The One With Mounting Frustrations

Wednesday was an excruciatingly frustrating day. Moment after moment seemed stalled by annoying circumstances.

We bought a new phone with built-in answering machine & call display because we want to drop our voicemail from our phone plan and add the call display. This needed to get done ASAP as I hate waiting for phone calls from potential employers and getting bloody phone calls from vacuum cleaner sales people, or Capital One Mastercard. They call twice a week.

So, I called up the phone company to make changes to our plan. On the first attempt, the system let me know there was an error and hung up on me. On the second attempt, the same thing happened. On the third attempt, it happened again. On the fourth attempt, the system told me my phone doesn't exist in the directory. On the fifth attempt, I got a live person. She refused to help me because my name isn't the primary name on the account. A week earlier, when we first looked into it, they'd told my wife either one of us could make those changes.

So, nothing was done and 30 minutes were wasted away.

I went to pick up my daughter from school and nearly got run down by a van as I crossed at the crosswalk. She was doing at least twice the speed limit, 30 km/h, and I was one a of a few people who approached her van when she pulled over to pick up her child from kindergarten!

Needless to say, I was livid when her response to speeding through the school zone a minute before the kids were dismissed "they're out in a minute!" She was about to be beaten when the principal came over to see what the problem was. I told her she needed to call the police as this woman was driving recklessly and dangerously in school zone. Stupid woman. The police were called and despite talking to 5 different people, she got off with a warning. Urgh. I'm hoping the police come out a little more often to watch how fast people drive by the school. It's getitng ridiculous and someone's going to get hurt --SOON.

The other major thing on my 'to do' list was renew my car insurance. My notice for renewal was mailed before the insurance company wrongly decided I was at fault for the accident, so I was trying to figure out on their website, just how much more I'd be expected to pay. I couldn't figure it out. I know what level I'm at, but there are 3 sections to that level and I'm "somewhere" in the level. Whatever happened, I was looking at a 3-5% increase in my insurance. Not a huge amount of money, but it would be one more thing to get corrected after meeting with the arbitrator and getting the decision overturned. So, I figured there would be problems aplenty when I went to renew it.

Not only were there no problems, my insurance actually went down an additional $5 a month and it only took about 4 minutes for the clerk to process everything. Sweet!

I never thought getting my insurance would be the highlight of the day.