feelin' a li'l angsty
I was feeling a little bit angsty, and a little bit emotional today. I had a bad start to the day by being slightly late (not that late, but enough to make me feel uncomfortable), and then I had to be late for my meeting with Neil, my director, because I didn't have all the stuff together to start the meeting on time. That was alright though because he had other things he needed to catch up on so it wasn't a big deal.
Then today we received an order for a gps device that plugs into Neil's pda, and I was going through the box and saw that the adaptor inside the box was a dc adaptor, but of american origins with a european adaptor. There was an australian power adaptor thrown in the larger delivery box, but it was an ac adaptor. Now, looking at the gps device, it definitely required a dc adaptor, which can easily be told by looking at where the power adaptor plugs in and seeing the diagram that signifies the polarity of the power adaptor required - only dc adaptors have a distinction between polarities; ac adaptors are pretty much universal as long as it has the right size plug and a strong enough output (nb. I used to work at an electronics store). Now I wasn't sure however, whether or not the ac adaptor would cause damage to the gps device, so I called the company and was transferred to this incredibly rude man who actually started yelling at me on the phone saying that I was wasting his time. At first I was in a bit of shock, not expecting to be yelled at (especially as the company took 8 weeks to send the items and had no word of why it had been delayed), but after listening to him rant about how I was wasting his time, I switched on my "don't fuck with me" voice, and told him that I wanted written confirmation that this adaptor was not going to damage the unit. Then he ranted some more; I stood firm; and then eventually he said "fine, the customer's right", and we parted with brusque goodbyes. After I got off the phone, I got a congratulatory "You go girl" from my workmate Mel, and I received the email, which was polite, however non-apologetic, that the ac adaptor was going to work. I might as well mention the name of the company, Expansys, and say that I was appalled at their customer service, or lack thereof. I was nonetheless somewhat rattled after this phone conversation.
Of course it does get worse: GNER, the scottish train company is still number one on my hate/extreme dislike list. I'm still waiting for my two refunds they owe me - approximately £100 worth. I'm still to buy a phone card so I can call the UK, afford to wait on hold for an hour, and then argue with a customer sales rep for another hour - for at least the 5th time. Will get to that probably next week.
Anyway, moving on. The other thing that made me angsty today was that I got a call at about 1.10pm from Intec saying that I was due for my job interview at 1pm. Well that caught me offguard. I told her that I had the interview scheduled for tomorrow, but she said that no it was today. So we arranged to have the interview tomorrow, at 1.30pm, but now it's going to look to the people that are conducting the interview like I forgot. I went back and looked at my notes to see if I had totally stuffed up, but no - there it was - 14th September. So this isn't going to reflect well on me at all tomorrow. I have no idea what went wrong here, but it doesn't look like I should keep my hopes up for this position anymore.
I think part of my mood today can be attributed to not getting the best night's sleep for the last couple of nights. I keep going to bed at around midnight, not being able to sleep straight away, and of course having to get up early for work. I'm going to make a concerted effort to go to bed early tonight.
On a more positive note, I caught up with an old work colleague, Roger, from the dept of justice and attorney-general. It was great to catch up with him. We used to have little tiffs at work about the correct formatting of dg (director-general) correspondence, and other equally trivial topics. It kept me amused because I found that he was as anal as me when it comes to these things. He told me about how he made his own wine a little while ago from some very little known french grape variety (who's name escapes me right now) because they had loads left over from some french/italian cultural day that was held in New Farm (a suburb in Brisbane), and he managed to take about 80kg of it. Legitimately of course. He said it's not quite ready to drink yet, but he'll let me know when it is. It'll have to be better than his grapefruit wine that he made one time. I've never tasted anything so vile. Apparently other people at work still joke about it. Another thing about Roger is that he keeps his watch on Italy time, because he wants to live there that much. I had to laugh - but it's funny in an endearing kind of way, bless him.
Then today we received an order for a gps device that plugs into Neil's pda, and I was going through the box and saw that the adaptor inside the box was a dc adaptor, but of american origins with a european adaptor. There was an australian power adaptor thrown in the larger delivery box, but it was an ac adaptor. Now, looking at the gps device, it definitely required a dc adaptor, which can easily be told by looking at where the power adaptor plugs in and seeing the diagram that signifies the polarity of the power adaptor required - only dc adaptors have a distinction between polarities; ac adaptors are pretty much universal as long as it has the right size plug and a strong enough output (nb. I used to work at an electronics store). Now I wasn't sure however, whether or not the ac adaptor would cause damage to the gps device, so I called the company and was transferred to this incredibly rude man who actually started yelling at me on the phone saying that I was wasting his time. At first I was in a bit of shock, not expecting to be yelled at (especially as the company took 8 weeks to send the items and had no word of why it had been delayed), but after listening to him rant about how I was wasting his time, I switched on my "don't fuck with me" voice, and told him that I wanted written confirmation that this adaptor was not going to damage the unit. Then he ranted some more; I stood firm; and then eventually he said "fine, the customer's right", and we parted with brusque goodbyes. After I got off the phone, I got a congratulatory "You go girl" from my workmate Mel, and I received the email, which was polite, however non-apologetic, that the ac adaptor was going to work. I might as well mention the name of the company, Expansys, and say that I was appalled at their customer service, or lack thereof. I was nonetheless somewhat rattled after this phone conversation.
Of course it does get worse: GNER, the scottish train company is still number one on my hate/extreme dislike list. I'm still waiting for my two refunds they owe me - approximately £100 worth. I'm still to buy a phone card so I can call the UK, afford to wait on hold for an hour, and then argue with a customer sales rep for another hour - for at least the 5th time. Will get to that probably next week.
Anyway, moving on. The other thing that made me angsty today was that I got a call at about 1.10pm from Intec saying that I was due for my job interview at 1pm. Well that caught me offguard. I told her that I had the interview scheduled for tomorrow, but she said that no it was today. So we arranged to have the interview tomorrow, at 1.30pm, but now it's going to look to the people that are conducting the interview like I forgot. I went back and looked at my notes to see if I had totally stuffed up, but no - there it was - 14th September. So this isn't going to reflect well on me at all tomorrow. I have no idea what went wrong here, but it doesn't look like I should keep my hopes up for this position anymore.
I think part of my mood today can be attributed to not getting the best night's sleep for the last couple of nights. I keep going to bed at around midnight, not being able to sleep straight away, and of course having to get up early for work. I'm going to make a concerted effort to go to bed early tonight.
On a more positive note, I caught up with an old work colleague, Roger, from the dept of justice and attorney-general. It was great to catch up with him. We used to have little tiffs at work about the correct formatting of dg (director-general) correspondence, and other equally trivial topics. It kept me amused because I found that he was as anal as me when it comes to these things. He told me about how he made his own wine a little while ago from some very little known french grape variety (who's name escapes me right now) because they had loads left over from some french/italian cultural day that was held in New Farm (a suburb in Brisbane), and he managed to take about 80kg of it. Legitimately of course. He said it's not quite ready to drink yet, but he'll let me know when it is. It'll have to be better than his grapefruit wine that he made one time. I've never tasted anything so vile. Apparently other people at work still joke about it. Another thing about Roger is that he keeps his watch on Italy time, because he wants to live there that much. I had to laugh - but it's funny in an endearing kind of way, bless him.
posted by dee | 8:24 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home