Dear #!@*&%$#!
Throwing a Verbal Folding Chair into the Right Field
Stands of Life
by Joe Mitchell
9/18/2004
Okay, who the hell declared 2004 "The Year of Administrative Incompetence"?
I have encountered a laundry list of paper-pusher yellow cards, both
corporate and government, enough to challenge the patience of Job and
make Rodin's "Thinker," a hunk of rock, get up and run screaming through
the streets of Paris. In light of the brainless bureaucratic boo-boos
I've faced this year, it's a wonder the guys with straightjackets haven't
yet come to put me on the short bus to lithium la la land.
Let me count the ways:
1) The great, "car dealer who won't honor the extended warranty you paid $3,000 for because he doesn't know drive train from a choo choo train and who forgot to turn-in the loan paperwork, thus leading to the repossession of my truck," imbroglio (okay, that one did turn-out to my advantage);
2) Followed by the "I know you have our rental car and need a ride back downtown from the hinterlands in order to return it, but call this guy and wait 2 months for him to call you back" debacle (and this was to my advantage, too- both 1 and 2 rendered free auto transport for five months- yup five months, right when I really needed it. I'm still waiting for Vito and Rocko to come bangin' on the door.);
3) Leading up to "Yes, we owe you $3,200 on your insurance claim, but the form with all the correct information you put on it just doesn't seem to contain all the correct information you put on it so you'll have to spend two days researching and writing an appeal and wait another 3 weeks with no income and be forced to eat the termites that have invaded the apartment on which you are behind on rent" incident;
4) Continuing with the "I know the doctor told you to call for the test results, but we can't give out that info over the phone so let me give a message to the doctor so he'll never call you back and when you finally decide to write a letter to the doctor enclosing an SASE we'll all act really suspicious when you call and ask for the mailing address and ask 'why are you writing a letter?' when you were just told why not 2 seconds ago and we won't know the physical address of the building we work in every day and put you on hold for 15 minutes while we go get it" scandal.
And it just seems to be snowballing at this point. The number of such incidents have become so great and so frequent that they just seem routine now. I've forgotten most of them like the lady on the phone at the pizza joint who says "I don't know" when I ask how much my order is or the cashier at the bookstore who gets indignant when I tell him he swiped each book twice, thus rendering 3 books for $64 rather than the proper $32. "That's how much they are," he says, so I spend ten minutes explaining the receipt to him and waiting another ten for a manager who tells the guy, "that's the third time you've done that this week" and neither of them apologize or even acknowledge me ten minutes later when I get the corrected receipt. They just look at me like I'm wearing a hat that says "Viva Osama Bin Laden" or something like that. Oh yeah, and I won't mention the two job interviews that cancelled at the last second after I spent an hour finding their offices. Strange how they both had the same excuse. "They're stuck in San Francisco." Damnit. I wanna be stuck in San Francisco But, no, I'm stuck in Sacramento with the anywhere blues again.
I won't mention what I get at the Post Office every time I'm there.
Through all this, not once did I lose my cool, or say a disparaging word. I was the picture of politeness.
But yesterday, the cheese finally fell off the cracker. It plopped on the floor and I stomped all over it, making it a permanent fixture of the kitchen floor. I don't think I just crossed the line. I think I set it ablaze.
I was just minding my own business on a Thursday night, revamping my web site for the benefit of some potential employers and service buyers. I'm totally psyched. The site is looking good, and I know I'm gonna blow the socks off these people. Now, my host is one of those freebies. Ads run at the top of all my pages. "This isn't so spiffy," I thought.
So I log onto my account at 0catch.com (yes, I'll name names- there are no innocents in this narrative) and plunk down $8.21 to upgrade my site. This would mean no more ads and that I could upload cool media stuff like video and audio and get more space and bandwidth and all that jazz. I even got 5 free email accounts. I was stoked to have the address basiljoe@basiljoe.0catch.com. The redundancy was just too cool.
So a few minutes after rendering my mark of the beast, all is in working order. Ads are gone, mp3's and the all the new pages I've been working on all day are uploaded after about 3 hours over the phone line and the new email address is functioning.
But the next morning, the email is not taking my password. I go to the site. My stuff's gone. The 0catch.com logo is there. Huh? The credit card is okay.
I send an email. Nothing for 4 hours.
I call.
I get a young guy. Sounds like he is in high school. I tell him what happened. He does some investigation. The site was shut down because a phone number I gave was disconnected. Huh? What number? He gives me the number that a member of the staff called for verification. This is a number that I did not put in the regular daytime, nighttime phone fields, but a number I put in the "comments" section with the notation "this is my new number as of 9/23/2004." Why are they calling that number on 9/18/2004?
I ask why this was done? The guy says, "I don't know. I didn't do it."
"Since you are talking to me now on one of my functioning numbers, can I get the site turned back on?" I ask. I get put on hold a few minutes.