I never thought I’d be like my grandmother.  I used to get SO pissed back in the 80’s when she couldn’t figure out how to operate “call waiting”.  I had important shit to do, places to be, parties to go to.  She was stifling me.  I was never going to NOT be able to flow with technology.  I mean, how simple is/was that?  It beeps, you switch lines and answer, and then make a swift determination on who is the most important person of the two. That being said, I now have to call my 14 year old downstairs (and out of his cave) on a semi-regular basis to figure out what’s going on with my phone.  There you have it. I can’t imagine how she’d have possibly existed in this day and age – cell phones, automated answering systems, no humans to talk to…. ETERNAL HOLD.

As I type, I have been on hold with American Home Shield, waiting for some dingus to actually answer the phone and address my questions. About 3 of those minutes were talking to the pleasant sounding automated lady asking me what my problem was so she could direct me to the right place.  Here’s the issue with that “right place” – it’s never the right place!  It’s some bozo reading a script that typically has no knowledge of what the hell you are talking about.  They probably can’t even solve your problem – and in most cases, they can rarely speak English these days.

There’s something to be said about how nice I am that I don’t yell at these people.  They hate their jobs worse than I hate them having their jobs.  It’s not their fault they had to resort to this level of self loathing just for rent and beer money.  Who am I to tell them that by simply being an innocent bystander (or loathsome employee) has ruined my day, my life, my schedule, etc.  This is an immense level of self-restraint on my end, friends.  I am indeed softening in my old age.

You know what my grandmother would’ve done?  I’ll tell you what – she would’ve yelled “GO TO HELL” and then slammed the phone down.  We can’t even get that kind of physical satisfaction now.  How hard can you mash the “end call” key to be satisfied?  Not nearly hard enough…

So here’s my advice:  put in headphones/on speaker, stick you phone in your pocket, purse, etc. and keep moving.  Find some shit to do.  Multi-task.  Be productive.  LIVE DAMNIT, LIVE!  This is the ONLY way to sanity in this particular realm – trust me.  Because you will hold… possibly forever… or at least until it’s time to color your roots again.  And when they DO answer, they can’t help you – not fully anyway.  But you can still feel good about yourself after having wasted those precious minutes/hours, because you… YOU did something (else) in the interim & the day is not wasted.

….. and remember, you can always give yourself the simple, old-fashioned satisfaction of just telling them to GO TO HELL.

Ciao ~

AshGenX