When Monday Strikes Twice

I had a bit of a Monday today, which is not the best way to survive a Tuesday. The whole day wasn’t exactly shot to hell, at least not until I got home.

Even though part of it started on the actual Monday.

We’re trying to cut costs, which means we need to look at everything in the budget and decide what has to go, what can stay, and what needs to change. After careful study, I found out I could save money by bundling phone and internet with one company. While it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, it was definitely for the best so we could pare down the expenses to save for the shop.

Last month, I called, set everything up, and waited for the arrival of our new modem. I said I wanted everything to start on the first of November. I was told that would be fine. Then the guy asked if I wanted someone to come out and install it for me and I asked if it was complicated. He said it wasn’t difficult at all, but if I wasn’t confident in my abilities, I could have one of their tech guys come out for a fee.

I told him I’d do it myself.

And it would have worked, but we were having issues with the router and things weren’t going well, and I couldn’t get a signal, and oh, the pain and misery. So on Sunday, I scheduled an appointment to have a technician come out and take a look. The gal on the phone said they could have one out first thing Monday morning. I said that wouldn’t work, was there anything for the afternoon? “Sure,” she said, and set up the appointment for 2:30. I did my best to impress upon her that I REALLY needed them to show up AFTER 2:30.

Imagine my chagrin when I found the note on my door saying he’d arrived around 1:55 and left at 2:05. I got on the phone with the ISP folks and ranted for a while, getting the appointment rescheduled for the next afternoon. I was on the phone for a long time again. It sucked. There were long periods of being on hold. The hold portion of that company is not lovely. Everything was rescheduled and we were ready to rock.

This time, the guy showed up at 2:35 and got right to work. He fiddled here, swore there, babbled about this and that and even went so far as to insinuate that I didn’t know how to purchase computer equipment and peripherals. Really.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst of it happened when he stood up and with the power cord to my laptop wrapped around his foot, stepped away from the desk and literally crashed my computer, right onto the hardwood floor. Face down. Open and face down.

Imagine my chagrin.

I kept my cool as he “checked it” to make sure it still worked (parts of it do, I will freely admit that much). Then he wandered outside to do something and I had to follow him because he left the damn back door open and our indoor cats can be a pain in the ass to catch when they get out.

When all was said and done, he came back into the house and proceeded to tell Tam that “HP’s are practically indestructible” and that he had knocked his laptop off a counter and the whole thing just “blew into a thousand pieces!” But he just “snapped them all back together and it worked beautifully.”

That’s all kind of groovy and everything, but my Baby Beast (my netbook) ISN’T an HP and I’m sure it really didn’t need to be dropped. I take gentle care of my computers. I don’t set them down hard, and I sure as hell don’t drop the damn things. I sweat bullets when I am not sure I’ve padded the padded carrying case when I take it along on trips.

He dropped my netbook, did not apologize, insulted me, and acted for all the world like a dimwitted bull in a china shop filled with matador figurines.

The other icing on the cake: We were finally online when I decided to make a phone call to the ISP in question. Suddenly, we were no longer online. Not only that, but I could barely hear the almost-English-speaking operator asking me if I needed to include my cell phone in the bundle. After a long chat with another ELL person, it turns out that the modem they supplied me with is faulty and will need to be replaced.

Did I mention the ass cow? No? Well, whenever you’re put on hold for this company, you are treated to a series of advertisements for services offered by said company. These advertisements, if you listen to them long enough, begin to take on new meanings. Every time he said, “Ask how you can save more” I heard “ass cow, you can save more.”

I hate being called an ass cow. Ass cow, you can go fug yourself, m’kay?

So, that sums up my day. NaNo has been going well, but the bump to the floor has done some damage to the Baby Beast so it looks like I’ll be without it for a while. Did I mention that I’m doing all my writing on said Beast? It is more comfortable writing on it than the Big Beast, plus the portability is nice, which is one of the reasons I bought it in the first place.

I’m rambling. I’m upset, but I’m NOT an ass cow.