Personal stuff, and screaming over one cord.

Feel free to skip over the first part of this entry; I just feel like pontificating about some shit. I'll put it in italics so you can see where your regularly scheduled bitching about customers picks up again--because it's very personal stuff. If you don't want to know about a random fat girl's sex life, skip past the italicized part.

I got a new tattoo a couple of weeks ago - again, it's a little too distinctive to be putting out on here, so if anybody wants to see it they can email me at slightlycranky at hotmail.com. (I'll even try to answer promptly, because as some of you already know, I sometimes forget about that email address for weeks on end!) This tattoo is a song lyric, the idea of which is if you don't take chances life isn't worth living. I'd been thinking about this for almost two years, but never had the money to get it or felt like it wasn't appropriate to put it on me when I was being such a goddamn chickenshit in reality.


Well, I finally got it, because I feel like in the last year or so, I have finally loosened up and managed to take some chances. I acted in a gruesome haunted house, something I never would have seen myself doing. And hey, what do you know, I loved it and did it again this year.


I spent every last dime I had in November of 2010 to go to England to meet some friends and see my favorite band, and I have never once regretted it. Last April, I decided that turning 30 and having only seen one cock was not acceptable, so I started looking at the possibility of not being a nun anymore. Did take a few more months to put that into action, but at the end of August I finally had sex again after four years of wearing out batteries. I'm still amused by how many of my friends and even freaking family have told me they were proud of me for fucking a guy I had met an hour before. Well, technically I'd met him ten years before because it turned out we went to high school together and didn't realize it until after we'd hooked up. Anyway.


I broke a lease in July and moved on two weeks' notice to a town I still can hardly navigate around. In September I took on making a wedding cake for 170 people, something I was absolutely not sure I could do, but I did it. I risked CL's anger to work the haunt again in October. Between October and November I slept with two more guys when the first one decided to be weird and vanish, and through a verrrrry interesting visit to a strip club discovered I'm a lot more bisexual than I ever thought.


And then at the beginning of December I had a total meltdown, which was ... interesting. In late December, I finally, finally took the step of getting a new job. And I started seeing a new guy, who I'm actually sort of having a real relationship with. Holy shit. Swore I'd never do that again, but here I am. I think. It's been two months and we haven't actually had that discussion yet. But hey, labels are over-rated, right?


And now, I've finally gotten out of the restaurant.


I think that warrants a new tattoo.


Okay, enough of that positive crap. Let's get back to the complaining about idiotic people and being the bitchy blogger you're used to.

So this guy calls in the other day. He seemed like a nice enough gentleman at first; mid-fifties (I know this because his password was the year he was born), patient, and didn't even blow his top when I told him he wouldn't be able to watch his HBO show without changing a cable on his receiver. Well, at first he didn't.

There have recently been changes to digital rights management laws, and so you have to have a digital cable to watch some stuff now. I don't totally get it, because it seems to be really hit-or-miss and to who sees it and who doesn't. But when I told the guy that, he was totally cool at first. He asked if we'd send a technician out to set it up, and I told him it was actually a very easy fix, if he had a set of component cables. He did, he fetched them, and although I wasn't looking forward to spending a long time on the phone walking him through this, I didn't anticipate any problems. Silly me.

Turns out that when their system was set up, it was set up in a completely fucked up way that made absolutely no sense. Thanks, technician. It had been set up with an HDMI cable from the receiver to the tv, component cables from the receiver to the DVD player, and another set of cables from the DVD player to the back of the tv. I cannot think of any freaking reason for this at all. But as he was describing this he started muttering "goddammit" and "Jesus Christ" every ten seconds.

Now, I admit I did over-complicate things a little. I should have just told him to take the pair of cables between the receiver and the DVD player, pull the ends out of the DVD player, and jam them in the television. But I had him pull them out from both devices, because I hadn't fully processed how things were set up at that point, and remove the HDMI cable. Then I asked him what port the cables going to the back of the tv was labeled as. He said input one. Not a problem, since any tv is going to have multiple ones.

"Okay sir, go ahead and take that set of cables and plug it in to the back of the receiver." he did. "Now plug the other end in to the tv, in an--"
"Where!" he snarled.
"In any input that has those three red, yellow, and white ports."
"Well I don't see any!"
"Is there a row of ports right next to where the DVD player is plugged in?"
"No!"
The fuck there wasn't. "Okay sir, you said the DVD player is plugged in to input one, right?"
"No! No!" The sound of cables hitting the wall came through the phone. "I am more confused than I have ever been in my life! I'm starting over!" He slammed the phone down and I heard a slew of "goddamits" and "Jesus Christs" coming through, accompanied by banging sounds. Eventually he picked up the phone again. "Now what am I supposed to do!"

So we started over. This time, I just told him to follow the cords from the receiver to the DVD player and unplug them at the DVD player. Then I told him to find any port on his tv that had red, yellow, and white, and plug those cables in, and he went completely fucking insane. Started screaming we should send a technician out to fix it, and when I said we could but it would be a customer installation which costs X number of dollars, he started calling me names and swearing. He said it was set up "wrong" when they got their new receivers a month ago and it was our fault. I told him as calmly as possible that this new digital rights law had gone into effect within the last month and HBO had just put the restrictions into place in the last week, so it was set up correctly at the time.

"Well, it's not my fault! Why should I have to deal with it! Your company screwed up! It's not my fault there's a new law!"
I know better than to argue with a customer, but one thing I like about this job is that I don't have to kiss their asses either. "You're right sir, it's not your fault. But it's not our fault either, we can't see the future to know, and that's why your system was set up the way it was. It was correct at the time. If you'd like me to schedule that technician at the price I mentioned, I can do that, or we can get this cable plugged in and you'll be set to go."
"No! I'm not paying anything! This is bullshit! You get someone out here to fix this or I'm canceling my service. And don't think I won't, I don't care that I have a contract, I know all the legalities involved and you're not providing me with service so I don't have to keep the contract!"
"Sir, this is not an issue of us not providing service, because the signal is reaching you. We just need to adjust this one cable and-"
"*torrent of screaming and swearing*"
I think he was so loud my supervisor could actually hear him through my headset, or maybe he'd tapped into the call, because he sent me an instant message saying he had set up a free tech appointment for the guy. I confirmed the time and the guy hung up on me.

I had to take a few seconds to giggle, because Jesus fucking Christ! This guy would rather sit around his for five hours, waiting for a strange to come and plug in literally one fucking cable, than just do it himself? How fucking lazy can you be?