What's the point of having a blog if I can't complain?

Remember June 1st? How hot it was, and how we just couldn’t face paying to have the ac’s cleaned and put in the windows? The money was secondary. After the body parts were found on the roof of the Deutsche Bank, we just couldn’t bear to put our ac’s in the window. Yes we live five miles uptown. The smoke came anyway. Rationally we know that nothing can get in the chassis, and the ac’s have been cleaned every year, and the filters washed weekly.

The bedroom ac badly needed to be replaced. It felt as though it was circulating warm air, and many improvements have been made in the six years since we bought our ac’s.

There ain’t anything rational about post 9/11 fears though we, we’re so over it. We know a bridge we can sell to ourselves. Will save us money, and pride. Nobody else has to know how we let people and companies take advantage of us

Remember how we compared brands? Then we were so excited to see how good 12,000 BTU”s ac’s were in stock. We called to see if any were in the Manhattan stores and if not, could we expedite the order? We couldn’t. But they promised that both ac’s we ordered would arrive in five to seven business days. We placed the order.

Then the rains came. And came and came…and we began to feel sick. Our friends say that we make too much of the weather, but they don’t get sick in prolonged rains as we have ever since we were a small child.

It was a busy week, and damn we forgot that they were supposed to send us an email saying that the order had been shipped. We promised ourselves that we weren’t going to act the bitchy New Yorker and would actually wait until Friday to call. Totally forgot that we could track the order on the Internet. And people say that we know our way around cyberspace.

On Wednesday, we began to feel sick. As we’re having oral surgery and implants put in on 6/19, we can’t afford a sinus infection. No way. By Friday we were officially sick, and spent most of the day whining, drinking hot and sour soup, ginger tea, and sleeping. Wow did we sleep.

We can’t take Advil for five days before the surgery. We’re excellent at preparing for oral surgeries as this will be our sixth in the past two years. Our friends, the dentists and staff are always amazed at how our face never swells and how quickly we heal. We just have this all down to a science.

It was windy when we woke up this morning. But the sun was trying to come out, and it did. Yes, sun, glorious sun. Takes so little to make us happy. Then we tracked our order on the Internet. It was at the warehouse in Maryland. Had to be a mistake.

Now here is the problem. We have always felt that as a New Yorker we’re supposed to be extra nice to people because…you know we don’t know anymore. Didn’t New Yorker’s prove how nice they are almost five years ago? The tourists seem to love us. Right the federal government. Really who cares about them? We have gotten to know many Americans in the past two years, and even those who think we belong in Iraq don’t respect the government. So sad.

At five PM we began our phone calls. At six thirty PM and four people later we finally got off the phone. Of course the warehouse was closed, and nobody understood what happened. We do. The AC’s that had been promised to us, order processed properly, credit carded and all went to other people who complained first.

Every time one of the four people would say “and I apologize, ma’am,” we wanted to say, “no you don’t. You couldn’t care less.” We have been to and conducted enough employee training classes to know the drill. Sometimes we would much rather speak to a human who gets excited for us or at us. Sometimes we want to feel that we’re not dealing with human robots.

The last man we spoke to said the order might not be processed until Tuesday. Unf–king acceptable. We made him promise to try to expedite it and to call us on Monday, but it still probably wouldn’t arrive until the 19th–our date with destiny in the form of two dentists. I’ll take pictures of the views from their offices. Keep forgetting to bring my camera. Now that I have a Razor, I have no excuse.

We did some serious thinking. Ever since we have decided that our type A, slight control freak personality—okay you who have known us forever–we micromanage, isn’t a miracle of nature but a heart attack waiting to happen and not necessarily to us, we have let us be so ripped off, treated miserably, felt horrible, and worst of all made people who love us feel badly because we take out on them what we won’t take out on goddamn Home Depot employees who don’t deserve to be treated badly.

But nobody will take responsiblity. And that frigging angers us. Because we take responsibility if somebody bumps into us on the street. We’re better than we used to be. We don’t say “sorry” when somebody bumps us so hard we land in the gutter, but we think it. Here’s where our many persona’s converge into one. And we stop talking to our blog, though she can listen.

I looked up stores in New York and all of a sudden I remembered J&R, and ordered two very very good AC’s. They cost a bit more, but they’re usually delivered within “one to two business days.” I can call tomorrow and make sure this happens. Bought my last AC’s from Zabar‘s. Saul Zabar himself called that night to see how my AC’s were.

I tried to cancel the Home Depot AC’s. The man took all my info then told me he couldn’t take it because the computers were down for “scheduled maintenance.” This was after he pulled up my information. If he knew it was going to be scheduled why did he waste both his and my time? “Kidney’s” man “kidneys.” That’s a very old non-pc joke I might tell sometime if Lucia remembers it all.

He said he couldn’t call me, to tell me if he could cancel the order, because he’s not allowed to make outgoing calls. Asked to speak to the supervisor. There was none there. If you have employees doing customer service and cancellations, you should have somebody authorized to make out going calls.

Wasted hours tonight because all week I wanted to be the complacent nice New Yorker. As in, you all have the right to complain because you can do it so sweetly, but I can’t because it does bring out the micromanager New Yorker who never really had to hustle because I was cushioned, but I hustled anyway because I had to be the best at whatever I did.

Scratch that, whatever I do…read an article yesterday in The Times about 20 and 30 somethings taking time off between jobs, and not worrying about finding future employment while my generation thought we were employed for life. Had to link to it, just had to, then I decided not to waste more of my time doing something not really fun on a Saturday night

So not true. I began my real professional career as a six week temporary coder on the AT&T cases, three years and three promotions later…twelve years in the industry. Worked 24/7 before I ever heard the term. Would burn out, lay myself off, go to Europe

I watched the phone company change. From guaranteed life employment, great wages, great benefits, The Pioneer Club, to…telemarketing services basically. IBM and Xerox–same things. More people might do that now, but most of my friends have had several careers, with time off.

The thing is the phone company was the best employee trainer I knew. While I didn’t work directly for them they trained me and requested me for special projects all the time. Everything I know about work I learned from the phone company, my father who would have been so happy if I applied to work for them, and the phone company managers and VP’s were always trying to get me to but I was too dense to understand.

“Really think you’re the Summit peak. Come to my office sometime next week and we’ll talk.” Summit was my employer. Many of us look back at those years with awe and wonder. We can’t believe that we were paid to have fun. We began with 240 mostly 20somethings. It was college redeux, Only this time we lived in real, not student, apartments, were paid and didn’t have homework or had to study. Though anybody who wanted to could learn so much. Everybody should have a job like that once.

They were all hitting on me. I have Aspergers, and didn’t separate the two. Though I do think that when somebody tells you that at the 140 Club off Broadway, or Juniors or Smitty’s in Brooklyn, you kind of have to wonder. It was the 70’s, and usually they did make direct compliments about my work.

I had no belief in my own worth. Don’t know how to describe it other than I couldn’t believe that I was me. From the time I was eighteen I felt that I was living somebody else’s life. Somebody who most people liked, admired, thought was smart and pretty. Totally didn’t get it. Wish that I had.

Now I can make complex financial decisions quickly and with knowledge of the benefits and risks. Bid on this apartment on the spot and knew exactly how much I would spend and why. I spend months, maybe years looking for exactly the right couch and when I see it just know that’s it’s the perfect buy for the right amount of money.

It’s AC’s and stuff like that, that drive me crazy. Because I do believe that employees of most stores are trained to do one task and not understand the larger corporation and how each unit impacts on the most important person, the customer. My parents had stores and they made me begin with putting tags on clothes and hanging them up after customers tried them on.

You’ll never understand the irony in that, I can throw things around like you’ve never seen. But after a few years of some Saturday’s, holidays, some nights and other times, I knew what I was selling, to whom I was selling and why people bought their stuff from us rather than G&G who were just like us.

Personally I only wore the tee shirts and jeans, and was very selective about which ones. My sister and I still imitate our mom trying to give us clothes. Frankly, it’s not one of my more fun memories because I still feel barraged with clothes that I felt too good for,

Customer service is a dying art, but when a store has prices like Home Depot–sometimes it’s still not worth it.
Yes, I’m in rare form tonight. Since I had to devote so much of it to AC’s, I put on The Subdudes “Miracle Mile,” only CD I seem to listen to these days, and let myself. Spent all this time on AC’s tonight, and it’s freezing. A nice cold, one that feels filled with fresh good air, though many people insist there is no fresh good air in New York. I live near the Hudson and like to pretend.

Oh the rain finds it way from the stormy cold
down through the ground to the tide of sea

the rain keeps falling down
but it doesn’t bother me

Must add a political statement here. Three suicides at Guantanomo Bay is three too many. For the supposed best country on earth, we apply a pretty sick moral code to everybody and everyone. Only an Impeachment hearing will find out what’s really going on.

I got a heart full of steel
and a mouth full of mercury

Standing tall in the shadow
tall and I won’t fall

I listened to the seventh song on “Miracle Mule, seven times of course. I have probably listened to the CD four times tonight. Don’t know how many times in the last six months. Have all their CD’s of course, but “Miracle Mile,” it just does something.

Sunday morning, 8:30 and it’s beautiful. But I didn’t get off the phone last night with Home Depot employees until I was too emotionally drained to do anything but write, then I had to watch junk TV until 4AM. Going back to sleep for awhile and not trying to stew over how by tomorrow it will be real AC weather, and if and I apologize ma’am is really supposed to make it better?.

I tried to be nice but by the time I spoke to the third person, I just couldn’t get the honey to roll off my tongue, the way my mom had taught me to complain. Once again I turned into my father, so nice and charming, until the second hour of complaints. And he didn’t even live to the Internet age. Gawd, he would have died a million deaths more. I have something that he didn’t have. I have a blog, and its name is Courting and people do read it.

That would have made him very happy. But I would have had to spend two days aweek writing up his official complaints for the week, and he would have commented at political blogs, and let slip that I was his daughter. I would have had to explain over and over again that his views were his and his alone. Though he was ethical, and did believe that lying over sex was an honorable thing to do. Oh it’s so easy to make dead fathers behave.