Afternoon of Friday, March 4, 2011

The last thing on my mind today was AT&T.  The “other important call” I had scheduled to take during lunch was a phone interview.  My current job is a temporary one; so technically, I could get the old heave-ho at any time.  I’d been burned in the past by being overly optimistic, so I decided to be overly pessimistic and assume that each day at work might be the one where I turn in my badge.

The day started out well enough: I got up, got ready for work, checked out the nice new H-E-B near my apartment, and stopped for a bite of breakfast and a blog update before the workday started.  I was feeling pretty good: this was going to be the first payday I’d had in awhile, and I was looking forward to seeing that direct deposit drop into my virtual wallet.

I logged onto my work computer and decided to take a quick peek at my bank balance before getting started.  I was disappointed to see it was about the same as it had been a few days before.  That meant I was going to have to wait for the check to arrive in the mail.  I shrugged it off, but at the same time I hoped that it wouldn’t take too long.

As I started work, I noticed the guy next to me was sounding pretty rough.  I could hear him constantly coughing, and he soon went home sick.  I also noticed that we were quite busy and sure enough, I soon learned that there had been a few people that had called in sick.  This did not bode well for my lunchtime plans.  Sure enough, about twenty-five minutes before lunchtime, I got a call from some idiot who kept me on the phone for an hour.  My heart sank as I felt the cell phone on my hip ring once, and then twice.  Needless to say, I was in a bit of a mood when I finally left for lunch.

I ordered and then sat down to check my voicemails and return calls.  Sure enough, the interviewer had called at 12 on the dot.  I left a message on her voicemail then listened to the AT&T gal’s message.  She wanted to try to reschedule a time for a tech to come out.  I was confused and asked her why the tech had to be there.  As it turns out, because my phone line was currently unused they could not automatically assume that it worked.  The last time I had ordered DSL, I actually had a landline so they knew that it worked to a certain degree.

oh.

It would have been nice if someone had TOLD me this sometime over the past three days: the tech didn’t write it on the note on the door, the idiot CSR didn’t say it even though I kept bringing up the self-install thing, the 2 social media reps were as useless as a knife in a soup-eating contest and the first executive whatchamacallit only served to bounce me to the second executive whatchamacallit.

I had to go to Mount Doom and back and talk to all those people just to find out something that should have been posted on the order webpage or put in some phone guy’s script or computer screen.  That is just plain nuts.

The Executive phone person asked when she could schedule someone to come out.  I told her about the whole ‘can’t miss work’ thing and she told me that their installers don’t work on weekends.  Glorious.  She said she was going to try to get someone out on Saturday.  Feeling cooperative, I told her that I would call the apartment to see if they could let their tech in while I was out of work.  She asked me to leave a message when I got a decision.  The apartment people said yes, but I was really unsure about doing that so I left a message with her saying that I needed a weekend appointment.

I went back to work after that.  Things were still busy, and with about an hour and a half to go in the day I took a break to check my voicemail.  I got two messages, the first was from the Executive girl asking me to call a “DSL Specialist” to verify the appointment and answer some questions he would have for me.  The second message was from that guy.  He had already attempted to call me but I had been too busy at work to pick up. I called the guy’s number and got a message saying he had already left for the day a half-hour ago.  Seriously??

I left a message anyway and also left a message with Executive girl letting her know I had just missed the boat because DSL guy had decided to pack it in early for the weekend.  Yeah, that’s the kind of day I was having.

Game Over.  Bueno, bye.  Sayonara.  Thanks for playing.

I had all I could stand and I could stand no more.  I figured the next time I got called back I would be telling Executive girl I give up.  Un-frakking believable.  Executive girl called back and she was very apologetic, even more so than before.  That’s saying something, because every time I spoke with her she started by apologizing for the delay and their lousy phone system.  It says something about the phone company when they have to apologize for their own phone system.

After kissing my feet for way longer than necessary, she told me to call DSL guy back.  She assured me that yes, this time he would be answering.  I called him, and to my surprise, he answered, asked me if I had a modem plugged into the phone (I did) and told me a guy would be coming on Saturday morning to get everything fixed up.  Yeah-yeah, sure-sure.

Well, here we go again!