They're driving me crazy!!!

I have had many epic battles but none so amusing. One of the epic-est was with the really bitchy person who would NOT approve interpreters for sozlet's birth. I vanquished her. (And while she's not the REASON I had a 56-hour labor and therefore racked up huge interpreter bills, imagining the smoke coming out of her ears when she saw said bills was about the only good thing about it...)

Oh...I wish you had a transcript of that one!!!


I bet you crossed your legs at the end just to cost her more!!!

I do, somewhere, since it was all via tty.

No idea where though.

You can imagine it anyway. I was in excruciatingly reasonable mode, while she got madder and madder. And then capitulated. Hee. It was fun.

Your stories reminded me so much of a section of the book I'm reading right now, "A Fraction of the Whole" by the Austrailian writer, Steve Toltz.

One of the characters writes a handbook for criminals. The section on mugging reads (typos mine):

If you wish to avoid the automated menu system, please press 5....

It IS fun when you keep your cool.

Lately, to my intense shame, I don't always do so....I think it's hormonal or some goddam thing.

Today (cringes in shame) I CRIED!!!

Like...it's been a really tough few weeks at work, and I am kind of sick....but still...


It had to do with the gate at the top of the ramp that leads from my building's lower carpark to the front street entrance...it's the disabled ramp, I guess.

Now, I am not really disabled, but I have stuffed my knee cartilage by using a walker/jogger with a steep incline for too long (plus something to do with why I need orthotics.) I am NOT to use stairs unless I really have to ...and if I do so more than a couple of times a week I get quite intense pain, and it worsens the more I use stairs....on my way to knee replacement, I guess. It's worse in cold weather, which we have now.

So...all the gates run on swipe cards. As soon as it rains, the reader for the gate in question stops working. Sometimes it works again when it dries out...often not.


Every winter I call the company that manages my building and tell them the gate has stopped working.

Every winter, there is a huge delay while they fix it......often several times during the winter....often because they don't give the right instructions to the repair company.

Every year I point out that there is an underlying problem, likely that the reader needs protection from the rain, and this needs to be addressed .....it isn't.


Nobody in the company checks that it is fixed.


So...this time it has been weeks.

When I ring and tell the guy who is supposed to handle it that it is still not fixed, he acts surprised.


On wednesday, I left a message on his machine, telling him that it is STILL not fixed, that it is a legal requirement that the building have disabled access, and that his company is failing in its legal duty...and that I want him to call back and explain why it is not fixed, whenit WILL be fixed, and what steps he plans to take to ensure that the work is actually done. I leave work, home and mobile numbers.

Nada...bupkis...gate still not working....pain in knees getting really severe.


I call company...guy not there....leave a message? Already have...speak to assistant? Sure...assistant not there.

So, there is no other time I can call, and it is Friday...so I ask to speak to manager.

Manager says "You want to complain about James?"

"Not so much...I want to complain about the gate"

"Oh, call James"

"James not there"

"Oh, call assistant"

"assistant not there"

"Leave a message for James"

"Been there, done that, want something done".


Manager looks up job on computer.......


"You want the ramp fixed?"

"NO!!! The ramp is fine!!!"

"Oh...you want the closing device on the gate fixed?"

"NO...well, yes, but that is a secondary problem"

"Oh, the reader needs fixing?"

"Yes"

"So what's the problem? We despatched that job three weeks ago"

"It hasn't been done"


Conversation continues and suddenly I am crying!!!!!!!


Oh the horror!!!




Gate was supposedly fixed today...but I haven't dared look.

clarke & dawe, eat ya hearts out!

Lol!!!! And indeed, last time money was snatched from us, I took off after the thief like a hare.....people grabbed him for me, but let him go before I got there, cos they thought I was yelling he had stolen a handbag, but it was actual cash.

Still, I hope it gave him a hell of a fright.


A friend recently did the same thing when her handbag was snatched.

The thief rifled through her handbag while they both ran...took her wallet from it...and dropped the handbag.

She and the female friend she was with scooped it up and kept running.

He began to open wallet, still running, looked back, and dropped wallet unopened!!!


Friends very puffed, but triumphant.

You're a devil, you know...a devil.

You are so good at this business, dlowan.

Of course, you are speaking with humans. Whenever I recently call qwest, my telephone company, I, because of past experience with the process, turn homicidal at the first sound of the automatic personage asking me mostly irrelevant questions in a condescending vocal tone, always reminding me that I can check their website. Since I only call when my dsl is disconnected, usually due to outage, I can never do that. They repeat it several times in case I had my ears plugged at any of the other times. Eventually, I usually reach a human, poor thing, who has to deal with an angry person with a strained controlled voice. Must be nice for those folks.

Apparently if you just swear or speak gobbledygook at the automated person you get put through to a real person faster.

I have done this with apparent success.

There's an even blacker, tragic story from my part of the world:

Three kids, 16-17 or so, experienced bushwalkers, perhaps not too bright, went walking in the Blue Mountains National Park, to the west of Sydney.

They had taken some water with them, but not sufficient for a couple of days, and intended to get water from one of the rivers, but...there's a drought, you know. River was dry.

They're out of water and decide to head back. One gets hyperactive and races ahead, gets separated, and then lost.

He has a mobile phone, so he calls 000, Oz equivalent of 911. By this time, he's dehydrated, frightened, alone, the whole bit. And he's in the bush.

All the 000 operators wanted, would accept, was a street address. And he couldn't give them one. He described where he was, and how he got there, but they only wanted a street address. He called 5 times, getting increasingly hysterical, and the operators kept asking the same stupid, inappropriate questions. And told him not to scream! Even when they finally passed his call on to the police, they didn't pass on the information he had given them about where he was. Police searched but couldn't find him.

Result: kid died of dehydration. Found a week later. Doctors were unable to say if he would have been found if the 000 operators passed on the information they had to the police.

Yes - the kid was silly, but the 000 operators - must stick to their scripts.

Caused huge hullaballoo here.

Jesus wept!!!

That's awful and bizarre.

^%%^$#$# gate NOT FIXED!!!!

That's interesting.. I usually swear murmuringly, to no avail.

I did whine, when I was cut off at the very end of making a pay-by-telephone call for an about to be late (next day) bill, and my whining to the human helped, he waived the fee. Oh, yes, the whine was about being cut off, and also the every 20 second notation that they would be with me shortly (something like seventeen minutes).

Oh! that's terrible! (hmm, did police not ask to hear the recording? can't they zone in on cell phone locations..)

I've won against the combined might of telstra and bigpond. We all had a conference call and bigpond telstra and I decided that I was right and they were wrong and that they should in fact shove their erroneouse account up the rear end of a dead wombat..... but only because i was able to quote the number of said dead wombat.

gosh it felt good.

but mumpad is an expert she deals with this kind of thing on a daily basis for her work.
some tips
1. Ask for the call to be recorded.
2. Keep the operator on the line for more than 6 minutes (they have quotas). when you reach 6 minutes they are happy to pass you off to a supervisor
3. ask to speak with the supervisor
4. Have the ombudsmans phone number ready and ask if they (the supervisor) can confirm that number is correct.

Kewel!

They won this time.

My internet provider, without so much as a by-your leave or a sorry, has merged with another copmpany and will only provide ADSL2.

Which I gather is faster. And way more expensive.

If you don't say yes, they'll drop you. Just like that. I wonder how THEY'D have responded if I said I was going to drop MY contract just like that? Given it was 24 months and all.

To take "advantage" of this ultimatum, I need a new and expensive modem. Different from the new and expensive modem I bought 12 months ago.

Or..I can stick to my own...but it may or may not work. Great.

So, I decide to stick with these bastards, just because I can't bear to think of how many places I would have to change my email address at.

Actually, I think I have to change it anyway.

So...I click on their migration link. It takes me to a log-in page. I log in. It takes me to a page saying no more migrations will be accepted at my exchange.

I ring them...usual **** with buttons, which there is no need to go into.

Usual wait...with the music interrupted EVERY FIVE SECONDS with the "we love you and your phone-call and we are sorry you have to wait and what a patient angel you are" until I nearly vomit.

Then, of course, I get the Filipino woman with an accent so American mixed with Tagalog that I find her almost incomprehensible.

I explain the problem. No fore-play; "You did it wrong, do as I say".

Well, up yours nasty lady.

She gabbles at me to click the link in the email...I explain I already clicked the link. "You did it wrong" I clicked a LINK wrong? I laugh incredulously. I click the ******* link.

Now log in.

I log in.

Same discouraging message.

"You did it wrong"

She gabbles at me what OUGHT to be on the link I clicked wrong.

After asking her ten times to slow down, I am finally able to ascertain that the link she is gabbling is the link I am at.

She pauses.


"You logged in wrong"


WHAT??!!!

No, I didn't.

"What user name did you type in?"

MY user name!!!

We establish that I have actually managed to log in correctly to the service I have been using for ten years.

Pause. She begins gabbling again...I understand nothing she says by this time. I ask her several times to repeat herself, and she becomes rude. I ask for assistance from someone whose English I can understand...she ignores me!!!!!


Eventually, she is able to spot the problem and get me to change the thing that needs changing.

She then goes to leave, when I say I need help working out the new plans. She sighs heavily and says "Why do you need help?"

I am angry enough by then to respond that I understood that selling me something was what her job was, and I want to know more about what the jargon on the plans MEANS.

She then rudely demands to know what I don't get.

I rudely respond that, if she is unable to give me ten seconds to READ the plans, then I would like her to pass me over to someone who is more courteous.

I ask a few clarifying questions, thank her in a voice dripping with sarcasm for her extraordinary helpfulness, and would have slammed the phone down were it not a cordless.

So...I have started on a plan which is what I was paying already (for stinking peasants, I gather) to see if my modem will work....if not, I'll likely stay on the peasant plan until I get a new puter.

Hopefully it'll not be worse than the crap speed I was already getting.

Pedal Adsl!

May I add that I have taken a day's rec leave today so that I can get some work done?

Weird, huh?

Thing is, I have to prepare a heap of teaching.


So...at work, the phone never stops ringing, the emails never stop coming.

If I ignore the phone and let it go to the answering thingy, it still disturbs me...and, given we have a mess of admin people spread over two buildings, if you want to be left alone, the message never gets to all of them...also, they all insist on ringing you instead of just taking a message to ask if you want to take THIS call. And they get upset if you don't because they don't have any containment skills.


Technically, I can get permission to work at home...but they make a huge deal out of it, and are likely to say no. I can email myself stuff to work on and do it at night, (and I do) but I get no credit for it time-wise so I get a bit sick of it if there's heaps and heaps to do.

So..it's easier to take a rec leave day and work at home than to do so legitimately.

I was tired on the weekend, and didn't get round to the masses of stuff I had emailed myself to do.

I am getting through it today, though!!!

And I'm on holiday.