Paula's Blog

Okay... look at this picture:



This is the Czech Victoria's Secret Model Karolina Kurkova. Here she is modeling a bikini at the Sao Paulo Fashion Week last week in my hometown, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Now look again and tell me, is she fat???

According to a Brazilian fashion critic, apparently she is. This girl has been getting harshly criticized in the fashion industry and even called "unprofessional" for showing up "sloppy, chubby, with love handles and cellulite."

Ok, who doesn't have at least a little bit of cellulite??? I think the girl looks healthy and could even use a few more pounds.... isn't that what people are supposed to look like?

Now, I've read a lot of about this yesterday, and saw people saying that for one of the highest paid top models in the world, she should be looking flawless and she is not up to catwalk standards.... I happen to think that catwalk standards should be the same standards as any human being's standards. If catwalk standards mean looking anorexic and sick, then the fashion industry's message is a very, very ugly one. That's just sad.

Now what I really wanted to see was a picture of each and everyone of the people saying that girl is fat... I'm sure they are gorgeous, right?

So, what do you think???

Ok... I really didn't feel like writing lately, but I really need to get this out.

What happened to "being nice to customers and actually trying to help"??

I could throw a million cases here of bad customer service I seem to observe everywhere, from register people and waiters seeming to be bothered by customers presence or basically throwing your food or product in front of you, to really unpleasant experiences with people not willing to do their jobs and not even putting an effort to smile occasionally, or actually meaning it when they say "have a good day", or "good morning" (which right now seems to be just protocol).
It really brightens my day when someone smiles at me or treats me with respect and cordiality and I am always polite to people who are working with customer service, because really, they are there for you, the customer and they deserve respect. But it really upsets me when customers get treated like they are bothering the representative by just entering a store and asking about a service or product. A lot of customers representatives seem to forget that their job entails dealing with customers, and that their behavior makes part of the selling of a product. I honestly refuse to buy a product from a store that I have been treated poorly. Sometimes I wish some of them worked on commission, and actually tried to be nice.
Really, I understand... everyone has bad days, not everyone likes their jobs, but would it hurt to be nice to people???? I sincerely do try to be even nicer to people around me when I'm having a bad day. It just makes life so much less bitter.

I could go on and on with this, but let's get an example, shall we?

My purse got stolen at the U of M Dearborn field house while I was shooting a video for the school's rugby team in February. I ran to a police station and filled a report, and called all of my credit card companies right away.
American Express was the fastest, and the best customer service of all the 3 or 4 I had to call that night. They helped me calm down and got my 2 cards cancelled right away, gave me information of where my cards were used that night, including the addresses of the gas stations my stolen card was used.
My Chase Visa was a bit of a hassle and it took a while talking to a machine to actually cancel my card, but it was done.
National City was a big pain in the butt, because you cannot get rid of that machine talking to you and asking you all of the information that just got stolen and you don't have in front of you, and hanging up a few times on me because I didn't have my account number. But, after a while, they canceled that account too.

In case you were wondering, I did regret having all of these cards in the first place.

There was a last card though... a Citi American Airlines Advantage Master Card that I had never used in my life, and just had it in my purse because of the mileage program. That was used by the people who stole my card too and when I called to cancel it, they said it all would be taken care of and I didn't need to worry about it.

The next days and weeks following the theft, I called all of the credit card companies to follow-up on the proceedings of investigation/refunding, and everyone of them told me that everything was being taken care of and I was going to get refunded.

Oh... after numerous calls for weeks to the detective that was supposed to call me the next day, the Dearborn police told me they wouldn't even send a unit to the gas stations to try and see if they had a camera or try to investigate anything. They told me that even if they did have, and I quote "some black guy" in the tape using my credit card, first, they wouldn't be able to identify them, and second, they couldn't prosecute them because it doesn't prove that this person stole my card (even though it is illegal to use someone else's credit card), so basically, they didn't care and I just wasted my time filling that report and hoping that police would actually do their job. That REALLY pissed me off.

Well... even though I had all of my personal belongings and documents stolen, I did get refunded by American Express, Chase and National City for the money they spent on my cards. But remember that mileage Master Card that I had never used?? Well... that was taking a while... until I decided to call them and ask. The representative told me they were taking care of it. I even asked if they thought it would be best if I paid the amount on the card and waited on the refund later, and he said that I didn't need to pay for it, since it wasn't my fault. Ok, I thought... About 4 months later, I get a call from a collection company, telling me I owe charges on that card. I then called Citi again and they told me I never filled out a form they supposedly sent me regarding the stolen card, so the charges were never formally dealt with on the theft department, and there were a few late charges on top of that too... I paid it and asked them to send that form to me again (even though I never got the first one). I got the form a week later, filled out on the same day and sent it.

It has now been more than a month since then, so I decided to check my account to see if I was refunded... Nope, I had a balance of $395.00 sitting there... hey? what happened? I called... At this point I just wanted to close the account and solve this for good. I talked to some very nice people understanding the problem and willing to help, but after being forwarded 5 times to different departments, a got a major pain in the butt. The very unfriendly representative told me that it was my fault that the charges were on my card because it shouldn't have taken me so long to send that form. I politely told her the reason I didn't send that form earlier was because they hadn't sent me the form. She then said it was my responsibility to check my account and see the balance there. I told her I did see the balance and did call a few times asking about it and everybody told me it was being taken care of. She continued accusing me of being responsible for the whole situation. I asked where she was trying to go and she told me that I would have to accept those charges, since they had a policy that after so many days of the theft they couldn't investigate it, and could do nothing about it. When I told her the only reason it took so long was because THEY failed in sending me that form, she said I was being unprofessional. I said she was being unreasonable and I would not accept the charges. After politely trying to offend me for a few minutes, she finally gave up and said "Fine, I will write here that you will not accept the charges and we can close your account". I asked "Do I have to do anything else, will I be refunded?", she just said "yeah. Is that all?". When I said yes, she hung up the phone.

Now... is trying to blame the customer and not assume responsibility something we should expect from customer service???? Is that really customer service???
Whatever happened with customer satisfaction???

I'm sorry if this post is so long, but I just had to get it off my chest. I HATE BAD CUSTOMER REPRESENTATIVES!!!!

Let's just start by saying my first two weeks as an intern at FOX 2's web team have been pretty remarkable and educational. And I'm really not just saying that!
After last week's intensive training on all of the teams software, systems and processes, we started applying what we learned right away. We've been posting stories, cutting videos, and helping our team as much as we possibly can. We are 3 interns in our department, and I find it nice share this experience with Kelly and John. We try to help each other out whenever someone forgets a password, or a little step in the process, or even if someone just needs a little help in Photoshop. I think we all have been doing very good.

Coming to this internship, I had an idea that I would be exposed to some cool stuff that I had never experienced before... but I really under-estimated the "cool factor."
Let me tell you guys about my first "field trip" today... I think we all know that Michigan had a special visitor today: Mr. Barack Obama. So, Dennis, our boss, had the awesome idea to send us out to his appearance at the Macomb Community College with the news team. Me and John were assigned to go get whatever we could get from behind-the-scenes shots to reactions to Obama's speech. It was awesome that he trusted us and just told us to get whatever we could, with no pressure on our shoulders. The only problem: we had consumer-type mini dv cameras (translating: terrible audio, and not very good video quality) , and did not take a tripod (my back is still feeling this decision!)

And away we went... press badges and all. When we got there, we went straight to the press area and met our FOX 2 colleagues. We advised Al Allen and Charles Pugh that we would basically stalk them for the day and get to show a little bit of their "human side." They were very nice to us and didn't mind us bugging them with questions and filming them doing whatever it was that they were doing.
Obama's speech was delayed by about an hour, because his tour of the Chrysler Stamping Plant took longer than expected, so we were all patiently waiting for what he had to say.

I was pretty excited I would get to see what Obama had to say straight from his mouth. As I am not a citizen of this country (I'm from Brazil), I cannot vote here, but I am really interested in American politics, especially because the decisions made here will affect everyone, everywhere in the world. Because I was not there to make a decision on whether to vote Obama, Hilary or McCain, I decided I would just analyze Obama's intellectual character and ideologies. And I admit I was really blown away by his well-known charisma. Even if you are not an Obama supporter, you have to give this to him: he is a great speaker, and he does appear have good intentions in his mind. In person, Mr. Obama shows he really cares for what he was saying and for his country... and this was just a beautiful thing to see.

After his conference, it was time for Charles Pugh's one-on-one with Mr. Obama, and for our surprise, me and John got to join him as well. But first we had to wait... with the Secret Service staring at us. Now, I cannot describe the feeling of waiting in that corridor for the opportunity to be face-to-face with a person that might be the next president of the United States. I hope Charles Pugh never reads this, but I think even he was kind of nervous too!
When we were called in and entered that small room, Mr. Obama was very courteous and polite. He welcomed us 4 into the room, and them him and Charles went straight into the interview.... and my heart was pounding there for those 10 minutes. After the interview was done, Charles had asked me to take a picture of him and Mr. Obama, which I did. As I was done taking the picture and showing it to Charles, Barack Obama was right in front of me, offering a hand shake and a smile (YES, I WAS EXCITED). He asked me how I was doing and I briefly introduced myself. He asked me about my hometown in Brazil and seemed genuinely interested in the conversation. With all of that hospitality I risked asking for a quick photo with him, to which he replied "Of course! No problem!" And here's the proof:



So... yes, we really got a lot more than what we were expecting to get in this experience. I would never even imagine I would have an opportunity like that when I left the studio this morning... really, what an amazing experience!!!
After this I'm really ready for whatever comes, but I seriously can't imagine anything cooler than what happened today happening again.

I think you guys are probably tired of reading this thread already, but I really wanted to share this great day with you guys!

So if you guys are interested in our first little snippet of behind-the-scenes from today (that's all we really had time for after we got back to the office), you can check it out here: Behind the Scenes at Obama's Visit to MCC

Please keep in mind our lack of proper equipment and time to put a decent package together, but I promise we'll do better next time!
So... enjoy and thanks for reading!

Hey everyone,
My name is Paula, but you can just call me Paulinha. I'm from Sao Paulo, Brazil and moved to Michigan 5 years ago.
I have just graduated 2 weeks ago with a bachelors degree in Communications (Electronic Media) from U of M - Dearborn, and this is a pretty exciting week for me.
I have started as an intern at FOX 2 Detroit's Web Team, and I'll be publishing stories on our website and shooting some stuff for the website once in a while (I still have no idea of what that means, but I'm sure I'll find out soon), so I hope you all read and watch it all, and make sure to leave your comments.

This week was training week for us interns and I got to learn a lot and also walk around the office and meet some pretty cool people. I also got to sit at the Control Room during the 5pm show and was fascinated watching the director and switcher doing their thing. Believe me, that room is awesome! It's nuts because it's live, and people are so into the show... I just loved it!

The other highlight of the office, as funny as it seems, is the restroom. You will not believe how cool that place is! They have everything there, from make-up kits to flat irons and such. The girly girl in me just freaked out.

Well, I was writting this while a video was loading on my computer, and it is almost done now, so I gotta go back to work.

I'm pretty excited and I think this will be a great summer, so guys, wish me luck!

Talk to you guys later!