No more Mr. nice monk

Is it right that we have to lower our expectations to zero? Do you all think it's OK that people attain their level of incompetance?

In the restaurant at lunchtime today, the surly waiter spoke to us as if we had just stomped in from the farm still with manure on our shoes. The service continued at this lofty altitude until the final insult of an inflated bill and his fawning profuse thankyous as he drooled honey on us hoping for a tip! You've gotta be kinding me!

In the supermarket afterwards the check out girl spat venom at me because I hadn't put that little divider thingy in front of my lettuce and carrots. I understand that their job is a highly complex mixture of mathmatics and motor-muscular dexterity so it must be almost impossible to push that heavy aluminium divider the entire 30cm-length of the checkout so that a customer can use it!

Last week I had asked my website hosting company to cancel 3 of the 4 email addresses we have with them; both in writing and then by phone when they called to asked me to confirm what I had written. So far so good you're thinking, well not so fast there! This morning they emailed me to say that as per my email and our phone conversation they had cancelled 1 email address and had left the other 3! I'm not kidding!

I called the developer of the salary program we use to pay our teachers. The program crashes each time we send a PDF salary sheet to a teacher. "Oh! That's not right." (ya think?) "I'll look into it." that was 4 months ago and I still have to relaunch the programme after each PDF sent because they've done NOTHING!

There is a saying (as they say) "remain zen". Well I am zen, I'm an ordained zen monk. I have sat on my zafu for hours everyday for the last 20 years and I will remain ... Zen, BUT ... why do we have to accept the incompetance and downright I-don't-give-a-shit-ness of the plethora of idiots around us? With global unemoyment reaching the heights it has, why are these people not fired, (or better still made to endure the experience of being their own customer)? There are literally millions of people who are desperate for a job and who do have professional integrity and we have to put up with these idiots? Don't tell me to stay zen (reston zen), get off your over-fed, over-indulged fat asses and do a decent days work for the first time in your life or we'll give your job to someone else!

I think that my inner calm and beliefs should not stop me from saying things the way I see them, so, from now on - I will.


晴 雲 法 声 seiun hosei