Mary Anne Carter
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Category Archives: Local
May 14 2012

Energy audit

by Mary Anne

There is a networking meeting that I go to every week where a lot of businesses send a representative to the meeting to try to drum up business for their company. One thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of the people that go to the meetings really don’t seem to be interested in helping each other out at all, which is a little bit disappointing because the entire concept of a networking meeting is to help each other, right?

What’s even more disappointing is the fact that some of the people that go to the meetings seem to claim that they will give you a free offer of some kind, in order to drum up business for themselves, but when you contact them and ask them to do it, they don’t even call you back! For example, there is a guy there that is a home insulation contractor that goes every week and will stand up and tell people that his company will perform a free energy audit and he hands out business cards with the web page address of his company, saying that they have a list of energy saving solutions on their web site, but when I tell him that I want to schedule an audit for my house he never gets back to me! I have even gone to his web page and filled out the request form and they don’t get back to me! Is that any way to run a business?

Categories: Business, Computers and/or Internet, Home Improvement, Life, Local, Opinion | No Comments »

May 10 2012

Tired of junk mail

by Mary Anne

I don’t know about you, but I get so tired of all of the junk mail that I get almost every day. What irritates me even more is all of the resources that are wasted producing and delivering the junk mail! When I get junk mail, sometimes I shred it, sometimes I just toss it in the trash.  Sometimes, if it has a postage-paid return envelope in it I will tear up everything except the postage-paid return envelope, put it all inside the postage-paid return envelope and mail it back to the company that sent it to me.

I think that the US Post Office continues to raise the rates of stamps because they are not getting enough work (competing with Email, UPS, FedEx, etc) so this is a relatively painless way to give them more work at the expense of some other company! So, it is creating a little bit of job security for the Post Office workers, and some job security for the people who end up opening the envelope at the company it is going to! And, hopefully, their company recycles (most big companies do) so maybe the papers will get recycled there instead of filling up the junk yards in the local municipalities!

Categories: Around the House, Business, Life, Local, Opinion | No Comments »

May 3 2012

Sweet tea

by Mary Anne

One of the things that I find interesting about living in this area is that when I go into a restaurant and order “tea” that if I don’t specifically say that I want “hot tea” that they will bring me ice tea. I don’t understand why the wait staff does not ask for clarification on that. Seems to me that if it is early in the day, say before 10am or so, that a person that orders tea would probably be more interested in hot tea than in ice tea.

Not long ago a friend of mine was going to McDonald’s for lunch and asked me if I wanted anything. She told me that they sell large “sweet tea” for one dollar. So I said, sure, I’d like that, and I gave her a dollar ten (the extra ten for tax) and when she came back with my large cup of sweetened ice tea I was quite surprised exactly how yummy that was! Whenever I order sweet ice tea anywhere else it just is not as yummy. Even if I add tons of sugar, it just is not as yummy. I wish I knew exactly how they made it; I’d try to duplicate it at home! And I wish that they had it available in a sugar-substitute form so that it was zero calorie. I’m sure I could drink a lot of this stuff, but I hate to think of the weight I’ll gain if I do!

Categories: At the Office, Cooking, Family and friends, Life, Local, Opinion, Shopping | Comments Off

Apr 29 2012

Customer satisfaction

by Mary Anne

One of my friends has posted twice recently that she has had some bad experiences with the local pizza parlor. One of her complaints was that she had called in her order for it to be ready at a particular time and when she arrived there it was not ready, and she ended up waiting more than an hour after that to get her pizza! That reminded me of the time when the exact thing happened to me at the same place a couple of times too!

The first time it happened when I arrived to pick up the pizza I went ahead and paid for it and then they told me that it wasn’t ready yet and it would only be a few more minutes. In reality it was more than an hour before it was ready, and I was livid! So the next time that I ordered the pizza I asked the order taker on the phone if it would REALLY be ready on time, and I was assured that it would be ready on time. When I arrived and it wasn’t ready and the cashier asked me to pay for the pizza I told the cashier that I would pay for it after it was ready and I could inspect it to make sure it was done to my satisfaction, and if it wasn’t ready within ten minutes I was leaving without paying and without the pizza.

You know what? It WASN’T ready, and I left without paying and I walked across the parking lot to Wendy’s and bought my family dinner there. I refuse to be held hostage there again by paying for my food before it is ready.

Categories: Family and friends, Life, Local, Shopping | Comments Off

Apr 24 2012

Working the room

by Mary Anne

As we walked through the building, Tim introduced me to some of his business associates, and we wandered over to the tables full of food and beverages. I recognized the serving ware from the last social networking event we had gone to and I mentioned to Tim that it was the same stuff as before. He said that the organization supplied that kind of items to the events, that they could get them wholesale through a Hotel Product Supplies & Catering Supplies company’s website.

Well, ever since I worked for a Hotel Bathroom Supplies & Restaurant Supply Company myself back in 1972 and 1973 I have had an interest in where people can go to get those types of supplies at a wholesale price. The place that I worked at did not advertise that they would sell their products to walk-in customers, but people walked in just the same and bought things from the company.

I decided to try to look up the company I used to work for on the Internet, and I couldn’t find them online. I wonder if they’ve gone out of business! I did, however find the website of the PeachSuite Wholesale Hotel Supply & Restaurant Equipment Company and found myself spending quite a long time looking at the different flatware and stemware and thinking about how even after all of these years I am still using the same flatware that I bought back in 1972 from the company that I worked for. I’d say that was a good investment, wouldn’t you agree?

Categories: Around the House, At the Office, Business, Computers and/or Internet, Family and friends, Life, Local, Memories, Shopping | Comments Off

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