They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere!!!

I worked as a Wireless Broadband Consultant for Telstra for a while and it never ceased to amaze me how monumentally stupid the customers could be.  I don’t mean the ones who have zero technical expertise because… well, that was me before they trained me.  No, I mean the customers who were simply incapable of following simple instructions or who were unable to answer simple questions or the ones who liked to blame you for things they had done or things that were literally outside your control.  I used to particularly love the people who would call up complaining that they couldn’t connect to the internet and you’d look up their account and inform them that they hadn’t paid their phone bills so their services had been suspended…. which would normally result in an indignant tirade about how had paid their internet bill but not the phone bill without being aware that one relied on the other. 

Good fun stuff like that.  I used to come home all the time with another stupid annecdote gained from ‘exposure’…. exposure to the public that is.  ‘Them’… the hidden massess… the hairy unwashed and uneducated miscreants who unfortunately make up far to large a percentage of the general population.  I’m not racist or bigoted but I am a rather unashamed snob who doesn’t like having to deal with ‘stoopid people’…. yes it’s a dreadful burden but I’m learning to live with it.  Naturally having worked in IT support, retail AND hospitality over the years I’ve seen more than my fair share.

Anyway… where was i?  General public … customer service… blah, blah, blah.  I found a cool website "The Customer is NOT Always Right".  I’ve been reading through their past entries over the last few days and there’s some perfect examples demonstrated exactly the sort of thing that I’m rambling on about..  The stunning level of stupidity and seemingly willful ignorance displayed in some of these is phenomenal.  I’ve cut and pasted a few favs below:

Fibbing Fail  Retail | Denver, CO, USA

Me: “Hi, how can I help you?”

Customer: “I need to return this d*** camera.”

Me: “Sure, was it not working?”

Customer: “I just don’t want it, okay?”

Me: “Okay. Have you opened the box yet?”

Customer: “Why does that matter?”

Me: “Well, as the sticker on the box says, if the box is opened and you return it, I have to charge you a restocking fee.”

Customer: “Oh. No… no, it hasn’t been opened.”

(I look and the box has been clearly opened, with a torn seal.)

Me: “Uh… are you sure it hasn’t been opened?”

Customer:  ”LOOK! ARE YOU CALLING ME A F***ING LIAR? Where is your manager? I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars here and this is how I’m treated?!”

Me: “Ma’am, if you just–”

Customer: “THESE PEOPLE CALL CUSTOMERS LIARS! DON’T SHOP HERE!”

Me: “Ma’am, I believe you! I will return it!”

Customer: “That’s right you will!”

Me: “Can I see your receipt?”

Customer: “It’s in the box.”

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Egocentrism Meets Geocentrism

Travel Agent | Pendel, PA, USA

Customer, calling from a cell phone: “Would you tell me how to get to your office?”

Me: “Sure, where are you now?”

Customer: “That is none of your business. Just tell me how to get there.”

Me: “But to do that, I need to know where you are starting from. Are you in our town?”

Customer: “I told you that is none of your $%@# business.”

(After few more exchanges of this sort…)

Customer: “You are an idiot. Let me speak to your manager.”

Manager, who overheard part of the conversation already: “May I help you?”

Customer: “Tell me how to get to your office.”

Manager: “Well, that depends on where you are starting from.”

Customer: “&@#$#!! Just $%%@# tell me how to get there.”

Manager: “Okay. See the next corner? Turn right there.”

Customer: *click*

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Living On The Edge

Ice Cream Shop | New York, NY, USA

(At an ice cream shop)

Me: “Would you like any mix-ins with that?”

Older woman: “Yes, I would like almonds. But not too many, because I’m allergic, and if I have too many I will die.”

Me:

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Today, All My Questions Shall Be Stupid

Retail | Somerset, UK

Customer: “What size is this rug?”

Me, reading label: “54″ x 72″.”

Customer: “So how big is that?”

Me: “In centimetres? It’s…”

Customer: “No, in inches.”

Me: “It’s 54 inches x 72 inches.”

Customer: “OK. And what colour is it?”

Me: “Lilac.”

Customer: “Right…and would it look good in my lounge?”

Me: “I don’t know…I’ve never seen your lounge.”

Customer: “No, I guess you haven’t. Do you think I have room for it?”

Me: ?@#!


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Military Intelligence

USMC (troubleshooter for f-18 jets) | MCAS Miramar, San Diego, CA, USA

Me: “Okay sir, can you hear me?”

Pilot: “Loud and clear. Okay, I have a problem with my radar…it won’t test and nothing is coming up in the O-F-F position.”

Me: “Well, sir, turn it to the O-N position and let me know how things work out.”
 

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Random Acts of Specificity

Sandwich Shop | Fort Collins, CO, USA

Me: “What else do you want?”

Customer: “Peppers.”

Me: “Which kind?”

Customer: “… Peppers.”

Me: “We have three kinds of peppers not including salt and pepper. Which kind of these do you want?”

Customer: “PEPPERS.”

Me: “Do you want banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, or green peppers?”

Customer: “PEP-PERS.”

Me: “Do you want these?” *holds up the green peppers*

Customer: “Yes, those! Jesus Christ, don’t you guys know what a green pepper is?!”

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Do Not Doubt The Credibility Of The Map

Travel Agency | Alaska, USA

Me: “Thank you for calling **** Travel, this is ****, how can I help you today?”

Customer: “Um, yes. You’re located in Alaska, right?”

Me: “Yes, sir.”

Customer: “Is that near Hawaii?”

Me: “No, sir. Not at all.”

Customer: “Yeah, I wanna talk to a manager. This map shows y’all are right next to each other, and I wanna know why one’s so dang hot and the other’s so dang cold.”

Me: “Sir, you’re actually reading the insets on a map of the continental United States. Alaska and Hawaii are several thousand miles apart.”

Customer: “I don’t believe you.”

Me: “I’m sorry.”
 

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Deep Pockets

ISP | Kansas, USA

Customer: “I’d like to buy the Internet, please.”

Sales: “The whole thing?”


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This Is What Hell Is Like

Tech Support | USA

(I had this conversation recently with a lady who swore she had been using computers since forever.)

Tech Support: “All right. Now click ‘OK’.”

Customer: “Click ‘OK’?”

Tech Support: “Yes, click ‘OK’.”

Customer: “Click ‘OK’?”

Tech Support: “That’s right. Click ‘OK’.”

Customer: “So I click ‘OK’, right?”

Tech Support: “Right. Click ‘OK’.”

(Pause.)

Customer: “I clicked ‘Cancel’.”

Tech Support: “YOU CLICKED ‘CANCEL’???”

Customer: “That’s what I was supposed to do, right?”

Tech Support: “No, you were supposed to click ‘OK’.”

Customer: “I thought you said to click ‘Cancel’.”

Tech Support: “NO. I said to click ‘OK’.”

Customer: “Oh.”

Tech Support: “Now we have to start over.”

Customer: “Why?”

Tech Support: “Because you clicked ‘Cancel’.”

Customer: “Wasn’t I supposed to click ‘Cancel’?”

Tech Support: “No. Forget that. Let’s start from the top.”

Customer: “Ok.”

(I spend the next fifteen minutes re-constructing the carefully crafted setup for this lady’s unique computer.)

Tech Support: “All right. Now, are you ready to click ‘OK’?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Tech Support: “Great. Now click ‘OK’.”

(Pause.)

Customer: “I clicked ‘Cancel’.”

(And people wonder why my mouse pad has a target on it labeled “BANG HEAD HERE.”)


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That last one sounds REALLY familiar 🙂
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This is why I try not to post in the mornings

I’m sitting here crying over dirty dishes.  Fucking dirty dishes in the sink.  My back hurts sooo much and I am so sick of being in pain all day… EVERY FUCKING DAY.  I’m can’t stop clenching my teeth as I type this 🙁   I try so hard to ignore it and just get on with it but sometimes it totally gets the better of me.  I hardly slept at all last night even with plenty of valium and other drugs on board.  I woke up so many times, my back hurting, burning sensations down my legs and my hands feeling like they were cramping.  I’ve had enough of all this shit. 

I. have. just. had. enough.

I haven’t been cooking much because it increases my pain to stand still at the kitchen bench and chop food or stir pots.  I literally can’t stand still for 5 minutes without ending up holding my breath and clenching my teeth against the pain – which is exactly what happens when I end up in a queue out shopping or at the bank or something.  I can’t lean over the sink to do the dishes and they pile up and pile up…. and I HATE waking up in the morning and having to prepare breakfast or fix the Small Child’s lunch in the middle of dirty kitchen.  I am getting so tired of having to rely on other people for every stupid little thing. 

I can’t vacuum the carpets.
I can’t mop the tiled floors. 
I can’t clean down the kitchen cupboards.
I can’t weed the damn garden.
I can’t wash the shower or bathtub.
I can’t hang the washing out on the clothesline.
I can’t dust things anything above my head height.
I can’t get up and change a fucking lightbulb.
I can’t push a trolley at the supermarket.
I can’t reach up and put away or pull out things from high shelves.
I can’t carry the damn groceries into the house.
I can’t pick up anything heavy… like a small dog or the Small Child.
I can’t … finish this list it goes on ad infinitum.

Clean the gutters?  Prune trees?  Wash the car? Mow the lawn?  Wash windows?  You’ve got to be kidding right?  My Mum who is in her late 50s can do all this stuff and I can’t.  It shits me to tears that I need to have other people do these things for me… things I would much rather do myself.  Hell I haven’t even felt up to holding my arms up long enough to wash my hair for the last three days… and I find it difficult to bend down in the shower to pumice my little feet for crying out loud.  Shave my legs?  Oh surely you jest.  😐

It’s no wonder I feel so damn cranky and depressed all the time which today is spilling over into not wanting to deal with ‘other people’.  I really feel like I just don’t want to be near anyone or have to talk to anyone or participate in anything that even remotely resembles social intercourse.   Chatting on MSN…. that’s about the best I think I can manage to do… it’s so much easier to lie and say ‘Good thanks and you?’ via MSN than it is to someone’s face or over the phone. 

So I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have anywhere I need to be right now.
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Good news on the doorstep…

I went to walk out my door today and was surprised to find a brown paper package all tied up with string… actually, no I can’t back that up.  It was a little brown cardboard box covered in one of those stick-on invoice/picking slip things – which doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?  🙂   Ohh… where did it come from?  Who sent it?  Oh shit no!  It came from the Metropolitan Museum Gift Shop!!!

Fuck!  Fuck!  Fuck!!!   Don’t say I’ve gone and done it again!!! 

Running through my head was "I’m sure I didn’t buy anything from the Met gift shop!  I know I didnt.  No.  No, of course I didn’t…  …. did I???"  Since I’ve been on all these crazy arsed medications my short term memory has been shot to shit.  There’s been a couple of parcels turning up here (mostly books) that I didn’t remember ordering and even one situation where two copies of the same book arrived about 10 days apart – Renaissance Jewels, Gold Boxes, and Objets De Vertu… great book by the way .   I had totally forgotten that I had bought it and went and bought it again!!!  That particular little cock up worked out okay though… I gave the second copy to Uncle Surly for his birthday as it was a book that was right up his alley anyway.

But as I was opening this box today I was wracking my drug-fucked little brain trying to remember if I had bought anything from the Met and desperately hoping that I hadn’t spent too much money without remembering having done so?!?!?  But lo’ and behold I open it up and it was an unexpected gift!   For me! 

Just before Christmas i had published a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ list of gift suggestions for Mr K who had offered some insult or other and it seems one of my dearest friends must have clicked through on one of the links and thoughtfully sent me this beautiful Russian mirror pendant –  

 
Thank you Poppet!
You’re gorgeous!

 
I am totally touched… but not ‘touched’ as in ‘touched in the head’ kinda "touched"… though you did have me worried for a minute there!  I miss you heaps and can’t wait for you to come home  🙂
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I am all astonishment!

Should this not turn out to be some sort of bad joke the perpetrators ought be hung, drawn and quartered….  Have you no compassion for my poor nerves!

9781594743344_norm

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Quirk Books
By Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
5-1/4 x 8 in; 320 pp ; Paperback
ISBN 9781594743344
ISBN10 1594743347

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.
Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature.

Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn. He lives in Los Angeles.

The litmus bed.

I have to make my bed everyday…. and I mean I literally HAVE to do it.  I simply can not leave the bed unmade.  I detest seeing the bed unmade and I can’t get into an unmade bed in the evening without making it first (even if I’m staying in a hotel or something).  I don’t know what it is but I am compelled to do it.  I feel indescribably uncomfortable if my bed is unmade… it’s not dissimilar to the feeling I used to get if I went to work without any make up on.  It’s that feeling of something being not quite being right or not quite decent or proper…. a very unsettled feeling that remains with you.

If I’m down with the flu or home sick for some reason – I will make my bed and go rest on the lounge instead.   I’ve had maybe a dozen rather invasive IVF surgeries which frequently caused severe abdominal discomfort that naturally required several days of convalescence… on these post operative occasions I would get up and very slowly and painfully (it might take me 20mins) make my bed and would then go couch for the day.   Even when the Small Child was an infant keeping us up all night, I would have to make the bed first thing and could not manage to nap when he did during the day.  After the last car accident I spent several weeks feeling like I could hardly move yet – I still HAD to make my bed and would set up camp in the living room instead.

I can’t sleep in … EVER (well not without heavily over-medicating myself) and when I wake up I am usually so pained from laying down still for several hours (if I’m lucky) that I have to get up as soon as consciousness returns.  It’s the pain that drives me out of bed as soon as I wake, so there’s never been laying around in bed on the weekends to read the newspapers or having a lazy morning.  I very very rarely go back to bed during the day to lay down regardless how crap my back feels or how tired I am…. though God knows I’d probably benefit from it.  Sigh… it’s just not in my make up to do so. 

Anyway, I’ve noticed since my last car accident that making the bed has turned into a very obvious indicator of how crap my back is on any given day.  If I get up and am able to make the bed before going off for a cuppa and a heatpack then I’m probably not feeling too pained yet and might have a chance of having a relatively ‘good back day’.  If I get up, go for heatpack and tea BEFORE being able to face the bedmaking… then I’m probably not quite doing so well.  If the bed is still unmade by 10am or so it’s because my back is causing me too much pain to get in and do it.  And I can feel the bed lurking in my room taunting me because I don’t have the requisite freedom of movement or the required energy to feel up to making it. 

If, come 3pm, my bed is still not made… you can normally tell by the look on my face that the back pain has totally gotten the better of me that day.  Recently I noticed the week after going to the Cirque du Soleil I probably averaged only managing to make my bed by mid-afternoon every day for the entire week I was so stirred up.   🙁

Maybe it could be useful as a quantifable measure of what my pain levels are like for the day.  Maybe I should be writing down what time I made the bed as a record of how much the back pain is bothering me each day.   Or maybe… and this is a totally preposterous suggestion… maybe I should get over it and forget about making the damn bed altogether!
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