Dress Rehearsal
Written by Kate Petersen on August 3, 2008 – 12:16 pm -Here I am, busily putting food by and making plans for TEOTWAWKI, smug in my own calmness and confidence that I’ll be able to handle it. I’m ready!
Last night I picked up the phone to order refills of some of my husband’s prescriptions. No dial tone. After a great deal of searching online (they do NOT make it easy!), I found the repair number for AT&T and called them on my cell phone.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Petersen, but that does not appear to be an AT&T number.”
What????
The billing department doesn’t open until Monday morning at 8 am and the repair office had no information other than it is not a number they can do anything about.
I paced for 15 minutes getting more and more upset. The phone bill is on autopay. It hasn’t been cut off for nonpayment. What in the world is happening? What happens if there’s a medical emergency over the weekend? Why the hell isn’t anyone there to do anything about it until Monday????
After a while it occurred to me to check the online bank statement and be sure the thing was actually paid. Our credit union switched systems at the beginning of July and there have been multiple major problems with the new one. An employee in my husband’s department had his mortgage paid twice, throwing his account way into the red and wiping out the money they needed this weekend for back to school purchases and fees. The credit union shrugged over that one. “We’ll see that it gets fixed.” Meanwhile he can’t take advantage of this weekend’s tax holiday.
So I checked the statement. Sure enough, none of the automatic payments — phone, natural gas, cell phone, a couple of small insurance policies — none have been paid in July. Monday morning I have to get the phone bill paid and start calling everyone else, starting with the credit union to make sure they get their act together. The power bill is due tomorrow. Mortgage on Tuesday.
Lesson learned: I am NOT calm and confident when things go wrong. I didn’t panic, but I was amazed at how upset I was, how furious, how helpless — and the only thing that was down was the land line. These are not good emotions to have in a crisis. I need to work on better ways to emotionally respond when other things start going haywire. I’m not yet sure how to do that, but now I’m aware of a major vulnerability that I did not know before.
Things happen for a reason.
Posted in TEOTWAWKI |
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Oh, your poor thing! I know how frustrating it can be dealing with AT&T. I got divorced in 94 and in early 03 woke up one morning to a dead phone. At that time I worked as a customer service tech for a small software company and needed my phone! Well, called AT&T and they said, “you’ve filled for bankruptcy and we disconnected your phone.” Finally found out after a zillion transfers that my exes SS# was STILL on my account even though my account was totally new from 96 on! They just transfered the SS#’s to the new account then. Had to get another new account but luckily not a new #.
Kate, it’s the little nitpicking things that will drive us all MAD!
I think I’d have been an ex-widow at that point…
Please will someone help me here. I seem to have missed something. What does TEOTWAKI stand for?
Just to show you how dense I am, I spent $ and pulled-out-hair on telephone repair, just to have the repairman point out that the “trouble must be in the house somewhere”…turns out one of my telephone instruments had been knocked off the hook.
I hate electronic payments. I may be slow, but at least I know when I have paid my bills.
TEOTWAWKI = “The end of the world as we know it.” This doesn’t literally mean the end of the world — it’s shorthand for economic recession/depression, post peak oil, climate crisis, or what have you.
I’ve said before that I honestly think that things are going to get very, very bad for most people in the next few years, which is why I am spending so much time and emphasis on preparing for lean times ahead.
One of the reasons I have almost everything on autopay is that several of them charge extra for online payments. My car insurance costs an extra $4.00 per month if I pay it directly; the mortgage would be an extra $20.00 per month. I don’t think the utilities charge extra, but I could be wrong.
Hey, drchelo, are you and the doggies in the kiddie pool yet? I survived the summer heat wave of 78 in Dallas and even still have the t-shirt and THAT wasn’t easy.
This heat wave is awful - yes, I was in Dallas in ‘78 and ‘80 - but I was MUCH, much younger, and I was in my last year of residency and first year of hematology/oncology fellowship respectively, so I lived in the air-conditioned hospitals and did not come out for air until the sun went down. Also, I lived in a townhouse, with no yard or garden to worry about then.
I walk the Demon Dog shortly after the sun comes up, we walk for about an hour until it starts getting hot, then it is time to water the tomatoes, peppers, and fragrants - and then it is time to retreat to the house, shut the doors, pull the curtains, and turn on the fans! I only venture outside to get into the car to go to work, to shop, or to get the paper.
It is even too hot for Dudley the Louisiana Gumbo Hound to spend time in the sun - which he normally loves to do.
Congratulations on surviving the heat wave!
You too, sweetie! We were all much younger then. I remember driving home in the evening and seeing a hand glider guy glide off a 7-8 story building into the stillness of the 110 degree heat.