Do I use this blog as a place to rant? No? Maybe I should.
I have had a hell of an August, after one mind numbingly frustrating July. It’s not the weather (maybe it’s the stars, though) but I’m definitely confronting my share of obstacles these days. I’ve not yet figured out if I’m supposed to clear them, like hurdles; or if I’m supposed to turn back, rearrange my plans, and take an alternate route that doesn’t involve collisions at every turn. All the sensible thoughts lead to “abandon plans, abandon plans”, but I just press ahead, punch drunk. I certainly am stubborn (mostly because it will probably make me crazy to figure out what else to do, should I abandon the plans for real).
I’ve been trying to set up a practice office nearby in St. Catharines. The location’s ideal, it’s in the charming old section of town, and the older business offices around me have become re-inhabited with the city’s business stalwarts, right in the midst of the city’s gorgeous old homes, the old Carmelite abbey, and right across the street from the Olmstead-designed Montebello Park. I’m surrounded by old trees and roses, an architectural legacy that covers the last 150 years of building design, a quaint little fountain corner where you can sit and play chess on the stone tables, and doctors, alternative health care practitioners, lawyers, and accountants of every stripe. Right next door there’s the old Used Books store. I plan to spend some time distracting myself in there.
That is, if I ever get myself in there. Technically, I’ve been “open” since August 1. In actuality, I’m struggling to get my phone line in, digging myself out of the mass of unnecessary stuff I’ve moved over just because it was all part of my business office at home, trying to locate items I desperately need there (but didn’t realize I’d need till I got there) and I’ve been hit with a variety of “setbacks”. Let’s just call them that. They include a cell phone Telus email software has destroyed (which held all my contacts and all their information) plus appointments I’d set up until the end of the year. The cell phone has also been my lone source of business contact, since the land line will still be weeks in coming (oh my, yes, phone companies in Canada are lousy), and the pda features on the phone were supposed to substitute for an actual computer I’ve yet to move into the office (since there is no phone). I’ve been driving to and fro, moving things in, throwing things out, coordinating printing and marketing supplies, and generally running my practice via mobile, in exactly the same way I was before I got the office, just because it’s not ready yet.
So I’ve been driving extra long kilometers these days, the one thing I decided I no longer wished to do. And that has resulted in a car accident, to top everything off. A four car one, commuted to three cars, because the last one in the line up said “no damage here!” and pulled away, quite happy to be free of the waiting-for-the-cops nonsense I had to endure for three hours. One overly helpful participant, however, volunteered the information on that fourth car’s spectral presence to the police officer when he finally arrived–something I stressed was Absolutely Not Necessary, goddamn it–and she even passed the PC the fourth car’s license plate number and car model information. So because he opted to help me out, that man will probably be charged with something asinine too–such as “Leaving the Scene of an Accident”, even if he swears the accident did not happen for him.
There is such a thing as being too perky, and too helpful.
Anyway, I got the charge on that one, so I’m going to fight it because who could pay that fine anyway? It’s added another “to do” to my list of growing errands in futility. I’m feeling quite a lot like that hamster on the Habitrail these days. More so than ever before, and I felt like that much of the time, before.
The cell phone is my latest peeve. I was supposed to have it replaced, finally, by a new unit last night, and after spending three days of forcing the phone to try and stop freezing while “booting up” so that I could successfully get to my contact information and my appointment schedule (there is no way to reset the phone without losing this information for good) the sales staff at the Telus store immediately did the absolute wrong thing, and while I was explaining that they should not take the battery out of the phone as it would force the phone to shut down again, they took the battery out of my unit to put it into the new one (instead of just getting the new phone’s battery out and using that instead). They were feeling a little lazy about not having a battery pack for the new unit, something they’d need so that they could transfer my contact information from my broken phone to its replacement, so they ignored me and ruined my last chance of saving my business vitals. That immediately shut it down, which meant they would now have to reboot it to start it up so that it went to the screen where I could get the data. When I explained that it took me many days of doing that repeatedly to get the phone to stop freezing, they went ahead and rebooted it anyway, smiling at me like I was just so silly. When the phone froze as I’d predicted, they looked at me like I didn’t know, and said, “It freezes at the Sync page–did you try and sync it with your computer?”
My heart sank, probably because it was so full of a raging desire to start slapping people until they started to cry. I desperately kept that phone under watch when I got the phone to finally open up to me, and I’d have fully written out the contact information if I’d known these people would have destroyed it for me….but they weren’t interested in actually listening to me about saving it. They had me sign up a bunch of papers for the new unit and they were ready to push me out the door but I finally said, “Look, reverse all of this paper work right now. I have to take that phone home and just keep trying to reboot it over and over again until I can get to that screen again. It literally took me two days of solid shutting down and booting up over and over again, and playing with buttons that might force the phone to stop freezing instead of starting up, and you just ignored me when I asked you not to take the battery out”. She looked at me like the inconvenience I’d become, and said, “Well, get it back to me in two days, or we can’t replace your phone.”
What? Those are fighting words.
So now I’ve been wrestling with the phone again, trying to get that screen to come back up again, and that’s been very difficult and frustrating. I want to be convinced to stay on as a customer, and they’d better convince hard. I’m not leaving that store without a much better phone that can sync to my computer with no effort, immediately. Why? Because this phone was destroyed by Telus’ software–and this phone can crash because it runs on a Windows system. This phone doesn’t sync to a Mac unless you download some specific Mac patches for it–but they cost extra money, and they don’t always work, as I’m finding out. But the reason I’m getting a new phone (on top of the $300 credit I received as a consolation, which now has not become quite enough consolation for last night’s stupidity) is because now the battery on this phone won’t hold a charge, so even if I do manage to get to the contact screen, I’ll have to hand write every one of those names and addresses out by hand before it runs down again. And that doesn’t leave me much time to save my ass. This cell phone company’s cost me some time, and some money.
And that’s just not damned acceptable.
Nor is the time I’ll have to spend emailing the company’s president and marketing director, their customer placation people, who’ll put up a fight I know, and the weasels at the Telus store who’ll shoot evil eyes at me when I go and get the replacement set up. Once again, instead of getting on with things, I’m working like a bastard at trying to save my livelihood because Telus and their people don’t think it’s a good idea to just pay attention to me when I’m there to do business.
I’m arguing and pressing the point and gathering my evidence for my arguments all the bloody time these days. In a past life, I was a lawyer, I know it: one of the many condemned to a specific Hell in the Inferno, the one which mimics being on earth yet again and doing the thing you “do best” against your will and only in unpleasant circumstances from which you can glean no benefit, eternally, no matter what else you think you’re meant to accomplish in the world. Funny, the only other place in my life where I can “build a case” is in my practice, treating patients–and that’s exactly what I’m not able to do right now.
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