Two Settings and a Funeral

Setting No. 1:

At home last week I received a phone call from a collection agency. While they had no details about the bill, they reported it was from Verizon. Now my Verizon payments were up-to-date, but I thought I knew how the bill was generated. I told them I would call Verizon and call them back with Verizon's response. (Why do I say these things?)

A few of you know that I was psychologically traumatized, humiliated, and broken by Verizon last September. I can not repeat the events, but you can read about them in Franz Kafka's "The Castle." The problem was so bad that Verizon told me to change my number—a big mistake as it turned out, but, as I said, I was broken. One small side affect was that they forgot to switch my email account to the new number and I lost my email use in January. I surmised, since the bill was from January, that the Verizon 'System' had generated a bill from this mistake.

After more than an hour of transfers, listening to recorded music, and being told for 20 minutes that my "call would be answered in less than 8 minutes," I found the person with the proper records who verified the bill was a mistake and would be cancelled.

[I'd like to give you a glimpse into Verizon's very effective psychological torture techniques. While on hold after a couple on transfers (and holds), I was subjected to Beethoven's Ninth!...for at least 20 minutes. (No one can make this stuff up.)]

OK, the lady just had to fill out a form to cancel the bill. Could I stay on the line while she completed it? Yes…name?…first pet?…appendix?…bank account number? Um…what? You are canceling your own mistakingly generated bill and you want my bank account number?

She agreed that it was a silly request, but that the Verizon 'System' was a hard taskmaster. It was the only way she could get this form completed. When she offered to transfer me to finance, I finally said, with echos of Beethoven's Ninth in my brain, "No, thank you." I realized they were all getting paid for this and I wasn't.

I called the collection agency and told them the story. At my funeral there will be someone from Verizon looking on.

Setting No. 2:

I was pulling out of the Castle Shannon Blvd. Post Office after dropping a letter into the drive-by mail box. It was either early morning or late evening. I was continuing to Shop and Save so I did not have to cross any lanes of traffic. As I stopped and looked at the on-coming traffic, I saw a car at normal speed just come into view. I had plenty of time, if I hurried, to pull out into my lane. For some reason (hopefully partly due to my conservative driving habits) I thought to my self, "What is my hurry? Just wait for this car." I turned back to look straight ahead only to see a man and woman walk directly in front of my car at that moment.

Had I gone I would have violated one of the fundamental principals of driving, "Always look in the direction you are going" and would have hit the couple. Not hard, but probably enough to break a few legs. Thus I avoided a funeral…probably my own.