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I Hate the Phone Company

February 6, 2008 11:11 AM

t least one of the reasons that I'm excited about starting up our own business is the fact that, at least theoretically, I'll be able to set my own hours. I say "theoretically" because I'm pretty sure that once we have a good amount of business, we'll end up working pretty much normal business hours, anyway. I know that it's hard for me to motivate myself to do work after 5pm. And, of course, we'll have to go to court and meet with clients, and we can't very well do either of those things at 11pm. Still, whenever those concerns aren't in play, I should have the flexibility to decide that I want to get an early start one day or stay in bed a little longer the next, as long as I'm sure I'll be able to get everything done.

So why, then, did I have to wake up at 7am this morning and drive--through the ice and snow--to the office? I did that because, as it turns out, our phone company is evil. You see, when I spoke to someone last Friday to get the ball rolling on our phone service, the guy on the phone told me that our phone would be ready no later than Wednesday but that he was sure it would get done on Monday and that, if it wasn't, he'd call me and let me know. Flash forward to Tuesday. Mr. Vice and I arrive at our office with shiny new office equipment including, obviously, phones (still no chairs, though--we're open to taking donations). So we plug in our fancy new phone and--surprise!--no dial tone.

So I call up the phone company and ask them what gives. Turns out, no, we don't get phone till Wednesday. That's fine, but then I realized that the previous occupants of our office did some really fancy wiring with their phones and that the millions of phone jacks in our walls might all be on different extensions, so we have to make sure that all of them go to our one number (multiple lines are for the big boys). So now we have to pay an exorbitant fee to have some guy come into our office and check out the wiring and, what's worse, someone has to be here when the guy shows up. Mr. Vice had court this morning, so it fell to me to show up. And, of course, in classic crappy company fashion, the phone company couldn't give me a more precise estimate on when the guy would show up than "sometime between 8 and 12." And then when I called up this morning to make sure the guy was still coming despite the ice and snow, the guy I spoke to said "well, I don't know who you talked to, but he could be there anywhere between 8 and 4:30." Awesome.

Thank god for free municipal wireless internet or I'd be going insane.


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