It is snowing. Sigh.
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It is snowing. Sigh.
:0!Quote:
Originally Posted by puglogic
(It will happen here soon enough.)
oy oy oy. Our excellent rice cooker of a dozen years gave up the ghost and I had to shop for a new one. While I don't really mind how much I pay, I'd like to NOT pay for digital crap that I won't use. I wanted a pan that comes out and I wanted the unit to have some heft and solidity. Got the first ting but not really the second thing.
Went to Target and bought one, but not without some angst on my part in trying to match up sample machines with items in boxes with shelf tags. I thought that the unit we picked out was $59 but the cash register said $36 so ummm. I don't feel like I got a bargain, I wanted to see what the $56 unit was like.
We've had 3 rice cookers in our married life and this one that just went bad was by far the longest lasting one. And, it was FAST and it also seems to sense white rice from semi-brown to brown/black rice. I will miss it.
Just had to scan 21 pages from our 2013 federal and state tax returns -- two-thirds of which have absolutely nothing to do with my personal income -- to send them to the lender refinancing my rental property. This despite signing and sending forms allowing them to request those very same tax forms electronically from TIIC. >:( And sending them, clear-text, in batches lest Yahoo think I'm spamming the world 1.5 Megabytes at a time.
I wouldn't have minded so much if I could have filtered the unnecessary pages. Or if I'd never filled out the permission form in the first place. But that's bureaucracy for ya. As a time-waster, this is right up there with entering dozen-digit account numbers on the phone keypad only to be asked by the representative as soon as you get to speak with them, "Can I have your account number, please?"
One of my most time-honored quotes is, "I waste the most time on anything we're discussng for the third time" (Steve Murphy, President & CEO of Rodale Inc.). If we weren't talking real money here ... but I'm still going to complain about the insecurity of this mechanism.
Woke up sick on my birthday with a whopper of a head cold. After I dragged myself out to dinner with my mom, I feel like ca-ca and am finally admitting that I am sick, not just being lazy. At least I took tomorrow off too, but laying around sick is not what I had in mind for my 52nd birthday.
Happy Birthday!!!!
Excessively-scripted call takers
I was supposed to get a call back this morning from "Jennifer" at T-Mobile re: the interminable saga of getting my phone unlocked. At least that's what I have in my notes from last Monday. The appointed call time came and went. Jennifer wisely has never provided her phone number, so I called T-Mobile.
"My name is [unintelligible]. And who [sic] do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?" The rep recited the T-Mobile's Approved Procedure For How To Unlock A Phone script from the beginning. I broke in to tell her the regular mechanism has not worked, which is how I ended up speaking to Jennifer -- with whom I want to speak again, per our agreement. "We're terribly sorry for your inconvenience and thank you for your patience."
The call-taker claimed she could not contact "Jennifer". I've worked in Telecom around enough call centers to know that's a pile of [redacted]. There always are ways to escalate a call. When I pushed, the agent magically was able to contact "Jennifer" and promised me that she would call me back "in a few minutes".
After 45 minutes of no phone ringing, I called T-Mobile again. "My name is [unintelligible]. And who [sic-squared] do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?" I asked what happened. "We're terribly sorry for your inconvenience and thank you for your patience." The agent "contacted" Jennifer's workgroup and told me that my trouble ticket said she'd call me on Monday. I remember distinctly agreeing to Friday to speed this up a little. Strange Thing #1: There's a date for Monday's call in the ticket, but no time of day. Like I have nothing else to do. Strange Thing #2: If this was in the trouble ticket history (which I know typically cannot be altered after the fact), why was I promised during the first call today a call-back that wasn't going to happen?
That this mess gets pushed another couple of days means little after weeks of working on it. What really bothers me is the genuinely insincere concern expressed while agents recite their scripts and whatever else pops into their heads. The trouble ticket is there to document the problem. For all the verification one has to do before getting to any agent, the least they could do on a call-back is to take a minute to read the freeping history. I'm sure T-Mo wants to "excite" its customers with customer service -- but not this way. >:(
Jennifer/T-Mobile almost pulled this mess out of the fire by allowing me to get a replacement phone which could be unlocked. We've been with them for 12 years, which is generations long in the mobile business. But we can be treated like this for a whole lot less money every month. If what T-Mo has to sell is their customer service, they dropped the ball and then went after it with a spike. If I had a shred of wanting to stay with T-Mobile before, it's really gone now.
Day three, and I'm still sick :( I just had to call in and miss another day of work tomorrow (we're not allowed to work around food when you have a fever, obviously). It's been going up all day, even after taking Ibuprofin a few times.
On the bright side, my awesome ex-MIL left me my annual birthday check, so I am not going to worry about two days of lost wages and I'm not going to use up some of my accrued time off either (I'm saving that for next year's road trip).
How easy would it have been, US Bank, to see that I submitted two humongous payments online within seconds of each other, and instead of telling me to "check with my bank" about why the payment was returned, say to yourself, wow, look at that, a mistake must have happened and I'll offer to refund this customer's "returned payment" fee? Because, um, duh, you KNOW why the payment was returned!! Because it was submitted to you twice!! And now there is no balance on her account except for your fee sitting there! No, let's make her have to push and ask for that. Absolutely ridiculous.
So sick, abscessed tooth, haven't eaten for two days, taking Doxycycline. Getting the tooth out at soon as infection is gone. Ouch ouch ouch.