Book ‘Em

A few months ago, a friend of mine gave me some interesting advice. “When you’re at a bookstore”, she said, “talk to the girls.” Sunday afternoon, I was at a bookstore, and I saw a real cutie standing there.

I’m terrible at opening lines, so the best that I could come up with was: “Hi, I see that you’re standing exactly nowhere near The Da Vinci Code.”

She shot me a curious look, and then said, “And what’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, nothing”, I said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Actually”, she said, “I was looking for something in self-help.”

“Oh”, I said, and kind of blushed.

“No, not really”, she said. “I was looking for bargains. What are you looking for?”

“Umm”, I said. “I tried to find a good technical book on ‘blah blah blah‘, but they didn’t have it.”

Her eyes glossed over.

I continued. “Since they didn’t have what I was looking for, I mixed some books about the Kama Sutra into the Physics section”, I explained. “Then I was going to leave, but I saw you first.”

At first her guys grew wide. Then they grew wider, and she started laughing.

She reached into her purse and handed me her phone number.

Realizing Value

I hate it when dumb things happen, in particular when these dumb things cannot easily be explained. Before you continue reading, I will note that this entry has nothing to do with a girl.

Yesterday, after a 2-hour drive into work, I noticed that my engine light was on. That is, the car-shaped light that has a wrench icon in it had decided to pay me an, umm, enlightening visit. This was unfortunate, in part because I knew that I’d have another lengthy drive home at the end of the day. Further, my car is less than two years old. Even further, I don’t like dealing with car dealerships, which is what I’d be in for since my car is still under warranty.

I called the dealership when I got to work. I explained the noises that the car was making, how the fancy “car in pain: with wrench” light suddenly appeared, and wanted to setup an appointment. Long story short. I took the car to the dealership today, and 2 hours later, I had a diagnosis, which, in short, was: “If you pay us $250, we can fix a factory defect.”

Excuse me, what now?

But they assured me that I wouldn’t notice the problem in the summer (funny, how it’s exactly not the summer, or even exhibiting summer-like climate at this time), so it’s probably not much of a problem now either.

Do people pay $250 to remediate non-problems?

With their assurance, and how they reset the car-wrench-light, I paid them $79 for the diagnostic session. And I was on my way.

Towards the end of my journey home, the car-wrench-light appeared. I could understand if it turned green, but alas, no. It did not have the decency to be any color but amber.

Son of a bitch.

It’s subzero outside. I can’t wait until the drive home at 9pm, when I’ll end up in some ditch. Maybe I can figure out a way to suppress the engine light for long enough that I can trade the car in for something that doesn’t suck so much? Without a doubt, there are wholesalers out there who probably deal exclusively in amber-lighters. Goodbye, dear car. You and I will part company in May.

Since I’m on the car rant, let’s talk about the road conditions in New England. They’re deplorable. For a collection of states that tax people so heavily, there’s really no excuse why roads are not overhauled more often — in favor of pothole patching.

Thing is? They patch potholes year ’round, including during the winter. Patching a pothole during the winter is like shaving over a pimple. It’s all solidified and under the surface until you knick it’s head off. Then? You get puss, and a large, unattractive hole.

Rokken II

A funny thing happens to me when I get really, really upset. At first, I’m sad, like I’ve had a great loss. And then, the more that I analyze and rationalize, I get really angry, in particular when I know that I’m right. Yesterday was one of those days.

But I’m not the type to wallow. My preference is to throw all of my time and energy into something else. In this instance, I spent almost all day yesterday playing very loud music in between checking and reponding to email, and seeing if I had any voicemail messages. Instead of making angry phone calls or sending inappropriate email, I smashed on my guitar and bass strings. I wrote some new lyrics. Everything was OK. At the end of yesterday, I had a migraine, which was bound to have happened. I’m surprised that the migraine hadn’t come earlier, like on Sunday, but whatever. I didn’t feel sad anymore, and the sting of the previous days’ events had really subsided.

This is not to say that I’m going to seek a hot date for this weekend (please, I’m not a dating machine!), but I can feel that maniacal edge wearing off.

Assisted Automation

Like seemingly every other corporation in America, my cellphone provider was acquired by another company. This, under most circumstances, wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that both the old company and the new kind of, well, suck it hard.

The only benefit to this acquisition, in my own eyes, was that I could replace my existing, crappy, 450-minute per month plan with a 1250-minute per month plan with the new company — for the same exact price. I don’t know how this provision was actually possible, given its obvious benefits to the consumer, but I decided to find out more about it. I read their terms online, and after doing some studying, realized that I could easily switch plans and contracts so long as I upgraded my cellphone itself. Through an online special, I could actually get a new cellphone for zero dollars. What? Uhh, okay. Sure, I’m fine with free cellphones, in particular if they came to be free through legitimate means, like by not rolling over a crack dealer. I followed the instructions on their webpage and completed the upgrade process. I should expect my new service and phone within days.

But what really happened?

Apparently, there’s a bug in the application where it, well, just doesn’t work at all. So I ran through the process again, unfortunately with the same results. Decidedly, I blamed the failures on some strange 2004-2005 “New Year’s Bug” as I, after all, had attempted to slog through a web application after spending a couple of hours drinking by myself. I figured that I’d just go to their retail store on the next day that it’d be open, and everything would get all sorted out.

Of course, interacting face to face with a clerk was of even less value. “Oh no”, they told me, “if you started your service transition online, but it didn’t work, things are already screwed up — and they’ll get worse if we try to fix it here!”

Finally, I decided that my only course of action was to call my (new) cellphone provider for a heart-to-heart chat.

After waiting — on hold — for 10 minutes, I decided to break protocol and re-dial their 800 number. And after I redialed? I would answer every automated question incorrectly so that I’d be forced to chat with a human. Apparently, by typing a series and combination of numbers that would only have been possible had they been entered by a marmet or by smacking phone buttons with a kitchen utensil or other blunt object, I offended the system enough that it patched me immediately to an operator.

“Your call will be processed in the order that it was received”: my ass.

Operator: Sir, how might I direct your call?
Me: Well, I’m not sure.
Operator: How do you mean, sir?
Me: (playing dumb and innocent) I’m not sure, because I just tried to spend $200 with your company, and neither the internet or the people at the stores know how to take it.
Operator: So, are you saying that this is a billing question?

(Obviously, things weren’t going very well.)

Me: Kind of, but I’m having all kinds of problems upgrading my service to new-company-name-here, and I’ve been able to get no assistance.
Operator: Sir, I can help you with that.

No kidding? Wow.

So, after answering a series of questions, I was told that my service had been upgraded. But there was a problem.

“Don’t you need me to get a new phone?”, I asked the operator.

This request positively and absolutely blew her mind. I could practically hear fragments of her skull ricocheting off the telephone receiver on her end of the connection.

“No, sir, through our customer service number, you don’t have to get a new phone.”, she explained.

I didn’t dare explaining what the website told me about my contract, my obligations to it, and how that meant I had to get a new phone. So, I did the simplest thing (with the prospects of my cell phone service continuing to function — in the back of my mind all the while); I just asked for a new phone.

To this, the operator transferred me to a customer service representative. This, of course, made me wonder what she operator was doing if she, in fact, wasn’t a customer service representative?

A super-perky customer service representative joined the call, and the former, supposedly non-customer-service-representative dropped off the call. The super-perky customer service representative, of course, re-asked all of the questions that I just answered. And after understanding what it was that I actually wanted, did the unthinkable.

They opened up a web browser and started to fill the order for the cell phone upgrade: online. In fact, not only did they fill the order online, they were clearly using the same, exact application that had shafted me twice already — even after I’d explained how the application had misbehaved. “But, whatever”, I hoped, “maybe their version of the application is different since they work for this preposterous telecommunications provider.” After I answered a series of extremely familiar questions, I heard a loud beep in the background.

“Uh oh”, said the customer service representative.

“Let me guess”, I said, “it’s just given you the error about how my location doesn’t match the area where I’ll have a service plan?”

“Yeah! How’d you know?”, she asked.

“Because, I’ve been through this twice already.”, I noted.

Luckily, perky customer service rep had seen this before, and immediately called technical support on the phone. Funny, now that I think about it, because — I had just used the same application (twice) and failed (twice), and I was calling her for technical support. So, in essence, it took 6 people — twice removed — to provide front line support for an application and its ill-behavior.