all my vulgar and expletive-laden language aside, I don’t want to give Creative Dance Arts a bad name.  They have an incredibly dedicated, talented, and passionate group of staff and teachers and they deliver an extremely high-quality product in the care and instruction they provide to the students there.  I also painted a picture of the studio that they are an elitist institution and that was a mistake.  I erred by making it about the dance studio when it wasn’t and I sincerely apologize for that and for any harm I’ve done.

 

I hope that people who read this internet-sharing site understand that I use an extremely exaggerated form of hyperbole in my writing.  I think people get it but it’s worth a reminder that much of what I write I don’t literally believe but rather I use these statements to help prove an underlying point.  I like to take on interesting and edgy topics in my writing but I absolutely never intend to hurt people or companies (with the exception of Justin Bieber and Dirt Devil).

 

Finally, I’d like to encourage readers to take me to task on anything they disagree with.  The e-door is open.

 

Thanks for reading.

Taken down.

The post has been taken down.

Older, Wiser, Sadder

Last Friday, Adayah turned three.

"I might be cute and polka-dotty, but if you get anywhere near my yellow vegan cupcake, I'll have to fuck you up."

To celebrate, Sonya took her to the zoo and I went to Costco to buy a container ship’s worth of juice, flour, butter, and some frozen protein pieces that resemble chicken in anticipation of her birthday party that we had on Saturday (yes the party cost less than $100, but that’s only if you don’t take into account the $50 worth of alcohol I bought at Costco.  And, yes, it was necessary to buy $50 worth of alcohol for a three-year old’s birthday party, in case you needed clarification).  Adayah also picked out a vegan lemon cupcake for herself because she liked the bright yellow icing on it.  Unfortunately, the explanation that the yellow frosting probably tastes like dog shit because it was made of quinoa and beet juice was lost on her now three-year old brain that was easily seduced by the bright color.

Sometimes I look at Adayah with absolute wonder.  How did this little nine-pound lump of human being turn into a three year-old laughing, dancing, pooping, talking (cursing?) ball of joy (and occasional terror) without my noticing?  As cliché as it may be, it really does feel like yesterday when I was cradling her head in my hands because otherwise it would flop down and detach from her shoulders like Humpty Dumpty detached from the wall.  These days when I hold her it feels more akin to holding one of those fifty-pound bags of flour they sell at aforementioned Costco.  And she’s just three.  I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when I’m reminiscing on her infancy and proceed to walk into her room and catch her taking bong loads with her boyfriend (now Googling monasteries for girls ages 4-27).

Adayah: When we're in the middle of an argument when you're 14 and I'm about to smash your cell phone with a hammer, your best bet is to find this picture and show it to me.

So I have this beautiful, healthy, loving daughter who is growing and developing without complaint and, yet, every time she has a birthday, I feel this bizarre sadness.  In fact, every time I take a pensive moment away from the daily grind of cooking, cleaning, and pinning Adayah in a half nelson to make her apologize to someone, I feel just a little bit sad.  Not distraught, not devastated, but just sort of sad.  The best explanation I can give is that I’m sad she’s getting older.  Which, if you think about it, is a pretty stupid thing to get sad about.  After all, if I had to take care of a three-year old my whole life, I’d shoot myself with a single action Colt revolver.

But there’s something about her growing up that pokes at this semi-dormant yet omnipresent sadness.  What is it?  Is it that every year she matures brings me one year further away from that incredibly special time I got to spend with her while Sonya went through vagina special forces boot camp?  Is it that each time we put a higher number on her cake it means we’re one step closer to dealing with the bigger problems big kids have instead of the annoying but relatively insignificant ones we deal with now?  Could it be that each year Adayah ages is really just a reminder that I’m aging, too, and that I can see the writing on the wall and know that before I know it Adayah will be in college and I’ll be back in Pampers, albeit with much less hair and a much larger belly than when I was originally in Pampers?

I make pretty good use of the time I have with my kids.  Even though I’ve been known to totally ignore them when an important sporting event is on, I can’t say I have many regrets about how I spend time with my them.  So it’s not as if I need to make any major readjustments to better carpe the proverbial diem.  Which in a sense makes this sadness worse.  At least if I was a total fuckup dad, the remedy would be easy.  In this case, there may be no remedy.  Just wallow in my own sadness at having a loving, healthy, chocolate milk addicted, somewhat-well-adjusted toddler who brings immense joy to my life while she somehow seems to be turning into a little girl without my permission.

In a brief moment of sanity, Desert Dad feels happy at his daughter's birthday party.

Last Friday, Adayah turned three.  To celebrate I hugged my daughter extra close in hopes that squeezing her tighter than normal might stunt her growth for a just a short while.

Break(yourself) Dancing

Things are changing here in the desert.  The weather’s turned and now our “cold” spells mean it’s only in the low 80s, our beloved cheerleader-turned-governor signed legislation declaring the Colt Single Action Army Revolver (you know, the thing they used to shoot all those pesky little Indians who were here first) the official state of Arizona firearm, and I’ve slowly begun my metamorphosis into an old, crotchety, snarly man (see: Dirt Devil).

Not sure what your state's legislators have been up to, but down here in the Grand Canyon State, we get things done.

Just the other day, as I was driving back from working in Phoenix with a co-worker, I found myself screaming into my phone, “What the hell do you mean you can’t email me the phone number?  I worked for you guys for two years and you can’t take 15 seconds and email me a phone number?  You work in human resources!  I’m a human, aren’t I?  Shouldn’t you be a resource?” at an unsuspecting Oakland Unified School District human resources drone while my co-worker looked on from the front seat with a look of terror on her face.  I sheepishly apologized afterwards; she was gracious enough to pretend I was sane, though I think she might have been reaching for her pepper spray all the while.

You might think I’m going to write an internet-sharing piece on reflecting, on change, on how no matter how old we are we can still change our behavior and become better people.  Yeah, well, fuck all that noise.  What I am going to do is introduce a new segment to this emerging-from-hibernation-internet-sharing site.  It’s called: “Shit That Makes Me Salty.”  Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first installment of “Shit That Makes Me Salty.”

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Our daughters take dance classes at a posh dancing boutique in the Catalina Foothills (that’s Tucson for the rich, white part of town).  The place is great.  The teachers are excellent, the girls love it, and they’re accruing cultural capital (i.e. learning how to dance) so that one day they can go to a party and can do things with their bodies that don’t involve beer bongs or anything else that might make a fifty-year-old dad grab his Colt Single Action Army Revolver.  So, why does Creative Dance Arts make me salty?  Oh, dear reader, I’m so glad you asked.

This part, I like.

At the end of the spring dance semester, all the dance classes perform in a huge recital that’s held in a performing arts center at one of the campuses of the local community college.  That’s marvelous.  What better way to celebrate months of hard-work and growth than with a performance with the dancers’ loved ones in the audience?  If the dancers loved ones are willing to pay $10 per ticket, that is.  And if the dancers loved ones have paid the $35 recital fee per dancer.    And if the dancers loved ones buy the $75 recital costume, per dancer per class.  So, in case you didn’t have your abacus at home, for Nayezca to perform for both her hip-hop and ballet class, that’s $75 + 75 + $35 + $20 = $205.  Can I at least get a Coors Light and a reach-around with that?

"Hello, I'm an unidentified man at the beach with a doo-rag. I'd like to purchase some dance recital tickets, please."

We’ve elected to keep Adayah out of the recital because, you know, she’s two, and the last time I checked two year-olds are more concerned with what’s for snack than what they’re wearing at the recital.  Neither were we too keen on dropping another $110 for our toddler to skip around on stage for two minutes, only to stop, look at the audience, and ask, “Dada, why you say ‘fuckin shit’?”  I lobbied hard to have Nayezca not perform, either, but Sonya wasn’t having any part of that.  She had a point.  After all, Nayezca loves dance and has been looking forward to the recital for a while.  It didn’t feel fair to crush her just because I’m bitter at being bent over by some nice women in leotards and weird sock-like things they wear on their toes.  It’s just lame that the recital has to take the form of an over the top mega-performance that requires your whole family to eat Top Ramen for a week just to pay for the damn thing.  That shit makes me salty.

These things called "Foot Undies" really exist and people really wear them. Where can we get "Foot Thongs" or "Foot G-Strings"?

Just to be fair, this sort of extracurricular screwing you over like a credit card company thing doesn’t only happen at posh dance studios.  I coach Nayezca’s little league team and we have to participate in “picture day” soon.  Which means we all stand around in the Arizona sun, smile, and pay some guy $20 so we can get the exact same pictures any parent could have taken on a digital camera.  And every year in the fall every elementary school in the country makes parents ask themselves if they want to be the mean parent who doesn’t buy the class picture or if they’re ok with paying $20 for pictures of other kids and some nice staged ones of their own kid that aren’t nearly as nice as the 7,000 others sitting in the folders of iPhoto.  There’s this whole predatory industry that convinces you your memories of your children doing cute things can only be obtained if you pay for it.  Or, in the case of the dance recital, that you can’t even participate in the cute dance unless you cough it up.  It sucks because you want to be the supportive parent who doesn’t let a few dollars get in the way of something memorable, but at what point do we draw the line and say, “I’m not going to let you fuck me in the ass every time my kid participates in something cool”?

Being strong-armed for the sake of smiling one day when I’m fifty bothers me.  The $205 dollar dance recital just makes me salty.

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Thanks for indulging in another Desert Dad semi-psychotic episode.  If you want your email provider to magically tell you every time I rant, rave, or actually write something worth reading, just go ahead and sign up as a subscriber to this internet-sharing site.  Better yet, tell a friend of eight.  The field is near the top-right part of this page.  Thanks!

Devilishly Stupid

A little while ago, I shared my semi-psychotic episode with Dirt Devil with you.  Here’s an update:

 

A little less than a week after I sent that mildly condescending letter and email to Deb Kerner, I heard back from Dirt Devil!  Unfortunately, the woman who called was named Juanita, not Deb.  In retrospect, I should have known that expecting a customer service supervisor (i.e. Deb Kerner) to directly respond to a customer service complaint was entirely inappropriate.  Forgive my naiveté.

 

Juanita explained to me that it was actually impossible to credit me the $52 I requested because the mop heads had shipped by the time of our conversation.  Which, if you think about it, makes sense.  After all, right behind the natural laws of gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics, is the physical law that says human beings are unable to go into computer programs designed and controlled by human beings and make changes to those programs once an order has left the warehouse.  Again, please forgive my stupidity.

"Sir, I told you, I have no control over this computer in front of me unless I actually grab the mouse and start using the keyboard. Which I can't do because your package already left the warehouse!"

But Juanita said she could send me a new mop!  Oh boy!  The mop she was going to send was a deluxe edition, which included a “shag mop head” and even an attachment to mop a carpet (I have no idea how this works, by the way).  I had a moment of inner dialogue where I needed to decide if it was worth accepting her carpet mop and let it go, or if it was time to dig my heels in and go to war.  I’m sure my parents, siblings, and childhood friends are laughing because they think I’m a stubborn asshole who will waste weeks of my life just to prove my point and “win”.  Well, you guys can all go fuck yourselves.  I told Juanita that I’d take the mop and that I had to go prepare for a fantasy baseball draft.  Let bygones be bygones and enjoy spring in Glenwillow, Ohio, Juanita.

Mops with the capacity to clean carpets inspire the best in humanity.

What Juanita didn’t know, however, was that in some of my drama with Dirt Devil, an unnamed disgruntled man had already promised me a replacement mop for our broken one.  Unfortunately, homeboy cut me off before I could receive any sort of confirmation number, so I was unsure if the mop would even come.  In my peace treaty with Juanita, I held out hope that homeboy did, in fact, send me a mop.

 

Fast forward one week and I now have the mop heads I originally ordered (the mop heads that started this whole fiasco), a new Dirt Devil steaming mop, and a new Dirt Devil deluxe steaming mop with fancy triangular plastic carpet mopping attachment.  In their ass backwards style of customer service (i.e. not knowing anything, not communicating to different people, ignoring the customer, and wasting the company’s money), Dirt Devil refused to reimburse me the original $52 I asked for but accidentally sent me two brand new mops, which retail at $49.99 and $69.99.  Kudos, Deb Kerner!

 

I’m loathe to take this internet-sharing experience outside the realm of self-deprecating dad humor, but I’ll do it for a moment anyway.  Next year we’ll have a presidential election.  And, if we can ever actually get to the bottom of the mystery if Obama is even an American citizen or not, we will talk about the economy.  And, surely, we’ll talk about jobs.  And, certainly, we’ll talk about the need to keep American jobs in America.  Well, Dirt Devil is based in Ohio, so theoretically they should be lauded for keeping Americans working.  But what happens when Americans working in America are doing shitty work?  What overall value-add is it to this country when the folks who are pissing consumers off are getting paid so meagerly ($9.00/hr, no benefits) that they’re also probably in need of public assistance to make ends meet?  Why was it that talking to (and being avoided by) Americans working in America made me pine for the days of IT support from someone with a bad accent in Mumbai?

"And together we will ensure that all American companies achieve the excellence that Dirt Devil has achieved! Now, let's go look at Russia together from my house and read all the newspapers."

Whether you want to look at this Dirt Devil debacle as a sad-representation of where we are as a society or simply the tirade of a dad with too much time on his hands, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters now, dear reader, is that you can buy a brand new Dirt Devil mop on Tucson Craigslist for 30% off.  Customer service not included.

 

The Matt Siegel Challenge

Instilling in children one’s own passions and values has been a parental challenge for generations.  How do we ensure that our kids grow up to believe some of the integral beliefs we hold?  How do we teach our kids that some family traditions aren’t negotiable, that they’re not up for debate?  The social-cultural milieu is a scary place where things that are important to parents get drowned out in the cacophonous diarrhea that is Justin Bieber (for example).  How do parents fight back against that while still giving kids the ability to choose?

On a personal level, how can I teach my children the joys (and, unfortunately, heartbreaks) of loyalty to a sports team?  Specifically, how can I instill in my two daughters that the Oakland A’s are our family’s favorite baseball team and, therefore, they should care about them (besides repeating it as fact over and over)?  And beyond instilling that they’re our favorites, what I really want my daughters to understand are the emotional reactions to the A’s.  Joy, happiness, contentment when they win.  Sadness, anger, stomach pain when they lose.  I want to share with my daughters what it’s like to really love a team, not simply have some peripheral affinity because their dad keeps putting the team’s t-shirts on them and mumbling this about some guy nicknamed “Godzilla”.

The answer is quite simple, actually: Classic Conditioning.  Family and friends, welcome to the Matt Siegel Challenge!

The Challenge's namesake, with a romantic beach backdrop.

Named in honor of one of my closest and most imaginative friends who came up with the premise at the age of 19 (yes, I’m making a long-term parenting decision based off the advice of a 19 year-old who used to take Oreo cookies, break them apart, pour milk on them, and declare it cereal), the Matt Siegel Challenge is really quite simple.  When the A’s win, the girls get a treat.  When the A’s lose, I punch them.  Just kidding!  Well, partially.  When the A’s win, I will give them a small treat or prize (lollipop, pencil, whatever.  I’m open to suggestions…) but when they lose, I’ll simply tell them with an overly dramatic sad face that the A’s lost and that there will be no joy in Mudville, err, Tucson this afternoon.  The idea is that by the late summer, the A’s will become viscerally integrated into their psyches and they’ll feel the drool of saliva when they see this:

"And here's a pound of refined sugar for each of you."

And the pains of sadness when they see this:

"Oh, that's so sad, the A's are losing. Looks like it's celery and tonic water for dessert if this keeps up."

Frankly, I don’t see how this won’t work.  And fortunately for the girls, Vegas has the A’s win total this year at 83.5 (-125 on the over), so according to the bookmakers the girls are good for at least 83 days of reinforced goodness.  I don’t see how this is a bad idea at all.  The girls win because they get happy when the A’s win.  I win because I get happy when the A’s win and I get happy to watch my girls develop a love for the A’s.  Sonya wins because I’m actually teaching our children something worthwhile, for once.

The Oakland Athletics. Welcoming children and the Taliban as fans since 1968.

Maybe you feel this is a bit manipulative.  Maybe you think my children should be free to choose whichever team they like or, perhaps, that they should be able to choose if they even like rooting for teams in the first place.  Maybe they should have “agency” (rolling my eyes and doing finger quotes) over themselves and shouldn’t be subjected to their dad’s “forced” (mocking you incessantly) baseball games.  Maybe you should mind your own business and check in with me in fifteen years when your kid chooses with his own free will to vote for Sarah Palin because she’s the hottest 60 year-old ever and she can use a three-syllable word semi-consistently.

By the time the girls are old enough to tell Yankee fans to “Fuck off,” I’m hoping the conditioning, err, Matt Siegel Challenge will have paid off.  And by then, I’m considering altering the Matt Siegel Challenge to include money for Friday and Saturday nights spent with dad watching the A’s play.  Until then, cue the dum-dums, I suppose (the lollipop, asshole, not me).

This time, a real letter

Mostly you know me as a dad who likes sports.  But today, I’m sharing with you another piece of me.  You see, for as long as I remember, I’ve taken company screw-ups personally.  When I was a freshman in college I spent 20 cumulative hours on the phone with a now defunct phone company because they overcharged me by 50 bucks.  I’ve spent more time on the phone with Cox Cable in the past year than I have with anyone besides my wife and kids.  I take it personally.

"Ok, sir, now, um, do you have any Vaseline or KY Jelly available? Because, to be honest, we're really gonna fuck you this time."

The thing that continues to baffle me is that companies don’t seem to really understand that if you treat customers really well and make them happy then…wait for it…wait for it…wait…wait…they want to keep buying your shit.  Crazy, crazy concept, I know.  Can I now accept my MBA from somewhere, please?

Below is a letter that I just mailed and emailed to Dirt Devil, the newest proud member of the “Fucking Phil Over Because We Don’t Understand Customer Service and Would Rather Save $20 Today Than Lockdown a Customer for 20 Years” club.  I’m thrilled to share this adventure with you.  Enjoy reading and rest assured that I will share every bit of correspondence from Dirt Devil with you.

————————————-

Deb Kerner

Customer Service Supervisor

Royal Manufacturing Company

7005 Cochran Rd.

Glen Willow, OH 44139

March 25, 2011

Dear Deb Kerner,

It is with great annoyance and frustration that I write to you about my recent experiences with a Dirt Devil order (order number WDD2D39380365, confirmation number 4518127) and many contacts/attempted contacts with Dirt Devil customer service.

Below is a sequential explanation of my experiences with Dirt Devil:

1. On March 1, 2011, I placed an order online for four mop heads for our Dirt Devil steam mop (model number K09K).  While I cringed at paying upwards of $50 for four mop heads, I must admit, a steaming mop is pretty cool and very effective.
2. By March 18, 2011, the mop heads hadn’t arrived and I hadn’t received any communication from Dirt Devil.  So, on March 18, 2011, I called Dirt Devil customer service (1-800-321-1134).  I was on hold for over 15 minutes, so I hung up.  You know, because I have other things to do than wait on hold, regardless of the assurance from the friendly automated lady that my call was important.
3. On March 20, 2011, I contacted Dirt Devil electronically through the online contact portal (https://www.dirtdevil.com/contact.aspx).  I requested to actually receive my mop heads as well as to have the total order cost of $52.75 cut in half, with the credit going back to my credit card.  I never received a response to this inquiry.
4. On March 23, 2011, I contacted Dirt Devil customer service.  I was told that the mop heads were on back order and they wouldn’t ship until April 29, 2011.  I asked to speak with someone in the corporate office.  I was transferred to corporate, where I spoke with a woman who told me the mop heads would ship on March 28, 2011, but she couldn’t authorize a 50% credit on my order.  I asked her to speak with someone who did have that authority and she transferred me to a voicemail.  The man’s voice on the voicemail was unintelligible.  I left a message explaining the problem and asked for a return call.  I never heard back.
5. On March 24, 2011, while using my Dirt Devil mop, the plastic handle snapped.  I looked around for the Candid Camera cameras to pop up and for everyone to start laughing but, alas, that didn’t happen.
6. On March 25, 2011, I made five phone calls into the Dirt Devil customer service line.  Every time I requested to be transferred to the corporate office.  At the corporate office, I explained my situation to a man who listened and then offered me free shipping on my mop head order.  As you might imagine, I turned that offer down.  To his credit, he did offer to send me a free replacement mop for my now broken mop.  I asked to speak with someone who could authorize a 50% credit on my order.  He transferred me to voicemail of a woman named Lisa.  Unfortunately, Lisa’s voicemail was full and I couldn’t leave her a voicemail.  I called back and upon reaching the same man, he immediately transferred me back to Lisa’s full voicemail before I could get a word into him that her voicemail was full and, therefore, ineffective for resolving the issue.  I called back again and was finally transferred to your voicemail.  I left a message telling you I had a problem with my mop head order and asking for you to return my call early next week (the week of March 28, 2011).

Obviously, this has been an extremely frustrating customer service experience, to say the least.  At this point, in order to rectify Dirt Devil’s lapses in product availability as well as customer service (and to restore good faith in the company), I’m requesting to have this entire mop head order for free (in addition to actually receiving the free mop to replace my broken one).

In more informal words, here’s the deal:  I’m 29 years old with two kids.  We’re planning on having more kids.  Kids are messy.  They throw food.  They drop things.  They draw in places they’re not supposed to.  And, to boot, I really like to have a clean house.  You know what that means?  I have years and years of mopping ahead of me.  In the next twenty years, at an average of one hour per week, I’ll spend 1040 hours mopping.  That’s over 43 days of mopping.  But I have a mop with a broken handle and four new mop heads that aren’t here.  And, I’d really like to stay a Dirt Devil customer.  I like the mops.  They work.

The bad news is that you guys have screwed up tremendously in your customer service.  Nothing personal.  My suspicion is that it’s a systematic problem.  Regardless of the source of the problem, it’s egregious to make speaking with a customer service supervisor so difficult.

The good news is that you have a great opportunity to effectively remedy the problem.  And you can do it in front of an audience, to boot!  You see, I’ll be sharing the contents of this letter, as well as every future correspondence with Dirt Devil, on my exciting internet-sharing site (some people call it a blog).  You can visit it at www.desertdad.wordpress.com.  I like to link my internet-sharing site to both my own Facebook account as well as my wife’s to optimize viewership.

So again, to summarize:  I like the Dirt Devil product.  I don’t like Dirt Devil’s customer service.  I am requesting a free new mop (which sounds like it’s already in the works) and the four mop heads I ordered online on March 1, 2011 for free as well (please credit the entire cost of $52.75 to my credit card you have on file).  I am optimistic that you can accommodate this request and that I can continue to be a Dirt Devil customer for as long as there is crap (literally and figuratively) on my floor.

I will send this letter to you both in the mail as well as to your email account.  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Philipp Miller