It seems like something random and unintentional and totally unfair is happening to us lately. Something, that even though my head says it’s not, my heart suspects is a unwarranted galactic nuke sent by ‘Death as Christmas Future’ circa 1428. The solution to which, clearly, is for me to mount a posse to hunt that shrouded bastard down and BEAT HIS ASS.

First, eBay announced the closing of its Vancouver center in September 2009. News that on any other day, for any other company, would be a dime a’ dozen. Unless it’s you. Or SEVEN HUNDRED of your friends.

Then in April, Tim Paine died. I had no idea he was sick. Or how much. It was devastating to see the transformation from the man I knew six years ago, to know how he’d fought and to learn he had lost.

In July, an ex-co-worker and good friend got Breast Cancer. She’s going through chemotherapy right now. It looks horrible and hard and absolutely terrifying. She has a daughter, a husband, a life. And I really wish I could sit by her side just to help glare down cancer with a look that says, “bitch, BACK OFF!”

Jeannie Conklin died at the end of August. I remember the hair dryer collection she kept at her station. (Everyone collected something those days.) I remember she was FIERCE. And devoted. And 100% unstoppable. She inspired us all, reaching far beyond the walls of one support center in Salt Lake City.

Now, one of us has a brain tumor. And I just…I don’t even know what else to type. Except maybe, STOP IT, GOD, WOULDYA?

These are all good, GOOD people. They’re all fighters. They’re all young. They’re all strong and stubborn and smart and precious. They are people who have become a second family to me, and for whom I haven’t got a clue what to do for except to pray. Pray A LOT. 

And give whatever I can whenever they ask. Especially if it’s something as simple as spending the weekend recreating an sappy slideshow with no music* that includes a few people I missed the first time around**:

*Apparently, YouTube will strip the sound out of photo slideshows due to unauthorized copyright use, but has no problem whatsoever with non-copyright owners posting full music videos. WHATEV.

**Apologies to anyone who does not appear here. I have HUNDREDS more photos on disk (unfortunately, none of Jeannie) and would love to make them available to other eBay Peeps. Anybody have suggestions on a non-public place we could all contribute? As far as I know, photos from facebook make REALLY crappy prints.

© 2010, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

eBay CS, 1999

© 2009 – 2010, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

This weekend we visited the Museum of Flight, a place where it feels there are thousands of stories I should know, but don’t. A place where I almost expect to see Grandma sitting on the next bench, ready to tell me a few.

I keep looking. But it’s still quiet. So I wander and wonder and take these for him:

A year, maybe two, before I left eBay, there was a campaign called “The Power of All of Us”. It will always be my favorite representation of the company, because it showed that its specialness had nothing to do with categories or fees or cars. It was the people. Doing good things. For the launch, they took the employees to a local theatre in Salt Lake City and showed us user stories. The kind that made us all feel warm & fuzzy inside, but which I can’t remember now. Except this one. This one made me cry.

Thank you, veterans.

© 2009 – 2010, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

But. then. A few days ago, The Voice started meeping. From waaay in the back closet of my brain, where I keep all lonely piles of Later-If-Not-Never cares, I felt it tilt it’s head to the right, tap a fingernail on the floor and mumble, ‘hmm. pumpkin contest.’

To which I thought, ‘SHUT UP. I’m tired. I’m not doing it.’ Another tap. ‘It’s just a *little* pumpkin contest.’

Closing my eyes, I thought, ‘I. DON’T. CAA-A-ARE. And also? Hey, CRAZY. Shut uuuuuup!’

‘Huh. Looky there. Martha Stewart’s got about a bajillion pumpkin decorating clips on Comcast On Demand. But no. Don’t watch it. I DARE you.’

‘Crap!’

So yeah. Guess what I’m doing tonight? The same thing I do every night. Trying to take over the world! [insert plan for the World's Greatest Pumpkin here.] Bwah-ha-ha.

I’ve drummed up a few old entries from the Great eBay Gourd Competition I’ve mentioned here before, but am still coming up a little ‘empty-shelled’. Anyone got any bright ideas? What are your Great Pumpkin plans this year?

Swan Lake

Gourdilocks

Gourd-In-the-Hat

Lady Gourdiva

the Matrix Re-Gourded

RASCI, the MonGourd

The Gourdfather

The Gourdtrige Family

La Gourdia

UPDATE: Wow. I learn the craziest, most randomest things while reading my blog feeds. From Presentation Zen (a blog about, you guessed it – presentations) I found this awesome pumpkin carving contest gallery from Duarte Design. And, dang. Just…DANG. Their employees have been doing this for 13 years, and from the looks of the Specimen, Carved Crusader and WIIIIIILSON! pumpkins, they’re my kind o’ people.

© 2008 – 2010, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

(Anyone who’s read my eBay posts may have noticed this. Along with the definite sense that I was unbelievably pissy, angry and unhappy my last few months there. But…topic for another day.)

Rather than continue to simply rant about the nineteen million ways that’s wrong, whrong, wrong-o, I’ve decided to try to show it instead. Along with my regular blog photos, I’ll be posting my eBay pictures and stories to illustrate the times and people as I knew them.

The names will be changed. The stories will be true. Hopefully, you’ll love them as I do.

Pierre, Jules and Meg
eBay Customer Support 2nd Anniversary Celebration, Salt Lake City 2001

© 2008 – 2011, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

“Wow. It’s so…colorful…over here”, or

“Do you work for eBay?”

This is because my cubicle is plastered with just about every piece of event material I’ve created during the year, and a LOT of family photos.

Family that includes many, many, many eBay peeps.

I don’t do it to brag. I do it because I know I’m obsessive.

A trait that often leads to getting bogged down, stuck or just plain negative. When that happens, all I have to do is look up.

Everywhere I glance I can find a design, event or face that reminds me, “this was good”, “that was not so good”, or “think of things in a completely different way”.

© 2008, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

In the case of eBay Customer Service, you literally have the ENTIRE WORLD screaming at you via email all day long. All written as though their problem? It’s YOUR fault, mother-@#!&^*. No matter how many problems a Rep manages to solve, the next email is always another screamer. With 500 more waiting in line today. Just. For. You.

There are precious few letters of thanks or happy endings. Because, let’s be real. Who has the stamina to hunt through eighteen pages of help to submit a message? Pissed off people, that’s who. No-one goes through all that just to say, “hey, wanted to letcha know I’m having a wonderful experience here!”

You GOTTA have an outlet.

Which is why, I think, our Halloweens were always so beserk. Or why we came up with things like the Annual Gourd Decorating Contest. And the Name that Just-Born Lamb whiteboard. And why, OMFG, ePeeps – this video seems so real, it could be a documenary.

Dudes, the IT Team would Kick. Our. Butts. Matrix-style.

© 2008, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

While the ‘fat’ comment kind of gets my bristles all up and angry (the ‘fat’ perceptions being something I’ve lately debated with other ePeeps), I love this clip because even though I could listen to him any time on eBay Radio, it’s just plain good to see a living, breathing Griff being his old goofy self.

Related Links
Original Article: Griff “Weighs in” on Bike to Work Day
eBay Radio: Tuesdays 11am-1pm PST

© 2008, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

Today I was considering deleting him from my feed, thinking, ah, Steve, I just don’t care about Linux. or Woz. Or SDK. I don’t even care about the iPhone. (Just got a Blackberry, thanks. Although, Calendar? You make me feel old. Why do remind me of Trav’s 3pm bridge meeting every 15 minutes? And why are you even telling me? How do I make you shut up? wtf? GO AWAYYYY!)

Here’s the thing: I’m not a Mac user. Probably never will be. Because me and Profound Transitions in The Way I Do Things? We are not friends. In fact, we’ve made it a rule to try and claw each other’s eyes out whenever we meet. Makes for a really good girl fight and lots of crying.

So, why am I reading you?

Oh yeah. Because sometimes, you write stuff like this:

Google putting up fence and gate to keep execs from leaving

(In response to fictional question posed by Google CEO, Dr Eric Schmidt, asking why all his employees are leaving:)

…you make a big deal of only hiring these super-high-IQ kiddies and the fact is that most of them truly are smart, but then you put them into this horribly dull and easy drone work on AdWords and AdSense and they’re all bored to tears and totally disappointed because they really really really thought they were going to do something meaningful with their lives and now they’re just worker bees…

There is something really evil about taking thousands of the world’s smartest young people and using them to sell online text ads more efficiently. Really. Think of all the really interesting and important things that this pool of brainpower could be addressing.

HELL TO THE YEAH, Steve. I just became a reader for life.

© 2008, jules.maas. All rights reserved.

In fact, the only name I even vaguely recognize is Lynn Reedy, who was still Senior VP of Product, Development and Architecture at eBay when I left in 2005. (After Googling her, I get the impression she’s no longer with the company. But the search results are just vague enought that I can’t tell for sure.)

Visiting all the blogs yesterday, I found that most of them offer information, insight and humor I really like. Some I had a hard time reading, either because they were written in another language or because they speak another language and write with odd grammar. Still, good stuff. I have quite a lot of new material to add to my Netvibes reader.

I especially enjoy Adam Nash’s blog, Psychohistory. It’s one of those blogs that suck me in with offerings of all sorts of randomly-related subjects. Reading it today, I rediscovered that old StumbleUpon account I started last year but forgot about when I had to remove the toolbar for one reason or another (I think it might have been because I upgraded to IE 7.0…or maybe it was because I had it installed on my Microsoft laptop and one day realized that’s a big ‘no-no’…or maybe it was because of that one time I dribbled jam all over the keyboard and my computer went all, “You lazy bugger! I’m covered in jam!” Could have been any one of those.). But! Now it’s back! I reinstalled the toolbar! And it’s all thanks to Adam. From whom I also learned that the design of the last state quarter has been released.

I find that story thrilling for the mere fact that as soon as he gets home from hockey practice, I can boast to my coin-crazy husband that *I* have seen the fabled last quarter design – has HE? To which he will say, why YES my wife, I HAVE. And I shall retort, Well! …Did you know the last one is HAWAII? And he shall shake his head and say, my dear, besides the glaring imagery and the fact that it was the last state to join the United States – I DID ALSO READ IT.

But one thing about the wiki strikes me as odd. There are 26 blogs listed, but I don’t think there’s a single other Customer Support employee on there AT ALL. And I find that a little wierd, considering how creative, prolific and vocal I know CS peeps to be.

Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they’re out of town. Maybe they just don’t know it exists.

Or maybe they don’t want to go advertising themselves because of dillholes like this. Adam Nash announced on his own private blog that *Dah Dah DAAAAAH* he’s moving on, and these folks took a five second pause before using the news of his departure as a vehicle for bashing eBay features, strategies and employees they don’t like.

Which, I’m sorry, totally pisses me off because A) I bet you a THOUSAND DOLLARS most of these people wouldn’t ever speak or act this way to anyone in ‘real life’, and B) the automatic assumption that every decision eBay makes is some grand evil conspiracy to take over the world and install swimming pools full of money in every employee’s backyard is so retarded I can’t see straight. This conviction that the ‘powers that be’ are trying to shut everyone down and put them in the poor house completely invalidates the cares and efforts of every single person at eBay working their ass off to make it a safer, better place. Because I know for a fact that they do care. That they DO work their asses off. And that none of it will ever be good enough in the eyes of people like this. And that really, REALLY bothers me.

So no, “tattered*primitives”, eBay does NOT have a “talk about us and die” form. It has the same standard “Dear employee, you’re working for a company that handles a LOT of information for a LOT of people. You’ll see things, learn things, and maybe even build things that will impact us, you and our customers. Some stuff is confidential and some stuff is just plain private. So be a dear and promise us some integrity” form I hear MOST companies have nowdays. Heck, I bet even bank tellers have to sign something like that. In fact, I HOPE SO.

And I hope some CS folks sign up for the wiki blog, and show folks that there ARE human beings on the other side of that screen.

© 2007, jules.maas. All rights reserved.