Part of being a stay-at-home parent is answering the phone and the doorbell when it rings.  It’s very hard (some say impossible) to do those things from an office somewhere, but as someone who is fortunate enough to “work” from home, I’m here when the carpet guys, and the painters, and the delivery guys show up.  I’m also here when DirecTV calls me to tell me I’m late with a bill or AT&T calls to “upgrade” my service. I’m not sure how people with 2 out of the house jobs actually handle this.  Do you burn a vacation day to wait from noon ‘til 4:00 PM for the cable to be installed?  Do you take a half-day, that invariably turns into a full day, when the plumber runs late to fix a defective dishwasher?  With the United States being well behind the rest of the world in average paid vacation days (13 days per year as opposed to 42 in Italy, 37 in France, 35 in Germany, and 25 in Japan) I find it hard to imagine that anyone would willingly want to sacrifice his or her precious free time with such mundane life maintenance. If you’re going to make the sacrifice, though, then at least let me provide you with my 4 part proven method to get the customer service you deserve.  It’s simple, really. PLAY DUMB PLAY NICE BE SMART BE AN ASSHOLE Why is it this way?  Because there’s no turning back.  Once you’re the smart guy with everything figured out it doesn’t really matter how nice you are.  You’ve made your case and you will win or lose your battle with it.  You could get angry if things don’t go your way, but you haven’t built any empathy with the...

If you ask me, I blame the Prius. Recently, a big name celebrity came to see a show at the theatre where I work. For security and convenience reasons, we allowed him to park in the loading zone in front of the theatre rather than the slightly farther Peon Lot. Since this isn’t exactly legal, I arranged with his people (He has people. I want people! Even midgets would be fine. Do they work cheap? Can I get two for the price of one? I could stack them on top of each other, put them in a really long trench coat and pretend they are a super-tall publicist named KiKi. That would get me in to Sky Bar) that I would hold on to his car keys and watch his car while he was watching the show- never mind the fact that giving me car keys is about as useful as handing a bone to a monkey and telling it to drive the big black monolith around the block in case the cops come. You’re just going to end up with a smashed cow-skull and a big parking ticket. As I waited for him, I fantasized about the sort of supercar that would soon be at my disposal. Certainly, it would be some kind of Italian Dream Machine- a Maserati or Lamborghini or some other juicy word that sounds like food but isn’t food but still makes you drool like lasagna made out of money. A car designed to look like a spaceship if spaceships were designed to look like naked ladies (NOTE TO NASA: Next time, hire Italian designers. Endeavor is whatever but Endeavero is magnifico!!!) Maybe I would slip inside and sit behind the wheel in the tan leather interior all snug...