My life is terrific, taken as a whole. There are one or two little speed bumps of bitchiness, which now I share with you:
The plumber: is here with my general contractor. He was poking around, and believes that he’s found the source of the “odor” in my kitchen. redmed and I had been operating under the assumption that it was caused by stagnant water / food bits in the dishwasher, or our generally sub-perfect housekeeping in the kitchen sink department. No, no … they have an open vent from my bathroom sewer line, under the sink. They’re out having the conversation now about where to knock holes in my foundation to run the new lines.
The phone: I got my money back from V-Tech. The person from the credit department called me, and it was pretty clear from her initial questions that the summary she had received from tech support had very little to do with my reality. I stopped her, gently explained the entire story (starting back in August, when I ordered the original phone from their web site). I included the order numbers at every step. At the end of my story, she paused and then said “I’m processing a refund of your entire purchase now, and I’m very sorry about this sir.”
In the middle of this, I realized that most of my frustration had come from forgetting one of my primary rules: There are a lot of people in an organization who do not have the power to say “yes.” You must never, ever, deal with those people for any longer than neccessary. Those people are there to screen you from the decision makers. All they can do is deny you, or pass you up the chain. Support at V-Tech cannot say “yes.” Therefore, you need to deal with them as briefly as possible.
The customer: With as much discretion as I can muster – there is a customer / reseller with whom my company deals. Said reseller has a bit of a history of being pushy and manipulative. She flirts with me in an attempt to get free days of work. I’m okay with flirting, but when it’s always just before they ask for a favor, it makes me hate them. Additionally, she has a habit of underpaying us. There’s always some very good excuse (oh, I didn’t know about our pricing agreement … we need to rush and get this done, don’t worry, we’ll work out the purchase order later … etc). We finally drew the line and said “no more work until all our outstanding invoices are paid, and we don’t do any additional work without a purchase order in hand.” She’s started writing to me directly rather than through my business manager … flirting (i.e: You’re so cute, I wish you weren’t married) and asking me to just start on a new job for her because said business manager is “being mean.”
Gah. I forwarded all her crap back to my business manager. He forwards it to her boss saying “control your employees.”
The bummer of it is that she finds interesting work for me to do, but I can’t be working for free.
The laptop: My laptop is still in the shop. They tell me that they’re trying to get a replacement display, under warentee. Cool, dat.
Finally, as I was typing this, a Jehova’s Wiitness rang my doorbell. I so wish that I had time to talk to her. I really, really do. But with the plumber here … it’s just not a good time for me to play “Satan” and destroy someone’s faith.
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