Chapter 1: Night Terrors
You know those days when everything seems to go wrong no matter what you do? Today was my turn, again. I'm not really complaining over here. I've had a few good cries, gotten angry, and then took decisive action. And now, there is a small measure of joy in my life. The kind of joy that is only possible after you have endured a toothache and then the toothache is gone. You know what I mean?
Right from the start, things were tough. I was very tired last night, so I fell asleep about 8:30. I set the alarm for 4:45 to give me a full night's sleep. Ahhh, it wasn't that simple. I woke up with a start about 1:30 am in a panic, with the crazy idea in my head that I owed the IRS every penny I've made this year. Which, of course, is not true, but tell that to my beating heart in the middle of the night. I was yawning and tired, but after that adrenelin rush, there was no way I could get back to sleep.
I took advantage of the "extra" hours in the morning. I worked in the office for a while, sorting out some more financial paperwork, and then cleaned the whole upstairs, including running the vacuum and doing the kitty box. Then, about 3:30 I went downstairs to clean the kitchen, do the dishes, and two loads of laundry. I was expecting the printer repair guy to actually show up and return my printer (which he had kidnapped from my on February 18th, but don't get me started). So, I cleared a path for him, moving the furniture to give a wider walkway, and moved some plants. I didn't want him to face an obstacle course. About 6 am, I was in my office again, starting to work. At 8, I got my shower.
Chapter 2: The Thorn of the Rose
At 9:15, I called the printer repair guy to see if he was still on his way. He had this long drawn out personal story about why he was delayed, and what he had to prioritize before me. OK. He said that he would be here in abot 45 minutes. I was exhausted and hungry, but since I didn't have any groceries, I didn't have anything substantial I could eat. I had the last handful of grapes to hold me over. Then, about 15 minutes later, the printer repair guy calls me, to say that he has had yet another emergency, and can't come until later. I tell him that I need to run some errands, and will be back in about 90 minutes. He says that works perfectly for him, and for me to call him when I get in.
I dash out to my neighborhood Trader Joe's for a leisurely shop for delicious things, which I find in abundance. I make it through the store just fine, and am in quite a good mood, actually. The only excpetion -- I was reaching for the sorbet in the freezer case to check its nutritional information when the lid catches on something and jerks it out of my hand, back into the case, clipping off one of my fingernails, broken to the quick. I get the groceries loaded into my truck and drive home. It's 10:45 when I pull in, so after unloading the truck, I call the guy. He says that he'll be here in 45 minutes. So I start putting things away, and then I get out my favorite vase. I had purchased a half dozen yellow roses for myself, and I was feeling very happy. I cut the stems, trimmed off the leaves below the water line, and took the vase up to the office to enjoy today.
Because of a project spread out on my desk, there just wasn't any room for the vase, except for right by the printer's empty place, and since the guy is on his way, that's not a good place. In my brilliance, I decide that for now, I'll put the roses on the floor between my chair and the wall, and move them to the other side of the desk after the guy leaves. Only they never made it. About half way down, suddenly the vase just shatters in my hands, and broken glass, water mixed with blood, and roses go everywhere. First, I scramble to move my computer tower out of the flood zone, and then, I go into the bathroom to get a towel to sop up the mess. Cursing the whole time. I pick up the big pieces of glass and put them into what remains of the vase, along with the rose stems, which I also yell at, like it is their fault. As I'm screaming at them, I swear I can feel them wilting in my hands, and I feel guilty for taking out my rage on an item that only exists in my world to provide beauty. It was a wake up call, and the anger stopped immediately. I found yet another vase for them in the kitchen, and brought them back up to the place they were headed before the disaster hit.
Chapter 3: Holding Pattern
By now, it is more than 45 minutes, and I'm sure that the printer repair guy will be ringing the doorbell any minute. So I decide to go back downstairs to wait, and lay out on the couch to close my eyes. I have quite a headache by this time, and this quiet resting helps me to relax a bit. I decide to call my mom at her office, only I get put on hold. For five minutes. So I hang up and wait another 15 minutes. Still no guy, so I try mom again. I'm on hold for three minutes before I give up again. I wait another 20 minutes, still no guy, and this time, mom picks up the phone in just a few seconds, but she is too busy to talk. I should have figured, eh? By now, it is nearly 1 pm, and since the printer guy was going to be here just about 11:30, I decide that I'll give him until 1 before I call again.
Chapter 4: Lightening and Thunder
My doorbells goes off at 2 minutes to 1 pm. When I get to the door, the printer repair guy is standing there holding my printer. Now, this is a big old laser printer, and it weighs something like 45 pounds. So I push open the door and start in behind him. He comes into my living room and stops, and I say "after you..." to which he replies "oh, you want it upstairs..." and I'm thinking "yea, I want it where the computer is, where you took it from!" I trot up behind him. He spots the empty printer place and sets it down, and take three steps back. I'm looking at him, like "so, does it work?" and he says "Do you still have the cables for it?" and doesn't make a move. I walk over and sit on the floor next to the tower (beside the towel that is still sopping up the rose water) and pull out the cables from the electrical spaghetti. I hand him the ends he needs for the printer, and he connects them and turns it on. I reach over to the mouse and send a single page to print. I hear the printer start to spit out, page after page, and I reach over to see what he is pulling off the printer. It's a test page, and another, and another. And they look horrible! The toner is leaking in places where it shouldn't be, and letters are missing in other places. Then, I get an error message on the computer. One problem at a time. I tell him that the test page looks horrible. He says that he told me the page was still printing crooked (he didn't fix it in the 6 months that he had it, but I knew that before he returned it.) So I remind him that I called for the service because the toner cartridge I had purchased from his company burst and spilled all over inside, and since they were coming out, and it hadn't been serviced for 18 months, I scheduled a maintenance call, also. In addition to the new toner cartridge and spill. It was during that process that he told me that he would have to take it into the shop to fix the crooked printing. He didn't say anything. I told him that this printout wasn't acceptable. Then things got really ugly.
Chapter 5: Lightening Strike
The printer repair guy said to me "Well, if you expect me to go and fetch another toner cartridge and bring it back, I'm going to have to charge you for another service call." To which I said, "you still haven't completed the first service call... and I don't have any problem paying for the original service I requested." I didn't even mention that it took him six months to return my printer, or that he had scheduled more than 6 times to return it and plain just didn't show up, three of them in the last two weeks. I didn't even go there. He headed for the door, with me in pursuit, and he told me that he wasn't charging me for the hours he spent working on my printer, to which I could have said "You only attempted to fix my printer... you didn't fix it... that's at your expense." But again, I didn't go there. Instead, I told him that I knew he already had appointments this afternoon, and that Monday was fine. By this time, he is out the door and I'm trotting behind him onto the carport when I realize:
THE PRINTER GUY HAD LEFT HIS TRUCK RUNNING ON MY DRIVEWAY.
He had no intention of setting it up and making sure that it worked. He had no intention of providing any kind of service. That was the last straw. I'm standing on my carport with my jaw hanging open at this revelation when I realize he is talking. He says that he will bring the new toner cartridge by on Monday and just ring the doorbell and leave it on my mat. I'm still in shock when he pulls out of the driveway into the street.
Chapter 6: Plotting Revenge
And then I get mad. Really mad. I've bit my tongue this whole time, not gotten firm with him about the return delivery, and now this. I'm furious with myself for allowing this situation to drag on like this, and I'm really mad at him for providing such poor service and having such a pissy attitude. I'm so angry that I start to cry. I start pacing around the house, imagining the conversation I could have with him, ripping him a new one, letting him know that this isn't acceptable. Then, I think I will call the president of the company and give him a piece of my mind, too. And then I realize that if I make either one of those calls, I'll either start screaming (and be dismissed as a hysterical woman) or start crying (and be dismissed as a weak woman). This is not the time for me to take action, but these strong negative emotions are roiling around inside me and I feel like I'm going to burst from it.
I bite my tongue, and think hard, and then pick up the phone and call my dear friend at work. Yes, she is at work, and I'm crying. When she answers, I ask first if she has a minute, and she really only has a couple before meeting. So I tell her the very short version of the story (she know the basic printer story, anyway.) As I'm talking, I'm thinking that maybe I should just end my misery by calling one of their competitors to come and take over. I say this, but Kim reminds me that these assholes need to know that their customer service sucks. She's right. And then, I realize that all of this upset is happening over a printer that prints cockeyed. No matter how the toner gets fixed, the pages are always going to be crooked on the page. I sigh, and I know that my solution has to solve all of my problems. I'm feeling much better, no longer feeling like an estrogen hand grenade, and I let Kim get on to her meeting. Thank God for girlfriends.
Chapter 7: Sprouting Seeds
I spend most of an hour trying to get the printer to take print jobs from the computer. But not being a hardware gal, I can't get very far. I try all of the things I know, a few time, and then feel despair. What am I going to do? How can I fix this situation for myself? And then, a new idea ibegins brewing inside me... I need to buy a new printer. And suddenly, the clouds of anger are breaking up and the sunlight of hope and independence find their way to shine on me. I get back online and start looking at printer reviews. After most of another hour spent comparing the specs, I realize that there are going to be many options available to me that can give me the same characteristics I have with my trusted old dinosaur and for under $400. I'm so relieved! At one point when the printer repair guy said that he couldn't fix my printer, I had considered buying a new one, and the ones I saw were between $800 and $1400, and were more than I was willing to invest in my business. I decided that I could live with crooked printing, after all.
I narrow my choices down to three, and then two. And then, without really giving it much thought, I selected one. I went out to the company's website to download their user manual to see if there were any nasty maintenance surprises. And there were not. So, I called my local computer store and asked if they have them in stock. I got the greatest sales clerk, very helpful, offered me some tips about this printer, and found out that they had one. He put it on hold for me. I drove up and paid for it. It only weighs about 25 pounds, so I didn't have any trouble carrying it into the house and up the stairs.
Chapter 8: Play Time
Of course, mine is a household run by a cat, so Skooch was involved with every step of removing the old printer and installing the new one. His favorite parts were the crinkly bag that the printer was wrapped in, and the big box itself. I was laughing and enjoying his help, and took some pictures of the process. But my greatest joy came when I reached the end of the instructions and realized that 1) the instructions had worked perfectly (how often does that happen?) and 2) I CAN PRINT. After six months of not printing out anything, I can print to my heart's content. The printer is beautiful, the copies are clear, and it works! Oh, and they aren't crooked on the page, either.
So, you are wondering, what will I do to tie up the loose ends?
- I tried to find my broken fingernail in the freezer case at Trader Joe's but it blended in too much with the frost. I'm afraid that some poor shopper is going to reach in and pull out a pint of sorbet only to discover a fingernail on it.
- I now have an extra printer sitting in the middle of my office. I'm going to call a few charities I know and see if anyone wants a printer that prints crooked and needs a new toner cartridge.
- I don't know what I'm going to do about the printer repair guy and the fact that he said he would return on Monday with a new toner cartridge. Statistically, the odds are that he isn't going to show again. And based on his track record, I don't feel any compunction to notify him not to come. I'll decide later what I'm going to do.
- In the meantime, I'm going to print out everything I've been saving for my files for months and months. In fact, I probably will need more than the ream of paper that I have on hand. I think a short trip to Staples is going to be required tomorrow.
- I'll use the receipt from the printer donation to win back some of my money from the IRS next spring. Wish me luck.
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