Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Rock and a Hard Place



We lost our phone service and our Internet connectivity last night. Since we both work from home this is not just a major inconvenience, this is impacting our livelihood. Do you think Verizon cares? It’s amazing that they call the department that you talk to CUSTOMER SERVICE. They don’t know the meaning of the word. Jeeze.

Anyway, The Husband was freaking out because they didn’t want to come fix our problem until next week. He’s normally a pretty mild-mannered guy, but presently he’s got clients all over the globe that can’t get a hold of him, and that won’t do. The soonest the repairman could come out; he was assured after asking to speak to a “higher authority” is tomorrow.

So, I collected my disturbed mate and drove him to the Murrieta Library (pictured above) where they have all kinds of cool places that you can work. From tables, to easy chairs, to nice little personal cubicles, (that’s where we’re sitting), and he’s working away. The club chairs look like the ones they have at Starbuck’s. Only they don’t serve iced tea or coffee drinks and sandwiches and pastries here at the library. And I am so HUNGRY. I haven’t had anything to eat, and I drank the last, (about 4 ounces) of the bottle of liquid yogurt smoothie from the refrigerator at home, and that was two hours ago. I’m dreaming of food. We're related to the guy (in a roundabout kind of a way) that runs a little place up the road called "Gourmet Italia" (pictured above), and I'm remembering how delicious their fried calamari salad is. Mm, margarita pizza, bread sticks. Oh God! I've got to stop doing this to myself! Don’t know when we’ll be able to leave. Work is being done by The Husband, as I fool around. I’m unable to check my e-mail. But I can do that on my phone. I’m just playing around on Twitter. Blogging about our catastrophe. Many of you are probably thinking, man, she’s making a big deal over nothing. But seriously, if you let your clients down they won’t come back and in this economy you can’t afford to let you clients down. Unless you’re Verizon, because then, you have your clients where you want them, between a rock and a hard place. Ouch.


All Rights Reserved. © 2009 by Elizabeth Bradley.

9 comments:

Cloudia said...

What a lovely place to repair. Jacuranda trees? LOVE that lavender!
Wishing you connectivity and lollipops, gal pal.

aloha-

Comfort Spiral

Ms Scarlet said...

At least you've found a place to blog!
I remember when I lost my electricity for three days - it drove me crazy - I do understand.
Sx

Anonymous said...

Hopefully you are now well fed and have the internet back with a vengeance!

Angie Ledbetter said...

Man, I'd think about changing servers!

Marguerite said...

I feel your pain, Elizabeth. Earlier this year, my desktop computer crashed, then my new laptop malfunctioned and I had to send it back to Dell for 10 days! So, I spent a lot of time at the library.
Margarita pizza sounds divine! Have a fun weekend!

Kim said...

Your sentiments about verizon are so right. Here we have Roger's or Bell and it doesn't matter to them much if your service goes out because they have the market on internet, phone and cable. When you call either of these companies (we switched from Bell to Rogers because Bell was just terrible but now are finding that Rogers isn't much better) you are greeted by a computer generated voice who if you don't enunciate, calmly keeps telling you that she/he doesn't understand. It's enough to send someone to an institution.

Wendy Withers said...

You should have gone to a college or university library. In the past couple of years, I haven't been in a single one that didn't have a Starbucks or deli either attached or within a half-block radius.

I don't know how many of them have free wifi, but most of them have some free computer terminals.

Elizabeth Bradley said...

Happy to report, the Internet is alive and buzzing once again at mi casa! Turns out "our box" had the wrong serial number on it for some unGodly reason, so they switched it Off down where they switch these things OFF. Whatever, they said that this could never happen again. We'll see.

Being without the Internet is worse than being without a phone. Not as bad as being without a car, but it sucks.

Now I can get back to business.

I did get more writing done yesterday though. That is a good side effect, have to admit that much.

Anne Spollen said...

It's a pain to lose connectivity, but I am maybe the only one on the planet who secretly likes it. (And I teach online and write, so it's not like it doesn't impact me) So why like it? Everyone comes out of their rooms and we do something else for a while -- it's like found time.

(Of course, here, we're back up in under four hours...)