green

Serena makes an excellent point. :clap2:

Start travelling again now that I am looking good again.

That sounds like a terrific idea. :clap2:

This is where my rage issues would have kicked in and I would have snarled something to the effect of "listen, you pimple, I've had the lemonade before and I know that it is not carbonated. The machine is broken! Get it? Broken!!!"

Gibson, it is gonna be the tiny hands of third world children.

The question of customer service is, I think, complicated by the fact that some people are rude, some places are understaffed, and sometimes you find people, and they can be found on either side of the counter, who are just plain bone dumb. Stupid or undertrained people are not going be capable of giving a customer good service. No one is going to be able to squeeze answers out of an idiot. And it is difficult for someone in customer service to find him or herself stuck in the situation of being able to successfully provide assistance to an idiot. It is both frustrating and time-consuming. In fact the activity may result in eating up enough time that it results in keeping other people waiting, including the rude person. Wise people know that honey works better than vinegar but not all people are wise or kind. There are many arrogant and rude customers out there. Generally speaking, they figure that they have the right to give attitude because they view themselves as being more valuable than the one who is helping/serving them. I don't approve of dissing folks for no good reason and I personally tend to think that giving attitude can result in Very Bad Things happening to the one who Disrespects. For example: I have heard of restaurant workers spitting in the food of those who give them prickish treatment; and certainly rude people who are asking for your help will only get it........only eventually, eh. But, that being said, customers can also find themselves on the receiving end of rudeness. Women clients often find themselves dissed by male help, especially when they are shopping in the so-called man's sphere, old people are often ignored by young people, then there is that racial disrespect, and fat folk are dissed by normos. None of this is right, is it? And sometimes some of us don't feel that we are getting the treatment that we receive but we must realise that this has nothing to do with those who are there to provide us with service and everything to do with understaffing, a situation which may be a temporary glitch or chronic to the company. Though my own approach is to commence by being very respectful when I need customer service I have ended by showing my claws. In general I try not to act the monster with front line personnel but I admit that I have been a very bad bitch from time to time. If I am not too insensible with rage I will make a point of apologising and asking to be transferred to a supervisor. I do, however, remember 30 hours of telephonic violence when dealing with my electrical company after our rented hot water heater burst and they did nothing about it apart from acknowledge that it was broken and that they were gonna fix it. This despite the fact that the damn thing was spewing water (they had turned off the heat at least) all over my tenant's flat! I did blog the entire event and I named names. I did the same thing when my bank screwed up business in their handling of their share of my mother's estate. I a) kicked up a big stink not only took the account away from them but made a point of letting them know the dollar value of what they were losing out on and c) blogged the whole sorry event, naming names. As it happened, while I was ranting and raving about my idiot bank - and we only have the big 5 in Canada - a cousin and a close friend told me their tales of recent frustrations with the same bank. For sure I included these tales of idiocy on my blog. :heh: I will tell you that my own personal approach whenever I initially engage with those folks in customer service is to have all of my ducks in a row. This is to say that I will have all the necessary papers, the receipts, credit cards, yadda yadda, with me. This saves time for everyone and also displays that I certainly have my sh!t together. I will, for this very same reason, have a pad of notepaper and a pen or pencil at hand if I am doing the telephone walk. These are the basics of taking care of business. It is disrespectful to phone up customer assistance and then ask your rep to wait while you hunt for the necessary info. I find myself growing real cranky when I have made a point of having all my ducks in a row before phoning and then find myself launched into some kind of nightmare of incompetance land. This happens. The smart grrl or boy, the one who has done all the homework, finds herself spending up to 2 to 3 hours drifting around hellotellophoneLand, endlessly repeating the same damn story. Yup, it seems that the history of Joseph K was perhaps a little too prescient, eh. [read Kafka] Oh, ugh! At the same time I have watched nice people in the service industry savaged by jerks. Why, this happened the last time I saw the fill folk at my lapband centre! I was there because I needed a complete defill because of the acid reflux biz. When the nurse entered the waiting room and called for the defill patient I put up my hand. She was about to take me but then there was an ugly commotion. It seemed that there was another patient who had booked a defill and who had arrived before me. Though she had not indicated that she was also there for a defill when the nurse had initially asked she immediately got real pissy when she saw that I was going to be treated first. That she had the right to go before me certainly did not bother me. There was no reason why it should. But when the nurse brought me in for my defill a few short minutes later she was awfully apologetic for the wait. She was also very upset. I told her to calm down, that I wasn't bothered by the wait and couldn't see why anyone would be. Well, it appeared that she had been savaged by her previous customer and she was left feeling pretty shattered by this experience. She was expecting more of the same from me and this very nice and competent woman, a woman who is likely in her early to mid 30s, was oh so relieved when I treated her in the fashion that people usually treat each other. It is always disturbing to come across an intelligent and competent adult who has just gone through an experience of being (emotionially speaking) whipped like a cur and who then regards you as being a "lovely" human being simply because you treat them with the normal dose of respect. Sorry for the long post, eh. :bounce:

Hooray! :clap2: That will be too cool!! :biggrin1: It will be great to finally meet you in Real Land. :bounce: Do you ever hear from Cloe?

That is an excellent thread. Thanks for posting it. I didn't see it the first time around but it sure does apply to me. Manatee, weight loss seems to be a two-pronged issue, and the second part lives directly inside our heads. This mental conflict is what you are experiencing right now. I think that it is safe to say that all of us who have lost a great deal of weight have a certain amount of trouble wrapping our heads around our new slimmer bodies. In your case it sounds as though the excitement of successful weight loss has now left, and left you with an emotional hangover. For many of us, as reading the above link will show, we are left feeling a real sense of disbelief in our new, normo bodies. Thin on the outside and fat in the head........

Yep, you should crash the bash. We would love to meet you. :bounce:

Hi, Wildcat. You would do better to post your enquiry on the Lapband Support Area of this site. You will be certain to receive more answers to your enquiry. As for my advice, I would suggest that you ask your surgeon. Usually port revision takes place when the port has flipped as far as I know - but I admit to knowing very little about this topic.

I can wear belts again and I can tuck in my shirts and sweaters!

I ended up getting acid reflux because I was a little too tight. Now I am defilled. I have been since August. I am still waiting for everything in my physical life to return to normal. It is better to be a bit on the loose side, I think, that to get reflux. I must say that although I am at goal I sure do miss having my band guarding me from drifting back into the Land o Gluttony. This is my latest worry: going back to fat.

I'll be there or I'll be square.........

Thanks for posting this. I find it very, very interesting. :biggrin1:

You have been terrifically successful. Congratulations to you, Argon. :clap2::clap2::clap2: And hi to you, Wheezy. :biggrin1: It has been awhile....

I can wear belts that I haven't worn since I was 30 years old.

I have always been able to eat just about everything, just in very small quantities. And of course I had to chew, chew, chew.

I use small utensils, a desert fork and a coffee spoon.

As for milking rats, we would have to use child labour. Their titties are very, very small. Too small for adult hands.

I once tried to milk a cat but I was unsuccessful.

Big grrls aren't allowed to be anything other than goodnatured, jolly, and always concerned for others. Big grrls are expected to listen the problems of others all day long and yet never, ever speak about their own. Big grrls are the Mother Theresas of the work place. It sounds to me that you are claiming for yourself what every normo grrl gets to claim for herself without anyone else questioning it: a certain amount of self interest. Enjoy it! :biggrin1:

You may wish to phone her in order to warn her that there will be surcharges for your research: the time spent researching 1) the pattern 2) the fabrics and 3) the fuel you have consumed in doing these tasks.

Yep, you should charge her for all the work you have done. Present her with an itemized bill. And, by the way, even Mean Green has difficulties with saying the No-word. It took me years to learn how and even now I run into the occasional problem with it.

Yah, that seems fair but what if the newbies are as dumb as Green was/is? :faint:

:heh: I am in kind of a weird position whenever it comes to these discussions. I figure that I am now an old timer, I was banded Sept 7, 2006, and I reached goal about 9-10 months after I was banded. Since then I have lost another 5 lbs. Now, it is true that I was one of the lower BMI gang and so I only had about 50 lbs to lose but on the other hand the lower BMI gang often don't experience the same dramatic weight losses and we older, post-menopausal types can find ourselves handicapped when it comes to losing weight.... Anyhow, what I want to say is that I always find myself deeply conflicted whenever we LBT folk engage on these discussions as to what it is going to take in order to lose weight once we have had our lapbands installed. It is certain that some of us old farts have been fabulously successful and that part of this has been because we have chosen to engage on many levels in this project of weight loss: this means that we have been meticulous about watching what we eat and about following a strict exercise regime. Well, I must go on record as saying that my weight loss was not due to any of this. I am by temperament a real slacker and this is why I knew that I needed the band. I have never had a problem with sweets but I sure did like to eat a lot of food. The band cut my appetite way back and my job, as I figured it, was to make sure that I avoided the carbs and spent my time on protein and on vegies. To tell you all the truth, I am a lazy, self-indulgent grrl but I did - kinda accidently - manage to achieve goal within 10 months. This was such a thrill for me! I figure that I was very f...ing lucky. You should remember that most bariatric surgeons view the post surgery weight loss journey as being a journey which will last 2 years. Two years! This means that each and everyone of us who manages to get to goal under this time should be considered as exceptional. (Hah! First time that Green has ever been ever considered exceptional for all the right reasons, eh. LOL) Your weight loss journey is your weight loss journey. It belongs to you. There are virtuous old farts who have knocked their nuts off working to get to goal and they are very proud of themselves; and who can blame them, you know that they have worked hard. And then there are folks like myself, folks lost weight easily, but who are terrified that they are going to lose it just as easily that they got it. (Honest! I keep thinking that I am going to wake up fat!! ) There are also people who set more or less demanding weight loss goals for themselves. Your experiences will be personal to yourselves. My advice to you is to ignore all of the preachy and the judgemental stuff which you feel does not apply to you, to keep on asking questions, and to enjoy the best that this site has to offer. Remember, you will become old farts if you stick around long enough......:heh: And that is what LBT does need, more old farts.