29 posts tagged “qotd”
How do you handle phone calls from telemarketers?
I, like many, got my start in the technology industry as an in-bound call-centre monkey. I spent close to two years working phones before i moved onto the rest of my career. Although it wasn't out-bound sales, i learned some valuable lessons about being polite and respectful to the person on the other end of phone - and by "the other end of the phone", i don't mean the customer, i mean me.
As a result, when telemarketers call, i now just thank them for their time, explain to them that i realise they have a job to do, but that i'm not interested. Then i hang up. Honestly, there's no reason to get worked up about a telemarketer calling you, and it'll absolutely make their day if you treat them like a human being - even if it's only for a few moments before the conversation quietly ends.
What was the worst job you ever had?
Submitted by salaryman.
(Oups, je suis un 'tit peu en retard avec cette réponse.)
Quand j'étais 14 ans, ma mère m'a envoyé - pendant un été - chez un petit ville au nord du Canada. J'ai creusé des fossés et posé des pipes dans la toundra, et c'était généralement terrible. :P
Have you ever met any celebrities? Any interesting stories?
Submitted by Tasha.
A few years back, while backpacking around western Europe for a summer, I ran into somebody claiming to be Paco 'Christian' Prieto at a terminal in Paris. I didn't know who he was at the time, but he mentioned he was an actor in martial arts movie actor - the "latino guy", as he put it. Said he knew Jackie Chan and Seagal and them folks.
How did this come about? He didn't speak too much French, and was confused about the automated banking system (he was in town for the Cannes festival, to see the premiere of a movie he was in). He noticed that we (myself and my travel companion) spoke English and French, and came over to ask for help. We chatted for a while, and parted ways.
Well, he came back less than 10 minutes later, and rather sheepishly asked if he could borrow a few euros for the subway, as his gold mastercard (which he showed us) wasn't working. I believed him, because the credit cards we were carrying were flaky out there as well. He thanked us profusely, and asked for my postal address so he could send the money back to us - even gave me his cell number in case we needed anything. We parted ways again and i didn't give it much thought.
When i got back to Canada about a month later, i looked up his IMDB entry which, at the time, had a couple of pictures of him listed. What's most interesting about his list of movies on IMDB is this entry. He plays Silvio, the antagonist in Only the Strong, which is just about the only Capoeira movie anybody in North America has ever seen.
And now, the punch-line: dude still owes me 5 euros!
Are you a re-gifter? Have you ever re-gifted?
Submitted by Sandals.
I've only re-gifted once, and that was because the person that gave it to me specifically instructed me to re-gift it after one year. It was a boardgame - the name of which now escapes me - that had apparently been passed from person to person, once per year, for an unspecified number of years.
What were you afraid of as a child that seems silly to you now?
Submitted by navelgazer.
I was afraid that jackets, hanging in the closet, would somehow inflate around invisible bodies and chase me around the house.
Yeah.
What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.
Oh man, where do i even begin? I am from the era of video gaming. I have a hard time remembering a time in my life when i wasn't involved in some form of electronic entertainment. From a little wooden Pong console attached to our little antenna television, through the 2600 and the 64XE, then on to C64's and Apple ][e's, PC gaming from 80386 on forward, the old 8-bit Nintendo, Genesis, Lynx, SNES, Dreamcast, Playstation, Xbox, and soon, oh yes, soon the Wii. And that doesn't even include the hours - oh the countless, timeless hours - spent at arcades. God i miss the era of uprights and pinball machines so much.
Seriously now - you even dare to ask the top FIVE. That's like saying "what are your top five ways to breathe". You don't pick ways to breathe - you just do it in order to sustain life. If you stop breathing, you stop living. That's how i feel about gaming.
What's the most drastic change you've ever made to your appearance?
Submitted by Laurie.
Tattoos are, by some accounts, fairly drastic - and i've got a handful of those. Mais honnêtement, ils semblent pas mal normale à moi, donc ils sont difficile de les considérer comme « drastic ». The first time i changed my hair was pretty "out there" at the time, but these days simply having coloured hair isn't that strange.
Peut-être ça dit beaucoup au sujet de l'état de notre culture et société aujourd'hui. What was "crazy" in the 80's are today the sorts of things that kids sport at school on a daily basis. Je pense que Shannon Larrat de BMEzine est crédité de dire, « What you see on BME today will be mainstream in 5 years » - clairement, il a de raison.
How do you eat your pizza: folded, flat or with a fork and knife?
Submitted by danimass.
This depends entirely on the nature of the pizza, of course. For a standard pizza-delivery sort of pizza, i'll just eat it flat, with my hands. For a deep-dish pizza-pie the only reasonable option is fork and knife. For the super-large "by the slice" type pizzas that you might pick up after leaving the bar, well, those have to be folded; you don't have utensils, and you're too drunk to eat it normally anyways...
If you are going to dress up for Halloween, what will you be? Why?
Submitted by Auweea.
Actually, this is a good question. I'm taking the train out to Ottawa for a massive Hallow'een party, and i haven't even decided what i'm going to dress up as yet. Frankly stated, i'm just not a costume person. Ugh.. i really should work something out - and soon! :(
