It Takes A Global Village ....

... to drive you completely around the twist.

Let me explain. We are behind on paying off our account with Lowe's, on account of the children need food to eat and January was a little bit tough around here monetarily speaking. So the first thing to be ignored was the bill to the home improvement store, as they don't provide anything we have an immediate need for at this time. I sure would *like* to be able to pay them, but if it comes down to paying off a mega-corporation or feeding my kids, my kids win every time and Lowe's can bite me.

The downside, of course, is the harassing phone calls that start the day after your bill is not paid. I didn't use to mind these so much a few years ago; you would speak to the home office in Des Moines, promise to pay, they would pretend to believe you, and that was that. But since all those jobs got computerized and farmed out to India, they irritate the crap out of me now. The phone starts ringing at 8am on the dot and doesn't stop until 7pm at night.

If you actually answer the call, what you hear is a pre-recorded message saying, "please hold until a customer service representative is available to take your call". Um, look here butthead, you called me. I am *not* standing around with my thumb up my ass waiting for you to finish your coffee and amble over to the phone so I can get a lecture on how I owe you money.

So we have stopped answering the phone when they call; you would think they would figure out most people have caller i.d. by now.

And when and if I do actually answer the phone and wait for your slow ass to show up so's I can pays you the monies I owe, please don't insult my intelligence, person from India with fake American accent, by telling me your name is Bobbie Sue. I don't care what the PR people told you on your training course on how to deal with pissed off Yanks, pretending to be a middle-age white Episcopalian from Kansas does NOT make me warm to you. I am quite sure that you are a twenty-something Hindi named Vidya, with a master's degree in physics or something. So just quit it.

On the bright side, it seems that four underseas internet cables were cut a few days ago, severely disrupting global telecommunications in Egypt and India. We knew this the day it happened, because the phone calls stopped abruptly. I am not proud to admit this, but we laughed and laughed here, and did a little jig.

There is speculation in the press that it was sabotage and I totally believe it. I am absolutely positive it was someone who just couldn't wait a second longer for that elusive customer service representative to show up...