The crazies are back. The bad bad hormones that lie dormant in my pituitary for ooh at least 5 days of the month are back to rape and pillage all things unfortunate enough to stray into shot. Animal, mineral or vegetable - nothing is safe. I think this is the worst of the 3 worst weeks in a month's cycle. To my horror and contrary to what the good Doctor tells me, I'm getting worse with age, not better. Try as I might with pills, potions and abstention from all the great things God has given woman like chocolate, wine, shopping and complex carbohydrates, I still get hit by a tsunami of Stalin like disparagement with the world around me that starts a day after my period ends and ends a day before it comes round again . And I've yet to experience the menopause. I'm hoping to be 'out' for that one.
Despite hobbling through Yoga today and taking an extra long nidra meditation, I still managed to tell customer services for a wireless service provider, that its cellphone service was 'Expensive, crap and stuck in the dark ages' and for that reason I wished to cancel my contract. I didn't stop there, no I went on to say that I wanted to cut all ties and never have the scourge of a red bill polluting my post box again. That the 21st century started a decade ago and though their company still has 25 years before that milestone to catch up on, this call would hopefully serve as a good masterclass.
The real reason for cancelling of course is that I'm leaving Canada but the bad people in my head wouldn't let me say this and be done. The bad people smelled blood.
"Can I interest you in an online promotion for female circumcision?" asks the gormless rep - or something like that. I was by this point pacing the kitchen with flames shooting out of my eyes. I had put away my sense of hearing a long time before.
"No, you can interest me with terminating my contract and getting the hell out of my life, you mindless cretin and if you read another question from your script, I shall hang up and you can strip for the fucking money , cos you won't get it from me. I'm asking to give you money and you're making it hard. You utter moron."
Then thinking about it because pre-menstrual tension likes to toy with us, I added by way of a waiver: "Not you personally - you're not a moron obviously, the company as a whole is." Brilliant.
So now I'm extolling stories about being unable to pay for anything, much less a cellphone bill with the world's most arrogant provider (opinion based on personal experience) - put your lawyers away, we are entitled to an opinion, past March 4th BECAUSE I'M LEAVING THE COUNTRY ON THAT DAY. And do you know what he says? The man obviously has a deathwish:
"I'm afraid we won't be able to send you your last bill until March 6th."
"But I leave on March 4th."
"Well I'm afraid we still won't be able to send you your-"
"You can't override the system to pre-bill me so that you, the world's most backward cellphone service provider get its money from a customer who has been honest enough to call and explain they won't be here past March 4th?" I interrupt and from the tone of his voice I can only imagine the boy is now taking the call from under his desk.
"That's correct." Not, 'that's right' which is what normal people would say but 'that's correct' because now comes the part of the conversation where he gets to pedant me and I get to do this:
"Well, Tray - that is your name isn't it? (No ma’am, it's Justin) Do you really want to pendant someone who if from the birthplace of Pedantry? Do you really? Well, take a seat then. Let me see if I have this straight."
And so I commenced a soliloquy of monumentally monotonous proportions exacting the sense in sending a bill to a person who has been kind and honest enough to explain they won't be there after a certain date. Furthermore, they wish said customer to bear the brunt of the system's inability to pre-bill; to shoulder the blame in the form of a court summons for non-payment due to the rigidity of their computing system.
"So you see, Tray," by this point - he was on speaker and I'd made myself a cucumber sandwich and an earl grey tea, "You put me in an impossible position and so I advise you to accept that this final bill will appear in your ledger as unpaid until the earth swallows my brittle bones and you come to the inevitable conclusion that you should have billed me when you got the chance."
"Would you be interested in registering with us online and that way you can pay it from wherever it is you are?"
"No, Tray, I would not."
For the sake of mankind, and I use the term loosely where I live, I ought to hide in the basement until March 4th but I have to go to the piggy supermarket to get a few essentials and I'm dreading it because if you think scripted customer service representatives are trying....god help the cash monkeys at Sobeys if something fucks up and right now even the humblest rap on the door from a neighbour bearing cookies would upset the balance.
"Cookies? You mean to say you come over, trampling a messy path to my doorstep to give me stale leftover, egg flavoured rocks so that you can appear to be the good kind neighbour and pester us about babysitting The Lish again - you ham fisted wench?"
"No, I just made these fresh for your little one who I know likes them."
"Really, well unless you are prepared to pay the dental bill you can stick your cookies where the snow doesn't blow."
Ah, I hate myself on days like these. Only 15 more to go. Sausage man had better practice silence for the next little while if he knows what's good for him and you think he would, but I suspect he won't.
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