Friday, January 27, 2012

Stupid and Angry

I'm angry today and feeling stupid now.

Let's say your internet company calls you up and says, "Your internet isn't working, we'll send a new router to you and you'll have it in 3-5 days."  And a week and a half goes by and you don't have the new router yet, so you call them back and say, "I thought you were going to send me a new router.  Has it shipped yet?" And they tell you, "Oh, we issued a new router but there was something wrong with it so your account is on hold."

"Why is my account on hold?"

"There was something wrong with the router."

"What?"

"Please hold."  *muzak*  "Okay, we've located a working router and taken your account off of hold and you'll have it tomorrow."

"Groovy, thanks."

So tomorrow comes and they sent the new router to your mom's house instead of your house.  So you call the delivery company and ask them to change the address (since your mom was smart enough to refuse the package) and they process your change of address request so that your router will be delivered to where you are between normal delivery hours the following day.

Except, the delivery guy shows up an hour late.  You've already left because you had other commitments.  You're hoping he'll not actually deliver your router since you're not there to receive it and will try again the next day but no, the tracking information for the delivery says he delivered it and left it outside the front door an hour after the front door is locked for the night.

So you hurry in the next morning, hoping to find your router waiting for you outside the front door, but it's not there.  It's not in the hallway.  It's not blowing down the street.  Your router is nowhere to be found and all the delivery company can say when you call them is that they don't know where it is, either, since the delivery guy said he left it at the front door.  And at this point, you've been without interweb for two weeks and it's getting ridiculous and you're frustrated and angry.  So you call your internet provider back and tell them that the delivery company lost your router and they need to run a track and trace on it and they need to disassociate the serial number of that router from your account since it was never in your possession and you don't know where it is and you don't want to be held responsible for something that the delivery company lost.  Your internet provider reports that router lost and after quite a bit more hassle, agrees to overnight another router to you, shipped to where you will be the next day when you will be there, because this whole thing is just a freaking mess at this point and you're freaked out and angry and you've been a model internet customer for a really long time and I'm sure they're pissed off that one of their routers is now lost, too.

And then, ten minutes later, your neighbor knocks on the door with your router that was delivered to him last night when the delivery guy showed up an hour late.

So I'm angry.  And frustrated.  And feeling stupid.  If the delivery company had just said they left it with my neighbor instead of at the front door, I would be in possession of my package now and all would be good.  As it stands, I have to camp out at home tomorrow until the delivery guy shows up with the replacement for the replacement for the replacement because someone got frisky and messed with my account in the first place.

And I will freely admit that maybe I should have waited a bit before completely freaking out on the delivery company and "internet service provider" (this has nothing to do with my interweb - it's an adjacent metaphorical story), but wouldn't you?  If sensitive information was supposedly left somewhere in the open where it then obviously wasn't?

I could use some happy today.  I could really use some happy.  I don't like feeling stupid and angry.  I don't like yelling at people on the phone.  I'm sure they are all very nice people who are just trying to do their jobs but when they can't answer my questions or provide reasonable solutions to my problems, I get frustrated and start to yell.  I don't like that.  I'm sorry if you are one of the people I yelled at today.  You didn't deserve that.  And if it helps at all, I'm mad at me, too, for not just waiting two hours to see what else would develop (even though I feel justified in my irritation at the incorrect information given to me).

So I'm sorry that I'm stupid and angry today.  I'm going to go try to find some happy now.