Putting Out Fires

Monday, November 13, 2006

The customer is always....waiting

Don't you hate the practice of people in the home service industry giving you a window of time in which you should make yourself available for THEM to come do work that you are paying them for? Maybe its naive of me, but I tend to think that if I'm paying for a service, I should be the one who is asking them to make themselves available at a time that is convenient for me. How did they get the upper hand? And we all know that "Please be available from 10am-2pm" really means "I will be at your house at 2:15, and by that time you'll have wasted your entire day and you'll be so pissed off you've almost given up waiting for me to show".

Well, we have been waiting for this camera lens since the beginning of July people. Yesterday I get an automated message from UPS stating that a package will be delivered tomorrow and that it will need to be signed for. Oh, and by the way, "We will be in your area between 8am and 7pm". Um, what? In order to get my $800 lens that I've been waiting 5 months for I need to be chained to my house all day?

The (one) good thing about Ryan's schedule is that he's home during the day sometimes, so for today at least it wasn't too big a deal. Well, except for he didn't leave the house for errands all day because he knew I'd be heart broken if I didn't get that lens TODAY RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY. But here we are. 4pm. 8 hours into our 'window' and still no sign of UPS. 3 more hours to go. Here's hoping I don't have to pee (thus possibly being unable to get to the door fast enough because it IS all about the UPS man's schedule afterall) in the next half hour because Ryan's out jogging the devil dog.

Aside from that, I have BIG news people. Bigger then when Pumpkin Spice Lattes reappeared at Starbucks for the season! Drum roll..... I finally figured out what I'm making my girls for Christmas! That might not sound like a big thing, but I'm telling you I stress. I was with a few of those girls this weekend and they were talking about how they were already making progress on their projects and I realized I hadn't put any thought into it at all. The trick is to find something that can be mass-produced (I need 6 afterall), cheap (because I have to make 6), and spectacular enough to warrant a good Ya-ya Christmas gift. Oh, and it has to be functional and something that the girls would actually use. But I did it! I found the perfect thing. So there Christmas! And this weekend we're starting our Christmas shopping. Have you started yours??

**UPDATE**
After Ryan ran the devil dog, Karma D. Bear and I went out. About 1/4 mile from our house I saw the UPS man! RAPTURE! So I picked up the pace, ready to go play with my new toy which SURELY had arrived at our house. That was a half hour ago. No lens. Now they're just messing with me.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...: I'm hoping that your lens actually did arrive today!!

And not to rub it in or anything, but I totally finished my Christmas shopping this weekend....see what I mean about being a little OCD with my to do list. EEK!; 6:01 PM
Melissa said...: I'm having that problem with out Culligan service guy. "By noon" means sometime around 2:30.; 7:57 AM

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