Haggling

I woke up today, after a restless night of sleep – one hour on, one hour off, and so on. I find myself with a lot of stress these days. Nothing seems to be going well right about now, and I can only say that I’m sick of haggling for everything.

Why is it that it’s so difficult to get what we deserve? Why do we have to haggle for everything? Even things that we’re supposed to have?

We have to haggle for:
- Customer service
- Affordable prices
- Raises
- Promotions
- Better treatment

WTF?

And the problem is that, because I have zero problems with haggling (I’m actually pretty confrontational), I don’t like to have to do it all of the time.

Don’t get me wrong . . . usually I end up on the favorable side of the haggle. Generally, my haggling pays off, but it’s draining, and afterward I’m happy that I got my way, but at the same time, I know I worked hard to get it. Even if it’s a refund for a purchase, or an additional 5% in salary, or better column replacement, or whatever it is.

Does anyone else get sick of fighting for things, or is it just me???

Busy, BUSY, week!

And not without more phone mayhem. My posts of a few weeks ago indicate that I was having trouble with my beloved cellphone and received a replacement from the insurance company. Yeah, well, that phone was just as fucked up as the first one – still dropping text messages from certain carriers, still spontaneously rebooting. Weird.

So . . . I call for yet another replacement, and go through the exact same rigamarole – can’t get it delivered to another address without forking over my first born (which would actually be okay, if I planned to HAVE a first born), blah, blah, blah.

But this time, there was a twist. UPS is typically the pinnacle of inefficiency, but this time they were much worse than usual. I put in a request to have the delivery address changed, yet when I arrived at home, I had one of those InfoNotices posted on my door. So I called again. Another InfoNotice. I called a third time, with a terse tone, and asked a rep to guarantee that the next delivery would be at my office.

Later that day, I got a call from a surly woman named Ernestine, who left the message that they won’t reroute my package because it’s a phone, and they don’t reroute electronics.

Called Ernestine. Got put on hold for 4 minutes. Hung up. Called again. Again, put on hold. Hung up, yet again. Third time was the charm. I explained to Ernestine that, mere days ago, a phone had been rerouted to me. I was sure that she could find it in her heart to do it again. Again, she explained the policy. Again, I said that I really didn’t give a shit.

The end result was that my phone was finally delivered to my work address. I opened the long-awaited package only to discover that they neglected to include a battery.

WTF?