I don’t condone the methods of the Critical Mass Cycling Movement but everyone should see this.

The video shows the NYPD officer standing in the street as bikes ride past. He begins to slowly walk towards the street as the cyclist, Richard Vazques, approaches. Vazques veers left to avoid him, but the officer speeds up his pace and then violently knocks Vazques to the ground in front of a crowd. Vazques was arrested, held for 26 hours, and then charged with felony assault of a police officer and resisting arrest. One other cyclist was ticketed Friday night for riding outside the bike lane, which is not actually illegal and often necessary, considering how popular bike lanes are for double parking.

Nice job, Mayor Bloomberg. If so inclined, please leave a message for him at (212) 639-9675. I did.

The NYPD placed the unidentified officer on desk duty pending the outcome of a department investigation. With a little luck, he will lose his job, his car, his house and find it very difficult to find employment in the future.

And just so it is known, if I’m ever knocked off the bike like this by a cop or anyone else, I will be charged with much more than assault. I will do everything in my power to end the assailant’s life, right on the spot. Yup, I would kill a cop. In a heartbeat without any remorse.

So, let me get this straight… 

Our president will spend $720 million dollars per day or $262 billion per year on the war in Iraq (that figure does not include expenditures in Afghanistan or other countries in the Middle East where we wage our “war on terror”) but will veto a bill to provide healthcare to kids who fall through the Medicare and private health insurance cracks that would cost a mere $7 billion per year?

I’d like any Republican (including family members) to rationalize this decision and tell me how it is in Mr. Bush’s own words “unconscionably irresponsible.”

I normally like to stay away from politics here on RCS, but this in outrageous.

If you’re a business owner or work in a call center, please read this post.

Early, last week, I began receiving several calls a day from a 515-508-xxxx number. I recognized that NPA/NXX as being from Des Moines Iowa and since I don’t know anyone there and don’t owe any money to anyone, I ignored the calls. Later in the week, the calls started increasing in frequency and they finally left a message. It was Nationwide Insurance calling me to discuss the “Termination of my auto policy.” WTF?!! I called back instantly and got her vm. Tried dialing ‘0′ to get an operator but was told that insurance laws prevent anyone in the company from seeing account information so I would need to get back in touch with the rep who called me. I nicely protested that this call was in reference to the termination of my auto policy so since I generally try to avoid being a felon where possible, this was pretty important and surely I must be able to speak to someone. But no, nobody could look at my account and would not speak with me. Though I’d been with them since ‘99, never filed a claim and never had a lapse in coverage, I was still worried that some computer mix up had caused them to cancel my policy and that I was driving uninsured.

So on Friday, I spent half the day trying to call this girl but got voice mail every time. Then I got smart and just called the 800 number on my policy card and was told that there was no pending action on my account and that it was in fact, perfect. This rep said that surely, their other office was mistaken. So she left a message with Demoines as well.

This morning, I finally got a call back. After nearly five minutes of information verification, this girl proceeded to lay on the hard sell about upping my coverage amounts. Every time I inquired about the “termination of my auto policy,” she just ignored me, gradually raising her voice. I explained that I already carried twice the state minimums for coverage so then she moved on, trying to sell me home owner’s insurance. After nicely but emphatically explaining that I already had a policy and was satisfied, I was forced to interrupt her while she was trying to take evaluation information. At this point, my patience had run out and I asked her if this was just a sales call. She fessed up. It was all I could to not explode. Why had she left a message inferring that my auto policy had been terminated? She claimed that there was some miscommunication here but that sometimes they are *forced* to leave messages that will get policy holders to call back. I hung up.

And now I’m moving my policy to a different carrier. I can’t believe companies are resorting to these type of tactics just to upsell a current customer. Nationwide just lost a perfect customer of over 7 years because of this.

I’ll offer another example. About two months ago, I walked into a Bank of America branch to deposit a rather large check and didn’t feel like losing it in the ATM (I’ve had cases where they’ve been damaged or shredded). It was fairly crowded and I was with Amy. When we finally got up to the teller, I was grilled for account information as though I were on trial despite telling her that I just wanted to deposit the check and nothing else. Finally she said (ok, nearly yelled) that I “had overdrafts on my account.” WHAT? That’s impossible since I had checked my balance online less than 30 minuted before and had well over $4k in there. I’m normally pretty laid back but this girl quickly realized her mistake with me. “Sir, please calm down. What I meant was is that you do not have overdraft protection on your account and if you drop below zero, you will be charged an overdraft fee.” Instead of calming me down, that just pissed me off even more. Not only had she sent me into a momentary moment of panic but she had erroneously told everyone in the damn bank that I “had overdrafts.” I won’t be changing banks because of the huge hassle it would be but folks, if you own a business, don’t alienate your existing customers.

Can anyone out there say that their employer offers a straightforward way of expense reporting and reimbursement? I swear to God that employers use the most complicated systems to intentionally but subtly discourage employees from seeking reimbursement. It was so bad at Level (3) that I pretty much just gave up and ate the costs. It just wasn’t worth the 15 pages of paperwork and 20 phone calls required to get my money back none of which involved my supervisors or any type of approval. If one item was incorrectly categorized, mis-spelled or out of sequence, I had to do the entire report over and the six week clock reset. And this was with a company issued Amex (we had to pay it out of pocket and then submit for reimbursement because otherwise, every bill would be late every month).

At my newest gig, we aren’t issued credit cards but expense reimbursement is supposed to be easy since we’re so small. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I consider myself a relatively smart guy but I could not, for the life of me figure out the proper way to send an expense report via our outsourced system. The site’s validation tools kept saying that I wasn’t itemizing though my itemized totals matched my report totals. I resolved this by simply not itemizing even though it’s required for anything north of $100 (it validated however). Then I selected the “sales tax” category for the amount of sales tax I had paid. This earned my an instant dialogue box saying sales tax was not valid and not eligible for reimbursement. WTF? I wouldn’t have incurred the sales tax if I hadn’t made this purchase on behalf of my company so I don’t see how that’s correct. Someone told me that was because I didn’t itemize but as I said before, I couldn’t get the report to validate with itemization.

So I took some time out of my day to watch the site’s tour and read the instruction manual (in complete and utter disregard for my constitution). But there were no clues for my problems. I refused to call HR for help (in line with my values) since after all, I work in Engineering and am supposed to just figure out this stuff. I guess I’m eating the sales tax which ultimately becomes a tax on my pride and stubbornness.

But then I got to thinking how expense reporting has never been even remotely easy. If it’s easy for me to whip out my credit card and loan my employer money, it should be just as easy for me to recoup it.