Monday started off innocently enough. I went downtown to be part of a Child Abuse Prevention Month awareness event that I helped organize. My father-in-law provided the technical support for the event, and Brandon helped. It was a great morning, lots of reporters came, great awareness for child abuse prevention and intervention issues.
After the morning’s festivities, I told Brandon we needed to take Jim out for lunch to thank him for giving of his time. Off we went to Potbelly at Knox and 75. Except, when we got there and parked the car, we changed our minds and decided Chipotle decided better. So we went across the street to Chipotle for the world’s most expensive burrito.
Halfway through our lunch (we were in the restaurant for all of 45 minutes, if that), I got this really strange panicky feeling that my car wouldn’t be in the lot when we returned. Jim and Brandon both said not to worry about it, that they were sure the car was fine. I had seen tow warning signs, but I assumed we were inside one of the businesses that shared the lot. Little did I know. My advice to everyone is this: listen to the women in your life when that intuition strikes.
And of course, you know that when we left Chipotle, my car was gone. Someone called a “security spotter” had reported that we parked in the lot without frequenting the correct businesses. In less than 30 minutes, my car was gonezo. So, that sucked.
Jim drove Brandon and I over to the wrecker lot to pick up the car. $160 and 45 minutes later, I had my car back. Now you understand why lunch consisted of the world’s most expensive burrito. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
When I got home from work, Brandon was still studying (for any strangers out there reading, he’s a grad student and works from home). He was frustrated because our Internet has not been working properly ever since we got it installed. Thanks a lot Time Warner. We thought we were going to get better service by switching. Instead, we got a modem that doesn’t work with Brandon’s computer. Awesome.
I supposed this day couldn’t get any worse, and I thought that trying (again) to get Time Warner to help us find a fix for the connectivity might improve the day. Why I thought this I will never know. I called Time Warner and spoke with a very nice man in Austin who told us it sounded like the modem just wouldn’t talk to our computer. So, to try a new modem. He informed us we could make our way to the Time Warner office in Plano to swap our modem for a new one.
We thought we could make it by 6 p.m. We pulled up at 6:01 p.m. Two employees were sitting inside the lobby and refused to open the door. The folks at corporate tried to call them to tell them it was OK to help us, but the local employees wouldn’t answer the phone. So, they didn’t know it was OK for them open the door. No less than seven customers came, peeked inside to see that there were employees present, and left after unsuccessfully trying to pay their bills. Finally, a very nice woman named Kelly told Brandon over the phone that she would be sending a technician to our home in the morning to swap out our modem. We knocked on the glass again to say, “Hey, corporate really wishes you would answer your phone. Thanks anyways for your help!” A huge guy yelled back, “Have a nice day!” At this point, Brandon said back, “Why is this the first you’re actually talking to me?” And the man yelled back that if Brandon said one more word, he would call the police. We left. Time Warner’s customer service folks said that our account would be transferred to a special unit that deals with employees being abusive or threatening to customers. So, that sucked too. At this point, all we want is for our Internet to work and for people to be nice to us. I’m sure the people at the Time Warner knew we weren’t exactly in a pleasant mood, but there was no need to threaten police action against us. Ridiculous.
After all that, we went home, cleaned off the impound lot sticker and writing from my car and took my car to the car wash. We prayed the day off while going through the wash and hoped for a better Tuesday. When we got out of the car wash and pulled up to the free vacuums, we noted that my rear windshield wiper was missing. It got knocked off during the car wash, and the car wash manager was unable to find it. O’Reilly Auto Parts won’t have one in for us until tomorrow. And today it looks like it might rain. What a mess.
Basically, yesterday was the kind of day that makes you wonder why you left the house. This morning the technician came to the house with the exact same modem that we already have. He apparently had not been informed of our situation. Also, he said this is the only modem they have for our Internet package. So, I’m wondering why in the heck the lady on the phone told us she could send another modem over.
