Rant and Rave 

Phone Rage

I decided I needed a space to get out my frustrations, just for me, to be able to move on after getting it out.  If it helps someone else in the process, funtastic.   Doesn't it seem as though some days, negative situations just seem to go on and on, one mishap after another in a chain of frustrating happenings? This is why I need a Rant and Rave section, today is the first entry.

Maybe it's just me but I find more and more often I get frustrated with today's phone centre software.  You know the drill, you call a utility company, a bank, or any place really, and you never get what you need even though you research and look for the right number or department before you dial.

Next are the endless recordings and prompts to select 1 for blah blah blah, 2 for blah blah.... and so on and so on. Sometimes after going through them all, there is still no option to speak to a live body, so you select the 0 hoping to get a live person and either get put into the que with the "we're experiencing a high level of calls and appreciate your patience, etc.....recording" or you get the unnerving click and recording "your call cannot be completed as dialled" and cut off.

NO! Now you have to call back and go through it all again.  Endless circles of prompts and nobody there.  Sometimes if you're lucky, you get through to a live person only to be transferred again to a voice mail or the wrong person who asks you for all your information again that you just gave to the first person.

Or, what about the times they get your info wrong, and despite correcting them every time you call, they still have it wrong and insist they will have it corrected this time, but never do.

Or, my favourite, the voice recognition software.  You speak into the phone and they ask you "Is this what you said? If so press 1?"  THESE DRIVE ME NUTS!  It rarely asks what you are calling about, so it gets you nowhere or they keep reminding you to visit their website, well duh, the reason I am calling is because of a problem on their website or because you can't find it there. Sigh.

Teams of people spend endless time wanting to get the best customer service and yet if they would just get rid of the damn software in the first place and go back to good old people talking to you on the first ring, and who aren't reading from a scripted answer like a robot;  customers wouldn't be angry and frustrated when they finally get through to someone and rage at them causing high turnover in employees leaving for stress or because they can't deal with angry people on the phone all day who have to stay on hold for ever after battling with the endless prompts and recorded unsolicited advertising.  Then you go to the place in person and see that they have multiple people working at the reception desk talking to each other, but the software answering the phones.

I avoid calling cell phone companies, utility and insurance companies etc, probably costing me more money in the end;  just to avoid the stress of going through this! 

Coldest place in the world today

Coldest Place today was......

South Pole -38C

Calgary -35C

That's right, we were the second coldest place in the world, and we live here because???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

My kids still think their hometown is the greatest place on earth, I am having second thoughts and dreaming of the sun and warmth.

Good news is tomorrow is supposed to be a balmy -13, shorts and T-Shirts anyone?

The weather in Calgary has been so abysmal since Tuesday, I won't go on about it, a Chinook is expected now and by Saturday we are supposed to get to 20+C - how crazy is that. I suppose, after 16 years here I should be used to it by now, but seriously there is rock hard, crunchy ice all over the side roads now that will melt and be quite messy OMG. I need to have a weekend retreat somewhere warm.

I have just added Carly Simon's Blog http://simonspeaks.typepad.com/ to my Blog list really enjoy the 60's ladies being that I was born during the 60's .................almost finished the book.

Pesky Fly Story Part 2
Just when I was ready to call it a night, a couple of flies started buzzing around my glass of white zinfandel wine. Fed up after a few fruitless swats, I dashed upstairs in search of the handy, dandy fly swatter that had been used quite a bit today by various members of our family. I ran back downstairs and started what became a one hour journey into a flying nightmare. Excuse the fly pun, it was actually me that was flying around, chasing the flies that seemed to be duplicating themselves. For each one that I swatted, another two or three would replace them.

My anxiety kicked in at this point, it was after all almost midnight, my husband had gone to bed and so I had to dance around the basement, quietly, insane thoughts creeping their way into my mind as I started to remember all the horror bug movies I had seen throughout my life. It was as if they were all calling each other and coming to torment me. "Hey guys, lets make this lady crazy, make her think we are taking over, buzz, buzz."

Soon my daughter came down to say goodnight, saw how much fun I was having, and we began fighting over the fly swatter and jumping around, me picking up the dead flies with kleenex.

I forgot to mention that after the glass of wine was done, I grabbed a beer. Well after a fly had stopped on the can, I wiped it profusely before opening it, and then popped off the metal tab and took a big slurp. I deserved it after all the fly swattin, jumpin and arm swinging. It was then that my straight A, very smart daughter advised me that whenever flies stop and rub their hands together, they are actually pooping and throwing up on the surface they landed on. I was in no shape to wonder whether or not she had made it up, however, my beer suddenly lost some of its appeal.

Well it must be time for bed now, I may tape my mouth closed first, it does appear that we have seen the last one. I sure hope so, I think I might have nightmares tonight, or flymares......gosh I really am losing it!

Invasion of the Pesky Flies

This morning we woke up to my kitchen window swarming in flies. Yuck! On the inside of the window. No, not the outside, that's right folks, the rotten, stinkin, dirty little bleepers found a small opening in the window that houses our summer air conditioning.

That's correct, for those of you that thought we only had snow, and winter, and minus 35 Celsius. There is a season between snow, torrential rain and thunderstorms with marble sized hail, (up till yesterday), that begins sometime in what is supposed to be summer. Intolerable prairie heat blasting everywhere, so yes, you actually need air conditioning in your house and your car. Unless you are one of those people that enjoys trickles of perspiration running down parts of your body, randomly. I am not one of those people.

But, I digress, husband installed it this year in June but we have discovered that there are a few little unseen gaps. So there were flies everywhere this morning. Where did they come from? Why from one day to the next were we invaded by flies?

I told dear husband, and he, being a smart guy insisted there had to be a source, rotten food, more than likely, that was attracting them. Horrified, I bellowed. "There is NO rotten food in the kitchen!" And there was no smell, at least inside there wasn't. Anxious to get to the bottom of it I went outside and sure enough, under the airconditioning unit, in one of my bottle recycling bins, under a ton of bottles, there was the culprit. As I pulled out bunches of bottles, I was greeted with more flies and the stench of rotting something.........OMG, whew, rancid, putrid, can't describe the sight at the bottom. Let's just say it was not immobile.

I screamed! "Who put garbage in my recycling bin!!!!" Husband came out of his garage cave and told me, with a matter-of-fact tone, that he had instructed our guests at the last BBQ (Canada Day) to put garbage in the green bin. I looked at him in disbelief, feeling rage overtaking my body, then I realized it was pointless to blame, after all, we have 3 green bins, so I guess people got confused. Of course, nobody checked after the party, or cleaned it out, just kept stacking bottles on top, unaware, of the impending creation of an entire ecosystem that said neglect created, innocently below the airconditioning contraption, creating access to the inside where we live, eat and sleep with, OMG, our mouths open when some of us, uh, snore, unintentionally of course. I will never sleep the same again. Surely a fly in your mouth would wake you up right? Please let it be so. Ugh!

Oh well, again off on a tangent of doom. So, I cleaned up the mess, sprayed the bin with plenty of water and swished and swished. Most of the dead flies inside the house were killed with the fly swatter and my handy dandy Dyson animal sucked them all up. The problem, I considered later, was when I saw my fourteen year old running around the house with the extendable hose sucking up live ones. "No, no, stop....you can't suck up live ones! What if they lay eggs in my beautiful Dyson." Horrible thoughts of crawling maggots inside my top-of-the-line, Rolls Royce vacuum, invaded my head.

So he took off the bagless canister and we both peered at it. "Ah, mom, um, where are all the dead flies?"he asked. I couldn't see any either, and we must have sucked up at least 30 of them, seemed like 50, could have been more.

"They must have been pulverized," I said, "Yes, that vacuum is amazing." The thought that they may be trapped inside somewhere, setting up house and laying eggs, tormented me. But only for a second, can't think about that, not in my Dyson. Sleeping with my mouth open was almost a happy thought by comparison!