The Life of Riley

For close to twenty years, starting in April 1983, I subleased a small corner office in a CPA firm. Then, a little more than ten years ago, the firm moved to a new location which ended up being about the same mile and a half distance as before from my condo but heading west instead of north. One morning last week I went to the office to check the mail earlier than usual. But that’s basically all I do there now. I gave up the desk space when they made the move.lifeofriley
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Complaint Department

When was the last time you talked to someone in the “complaint department”? In today’s world of political correctness, a friendlier term is now in use- “customer service”. Based on interaction with people who populate this ever-growing field of work, the term is most definitely an oxymoron. And you can also say that some of the customer service people are morons, too.

Just last week, I was on the phone with a representative from the phone company complaining that they increased my bill from the previous month by ten dollars. I spent some time scrutinizing the four page statement of small print to figure out that they added an extra three dollars per phone number for something called ‘line charge’ and fifty cents each for ‘linebacker’. Having two lines, that was an extra seven dollars plus three dollars in various taxes to feed politicians need to take away my money. I wouldn’t have minded if the fees were reversed because ‘linebacker’ was a polite way to say inside wiring repair insurance. I’ve needed the talents of strangers coming into my apartment to rip up a few wires now and then. They call telephone repairmen linebackers not because they also doubled as football players but at some point in their career they climbed telephone polls for recreation, I guess.
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