I was putting together a file for a new client this afternoon, and when I pulled the folder out of the supply cabinet, it was a more reddish-brown than the plain brown files I’m used to.

Me: L, this is a different color than the ones we usually get, right?
L: Ya. It’s a slightly more reddish color.
Me: Ok. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t gone crazy. Plus, this is the most interesting type of event that can occur in office life.
L: Sad. But true.

Me: D, do you need to put this client into the billing system or do you already have him entered? ::holds file up for D to scrutinize label::
D: I think I already have it.
…
That’s a STRANGE color. I must have ordered the wrong brand.

Me: M, here’s the new file – you’re good to go.
M: Oh my god what color is that file?!
Me: ::shakes head sadly::

In addition to complaining about whatever I please, recounting stories of minimal importance, extending past the confines of my living room in my quest bore others with my vacation pictures, and a slue of other utterly disconnected and random topics (if one can call them topics), I’ve decided to add “tech blog for the not-so-advanced” to the list, because this dood is SO my hero. Comments are closed on that post so, since I can’t say it there, I figured I’d say it here. Plus, maybe some small percentage of my readers (so a small percentage of my small number of readers would be, what, uhhh…. 0.15 of a person?) will think I WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO DO THAT TOO! NOW YOU‘RE MY HERO!

But anyway, in keeping with the (see above re: disconnected and random topics), let me now take the opportunity to tell you what bothers me. Or rather, since a lot of things probably bother me, what REALLY bothers me.

It REALLY bothers me that, most often, at least when dealing with large bureaucracies and corporations, the only point at which you are provided good service is when you turn into a giant, whiny, entitled brat.

FOR EXAMPLE.

I recently spent a lot of time on the phone with Medicare trying to resolve one client’s account. When I say recently, I mean more like over the course of some five months. And no, I am not exaggerating. And what happens when you call Medicare, because I know you’ve been dying to find out, is that you wait on hold (and…wait…yes…in fact I think I might have mentioned the hold music) you wait on hold until someone answers the phone. And that someone is somewhere in a different time zone and is one of eight bazillion people answering that phone number, none of whom have identification codes or callback numbers so it’s not like you ever speak to the same person twice. And they ask you for information. And you fax it. Except it takes about three days to fax any information to them because they have ONE FAX NUMBER. For all of Medicare. Just the ONE. And then you finally get your information through. But they never “find” it. Or it never gets processed. Or whatever. So you send it again. And then you wait the sixty day processing period because if you try calling (hold music) before the sixty days are up “just to check on it”, you are simply told that it won’t register in the system until the processing people have processed it. And that takes 60 days. And no, they don’t have any incoming phone lines in the processing room of processingness, so you can’t speak with them.

And then, when sixty days have passed, you call again (hold music) to check on it. And they say it’s processed and in the mail and to wait a few more days. And then you call back (hold music) after a few more days. And they say to wait a FEW MORE. And you say no, please send it again. And they say, ok please hold (hold music), but then they come back and say it’s not in the digital system yet so they can’t send it again. So please wait a few days and call back.

And then you wait a few more days and call back (still with the hold music and the going crazy, by the way, in case that pattern hasn’t presented itself to you yet), and THIS person tells you that, oh…no…actually that thing that they said was completed on time (on time being a relative concept when it takes 60 days to process a letter) and already in the mail was just a copy of something they’d already sent and the thing you are waiting for hasn’t been processed yet because instead of what you said in the letter (two and a half months ago) about charge one and charge two, you have to PHYSICALLY CROSS OUT AND CIRCLE, respectively, the charges you’re talking about on the ledger and send it back again because describing the charges by the name listed on the ledger is just too confusing, apparently. So please start again.

So (are you still reading?) you circle and cross out with fury and re-fax (another three days to get that through). And then you call back (hold music) and are told to wait the 60 days for processing at which point you say

(in your head) HOLD. THE FUCK. UP. (and out loud, with only the tiniest edge of insanity) May I please and ever so kindly speak with your supervisor? This dude assures you at least four times that while you can speak to his supervisor, she will have no ability to speed this process along for you, but you insist and so you are asked to hold (hold music) and you wait a full twenty minutes before….

A saccharine sweet lady gets on the phone, apologizes profusely, listens to your saga, asks you to hold (hold music) while she checks out the issue, comes back and says, “Actually, ma’am, I see that none of these charges are related. I will get out a letter to you to that effect this afternoon.”

And you receive that letter later that week.

And would you believe me if I said that that is the SHORT version of the story? The version where I don’t even bother to mention at least five other times that I called (hold music hold music hold music hold music hold music)?

And so MY QUESTION is, people, my QUESTION TO THE WORLD, is how much of a dent could we take out of the national debt if we were to replace:

1. The money spent on wages for roughly ten (I’m being generous here) phone calls, roughly seven minutes each (including data entry), PLUS
2. The money spent on all the phone lines for people like me to HOLD…again, PLUS
3. The money spent on health care for people like me who just might go crazy from the experience

TIMES the number of people who have had this experience (raise your hand)

with

A small fleet of people with half a brain who evaluate and handle (simple…such simple) issues as they arise and in a timely manner without creating a paper trail storm of useless notes that convey no information at best.

How much? I dare you to guess.

Except I do have some words. Here they are.

I go up to cover the receptionist’s afternoon break and she has a news page up with a picture of Michael Jackson. I shudder at the frighteningly disfigured “face” on the screen. She tells me had had a heart attack.

My reaction: indifference

I do what a good little socially acceptable person does and crack the requisite jokes at his expense. You know the routine. Black to white. Fake nose. Child molestation. Right down the line.

Another coworker flies out of his office and announces, “Michael Jackson just died!”

My reaction: get totally fucking wigged out

I mean, that’s kind of intense, no? When a person who is that famous (read: well connected and wealthy) can’t survive passed 50, it just reminds you exactly how mortal we are. And besides that, there’s just something a little weird when an icon dies. It’s TOTALLY intense. There are debates already on the radio between this person calling him a pop icon whose influences have reached far and wide and that person claiming he’s a psycho. This really rubs me the wrong way, because of all the pointless arguments in the world…. Seriously. It’s like having an argument about whether someone was tall or has blue eyes. Like you can’t be both.

::shrug::

But all in all it’s just a little surreal. It’s like announcing Mickey Mouse has died.

I was going to marry Michael Jackson when I was six. Go ahead and crack all the jokes you want about how he would have been willing (but note that I was never a young boy), but the dude made some good music and he is a household name.

A little surreal for sure.

I was pleasantly surprised at how painful my first day back at work post-vacation was not…until it came back. The music. It’s back.

Oh dear lord in Heaven have mercy. It’s a conspiracy to kill us all.

So I am back from the whirlwind weekend at the beach with The Fam. What I failed to mention in my last post is that about four seconds after I got the internet, I lost it again, and, upset that I hadn’t finished the task at hand, proceeded to write up the whole post and then use my stubborn powers to find it once more by standing tiptoe on the back of the couch just long enough to send it into the ether and then lose connection again… I gave up after that. Sad, pathetic technology dependence.

Today after a delayed flight back followed by a shortened night’s sleep, I am The Braindead, and I feel as if I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

This sentiment is only reinforced by the fact that today, in the very same square in which last Tuesday there was a three-hour blues festival broadcast from a tiny stage with few to no spectators yet a remarkably effective amplification system which turned out to be a celebration honor of World Herpes Awareness Day, a film was being shot. Apparently Portland is the new Vancouver, BC because very recently a car was blown up a few blocks away and, in looking up the plot for today’s shoot it seems highly unlikely that this drama involves an exploding car. For this shoot, blocks and blocks of prime downtown parking have been cordoned off All Hours All Days for nearly a month. For this, countless rig trucks and black uniformed grips and lackeys roam the streets. For this, the police department has been hijacked. For this, you give your consent to be filmed merely by walking to your office. And the new line of the train, which is not yet fit to carry passengers, has been deemed fit to drive a block, back up, drive a block, back up, drive a block, back up, alternately revealing and hiding the hordes of extras crammed onto the platform to make the city look more packed than it is in Real Life in a large scale demonstration of hide-and-seek which constitutes the four hour ordeal that is capturing a ten second filler shot. All of this is more or less fine. What is not fine is when Brendan Fraser comes out for the marketplace scene and the god mic comes out to direct “Extra Group Yellow to your start locations please” and “Action” and “Cut” and “Reset” and “Action” and “Cut” and “Reset” and “Action” and “Cut” and “Reset” and “Now extras with last names P-S” and so on and so forth devolving until the woman is doing some sort of raffle with the extras, I kid you not – I even checked with a coworker to ensure that I hadn’t fallen completely into the rabbit hole. Seriously. She is advertising prizes and calling numbers – all still over the bullhorn.

Meanwhile my task is to find an estimate for a scar revision which involves lots of google searches that turn up sleazy plastic surgeons who do lipo and face lifts and consider themselves artists. I click on one doctor’s site which takes so long to load that I go to refill my water glass and return to find my screen plastered with naked breasts. So I buzz the associate who gave me this task and charge him with attempting to get me fired, to which he replies in all earnestness and without thinking about context that “he gives me oral consent.” So by then I’ve fallen off the deep end laughing, and we haven’t even GOTTEN to the part in my day when I started reading Stiff by Mary Roach and decided that decapitated heads should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to congregate.

And kids, this is all before lunch.

::sigh::

I need a nap.