L.A. Fitness is like Hotel California
I cancelled my gym membership at L.A. Fitness in September. My membership expired on 11/14. Yet today and last month, L.A. Fitness charged me for the Kid Klub. Someone explain to me why I would still have a Kid Klub membership when I'm not even a member at the club myself.
Mr. BBM saw the charge and called the gym, where some girl with barely two brain cells to rub together explained that it was perfectly reasonable for me to NOT have membership and STILL have a Kid Klub membership, despite the fact that you can't take kids in there for daycare purposes. You must always be on grounds. Yeah, because I totally drop my kids off at Germ Klub just so I can hang out in the lobby and watch people work out. That makes a whole lot of sense.
When Mr. BBM realized he was getting nowhere, he freaked out on the girl, and then called me to tell me about it. Half the time, those girls in the front don't even know their own names. They're certainly not going to be able to help with an actual problem. I told him he had talked to the wrong person.
So I decided I was done dealing with the local club about this issue. Last month, when they shouldn't have charged me, they said my Kid Klub membership would be cancelled. Now they're saying the same thing. I'm not feeling confident about it. They're refusing to refund my money. They also refused to give me my free month that they promised when I signed up. They also refused to freeze my club membership when I had knee surgery last January, saying that I had not given them a month's notice. I didn't even have a freaking month's notice that I was going to have the surgery.
So while Mr. BBM filed a dispute with the credit card company, I called the corporate office. I waited 20 minutes on the phone to speak with someone and then got disconnected.
Deep breath, swearing under the breath and desperate need for a heavy bag at this point.
I was done with games. So I did a little research online and found a Senior VP's name and phone number. I called him directly and left a voice mail on his line, not his secretary's line. I still haven't heard back.
Then I asked my recruiting manager to help me out further. Within seconds he had the number for the Regional VP for the East Coast. I called him and left a personal voice mail as well. You don't mess with people who've been in the recruiting business. We can find you anywhere. If I asked my manager, he could probably find the guy's private bathroom phone number.
Yet still nothing.
They have 3.5 hours to contact me and confirm that my membership is cancelled and that my charges will be refunded or else I'm launching an all out campaign. There are thousands of pissed off people online without the skills to get to the corporate people directly. I just might help them.
L.A. Fitness is like the freaking Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.
I have totally had it.
Updated to add: 4:30 p.m on Wednesday. . . Issue resolved. Money credited. Sign of relief
Throw Away the Key
"I know what I did is wrong and it will never happen again," he said. "I messed around with a little girl and I shouldn't have done it. I only did it once a week on Thursdays when I was baby-sitting.
"But it wasn't every Thursday," he said. "I don't think the law is fair."
Taken from this article on the Reading Eagle dot com.
This quote is from a violent sexual predator who sexually assaulted a little girl for years. He served 5 months out of only a 23 month sentence and he's ticked off that new laws will require longer sentences and more strict supervision once predators are let out of prison.
Boo freaking hoo.
For the original article about what he did and his sentence, go here. She was five years old when it started and he claims she initiated. He says he's reformed. "But it wasn't every Thursday" shows me he's not. He's still minimizing what he, a 70-some year old man, did to a little girl. Here's his page on the PA Megan's Law website.
Then, as I'm doing a little research on his name and trying to find his Megan's Law page, I find this. This guy's in Florida, same name with a Jr. tacked onto the end and another assault against a minor. Is this just a strange coincidence or what?
This is exactly why violent sexual predators, especially those who assault children should be locked up forever. Throw away the keys.
And is it just me, or is a 5-month prison sentence for sexual assualting a child just a little light?
The Most Craptastic Week of All
Big I has been home sick all week with suspected H1N1. It can't be confirmed though because her doctor won't even see her.
Lil C seemed to be fine, but this afternoon she broke out in a fever and is now sound asleep on the loveseat, snoring away.
Today on campus, I was scolded for breaking the projector that is attached to the ceiling. I turned it on, off and then back on and apparently doing that breaks them. I got scolded by the IT lady in front of the class and then she sent reinforcements who told me it wasn't my fault and that she is indeed, insane. However, I couldn't help feeling guilty considering the guy had to put a chair on top of a table in order to get up high enough. I took on personal responsibility for his well-being, teaching my class while keeping a death grip on the chair, and figured I could handle being held responsible for killing a projector, but add a media/IT guy to the death count and well, a girl could get a reputation.
This whole week has been complete crap as far as I'm concerned; and now I have a headache which is how Big I started. I will probably spend my weekend, which is also my 11th wedding anniversary, sick.
I'm also really ticked off at my fantasy football team and have written some "love letter" to my players over at Bulls N Balls. I don't know who I'm more angry at right now, the crazy person who accused me of breaking the projector, the stupid swine flu, or the San Fran D/ST.
Just saying their name makes me seethe right now. Argh, just make this week end already.
The Audacity of People
As I was driving home from campus today, I witnessed a hit and run at a busy intersection. A woman and her young daughter were crossing a busy street, when a woman came screaming around the corner, making a left turn, right into the woman. I was the first car in line to turn right and it was right in front of me. The woman was hit in the legs and the force of it threw her back and onto her back and butt. She never left go of her daughter's hand. The little girl was unharmed, although I'm sure that seeing your mother hit by a car isn't exactly the best thing for a little one.
I immediately threw my car into park and got out. Two other men did too. I screamed "Are you ok?" at her as she slowly got up from the ground. I reached back into the car and grabbed my cell phone. The other men who were out of their cars were closer to her. I dialed "911." Clearly, she should have been at least looked at. The woman continued to stand in front of the car holding her daughter's hand, as she gave the driver, a young woman herself, a piece of her mind. The woman who hit her never even got out of the car, not when she had initially knocked her down, not as she slowly made her way back to her feet, not at all.
What was even more shocking than the fact that the woman did not get out of the car was that there were cars behind the driver who were beeping. Everyone clearly saw what happened, and you know, who cares? We have places to go, things to do, people to see. . .
Unbelievable.
And then, even more unbelievable is that the driver edged her car around the woman and sped off. I was on the phone with the 911 operator at the time and quickly regurgitated the license number as she sped off. The woman repeated it back to me and I hope to God that she got it. I didn't have time to commit it to memory or write it down. I just read it off and then turned right to try to follow her and make sure I was right.
The 911 operator kept trying to transfer me to the local police but it wouldn't work. I told her everything I could, and that the woman who had been hit was slowly walking up the sidewalk of the same street. I lost the car in a sea of traffic at a shopping center and that was that.
I drove back to the intersection and tried to find the woman and her child to see if she was ok and to tell her that she should really be seen by a medical professional, and to let her know that I had given the police the woman's license number, but she was gone too. I don't know if she went in one of the many buildings for help or if she got on a bus and went back to her life.
All I know is that people completely shock me. It absolutely blows my mind that if you hit someone with your car, you wouldn't immediately get out and make sure the person is ok. It is unfathomable to me that someone could just drive off, because I would never do that. And it's even more shocking to me that someone would have the audacity to honk their horn so that a victim who was just knocked down on the street would move so that they can all move on and go about their day.
I don't understand why people don't care about other people and why people don't possess common decency. All I know is that I am so thankful that I'm not one of them.
Get Rid of the Warm and Fuzzies
Filed under: Back in the Classroom, Things that get my gi all in a bunch
Last week, I had a student skip his scheduled speech date. In order to pass the class, students must give all speeches. I also don't allow late assignments. So when he came in my class and asked what he should do about it, I had a decision to make.
I happen to like this kid and think he has great potential; but he is such a slacker right now and he needs to get organized. So I decided to allow him to give his speech a class late for half credit. It's still a failing grade, but at least he won't have to dig himself out from under a big 0. I told him though, that the only way I was allowing him to deliver his speech was if he wrote a personal improvement plan, a plan that detailed how he was going to get his act together.
Today he came to class on time and with his plan in hand. I allowed him to deliver his speech and with any luck, he will pass this class, probably by the skin of his teeth.
But that's not what I want to talk about today.
What I want to vent about is what was in his personal improvement plan. Apparently, this student has some learning issues and spent much of his high school career being pulled out of mainstream classrooms to be coddled. He says so himself. He goes so far as to say that he was actually "spoon-fed" answers on tests on most occasions and that because of this he entered his freshman year of college without any skills when it comes to getting work done and correctly. Things were done for him in high school.
He is not the first university student I have had with these types of problems; and frankly, something needs to be done about it. We spend so much time in education, stressing the importance of making students feel good about themselves by handing them answers and spoon-feeding them, that we forget that we're doing a huge disservice to these students. When you're used to being spoon-fed, what will you do in the work force? I'll tell you what, you'll fail in that arena too.
When I taught high school, my second year of teaching I was given three special education TAM classes which means that I had a special education teacher in my classroom during those three classes and my students' issues ranged from not being able to read, to having ADHD, to having severe behavior problems. I was at first, very upset about having these classes. I didn't get any special education training when I was getting my Master's in education. I didn't have any idea what to do or where to begin; and personally, I felt it was grossly unfair to my non-special ed students since they made up less than 50% of the classroom and were surrounded by many more special education than state-mandated laws should have allowed. Fortunately, I had a talented teacher in my classroom to help me. She provided accommodations to students, but one thing she did not do was coddle them or give them answers. Because of this, I would sometimes hear students talk about how much easier the other special ed. teacher was to work with. This teacher was notorious for handing kids A's when they did nothing to deserve them. It was extremely frustrating for me and for my TAM teacher.
Having moved on to teach at the university level, I am increasingly frustrated with where education is going. Some of these freshman are completely unprepared to handle the responsibility of a college class. This isn't high school. I shouldn't have to write assignments on the board each day, when they already have a syllabus. It can be a frustrating job of taking them out of the hand-holding attitude they've grown up with to one that stresses personal responsibility.
While I fully realize that kids with learning disabilities and behavior issues need modifications, simply providing them with answers they don't have to work for isn't helping anyone. Self-esteem is definitely important when it comes to education, but shouldn't we be helping students with their self esteem by giving them the tools and resources they need in order to find the answers on their own. Isn't this actually what education is intended to be? Isn't the feeling kids get from actually accomplishing something on their own better than us lowering expectations and still patting them on the head?
I'd like to know when special education became a warm and fuzzy thing where instead of teaching kids alternate ways to get to the answers, we decided it's best to just hand them the answers. There is a trickle down effect to this that is bringing students into universities unprepared. And if students go directly from high school to the job market, then what?
One may think that I haven't experienced any issues with my own kids, and therefore can't speak to this issue; but that is simply not true. In 1st grade, Big I was pulled out of class several times a week to get extra help with reading. She didn't like being pulled out and I didn't like it either. I fought it her entire Kindergarten year and finally gave in during 1st grade. She was behind the other kids when it came to reading. She needed to get caught up. After a couple months of extra help, she was able to stop going to the reading resource teacher. The teacher, although tough at times, didn't hand her answers. She taught her better ways to read and Big I got it. She didn't get a sticker every week; she got one only when she had done really well. It paid off. Now in third grade, Big I is one of two kids in an independent reading group. She doesn't need guided reading because her reading comprehension is off the charts. I recognize that kids need extra help sometimes; but they need the right kind of help to really get somewhere.
I've heard a lot of talk recently about extending school days and extending the school year. Maybe instead of adding more time to the school year, we should be changing what happens in the classroom during the hours they are there. Ten hours of handing kids the answers isn't going to be any better than eight hours of doing the same thing. However, eight hours of actually teaching kids with learning issues how to work more efficiently and find the answers on their own is going to benefit not only the students, but future employers and our country as well.
The dumbing down of American students has to stop if we want our country to be successful an competitive. Instead of lowering expectations, we need to raise them and help students find ways to get there. Spoon feeding is for babies, not grown-ups; and something clearly needs to change.
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