Isn’t it great living in a material world? That’s what I found out last week after writing about my customer service woes.  We’ve got wars and famine and earthquakes and nuclear material missing, but  smile when you sell me my double skinny iced caramel macchiato and organic almond biscotti, dammit!

Other people seemed to want to vent, too, so today I’m opening the e-mail and sharing:

* “I think sales people are not trained in customer service because their employer doesn’t know what that means … so many places you go to shop and they are so busy chit chatting and paying no attention to you.”

* “Cindy, part of your column was quoted by our pastor in his Sunday sermon yesterday. His comment was that if you thought service was bad here, you should go to St. Louis.” (Where said pastor  once lived.)

* One woman’s explanation of retail rudeness: “I believe it is because people are not raised to respect others, (they think) a job is a paycheck and lack of training.”

* From a woman who works in telephone customer service: “I have been screamed at and cursed at; I have had people chewing, smacking, slurping and belching in my ear. People have been using the toilet (forcefully, from the sound), brushing their teeth, driving and even indulging in lewd behavior (with a partner or alone) while on the phone.”

(I heard similar stories from people who worked at customer service counters.)

* A couple of reader pet peeves: “When my husband and I enter a restaurant, we are greeted by the host/hostess: ‘Hi, guys, table for two?’ The last time I checked, I wasn’t a guy. As I am paying for my groceries, the cashier hands me my receipt and says, ‘Have a good one.” No more ‘Thank yous’ in their vocabulary.

* I also opened up my Lincoln Life blog for people to rate the best and the worst in customer service. You can check it out, or chime in at www.journalstar.com/blog/lincolnlife.php. Scroll down until you come to the “Customer What?” heading.

Here are a few other updates from recent columns:

* The column on the “I (HEART) BOOBS” T-shirts worn by some college groups at the recent Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk resulted in a flood of calls for the shirts. (Profits go to cancer research.)

On the flip side, a group called the Women & Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania put together a successful campaign against some indisputably offensive tees being sold at Abercrombie & Fitch. (The shirts featured the sayings: “Who needs brains when you have these?” and “I had a nightmare I was a brunette.”) The clothing company has stopped selling the shirts.

(Reminds me of the talking Barbie doll who said, “I hate math!”)

* It’s always embarrassing to misuse a word. But to misuse a word in a column about words, that’s uber (extremely) embarrassing. Although national Scrabble champion David Wiegand might legitimately use both the words cache (a safe place for hiding things) and cachet (prestige) on a Scrabble board, a reporter should never use cache to indicate cachet. My apologies.

* A column on fired BryanLGH Medical Center nurse Pam Wagner touched some nerves. People wrote about everything from the lack of loyalty in the working world to Bryan’s building boom to good wishes for Pam and her future employment.

At least one reader was brutal: “Nothing in this life is certain, except for death.”

(Pam is looking for, but has yet to find, a new job.)

* Remember Esther Sturgeon? She’s the 92-year-old widow whose husband gave her a lifetime subscription to Reader’s Digest in 1937. After George died she called the magazine and told them to stop sending issues because the subscription was in George’s name and she didn’t want to “cheat them.”

The Reader’s Digest people heard about the column and sent Esther a lovely coffee table book on orchids and another lifetime subscription to Reader’s Digest. 

*  In late April I wrote a column that began: “I own two potholders. Both of them thinner than a $200 prom dress.”

The column was really about a group of women who met every month and gave each other the kinds of gifts they might receive at bridal showers. The fallout for me was a lifetime supply of potholders, ranging from a trendy red silicone potholder to handmade quilted mitts.

(My second line was: “My only cookie sheet has a black patina.”)

Since my last update, my last kid has gone off to college, the Hunt Sisters have been deployed to Iraq, Tom Cruise has stopped bashing pharmaceuticals and proposed to Katie Holmes, Michelle Wie turned pro and a line from a column on Tropical Storm Cindy sounds like I actually knew something: “If they have a record year, like 1933, they’ll make it all the way to Hurricane Wilma.”

And I still didn’t win the Powerball.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.