I am the 10%

The thing I remember most, or shall we say the only thing I remember at all, about my training session before my first day of work at JCPenney as a junior in high school, was this tidbit from the lovely video we had to view: (Quotation likely not exact, but you get the picture) "If you give good customer service, 1 out of 10 people will tell their friends about you. If you give bad customer service, 10 out of 10 will tell their friends." Amazing the random thoughts that stick in my head and yet I can't remember to buy Tide when we have no clean socks left in the house.

It must have stuck with me in part because to me, it is not only a sad statistic, but fairly unbelievable. Because, hotties, I am a gusher. If I like you, or something you are wearing, or think your garden is pretty, or you opened a cafe and make incredible sandwiches (shameless plug for my friend's place, Blackbird Cafe in Groton MA), or you take one of my classes and I love your fabrics, I am all over you with compliments and telling you and everyone else exactly how much I love whatever it is I love about you. True, if you chomp your gum at me the whole time I am in your checkout line, or spell "Catherine, Caroline, and Douglas" as "Cathrin, Cardine, and Douglas" on my friend's baby shower cake, or sell me a computer that OOOPS! never had the control panel turned on before it left the store, yeah, I'm going to talk about you too. But I like to think at least I make up for being one of the 100% who will complain with being one of the 10% who gush.

It is in this spirit that I need to gush today. As some of you who have been readers for a while know, I was very skeptical about buying EQ about a year and a half ago. I tend to design things that are rather freeform blocks, and I didn't see how it would help me. I got a good price on it, though, so between that and the urging of Jen Eskridge at ReannaLily Designs who promised me it would change my life, I caved.

It has not changed my life to the same degree that Jewel-it has, but that would take a miracle.

Anyway, I really have had fun with it and actually designed two things on it that were groundbreaking for me for reasons which will become clear at a later date. Suffice it to say that yes, I do enjoy it and yes, I am really glad I bought it. Not a HUGE gush, but gush nonetheless. Stay tuned, the waters will burst momentarily.

Fast forward to all of my computer meltdowns this year, including an actual gush of hot tea frying out my laptop containing my EQ software. Crap. Got the thing fixed, reloaded software. Took laptop on trip, and after it went through security it never woke up. Double crap.

I finally had a new laptop delivered last week, and I attempted to load EQ7 (AGAIN!) onto my blank (AGAIN!) laptop. This is all getting very old. Imagine my horror when I find that I cannot use the software because the activations were both used for my copy. So I had used two activations on two computer crashes and had nothing to show for my software purchase. I was a little devastated.

But, going with the adage we all know is true that quilters are nice people, I wrote an email yesterday to tech support, outlining my dramas and dilemmas, and basically begging them to allow me a new activation. I expected to be told "I'm sorry, you are a complete computer dummy and should have known better than to drink a hot beverage near your laptop; it is not our problem if you are an idiot" and I really couldn't have blamed them.

Instead, I get this "We are so sorry you have had so many troubles, but we aren't going to add to them." Really? REALLY? You don't want to confirm my story with the repair guy (who actually has also been quite awesome)? You don't want to have me ship this one back, you just will reactivate my code and allow me to fix this problem in a matter of seconds? EQ people - YOU ROCK!

And I will tell everyone I know. Even if they aren't quilters and really don't care. Because I'm a gusher.