Respite and Nepenthe: Please Press "Bite Me"

Sufficiently distanced from the initial event, the boil has settled into a simmer and I can re-visit this little encounter.

The following is an Instant Message dialog I had with an indulgent friend who would not be appeased with the brief rant I’d posted earlier. Please be informed that there will be un-lady-like vocabulary. If you know me, you know that I can curse like a trucker, given just the right circumstances. I don’t get angry too easily, I’m pretty mellow. But incompetence and inefficiency are sore spots.

I copy/pasted the dialog with my friend because by the end of telling him about the dialog with AT&T, I was laughing, which is my usual mode in challenging situations. The only editing I did was for typos and such. Enjoy.

Friend: […] I want to hear the story about AT&T

This.Art.Geek: AT&T buh-lowwwwwwwwws

Friend: Clearly

T.A.G.: I have a pay as you go thing going on, but it's been auto-pay forever

T.A.G.: When I was more busily tutoring, I was always getting phone use

T.A.G.: So I had a $50/month payment

Friend: mhmm

T.A.G.: Lately, it's less active so I'd accumulated like 80 bucks

T.A.G.: So I thought it was time to get a smaller plan amount, coast on the rollover balance for a while.

T.A.G.: Went through the whole rigmarole

T.A.G.: Phone call of half an hour

T.A.G.: Asked for all the same old crap

T.A.G.: Name

T.A.G.: BD

T.A.G.: Address

T.A.G.: Credit card

T.A.G.: Blah, stinkin' blah

T.A.G.: Then they transferred me to some other place to verify/confirm and...

T.A.G.: Mind you, I’d already been on the phone for half an hour and my lunch break was over

T.A.G.: They started asking all the same questions all over again

Friend: Rigmarole redux!

T.A.G.: So I told them I'd have to finish at a later date and hung up

T.A.G.: I called back a couple of days later

T.A.G.: Same

T.A.G.: Half an hour on the phone

T.A.G.: Start over with all the exact same questions

T.A.G.: DON'T THEY WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN??????

Friend: Graah

T.A.G.: And why does it take half an hour to collect basic information?!

T.A.G.: It takes me 12 seconds to rattle it off

T.A.G.: Anyway

T.A.G.: After they took my information

T.A.G.: They transferred me to another location to verify/confirm

T.A.G.: FUCK

T.A.G.: Another 10 minutes to do that

T.A.G.: Ok, fine. At least now I was in the system and could go on with my life

T.A.G.: That was last month

T.A.G.: This month, on the 2nd of the month... no service

T.A.G.: WTF?

Friend: baaaahahahahaa

T.A.G.: I'd had 73 bucks balance left on the damned thing, plus should have auto paid another 15

T.A.G.: So, I call

T.A.G.: This time from home

T.A.G.: And I'm YELLING

T.A.G.: It takes a lot to make me yell

T.A.G.: I don't yell

T.A.G.: I’m not a yeller

Friend: ")

T.A.G.: I was yelling

T.A.G.: I called the incompetent woman incompetent

T.A.G.: I’m not sure if she actually is incompetent, but I didn't care

T.A.G.: I wanted someone to have a bad day

T.A.G.: I was working hard to ruin someone's day

Friend: Out for blood

T.A.G.: Yessir

T.A.G.: I was going to be the "rude bitch" story someone was going to tell over dinner

Friend: :-)

Friend: And you have the wordsmithistry to back it up.

T.A.G.: Oh, you'd better believe it, buster

T.A.G.: I really was a bitch

T.A.G.: I wouldn't have wanted to deal with me

T.A.G.: I told her that this was the third time I attempted to enroll in the auto plan

T.A.G.: "When I was paying you idiots $50 a month, there were no mistakes getting your money out of my bank account, but I reduce my payments to $15 and suddenly no one knows how to enter a fucking address”

Friend: lol

Friend: Or notify me that you're fucking my shit up

T.A.G.: "Ma'am, I'll take your information now. May I have your full phone num-"

T.A.G.: 714-59...

T.A.G.: 13322 Mon...

T.A.G.: And I went through all the fields she needed to fill before she could even ask for them

T.A.G.: Phone,

T.A.G.: Address

T.A.G.: Credit card

T.A.G.: Security number on credit card

T.A.G.: Security number on my file

T.A.G.: Etc

T.A.G.: And I can hear her typing away as fast as she could 'cause you know she didn't want to have to ask me to repeat myself

Friend: You always keep an empty txt file open for the rapid readers

Friend: So you can just type it out unencumbered

Friend: And fill it in bit by bit after they're done

T.A.G.: And I wrap it up with "Does the fact that I've memorized the order of the fields you have on your screen tell you ANYTHING about the amount of times I've had to do this?"

T.A.G.: "I'm sorry about that, Ma'a-"

T.A.G.: "Oh whatever, are you done?”

T.A.G.: "I have to ask you if when you called before, do you remember what key you pressed when you finished signing up for the auto pay?"

T.A.G.: "What?"

Friend: Yes, I keep a log

Friend: Let me check

T.A.G.: "The part where you are asked to verify, and are taken through a series of steps by pressing keys, do you remember what was the last key you pressed?"

Friend: "The fuck your mother key"

T.A.G.: "Are you seriously asking me if I remember what key I pressed a month ago after half an hour on the phone?"

T.A.G.: "What the hell kind of question is that?"

T.A.G.: "You want me to remember a fucking key?!"

T.A.G.: "Well, ma'am, it's important that when you go through the confirmation process, that at the end you press 1 so that it enters all of your responses into the system."

Friend: That... is a ridiculous system

T.A.G.: "Will the system ask me to press 1?"

T.A.G.: "Yes, ma'am"

T.A.G.: "Then what in the name of all that is holy, makes you think I WOULDN’T press 1?"

T.A.G.: “If it asked me to press 1, I fucking pressed 1!”

T.A.G.: "Are we done yet?"

T.A.G.: “I believe so, ma'am.”

Friend: "God, I hope so, ma'am."

T.A.G.: "I've signed you on to the auto pay program so you don't have to go through the system...”

T.A.G.: "You just did it yourself?"

T.A.G.: "Yes, ma'am"

T.A.G.: "So I don't have to go through the system?"