The worst hole puncher in the world

The Swingline hole puncher. Behold! It is ... the very worst. At least, I hope so.

Looks innocent enough, doesn't it? But try to insert paper and ... BAM! It keeps going into the wrong place.



Why? Because they stupidly designed it thus:



Note the overhanging lip at the red arrow. Instead of helping to channel the paper into the slot, it obstructs the paper, which keeps getting caught underneath it.


It's just poor design. The lip should have been extended further, or bent downward further. Instead, it makes every hole-punching job an exercise in threading the needle.

Behold! ... and may it never darken your office door. Alas, that's all we have here, by the dozens.

Poor customer service at Chevy Chase Bank

So I walk into Chevy Chase Bank on Saturday around 1 pm to deposit a few checks. There's one guy at the teller, seemingly being helped to plan his entire financial future, even unto the fourth generation. Or something, since they're speaking Spanish. Another teller helps a woman with her safety deposit box.

Now there's half a dozen other bank employees milling around in the back and sometimes walking around in the lobby area, each with big orange stickers: "Can We Talk?" or something like it. I'm standing there for five minutes and they're hanging around. My friend suggests they've just finished lunch.

Technically they have two tellers at the window. Problem is, neither of them are available nor will they be in the short term. The others continue ignoring the waiting customers. I voice my observation out loud, that their orange buttons seem to be just for show.

Later, making copies at Staples, the opposite experience - great customer service. The manager is on hand to load the three-hole-punched paper we need. Alert employees helpfully ask if I need help. These people deserve to succeed.

Some days earlier, a friend of mine endured unbelievably rude service from Chevy Chase's home equity department, so much so that we were thinking of switching to Wachovia, currently offering $50 to open an account there. It's a tough choice, since Ch Ch has so many ATMs around here. We'll see.

A particularly revealing case of media bias (or incompetence) - Wolfowitz

Is the media biased ... or just incompetent and lazy? You decide.

clipped from opinionjournal.com Needless to say, none of this context has appeared in the media smears suggesting that Mr. Wolfowitz pulled a fast one to pad the pay of Ms. Riza. Yet the record clearly shows he acted only after he had tried to recuse himself but then wasn't allowed to do so by the ethics committee. And he acted only after that same committee advised him to compensate Ms. Riza for the damage to her career from a "conflict of interest" that was no fault of her own. Based on this paper trail, Mr. Wolfowitz's only real mistake was in assuming that everyone else was acting in good faith. Yet when some of these details leaked to the media, nearly everyone else at the bank dodged responsibility and let Mr. Wolfowitz twist in the wind. Mr. Melkert, a Dutch politician now at the U.N., seems to have played an especially cowardly role.

Is it April Fools?

Is common sense reemerging?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The US is perceived by many as an international bully, a modern day imperial power. At this critical moment in history, Washington correspondent Justin Webb challenges that idea. He argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact. His three part series takes him to Cairo, Caracas and Washington but it begins where anti-Americanism began - in Paris.

Global Warming - follow the money indeed

How "scientific consensus" is obtained - cut off funding for inconvenient views.

clipped from www.businessandmedia.org      Something of a renegade indeed. According to the March 28, 2006, Washington Post, Gray’s view of global warming is almost heresy compared to what the networks preach. “I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people,” the paper quoted Gray.      The Post even described him as “often called the World’s Most Famous Hurricane Expert.” Daring to disagree with the mainstream media and Al Gore supporters has meant losing “most of his government funding,” and he has had to put up more than $100,000 of his own money to continue his research.      In fact, the Post reported that Gray thinks “in just three, five, maybe eight years, he says, the world will begin to cool again.”