You know every once in a while…
You know every once in a while, you just have to sit down and wonder about life in general and why it seems so hard on a day-to-day basis.
For example, a year or so ago one of my good employees was severely bitten on the hand by a dog that had gotten loose from its owner. My employee had to have several surgeries and was off work for several weeks doing therapy. We contacted the owner of the dog and tried to get her to provide us with the name of her insurance company, but she refused. Long story, short we ended up suing her for the $7500 we were out of pocket to cover our part of our employees medical bills. Then we had to pay an attorney another $2500 to draw up the papers and get the show on the road.
Several months go by and the dog owner doesn’t respond, so we win what is called a ‘default judgment’. Now, here comes the bad part. When the clerk in the court types the judgment, they spell the name of the dog owner incorrectly. Our attorney notices it and brings it back to the attention of the court. This is called a ‘misnomer’. The judge refuses to make the correction and tells us we have to start the entire process all over. This means tracking the dog owner down and re-filing all of the papers when we first started. Now we find the dog owner has moved and now we can’t find her, so that leaves me with the option of hiring an investigator to find her and paying the attorney for his work all over again. Not worth it. Forget it, go on down the road.
The last couple of days we have had some terrible rainstorms. We have a dish for our television. Normally it does well, but can go out in bad weather. You can tell what’s coming can’t you? So, it goes out, but then when the weather clears up it won’t come back on. I call their voice mail hell and after 30 minutes finally get to speak to a live human being. Guess what? No record of me even having an account. Looked it up under my address, phone number, social security number, cell phone number, office number, office address…nothing, nada, zip.
They want to know my account number. I tell them my bills are kept at my office and I don’t have one at home. They say that I don’t exist, but then how do I get an invoice each and every month? They say that this isn’t possible since I would have to be in their system, which I’m not…two days pass and the system fixes itself. I’m sure they will find me and give me credit for the days the system was down. Yeah, right.
Finally this morning I get a bill for $185 from the guys who provide me with cell phones. This is in addition to the monthly account we get for the phones. There isn’t any explanation, just this invoice. I called their ‘customer service’ department. Another voice mail hell half hour wait for a live, warm body. They are nice and tell me they have no idea what this is for. Looks to them like someone named ‘Loretta’ ordered these additional services. I tell them we don’t have a Loretta and they politely tell me that I must since the unknown items were ordered and charged to our account. When I tell this person that whatever it is, we don’t want it, didn’t order it and aren’t going to pay for it, they tell me that they can’t cancel it since that’s isn’t part of their responsibility. Then they switch me over to another voice mail hell location where I sit for another thirty minutes before I finally give up and hang up.
Last but not least is the call I just received from an irate ex employee who wants his final paycheck. No problem on our end, we mailed it to his home address. Well, when I say no problem on our end, I mean we just sent it to where he told us he lived. Only problem is, he moved about six months ago and didn’t tell us. So, he shouts at us and thinks it’s our fault and responsibility to know where he lives at all time without him having to tell us. As usual he demands that we find the missing check and deliver it to him or he’s going to his attorney and get a court order to make us pay him. Maybe he’ll get lucky and get the judge in my first example that can’t spell.
Some days, I think I should either stay in bed or go fishing.
