Monday was .. awful. Monday was so awful I couldn't even talk about it til Tuesday and couldn't post here about it til today.
It was Monday, first of all. No longer The Weekend.
My VPN was flaking.
My supe sent me an email asking what the hell happened to my stats 2 weeks ago (she didn't say 'what the hell' but it was clearly implied), which are so bad they could probably fire me if they wanted to, and I have NO IDEA what happened to them so I get to fret about that til I can redeem myself in the very immediate future.
Some woman wanted her bill explained (which is what I do most of every day) and I explained it and she said we misrepresented ourselves and nobody told her and so forth (which is possible) and I explained that I was unable to remove those charges and I was sorry for any misinformation ... and she said I was rude and she wanted my supervisor. NOW. Which ain't happenin'. I told her I could get her a callback within an hour and she said again that I was rude and she wanted my supervisor NOW, PUT HER ON THE PHONE NOW, and I repeated that she could have a callback within sixty minutes and she called me a name I shouldn't say in front of my grandchildren even with a pg warning on this post and demanded to speak to Corporate. I gave her the number, with its 215 area code and she was hating me so much she was actually going to call it.
While she was yelling at me my cell phone went off -- oh, and she heard it: "What is that music? Are you listening to me?" I don't usually bother to turn it off because only about a dozen people in the world have my number and they all know I work and they don't call during business hours. Unless it's urgent. This ring was one of my kids, who does know better than to call, which meant it *was* urgent. I stuffed the phone under me to muffle the ring, and then heard the text message signal. So as soon as my customer had scampered off to tattle to Philadelphia on me, I checked my messages and the message was: "Mom, please call as soon as you can."
And I couldn't call back til break, which was 20 minutes away. Twenty minutes, while I wondered if there had been an accident or if a divorce was looming or someone had cancer ... you know, all that sort of thing. A lot of them can leap right into your mind, given half a chance.
It turned out to be money problems, which was a huge relief to me so I offered to send some right away.
When lunchtime came I went downstairs and made a fruit salad and did the dishes and cleaned up after a couple of the cats and went back upstairs to eat. I had a chunk of watermelon and a slice of banana and a little bit of peach in my mouth and I was just about to transfer funds to David so he could use his PayPal account since mine isn't working at the moment -- when I aspirated the fruit.
Seriously.
A whole lot of things can flash through your mind when you can't draw a breath for a few seconds. Some of what went through mine, in no particular order:
I can't die, I haven't sent the money and my child will think think I stiffed him/her.
I can't die, I don't have the Christmas ornaments done. By a long shot.
I can't die, I haven't published any of these books I've been working on FOREVER.
I can't die, I don't want David to come home and search all over the house for me and find me dead across my computer, surrounded by balls of yarn and spilled fruit.
And then there was the knowledge that I also couldn't call 911 because all I have to work with is a cellphone with a Denver area code and the ambulance would go tearing out to Lakewood, CO, while I died in San Francisco, unable to speak the words of my current address.
Because I was choking on watermelon and banana and a little bit of peach.
I made a ball of my fists and drove them into my stomach just below my ribs as hard as I could. A little bit of fruit came up and (after a brief debate with myself about messing up the carpet, which I decided quickly would be worth it) I let it fall out of my mouth. A little tiny bit of air got through. I hurled myself across the banister and some more came out. Two more times, spitting fruit and wheezing.
It was quite awhile before I stopped coughing and was able to speak again, but at the end of my lunch hour I was back on the phone, pretending nothing had happened but badly shaken.
My VPN went out again later in the afternoon, nearly costing me a hard-won sale, but I was so pissed off by then that I Broke a Rule and called the customer on my cellphone so he wouldn't think I'd hung up on him and so no one else would get that damned sale. He was impressed.
Oh, and I sprained a finger knitting.
David was extremely glad I was still breathing and he said Tuesday would have to be better. It was.
4 comments:
Geez Mom!! I'm sorry your day was so terrible. I'm so glad you got the fruit up. How scary!!!
I hope the rest of your week is much much better with nicer customers and no children needing money.
Good grief, Mom! How can anyone say you're rude? Dylan had to learn that self-Heimlich thing for scouts, but I specifically thought "Please don't let me ever have to do that to myself". Thank goodness you did! So glad you're okay!
It never ceases to amaze me how much nerve people have when talking to customer/technical support persons over the phone. It's like so many of them go into the conversation ready to be offended and demand whatever extents they may have available to them. One of the things I kinda liked about working at CrystalTech was that the owner of the company sat in an office right behind my desk, and when people would start throwing a fit, I could just outright refuse their demands and get argumentative with them (so long as we were in the right). The owner would sometimes come out and silently cheer me on in my rebuttals.
Yikes! SOO glad to hear that you are still breathing! You can't die! My kids have not come out to California yet to visit you!
Post a Comment