The phones are driving me crazy today. It seems to me that half the people in my office are away from their desks at any given point in time today. Coincidentally it’s the same half of the people that are getting mutiple phone calls each during that time. Few things bug me more than incessantly ringing phones. It brings out a pathological rage in me that I can barely control, I think it’s a throwback to my days on the switchboard.

It doesn’t help that our phones here don’t have an automatic answering service on them, so if someone dialed in directly (ie, not through switchboard) they’ll ring forever. I try to ignore if for a bit, then just when my frustration reaches it’s peak (as my face starts turning crimson and moments before I throttle someone) I walk the full length of the office to answer the offending phone. Past several other people who are closer and could have answered that instrument of the devil, but just as I get there it gives me one final taunt by stopping ringing!

Or scenario two - nearly as bad: I get there in the nick of time, answer it almost begging the person to leave a message and the caller, thinking they are doing me a favour, says “Oh don’t worry, I’ll try her later”. I’m sure you will! And no doubt she won’t at her desk then either!

The only thing worse than the two above scenarios is when I have just gotten back to my desk after missing / answering the phone and that person’s cellphone starts to ring, sitting pretty next to their portal to hell desk phone… Makes me want to fetch said cellphone, find its owner and beat their head in with it.

*deep breaths*

Okay, I admit I’m having a particularly raw day today. You know the kind of day when everything seems to get on your nerves? My skin itches from the inside, my legs feel like they are burning and even neighboring cubicle conversations rub on my exposed brain nerves.

Perhaps I should just go home and play some Wii… yeah, that’s the ticket

Until last night when I received and Upgrade offer from Nashua, and with it came the sneaky suspicion that they had not cancelled m contract as requested. This suspicion was confirmed when I opened up my inbox this morning and found a full account from my friends at Nashua … Their billing period is the 16 to the 15th of the following month, so I should have paid a prorated fee for the end of December, but there it was: my account in full.

I phoned Nashua, and the service consultant told me that the account hadn’t been cancelled because Vodashop had not ported my number. I assured the bloke that they had indeed, as I was making calls and they weren’t appearing on my Nashua itemized billing. So I must have been ported, not to mention the saga that I had gone through to get re-set up on Vodashop. He insisted that I phone Vodashop to confirm they had competed porting. That wasn’t easy as they weren’t answering their phones, but when I did eventually get through to someone, she assured me that I had been ported. Phoned Nashua back and blah blah fishpaste, they’ve escalated it to XYZ.

But this saga is not the point of the post …

The whole ordeal (around 1 hour’s worth of phoning and holding and fighting with people) left me feeling rather sorry for myself, until a friend arrived at work, and told me her car, that has spent 2 weeks at Peugeot with an undiagnosed fault, will now cost her R47 000 to fix. The guys still don’t really know what’s wrong, so now they want to replace the entire fuel-injection system at a cost of 47K! I could get side-tracked here about my experience with French cars, but I won’t … Needless to say my cellphone saga paled in comparison, and I felt a bit stupid for getting so worked up about…

This same friend then mirrored my situation by telling me that just when she was feeling incredibly frustrated and upset about the seemingly insolvable car situation, something happened that made her think “what am I doing getting so upset about this? It’s just a car”. She got a call from friend, telling her about a mutual friend whose unborn baby has been diagnosed with Turners syndrome … If her baby survives she’s got a whole life-time of potential complications ahead of her …

I’m not trying to depress you all here, but it did make me realize how easily I can end up down and feeling sorry for myself when one aspect of easy and comfortable life goes wrong. I am truly blessed and I mustn’t forget that. So what if the service industry is out to get me In the greater scheme of things I’ve got it so good it almost hurts, thanks to God for that.

As for office toilet etiquette I’d go as far as to say that I would never talk from the stall. Not even if I’m conversing merrily with someone as we walk together towards the toilets. Once that stall door in closed, I’m zipped. Even when someone I know walks in, talking to someone else I know, and I have something I’d really like to add to the conversation? I bite my tongue. When I’m done in the loo, washing my hands at the basin I can say my piece, but not till the other person it out their stall.

And people who don’t wait to check that everything flushed cleanly before they leave? My all time worst. I actually thought the Biscuit’s automated flushing device in Ally McBeal was a great idea. Anyone know where I could get me one of those?