As a former journalist, crossword puzzle addict (and wanna-be crossword puzzle constructor), word game aficionado and general grammar nazi, I have a pretty deep love of the English language but feel there are some holes where words are missing.
Introducing a new blog category: Fake Words for the Win (FWFtW)
In today’s entry, I present errandata.
errandata
/aerend day tah/ noun A summary of interesting, unusual or even mundane stories that occurred while running errands. “Aldi was out of milk so I had to go to JC’s. In the parking lot, somebody almost backed into me. I saw a lady with a raccoon on her head.”
If you are of a certain age, that might remind you of the 1970’s show, The Electric Company (btw – Rita Moreno is a international treasure!!)
But in this installment of Customer Service 101, I want to address the use of using “guys” to address a group of people when working in customer service. It’s been a common and perhaps overused term that is often used as a pronoun whether the group is male, female or both. In fact, the the Oxford Dictionary defines “guys” as “people of either sex” which can further cloud the issue.
In the forefront of the argument against “guys” is, of course, the gender labels and potential offense you can cause by addressing someone incorrectly. And I am not even talking about the feminist argument that it is sexist and marginalizes women by saying it which, of course, is very much an strong and valid argument.
For my purpose, I think it is just too damn casual to be used in many work environments. Many, but not all.
BBC Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey had a humorous take on the subject:
Back when I owned the wine shop, I was one of the largest retailers of wines in my region. Many of my distributors knew the way to my heart was through my bloodstream and I was often given VIP perks. On one occasion, Paul and I along with the owners of 3 of our areas finest restaurants, we taken up by a ridiculous Hummer Limo to Chicago and treated to a gourmet lunch and wine tasting with some of the finest wineries in the country.
It was on the drive up that the discussion of “guys” came up. An owner of a long-time, high end restaurant in the Quad Cities said they don’t allow employees to say “Hi Guys!” to their customers and upon repeated offenses of doing so, employees could be fired.
I had never thought that much about it until that point but I did understand his point. Saying that to a table of diners comes across as too casual and too familiar. It lacks a certain professionalism that is important to many restaurants and businesses. Plus, as I said earlier, it can be offensive.
In an effort to stop the “guys” business, I offer up some alternatives:
folks (I understand this one is polarizing!)
team
everybody, everyone
y’all (if you live somewhere that people actually say y’all)
friends
replace it with nothing at all
It is a pretty difficult habit to break but being more mindful can certainly help. After all, language matters!
It’s crazy how things from the deep past can boomerang back into your present. For me, it’s the hobby of miniatures painting. WAY back in the mid-70s, I was just starting to get into what I’ll call “deep gaming” – war-games and miniatures battle rule sets.
In those days, you could build and paint an army of warriors in 28mm scale. The miniatures were molded out of some sort of lead/pot-metal base, and you’d often have to use epoxy to glue them together. I remember my dad helping me with some Greek hoplite warriors – you had to glue on the shields, one of their arms and their spear. It was the first time I’d ever worked with epoxy and it was amazing to me how you’d mix two chemicals together to get this goopy, viscous glue that could stick anything together (those were the days before cyanoacrylate super glues).
I tried my hand at painting those little guys, and yowza, was I terrible at it! But in my defense, that was back in 1974, and I was just eleven years old. I still have one of those original hoplites – I have no idea how I haven’t lost him over the last 45+ years.
Fast forward a few years into high school and a number of my friends and I get semi-serious about miniatures painting. All the paints were oil-based enamels and ninja-skills with a 000 brush were essential.
My first-ever paint job from 1974, plus two high-school era minis
So fast forward to late last year and I started to become interested in miniatures again – maybe it was unpacking my old D&D rule books after we moved or the fact that the hobby is getting pretty mainstream with YouTube channels and stores out there selling miniatures (we’ve got one up in Lincoln City).
I was also looking for a “creativity-lite” sort of hobby – something that would let me gently flex my creative muscles but would also be relaxing and peaceful – a calming activity after a crazy week of work. I bought myself a starter paint kit, some brushes and a few miniatures and resolved to give it a try. Within moments, I was hooked!
So things have changed over the years. Now, the miniatures are plastic (some limited run ones are 3D printed) and WAY more detailed. Now, hobbyists use the term “nice sculpt” to compliment the design of the miniature. Paints are now acrylic and come in a zillion colors (they are different from normal acrylic art paints in that their pigments are mixed much finer so they can work on a super-small scale). And “back in the day,” washes and advanced techniques were beyond us as high schoolers. Now, with YouTube tutorials and some creative problem solving there are a number of techniques that make the little dudes look awesome – SO much better than what we did in high school.
These days, I can’t see as well as I once did, so I use an LED-lit magnifying glass on a gooseneck. What is still essential is a steady hand, and I’ve found myself growing steadier and steadier over the weeks I’ve been painting. And it still amazes me that a human being has enough fine motor control to paint an eye and an iris on a little 28mm face!
So now it’s my go-to weekend hobby. On Saturday, I’ll lay down a few base costs on a miniature and then do the washes, dry brushing and detail work on Sunday. What fun! I feel like a kid again!
So one of my true loves is reading, now more than ever. I’ve always been a reader, but never to the degree that my parents were. When I was a kid, we had a whole huge library in the basement of thousands of paperbacks from the 50s and 60s – mostly science fiction and mysteries (my dad into science fiction, my mom into mysteries).
At the end of my Mom’s life, books were her escape – she’d juggle four or five at a time and would bring them home from the library by the bushel. I always joked that she’d be happiest being a brain in a jar, just as long is there was some way for her to turn the pages.
I read every morning during the work-week – 45 minutes to an hour. I’m a slow reader, but slow and steady can win the race. Over time, I churn through a lot of books – maybe 75% fiction and 25% non-fiction, and I certainly get into some themes. Right now, I’m plowing through all the amazing “Grimdark” fantasy novels of English writer Joe Abercrombie. Awesome Game of Thrones type stuff!
But occasionally, I don’t have a book “on deck” so I have to make the hard and stressful decision of what to read next. That’s where the picture came from – this Sunday’s arduous decision-making process. I set out all of the “contenders” and read through several pages in each – culling the pile one at a time until I pick just the right book. It totally stresses me out (what if I pick wrong?), but it’s also exciting, because what I read in the morning is how I start my day.
For the record, the winner in this stack is a re-read of William Gibson’s 1986 masterpiece Count Zero – at least until I get the latest Joe Abercrombie from Amazon!
So what about eBooks? I love them and they are awesome for traveling, either with a Kindle or my iPad (using the Kindle app). Often, a book that I’m interested in is WAY cheap on Kindle and if so, I’ll get that version. These days, it seems like what I want to read is about the same price for Kindle or a trade paperback – so I’ll go with the real life paper book – better battery life that way!
So I’ve always been a gamer, and I’ve had the amazing privilege to work in the game industry for a number of years – as a journalist, as a contract designer (for The Other 90% Inc.), as a lead designer (Mechwarrior 3 for FASA Interactive), as a producer/designer (Prey at 3D Realms) and as the head of my owner software company, Magic Lantern Playware. Even though I work in the economic development sector now, I still do a lot of “gamey” thinking, both at home and professionally.
But how’d I get into that industry? Like all things, it was a twisty path that I could have in no way planned. But one thing was foundational – as a little kid, I was totally engrossed in “rule systems” – and how adding rules to play made play even better. Back then, I didn’t know how to explain it, I just did it. For example – having a friend over and hanging out on a swing set was fun. BUT if you said the swing set was a pirate ship, and the lawn was the ocean and Nikki our poodle running around the yard was a dangerous great white shark – suddenly, you had rules adding structure and challenge to the play, and it was SO much more fun!
So I was a geeky miniatures and RPG gamer in 1977 when my dad suddenly died. My Mom had no idea how to be a single mom, but a family friend was playing around with the totally new TRS-80 and how to do accounting with it. He talked my Mom into buying me one to give me something to dive into to take my mind off of losing my dad.
I totally geeked out on coding in BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Interpreter Code, for the geeks out there – you know who you are!) and coded stupid dungeon crawlers and pixel paint programs and a database to track my beer can collection (called PIMS – Personal Information Management System). All the while our family friend Larry sort of became my ersatz dad and we explored coding together, and he started looking into starting a game company. He initially did contract work, and my first paid gig was in high school, coding on an Apple II – doing graphics for an educational math game to be published by Guinness (the beer guys). I coded fun little splash scenes you’d see when you’d get some problems right.
Things took off when the Atari 800 came out. I learned assembler and Forth and Larry’s company took off – called “Rocklan Corporation” – and I was a junior coder there on their “rip off” (as in Wild West of no licensing or copyright) Wizard of Wor port. I also got totally into Eastern Front and became pen pals with its creator Chris Crawford who later became a bit of a mentor to me (he’s widely considered to be one of the “fathers” of modern computer gaming).
But the industry wasn’t all that mature then and when I attended Knox College to get a degree in computer science, I was told game programming wasn’t a valid career path. So I gave it up and pursued an MFA in science fiction writing (through it’s own overly long and twisted path) – and only came back to the game world after grad school writing for Compute (I took over the Gameplay column from Orson Scott Card), Omni and Computer Gaming World (where I was the game design editor)… and that writing work, plus my love of rules systems started the dominos falling and by 1996, I was making games full-time at FASA Interactive up in Chicago (living in a corporate apartment off Ashland during the week and driving home to Monmouth on the weekends). What a crazy ride!
