What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?
I am back in Kelowna. I got back yesterday after spending an extra day in Vancouver. I had hoped for my extra day to see Ryan and Nathan but both were busy. I did manage to spend a few hours with Aaron, which was good. I hadn’t seen him since he left for Ontario to get his Masters’ Degree. He was ill but we managed a trek up to Scratch Records and then back down to Yaletown where people with brooms were protesting outside the public library. What had gotten them in a twist I do not know, perhaps they too had realized that Lime Coke isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
On Monday, the extra day in Vancouver, I went to Virgin records and blew a ton of money on Moby’s new record, the new British Sea Power disc, the new Eels disc and I think the entire Death Cab For Cutie catalogue. Later in the day, when I got home, I spent more money at the iTunes music store buying up the new Nine Inch Nails disc. On its own a day of music splurging wouldn’t be a big deal but after a week of not working and spending tons of money on comics, food and U2 clothing while on my trip it made me start to feel poor.
I felt even poorer along with a sense of panic, as I realized my car insurance expired that day. The ICBC offices were all closed so I couldn’t renew insurance until Tuesday. Trouble being in order to get to the office I had to drive about five kilometers with no insurance. So very carefully and abiding all the laws I could think of, I drove down Lakeshore to the Mission Park Centre where I parked safely and got my insurance without: a) killing anyone, b) flipping my car in a fiery wreck, c) getting into a high speed chase with the police or d) all of the above. I still have to put my blood red May 06 sticker on my plate, but I figure that can wait.
However as good as being able to hit pedestrians without worry of fiscal responsibility beyond a small deductible is, paying $2,400+ for that tiny red sticker, certainly did not make my finances feel any more robust. Nor did a $800 MasterCard bill on that one card I never use except when my other one was lost for a week and I had to pay for my iPod with it.
The net effect of all of this is that I’m feeling fucking poor. Which makes it even cooler that within one day back I already hate my job again. Things at work go in cycles, and today was the “what do you mean I need to have the original packaging” day. For well over a year we’ve had had this policy that a person cannot return a phone if they have: a) talked on it for more than 30 minutes, b) had it for more than a week and c) not kept the original packaging. If the phone turns out to be a lemon within the first month we’ll exchange it for the same model, but again they have to have the original packaging because it’s all serialized and the manufacturers won’t take back the phones unless all the original materials are enclosed. So there are no trades, ever, without the original box.
Maybe it’s anal, and goodness knows there’s a ton of things that I would like to beat Motorola over the head with a stick for, but it doesn’t seem to be that huge of a deal. Yet today, my first day back, two different and as far as I could tell unrelated women yelled, scowled, cried and threw a fit over the policy. In both cases they had had their phones for just a bit under a month, and in both cases they had disposed of their box. So to be nice I offered to waive the $25 dollar rental charge and supply them with one of our rental phones we give customers when we send their phones out. So they would have a working phone to use while theirs was off for service. We couldn’t just do an over-the-counter-exchange because they had no box, but they could have a perfectly good phone to use while it theirs was gone being serviced. The problem is that I still was going to charge them the $100 deposit for the rental phone.
Now the $100 is something we charge because when we don’t people either destroy our phones or keep them, it’s totally refundable on the condition that they haven’t trashed the phone we loaned them. In both cases this was cause to flip out at me again, but I wouldn’t budge on the deposit. One lady realized after I had repeated her options to her about five times decided to pay the deposit and send her phone in for service. The other one did not take the rental phone, and has informed me that her husband is going to be very angry with me and will be coming down to speak to me “when he gets back.” Hopefully it’s not back from jail, but rather oh I don’t know a philosophers’ convention.
That coupled with the fact that we really did not sell that much today, has left me a bit bitter about my job. I can handle being yelled at and making big bucks, but to have a slow day and get yelled at twice is a bit rough. Without being able to look at my GPM and calculate having made hundreds of dollars, being accused of being a crook just is kind of lame.
I awoke yesterday to snow, the sort of snow that makes you wake up and realize for all the much cherished warmth of the Okanagan this is still Canada, sucker. Luckily I allowed no time at all to deal with the situation, so I was pressed to get to work after cleaning my car off and skidding through the side streets and alleyways of Kelowna. Today was much the same story, except I also had to sweep the sidewalk at work since the building managers apparently don't deal with the elements on Saturdays.
