Around Fremont

Wandering around Fremont, Union City, Newark, Milpitas, etc.

Archive for category rants

Ever Seen a Grown Man Flounce?

Oct 25

Posted by Clarissa in rants | No Comments

I have–about one out of five times that I go to the Irvington post office. Somebody, often a fully grown man, will flounce out, huffing “This is ridiculous!”

Unfortunately, that’s a better reaction than the one where the person takes it out on the postal worker at the desk. (Most of the workers I’ve dealt with there are really nice, until customers become obnoxious.)

It’s true that the office is understaffed and undersupplied, but the customers seem to make it worse for themselves. About a third or so of the people in line and many of the flouncers are people with simple domestic envelopes and packages that could be mailed at the machine outside. I used it today and only had to pop in to the counter to snag a couple of Priority Mail stickers. I think my total time was about 5 minutes. It’s actually very easy to use.

I realize that many older people (and a few younger ones) are scared of ATM-like gadgets, and some people have language/vision/literacy issues, and some people don’t have a credit card. But that still leaves a lot of people who are just waiting in line for no good reason. Just use the @#$ machine! And if you must do it in person for one reason or another and you didn’t budget enough time to wait in line, don’t take it out on the employees or force the other people near you to listen to your complaints.

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Smart Voter, Dumb Candidates

Oct 6

Posted by Clarissa in politics, rants | 1 Comment

It’s the time of year to get informed about the huge pile of propositions on California’s ballot, as well as attempt to make sense of all of the local candidates. Luckily, there’s a good starting place: smartvoter.org. Put in your street address and zip code, and everything on your ballot will be served up.

Even better, candidates can create a Smart Vote page for free, so that users can just click on each candidate’s name to learn about them. (Candidates have to pay to get information in the printed booklet that’s mailed out.) It’s painless, and since the site is very well known, it’s a potentially huge amount of exposure in these highly-contested local races, where a handful of votes can make the difference.

Here’s what’s baffling to me: 6 out of 10 Fremont city council candidates did not bother to submit their information to smartvoter.org. Several school and community college board members, legislature candidates, and others couldn’t be bothered to. I guess they’re relying on their campaign literature, but I recycle nearly all of that garbage nearly immediately–at least smartvoter.org’s format forces candidates into a plain format and does away with the glossy photos and overproduced nonsense. And phone calls just make me irritated and less likely to vote for a candidate. I know I’m not alone, so what’s with the anemic participation?

I don’t know what’s behind it, and maybe there are even legitimate reasons. Still, when I look at the candidates who didn’t bother, I can’t help theorizing that just maybe…

  • They’re lazy.
  • They’re not good at time management or delegation.
  • They do not possess even a minimal level of computer literacy.
  • They have extraordinarily poor judgment.
  • They believe we already know who they are. (Slightly arrogant in the case of Newsom, Fiorina, and Boxer, because not everyone’s lived here for 10 years; ridiculous in the case of local and dark-horse candidates.)

Hmmm. These don’t seem like qualities that I’d like to see in my elected officials.

Come on, local candidates: If you can spend so much money and time littering every possible street corner, tree, and fence in Fremont, Newark, Union City, and Milpitas with your plastic signs, (not to mention bombarding my house with mail and annoying phone calls), you could have spent the time to get your information out to more people and avoid looking lazy, disorganized, technologically illiterate, dumb, and arrogant.