Dr Herman I. Libshitz is a retired physician who lives in West Philadelphia.
He and his wife own a summer home in Reheboth Beach, Delaware.
The summer place had a simple dial-up service for the internet, which Dr Libshitz decided to upgrade to DSL.
He contacted Verizon to get the service installed.
Who were unable to complete the job because when Dr Libshitz was prompted to create his user name and e-mail address, the system spat his request out.
Why?
He called the Verizon help line, only to be told - and I am NOT making this up - "We can't install it because your name has 'shit' in it"
Annoyed, he asked to speak to a supervisor. Who gave him exactly the same response, having the additional balls to actually suggest Dr Libshitz could simply misspell his last name in order to confirm the account! (WTF?!)
The good doctor, a Vietnam war veteran who had previously signed his own proud name to several hundred academic papers without incident, decided that Verizon wasn't for him and stuck with his AT&T dial-up.
This kind of moronic 'holier-than-thou' censorship nonsense really grips my Libshitz. (I say that with every respect in the world)
Verizon
Psychiatric Research
Three prominent psychiatrists - Dr. Melissa Del Bello, Dr. Alan Schatzburg and Dr. Joseph Biederman - recently admitted to Congress that they had all "under-reported income they had received from drug companies".
All three are considered "Key Opinion Leaders" within the psychiatry community - indeed, Dr. Schatzburg is the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) - and all three have been vocal advocates of using anti psychotic drugs to treat children believed to suffer from bipolar disorder.
This despite the fact that the drugs in question have been approved ONLY for adults. There is also a big question mark hanging over the legitimacy of "childhood bipolar disorder" by other mental health professionals too, some saying it is usually just "kids being kids".
Call me crazy (and I'm sure some of these professionals would) but do you think there could be ANY link between the payola these Doctors received from big pharma and the recommendations they subsequently made?
Powerful anti-psychotic drugs for children, basically being prescribed for YOUR kids directly by the drug industry.
Everyone should be having their shit gripped by that.
The Airline Industry
Let it be known that, in the aftermath of that disaster, the Airline Industry has maintained the very real potential to actually kill hundreds, maybe thousands, more civilians as a direct result of their continued negligence.
Following diligent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigations, it was determined that the cause for the explosion/crash was an electrical short circuit which ignited gasoline vapors in one of the plane's major fuel tanks.
To combat the accident happening again, the FAA has spent the past 12 years having to fight over the issue with the Airline industry, first strongly recommending, and - more recently - having to ORDER the industry to retrofit a new safety device to the fuel tanks of up to 55% of all commercial planes currently in use.
The industry - complaining about 'cost issues' in today's marketplace (apparently, each plane would cost $90k - $300k) - has so far been surprisingly successful in resisting the necessity. Its latest delay tactic with the FAA - and here's another shit-gripper folks - is that it is negotiating to be permitted to take another NINE years to carry out the necessary work!
For those poor at math amongst us, that means it could take a mind-boggling and staggeringly immoral 21 years from the date of the crash to fix a very important recognised safety issue on many of the planes we happily board each and every day of the week.
For us at IGMS, three things spring to mind here.
One, this stinks - and I mean REEKS - of more lobbyist interference.
Two, it seems that insurance against a class action lawsuit - let's suggest "negligence leading to murder" shall we? - must be less costly than actually carrying out the work.
and three, if the officials at the FAA actually HAD any hairy danglers at all - or even serious influence - they would simply ground each and every plane until the work had been carried out. You can bet your sweet derrière that the companies would get the work done then!
Just a thought for everyone as they board their next flight. Happy traveling!
Exxon
DINP, or diisononyl phthalate to give it its proper name, is amongst a group of phthalates that - according to research carried out by the National Research Center for Women and Families - can potentially make young boys less masculine, decrease the size of their penises and make them more susceptible to testicular cancer in later life. Plus, in adult males it can result in infertility.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been trying to pass legislation in Congress to allow it greater powers to, amongst many other safety matters, ban the use of these phthalates in children's toys.
The proposed ban is similar to bans against phthalates that already exist right across Europe.
One of the largest manufacturers of phthalates in the world is Exxon.
Exxon have so far spent $8 million on lobbying in 2008, the vast majority of which has been spent nefariously lobbying AGAINST the attempts of the CPSC to ban the use of phthalates.
Lobbying which, by its very nature, would appear to be undermining the health and well-being of many young children in this country.
If that doesn't seriously grip your shit, then nothing will. It's irrefutable proof that the Washington lobbyists will stop at absolutely nothing to improve the bottom line and profits of the corporations they are employed by.
How do lobbyists sleep at night?
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Kentucky Fried Chicken in Canada recently launched a new menu item.
The "Unchicken". Which is a vegan/vegetarian sandwich.
Except.
Well, it's not.
KFC staff, with something of a 'smoking gun" attitude, have reported that they are frying the burger in exactly the same fryers/fats they drop the regular chicken pieces/burgers into and, furthermore, they handle the "unchicken" using the same meat/grease-laden gloves & utensils they use for every other procedure.
Not that ANY self-respecting vegetarian diner would ever visit a KFC, but this still demands to be marked as a shit-gripper.
Almost ALL restaurant chains forget that vegetarians enjoy eating out too. They invariably also have MANY non-vegetarian friends or families who may like to share a table or special event with them. So, by discriminating against one person by offering limited menu choices, these chains are actually turning away the business of many more people.
Washington Nationals
Whilst in DC we took in a Washington Nationals baseball game at Nationals Park.
We bought our tickets from one of the booths at the ballpark, and were VERY surprised to be asked for ID along with our credit card.
I wonder if the Nationals organization knows that asking for additional ID along with a signed credit card is a violation of their contract with the credit card company? Violators can be reported by consumers to their credit card companies, and possibly have their accounts taken away.
I haven't got anything against the Nationals though - they're a new team and all that - so I won't grip their shit. However, if they continue doing it, I'm sure it will grip some one's?!
AirTran Airways
My wife and I were subject the THE very worst treatment and customer service over the weekend whilst returning from our vacation.
All at the hands of the ignorant, clueless and untrained staff at AirTran Airways at BWI airport.
Or so we thought.
Several lines snaked back from the AirTran check-in desks, the result of mismanagement earlier in the morning, which was now compounded to such a degree that a wait in excess of 1½ hours was necessary.
Meaning that we, along with several hundred OTHER passengers, could not be confirmed for flights before they were closed.
So, several hundred unhappy passengers all having their shit gripped through no fault of their own.
The gate clerk told us we could be booked on the later 3:52pm flight, which we accepted.
Only to find out much later - almost by accident - that the fucking bitch had marked us as standby-ONLY passengers, despite the check-in snafu being of their making! Indeed, we were marked as "no show" passengers, meaning we had zero preference entitlement.
The 3:52pm flight ended up being "oversold" - gee, I wonder why AirTran? - meaning we had no chance to get on it, and we then heard the even later 9:00pm flight was also oversold.
To add insult to injury the AirTran staff couldn't give a flying fuck for our - or other people's - dilemmas. Not one staff member ever apologised for the situation their incompetence had created - almost as if they had been trained to never admit fault? - and repeated requests to see a supervisor fell on deaf ears.
In fact, we discovered, the supervisor had REFUSED to come down to speak with any disgruntled passenger, and furthermore had ordered the gate staff NOT to give her name to any passenger who asked for it. Again, you have to wonder if this is company policy or a senior member shirking her responsibilities.
It became more and more evident no-one was going to help us - requests for refunds or to be booked on alternate airlines were met with absolute refusals - so we felt forced to hire a car from Hertz and drive ourselves the 500 miles home.
AirTran will never get another cent from me, and we are in the process of (as they say) ripping them a new one. Through the courts if necessary. I will do my utmost to find a way of making AirTran EAT the shit I gripped on Saturday.
Hotel Room Design
Ever stayed in a hotel room where the sink is outside of the bathroom?
Meaning you have to open the door and exit before washing your hands after using the toilet.
Ever wondered what the bacterial count is on the handles of that door as a result of inadequate and thoughtless room design?
Do you think the maid cleans/disinfects those door handles every day?
I think we all know the scary answer.
You've been gripping someone else's shit!
Excuses
IGMS has been on vacation.
Sorry to have gripped your shit with the lack of posts.
The upside is our vacation gave me lots of 'material' for upcoming entries!
Gold Star Chili
Permit me if you will something of personal shit-gripper
I had never been to a Gold Star Chili location before last Wednesday.
I will never go again.
So, I went to the counter and ordered my item to go. Whilst waiting I witnessed this....
The server, having dealt with me, another customer and several drive-thru orders, went straight from handling people's (filthy, dirty, germ-ridden) money to manually dishing out nacho chips from a bag onto a customer's plate. NO hand washing or sanitation in between whatsoever.
Uuuugh!..... Disgusting!
I got my food, exited, and placed it straight in a trash bin outside, not knowing how MY order had been dealt with. I was astonished and surprisingly lost for words at what I had just seen.
(I realize and accept now I should've complained loudly at the counter. Instead I went home and shot off an angry e-mail to their corporate HQ, who - to their credit - responded promptly full of apologies and contriteness)
Is it really any wonder there are so many health scares these days? It would appear Gold Star Chili can't conform to the very simplest precautions to protect its customers and employees. Shit-grippingly scary.
Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn
At the Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, a woman collapsed and was laying face down on the waiting room floor for OVER AN HOUR before anyone - staff, security guards, nurses, other patients, anyone - decided she should be attended to or assisted.
By which time she was dead.
New York City Health and Hospitals Corp - big-monied owners of the Kings County - have said they will launch an investigation into the matter and have already fired six employees.
I certainly hope this included everyone in the hospital's HR department who must have been responsible for hiring such an ignorant, uncaring & inhumane bunch of poorly-trained (but presumably little-more-than minimum-waged) staff.
Hospitals grip my shit at the best of times, but this story really has a strong wrench around my poop!
This little dude on the toilet was created by lego artist