customer satisfaction

"Sir, the only difference between the Reduced Fat blueberry muffins and regular blueberry muffins is the lack of sugar on the former", said Assistant Manager J.
As the perplexed but satisfied customer walked away, I approached J. I have baked muffins before, and I know the simple procedure quite well. You go into the freezer, you get the frozen muffins, bring them back, put toppings on them, and stick them all into the oven. The stage of putting the toppings on the muffins is how sugar gets to the ones labelled "Blueberry" but not to the ones that say "Reduced Fat Blueberry" on those little muffin wrapping papers. It's just how we do it.
"J., did you just tell the customer that there is no difference between the two muffins?"
"There isn't", confirmed J. "They're all healthy".
"Right...I realise that", said I, as I thought to myself that they aren't any healthier than the doughnuts we sell. "But...", and the idea consumed me as I was unable to express it - it just seemed too obvious. The muffins came labelled differently, how could they be exactly the same? Surely, Corporate wouldn't be that dumb.
"But, J.", I tried again, "They are labelled individually. They must be made up of different ingredients. Otherwise, it's a lie."
"No, Oleh, the sugar is what makes them fatty. You see, the RF blueberry doesn't have sugar, so they are less fatty." J. was getting irritated.
Amazed at hearing this, I blurted out:
"Sugar and fat don't correlate though. Just 'cos something is sweet, doesn't make it fatty."
"Uhh, yeah, it does, " attacked J. in a quarterback manner.
"Soda has tons of sugar, but no fat in it", said I, feeling slightly idiosyncratic.
"Yeah, it does."
"Soda? No... It has no fat!"
"Why don't you go get a bottle of soda from the freezer and show me, OLEH?", and with those words she walked away."Why do you people always HAVE TO PROVE everyone else wrong?!", I heard her voice muffle through the walls.
I went over to the cooler, calmly got out a Mountain Dew and brought it to J. half satisfied at the upcoming resolution.
Unfortunately, however, J. seemed suddenly busy calculating something very fiercely. So much so that she didn't have the time to care about such pretty things as saturated fats and sugar levels. So i set the bottle on her table and went back.
I decided not to mention the fact that skim milk looks and tastes very much like the 2% milk that we have recently received a huge shipment of, and that the general manager P., who has worked with the company for ages, made me cover the wheat bagels in oats and bake them instead of baking the multigrain bagels, even though we had both kinds available. He could not understand the difference.
And yet, I get in trouble for not grinning to every customer. Customer satisfaction, they say, is key.

Living in harmony

Well, I'll probably be posting a bunch in the future about this summer at camp. My camp takes us to the Canadian wilderness to canoe and I've fallen in love with the beauty of the region. I'd really like to share a few stories that I've thought a lot about and hopefully people reading this can choose to get their own meaning out of it.

One of my best friends at camp spent the previous summer in Thailand, where she spent six weeks traveling village to village, backpacking, and staying with locals to better understand the culture. On a trip with her to the English River, we came across a campsite filled with what we call "no see ems"- little, tiny bugs that make you bleed when they bite you, giving you lots of scabs. Our faces were bloodied from the bugs and we were all ready to retire to our tents and kill each and every single bug that may have crept into our tent. As my friend and I were sitting by the water, she said : "You know, these bugs are just like the bugs we encountered one day as we were meditating with the monks in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. But we couldn't kill them; we were in the monastery. Although we were struggling to take our minds off of the bugs, the monks looked to be living in harmony with the bugs that harassed them."