Lily Tomlin became famous playing uncaring telephone operator “Ernes- tine” on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In TV show of the late 1960s/early 70s. Customer service personnel in 2014 are required by current employers
to act even more detached than the oftentimes obnoxious Ernestine.

TURN TABLES ON CUSTOMERS
BY MAKING COMPANIES
INACCESSIBLE BY PHONE

Customer service people obsolete

TALK RADIO MAY BE LAST
— AND ONLY — INDUSTRY
TO WELCOME CALL-INS
 
By David Maril
 
I was listening to a Ravens’ post-game radio show on WBAL the other day and when the hosts started encouraging listeners to call in with comments, it hit me that talk radio is one of the few places where a business wants its telephone to ring.

Here’s a prediction:  In 10 years — no, make that five years — you will no longer be able to reach large-sized businesses or any companies of significant corporate size by telephone.

If you need to communicate with your bank, telephone company or insurance carrier you’ll either send them an email or leave some type of message on their website.

We are almost at that point now.

The business world is already cutting back, streamlining manpower; and  personalized customer service is going the way of the milkmen who used to deliver to your door.

What happens now when you try to call a company to complain about charges on a bill? Most statements don’t even have a phone number listed.

If you are fortunate enough to discover a number in fine-print on the reverse side of the last page, it’s a lesson in eyestrain and torture trying to decipher it.

Good luck if you think you can find a phone number on the company’s website. Most avoid including their corporate address and phone.

And, it turns out, the thing big companies detest almost as much as phone calls is mail. Hey, opening envelopes requires extra work and labor costs.

If your perseverance pays off enough to locate a number and you call, right off the bat you are told to “listen closely because some of our options have changed.”

Translation: “We want to make it even more difficult and time-consuming before you talk to a human being so you’ll think twice about ever calling us again.”

After being asked a dozen recorded questions — and you are out of luck if you have a rotary phone  —  to supposedly direct your call to the right customer-service person, you are advised that “due to an unusually high caller volume, you may have a longer waiting time on hold.”

This, despite the fact it’s 5 a.m. West Coast time.

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Joe Nawrozki, “The Pride of Belair & Erdman,” May 2014 in Mount Washington. (VoB Photo/Bill Hughes)

BALTIMORE ‘STORYTELLER’ RAFAEL ALVAREZ
READS FROM NEWLY PUBLISHED CHAPBOOK
ON EX-NEWS AMERICAN CRIME REPORTER

‘The Pride of Belair & Erdman’
 
[N.B.  Joe Nawrozki died late Friday night.  To read Baltimore Sun obit  click here.  —Ed.]
 
Longtime News American crime reporter and later Baltimore Sun journalist Joe Nawrozki’s career is scheduled to be celebrated Saturday as the city’s favorite “storyteller” Rafael Alvarez reads from his latest chapbook, The Pride of Belair & Erdman, at the 2014 Baltimore Book Festival at 12 p.m. in the Inner Harbor.

Alvarez has just published what he terms “a quick little history of the News American,” the Baltimore area’s oldest newspaper, which dated from pre-Revolutionary times until it folded in 1986.

In an interview Friday with Voice of Baltimore, he subtitled the book “a lifetime achievement award for Joe Nawrozki,” who grew up in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood around Belair Road and Erdman Avenue.

Joseph Francis Christopher Nawrozki — “Our Pal Joey,” as he is described in the chapbook by his former investigative news partner Michael Olesker — was always “braver than anybody” in the News American newsroom, “even when the going [got] roughest.”

From facing down heroin dealers to covering corruption at the Baltimore courthouse, plus police spying and charity ripoffs, the two were at their best as a team in the mid-1970s, when what the world knows today as “investigative journalism” had its beginnings during and following the Watergate scandal of the Nixon Administration.

Olesker also credits Nawrozki with taking “the lead” in writing about “problems facing Vietnam [War] veterans on their return to the United States.”

Nearly 40 years later, Olesker reminisces about how Nawrozki “came off Belair Road and Erdman Avenue, and a Baltimore City College high school education, to find work… as a sports reporter under the News American’s John Steadman,” who for part of a seven-decade career attended and reported on every Super Bowl beginning with the game’s inception in 1967.

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Featuring live music 5 nights a week, Tin Roof is the Inner Harbor’s newest restaurant. (VoB Photos/Eddie Applefeld)

NASHVILLE CLUB IN MARKET PLACE
OFFERS FOOD & DRINK WITH MUSIC
TO INNER HARBOR PATRONS

Open late seven nights a week,
featuring ‘Tenn-Mex’ menu,
especially ‘chicken tortas’
 
By Eddie Applefeld
 
It seems to me as if Power Plant Live! in Market Place downtown would be a good location for a business. For one thing it is in the heart of the city, meaning it is surrounded by other attractions. That should mean more people milling around on the streets checking out the different venues.

In Power Plant Live! alone there are at least a dozen places to go. But over the years the location has seen numerous turnovers. Not exactly sure why that happened, but it did.

Recently I made my first visit to a new venue on the block:  Tin Roof, which bills itself as “a live music joint,” joining other Power Plant Live! tenants such as Rams Head Live! and Howl at the Moon, that feature live music. It opened last spring in the space formerly occupied by Kettle Hill, an American-themed bar/restaurant that shut down abruptly in November 2012 after operating for less than eight months after taking over the location from Mondo Bondo Italian Bistro.

Tin Roof opened in May, and my guess is this restaurant/bar/lounge has a very good chance of being a success. It seems perfectly suited to the clientele who are apt to be at Power Plant Live! — namely young adults, who don’t leave the house on weekends until after 10 pm.

It’s casual, both in dress and attitude, and the prices are reasonable. But maybe best of all, there’s lots of beer on tap and live music five nights a week. Whether your taste in music leans in the direction of Top 40, rock or country, you’ll be in the right place.

The food is termed “Tenn-Mex,” which makes sense because the national headquarters for the company is in Nashville. There are 14 locations across the country, mainly in the south and east, but the restaurant and live music chain also has at least one location in California.

Accordingly, the signature dishes include chips ’n’ salsa, BBQ brisket nachos, quesadillas and chicken torta. Definitely a leaning to the south.

I never particularly cared for quesadillas so I had to be coerced into trying theirs. And guess what? I was glad I did.

I actually had three. Okay, maybe not a big deal to you, but to me, well, it was an unusual culinary leap.

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Pop-Tarts celebrated its 50th anniver- sary last week, providing cardboard-tasting crust & jelly-flavored breakfast/ late-night snacks mainly to Americans.

DOES TRAVEL BY EX-POTUSES TO RAISE MONEY
COST AMERICAN TAXPAYERS EVEN MORE
THAN CAMPAIGN CASH THEY RAKE IN?

Barbara Mikulski wastes U.S. Senate’s time extolling Orioles’ magic
as local area newscasters morph into bush-league cheerleaders

PANETTA LAUNCHES HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN
WITH ATTACK ON FORMER BOSS OBAMA

Pop-Tarts celebrates 50 years of cardboard-tasting crust & jelly;
Téa Leoni stars as thinly disguised clone of former First Lady
 
By David Maril
 
While trying to determine why Pop-Tarts, a toasted breakfast pastry that seems like nothing more than fruit-flavored jam in a pocket of cardboard-tasting crust, have remained popular for 50 years, it’s interesting to note the following:

  Any time Barack Obama, or any other sitting president, makes an appearance in a city to participate in a party fundraiser, you might wonder if the money raised equals what’s spent on security and extra state and local traffic details. The President was in Baltimore recently to attend a fund-raising dinner.

When Obama, in the spirit of the Star Spangled Banner celebration, also made a quick visit to Fort McHenry, thousands of people either had to scrap most of their plans for the day or drastically alter their schedules because of unannounced road closures and hours of gridlock to clear a path for the presidential motorcade.

How many voters who have been inconvenienced, on roads and highways and in airports, by presidential visits, would object to legislation that prohibits U.S. presidents while in office from devoting travel time to attend fundraisers?

You can certainly make a case that the Commander-in-Chief is president of all the people and should not be touring the country panhandling for money to boost a particular political party or its candidates.

Let’s be clear however on one thing. This isn’t strictly an Obama issue. Most of his predecessors have followed the same fundraising practice. Some, to even greater extremes.

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As reported facetiously by the Onion (an online news outlet specializing in satire) following TMZ’s release of initial Ray Rice battering video, Commis- sioner Roger Goodell informs NFL players: “Murdering your wife will result in automatic four-game suspension.” (See the Onion, tinyurl.com/pjjvzqg)

PUNISHMENT IS PR-DRIVEN:
GOODELL ‘REVISES’ SUSPENSION
WITH EYE TOWARD FAN APPROVAL

Politics & profit rule the day

CELEBRITIES PUT ON A PEDESTAL
 
By David Maril
 
With all that is going on in the world, what type of perspective does American culture convey when you examine the intense, never-ending media coverage of the sorry Ray Rice domestic assault case?

Sure, the public can’t seem to get enough video clips of the shocking and chilling images of a former NFL football hero slugging his then-fiancée in an elevator and dispassionately dragging her on the floor to the hotel hallway like a piece of discarded, damaged furniture.

We are obsessed by celebrities. Just because a running back can gain 100 yards and score a few touchdowns in a football game, we wear jerseys with his uniform number, buy posters with his image, and listen to his sales pitch when he’s paid to tell us what clothes to wear and which cars to drive.

Fame and wealth go a long way. Thousands of adults will stand in line and push through crowds to get a glimpse of celebrities or pay money to have them scribble their names on a souvenir or scrap of paper.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether the celebrity is intelligent or stupid. Most of us don’t care if the celeb has a sense of humor or is a bore.

In most cases, we have no idea or concern whether a big-name athlete, movie star or famous entertainer is a decent person or a jerk.

When I was a sports writer, I’d often have people I met say, “Wow, you get to go into the locker rooms and talk to all these famous athletes. What a great job.”

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